Orbital and stuff

By Mike Daly
December 1st, 2008

Hi guys. Here's what has gone down the month of November.

Orbital

So after I finished up Connexus (see previous post) I decided that I would take a break for a while. There was a lot of work to get done leading up to that, so I had gotten myself into the routine of spending all of my spare time working on it.

Pretty much as soon as I finished it, suddenly there were all these unoccupied gaps in my schedule, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I had to do something productive with them. My friend Vince ended up having some free time around the same time, so I started a new game project that I'm calling Orbital.

This is a much simpler game concept that I'd had rolling around in the back of my head for a while. It is simpler to the point that I'm actually almost done with it. I'm thinking I might do the extra polish work required and post it up on the new Xbox Live Community games thing.

Anyway, let's make with the pictures:


Mmm... nice blurry trails


A fine bankshot

It's a pretty simple game; it's basically just like pong (or maybe air-hockey). The catch is that instead of just bouncing the puck around, you press and hold the A button to activate gravity. You use gravity to slingshot the puck back at your opponent.

One aspect of the design that I think is pretty cool is that due to the nature of how gravity works there is a built in risk/reward system. If you line the puck up with your 'radius of stable orbit' indicator and time it well, you can get a stable orbit and aim a reasonable shot. However, if you activate gravity when the puck is inside the orbit radius, then it will actually accelerate towards you. This is dangerous because if it hits you it does damage - eventually giving the other player a point. However, the puck also speeds up which means if you get out of the way or release gravity at the right time, you have the potential of making a much more effective shot.

Once you start taking damage, you can heal by achieving a perfect orbit immediately after the other player takes a shot.

and stuff

So in other news, I had a nice Thanksgiving in the mountains with my family. There wasn't much to do so I read over all of the Scott Pilgrim books again.

I recently took the Motorcycle Safety Course. It was fun to ride a motorcycle again. I'm thinking about maybe possibly getting one.

I've been asked a lot about when I will hear back from the IGF about Connexus. The answer is that I'll hear by January 5th, but don't get your hopes up. Last year's finalists were awesome games and this year there were 30% more total entries!

I still haven't beaten Mega Man 9. I keep getting a game over at the 3rd stage of the final boss, but it takes so long to get back there I never try more than once. To my shame, I just recently beat Diablo 2 (again). That game is a terrible waste of time; never play it.

It's over!

Comments

Farewell beard

By Mike Daly
December 16th, 2008

(may we meet again)

So I was thinking of finally trimming up my attrocious beard for my company's Holiday party so I could look respectable. However, the Thursday before that I went out drinking with a few guys to send off a co-worker who is retreating to academia. I mentioned that I was thinking of trimming my beard. One of my (drunk) co-workers declared that I wouldn't do it. He bet me I wouldn't do it. After I just said I was going to do it.

I took him up on that bet. What did we wager, you might ask? Not money - more than money. Credibility. As an organization of dorks at my job, we have an engineered system of determining someone's credibility. People's credibility ratings are documented on an intranet page that also records the transactions(bets) that modify our credibility.

Credibility is the system we use to act smug and put less credible people's ideas down. It is very important.

Anyway, now that you have a better understanding of what was on the line with this bet, you understand that I had to go all of the way. It was time for the beard to come off. For posterity, I documented the stages of this process.



In case you haven't seen me in a while, this is what I used to look like



nobody will ever see me looking like this in person again



Actually, I really liked this stage. BUT I HAD A FREAKIN BET GOING ON



This is me now. Terrible, I know


But wait, THAT'S NOT ALL! I actually had Tim help me take lots of pictures and I strung them together into an irritating animated gif of spinning objects (an internet no-no):



Oh yeah, I also got a haircut in case you didn't notice.

ANYWAY

So other than that, I've been getting quite busy at work recently. Last night I was at work until almost midnight, although that is definately an exceptional case. I haven't added my hours up for this week yet, but I estimate it coming in around 60.

This unfortunately has left Orbital development kind of dead in the water, which is a little bit of a bummer. We'll see what happens. Hopefully I won't be this busy all the way until GDC.

Opus 15

I might have mentioned Musagi a few times already. I just recently started playing around with VSTi plug-ins. This is a great way of getting quality sounding instruments for free. I made a new song recently while playing with the instruments. Sadly, Musagi doesn't actually handle VSTi instruments that well. It goes really slow, takes up a ton of Ram, crashes frequently, and in one case currupted my file. To make this song, I had to write one track at a time out to wav then composite them in a seperate program. That was a huge pain and i'd like to avoid doing it again. I also realized that the instruments I used didn't have sounds for some of the notes I wrote so part of the song doesn't even play.

In any case, it was a fun experiment. You can listen to it here: Opus 15

Happy Holidays people. (damn, that reminded me I have to do holiday gift shopping, now I'm depressed)

Comments

Drew
January 23rd, 2009 - 07:16 am

you should go for the glory and shave your head bare