 |
ENTRIES:
[2010/06/09 11:07 am]
Yesterday my 'pogo sketch' stylus arrived in the mail. It's a pen with a squishy conductive foam tip that works on the iPad, and it's generally regarded as the best option. It cost me £15 including shipping to the UK, which isn't cheap for such a basic device, but apparently the cheaper options are a waste of money.
This is the pen in question. It's actually pretty small, but long enough to be comfortable my fairly large man-hands. I wish it had a pen cap, I worry about the foam tip getting damaged in my pocket or bag.
So this is my second image using the stylus, which I did whilst eating breakfast and watching the morning news. I actually had a laptop nearby running gmail etc as usual, and I even had a wacom tablet there too, but once I'm using a tablet it feels a lot like 'work'. This was very relaxing to draw. The nature of the stylus (or indeed, using your finger) is that it tends to be behave a lot more like painting than drawing. You don't have the same sort of tight line control as a pen or tablet, but you get all the motion in there, and you can zoom and pan easily to go in for detail when necessary. At first it seemed clumsy, but now I'm starting to enjoy using it, and I found myself using the iPad to write/draw game design notes whilst coding yesterday.
You can watch the progress of this drawing here. You can see that I originally sketched this small, and then scaled it up and started working on it in detail instead. I flipped the artwork a couple of times too, which is something I find essential for checking symmetry. Autodesk Sketchpad doesn't have this feature, but Brushes and Art Studio both do.
 
When I first received the iPad I wasn't very excited. I didn't really have any good use for it, and I didn't enjoy typing on it at all. Browsing was neither as portable as my iphone nor as good as my laptop. However, as always, it's really down to the apps you get. I bought and played a lot of games that I really enjoy, and these art packages are really coming into their own for me.
Also, I'm seriously considering drawing a comic with it! This is an ultra fast sketch of a rough comic page, but I think that with the upscaling 'Brushes Viewer', and a little tidy up work (bubbles and panel borders etc), I could create all the artwork for a comic on the iPad comfortably enough. It's weird, because it feels like a break from a computer, when this is patently untrue! :)Current Mood:  artistic
[2010/06/04 11:25 am]
It's time for TIGJamUK3, so soon I'll be heading to CB2 Bistro and getting my game on! There are plans for 3-hour collaborations and challenges, and some people will be working on new game ideas too. There were some talks of making an RPG of some sort, as well as some ultra low-resolution stuff. Exciting!
I'll post some updates over the weekend. Please look forward to some pretty shitty games! XD
[2010/05/28 2:57 pm]
It's an exciting day here at Starfruit HQ. I just received two new pieces of hardware which will impact my work significantly over the coming years! The first is fairly straight forward... it's an iPad!
I've already announced that I'll be releasing Tumbledrop on iPad, so now that I have the hardware I can start development on it properly. Call me old fashioned, but when possible I prefer to have the hardware I'm developing for! I went for a 3G 32GB model just so that I can use it when traveling if need be, as I can just pay for one day's usage. So, there might be some interesting iPad games coming in the future...
Far more interesting (and expensive...) is my new laptop! Amazingly, I decided not to get a macbook of any sort, and instead opted for the Sony Vaio-Z. It has a 13" screen, Core i7 CPU, nvidia 330m GPU, 4GB ram, and lots of other really high specs! My current laptop is a Toshiba Portege A200, which is a very compact but competent little laptop, and it's served me well for the last five years. I adore the compact form factor, and I loved having a Windows machine at all times, but I hated that it wasn't powerful enough for much gaming, or heavy 3D graphics work.
Now I have a very powerful and portable laptop I'll be able to work away from my desk more often. I'm looking forward to being able to work on Unity games, and do lots of 3D modeling without the discomfort of a low-spec machine. It also allows me to play PC games (especially indie games) in the living room, or hooked up to my TV, which helps to give me more time for relaxation in general.
Whilst these are just pieces of technology, they help me to do my job (and live my life) more effectively. It also feels nice to have something shiny after a long period of hard work. Even indies deserve to have something nice once in a while!
With that in mind, I will probably play some PC games this weekend. Any recommendations? I might start Dragon Age again, or play some Fuel, but I'm open to suggestion.Current Mood:  excited
[2010/05/26 8:08 am]
Every Tuesday afternoon I uproot from my regular work environment and head to a local bistro with my laptop!
It’s part of ‘Cambridge Friendship Club’ (otherwise known as CB2Indies), in which several indie developers get together and work. It’s a great opportunity to get out of the house, and I use it in lieu of my previous ‘Fun Friday’ as a day to work on experimental projects. We’ve been doing it for about five weeks now, and I’m definitely enjoying the routine. It also goes some way to counteract the maddening isolation from working all alone all the time.
I might start doing some full days working away from home, as often all I need is a laptop and an internet connection! I’m learning to take advantage of my indie status, without letting my work hours eat all of my time.
[2010/04/26 2:24 pm]
This weekend was Ludum Dare, a 48 hour game making challenge. This is my fifth time, and the theme was 'Islands'!
This time was different, because several of us went to a cafe and did LD together, so it was two days tapping on a laptop - not quite as comfortable as working from home, but I definitely appreciated the encouragement and motivation from working around others. I wasn't able to wrap up the game as neatly as my previous entries, but I was very pleased with the results. What do you think? :)
Play in web browser!
Download the Windows version.Current Mood: accomplished
[2010/04/22 1:00 pm]
Yesterday I did some manga tutorial work for the BBC! It's going to be some sort of video online in a few weeks, but for now here's a photo of me at the set. They painted it up based upon some of my artwork, haha. It was my first time doing any sort of film work, and hopefully the results will turn out okay.
[2010/04/07 12:13 am]
Tumbledrop 1.10 with 20 extra levels is now live on the iPhone app store!
Thanks Apple, nice last minute present! XD
[2010/04/06 6:46 pm]
It's my 30th birthday today, and it's been something of an introspective occasion. I've been evaluating what I've achieved and the position I'm in, rather than getting hung up on things I wanted to achieve and where I thought I might be. Life benefits from Agile project management too, Waterfall is outdated.
Moreso than new-year, I've had opportunity to consider my past year, and where I want to go from here as a game developer. I had a bit of a rocky beginning with my new life as an indie game developer, but I now feel happy and confident about the decision I made, and I'm committed to continuing like this for the foreseeable future.
I'm pleased that Tumbledrop has been received well enough to enable me to make this decision, and I'm very grateful to each and every person that has supported me by purchasing the game, or otherwise been supportive of my decision. Being independent is such a false term, because I'm entirely dependent upon my friends, the community of developers, and everyone that supports me by buying my games. A lot of people make it possible for me to have this opportunity, and I always grateful for this.
What's to look forward to? Well, I have at least two major games I'll be releasing within the next 12 months, neither of which has anything to do with Tumbledrop. I'm doing a lot of prototypes right now, and a lot of programming practice to lay down some solid foundations for my projects, and generally trying to broaden my skillset.
However, it's my birthday today, so I'm going to get back to playing games, eating chocolate and drinking beer! Right now I'm playing 'FFCC The Crystal Bearers' on Wii, it seems pretty weird from first impressions! Whoo!
[2010/04/04 9:02 pm]
I've just submitted Tumbledrop 1.1 to the App Store! This adds 20 new levels, and 40 new medals. It also fixes a lot of bugs, so it's something of a milestone for me. It's been great to have received feedback on the original release, and I've been working hard to make new and interesting level designs that are tricky and puzzling.
Some people have asked about iPad support, so I would like to announce that I'm working on 'Tumbledrop Deluxe' coming to PC, Mac and iPad! This is an enhanced version of Tumbledrop featuring all of the levels from the iPhone, as well as new levels to take advantage of the larger screen. More details on this will come later in the month.
So, please keep an eye on the app store for Tumbledrop 1.1! :)
[2010/03/30 7:26 am]
San Francisco was incredible, and very hard for me to put into words. It was amazing to spend time with lots of people that I've only had cursory experience of via the internet, and it was also nice to spend time with familiar faces such as Terry and Perrin. I had some exciting meetings with companies too, so hopefully I'll have some things to announce later this year! :)
I didn't win IGF, but being nominated is still enormous for me. I fully intend to enter IGF again this year, and I also intend to attend GDC next year regardless of how things go.
Right now I'm working really hard on the next level pack for Tumbledrop - here's a sneak peak! I can't announce a release date just yet, but watch this space!!
:: all
entries :: history/calendar
::
|
 |
