So I've been silent since my last post due to lots of work in the Marketing and Distribution area. To get Crumb as much exposure as possible, I've had to spending lots of time marketing it. This has included writing and distributing press releases, creating and distributing PAD files, and writing to and signing contracts with distribution partners.
I think anyone wanting their game to make a big impact in the market should expect to spend about a months time in refining the game, making fixes, creating custom builds, and negotiating with people. I'll write more about my experiences with fini

I'm pleased to announce that Crumb is finished. I've had alot of support and encouragement from the Indie Game community who helped me through the tough spots. I'm now looking for publishers and setting up the sales portal for this site. I'm also looking at putting the Forum back in to encourage community development around the game. The Mac version is being finalized as well and will be coming out soon.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to participate in a great class on accounting. The class is designed around a game called the Accounting Game. In the game, you participate in the creation and running of a lemonade stand. Using little game pieces, you act out the accounting involved in running your stand. You purchase supplies, pay people, get loans and pay them back. In the end you learn how to read balance sheets and many other accounting documents.
The Accounting Game by no means is a full accounting course. The instructors describe it as an introduction to accounting all in one day.

On top of my continuing obsession with Guitar Hero 3, I've started playing Mass Effect. My take on the game is that it's a modern remake of Starflight. I was a big fan of Starflight, so this game is right up my alley. Mass Effect has a huge story line with many races and plots going on. The dialog tree is also huge. I have found some annoying problems that creep up from time to time. In one incident after a cutscene on the first planet mission I returned to the ships infirmary. When I awoke and started to talk to the doctor my XBox started to get quiet and I couldn't hear anyone talking in the game. Then I got an error that the disk was damaged. I examined the disc and it was fine. So I had to start over from the cutscene. I think there area few glitches like this in the game.
Another thing that annoyed me was that on one planet I could explore everywhere. On another I was stuck in a valley that I couldn't go up the walls in my vehicle. There was no difference in the height, they just wanted to control my movements. I do find that the exploration on the ground is kinda boring, but the spacefilght and the RPG aspects are very cool.

Today there was an interesting article on the "worst" computer keyboards of all time. I remember alot of these. Recently I took a look at an old TI-994A and Atari 800 that I have. Both have very bad keyboards. I probably got carple tunnel from all the hours spent typing in computer code. It's much easier now, and not as painful.

Grey Alien Games has released a new 1.06 version of their Framework. It includes many features to make BlitzMax much more Mac friendly as well as fixing many bugs with Vista. I highly recommend it to anyone working in BlitzMax.

Time for an update. I've been very busy with Crumb. Lots of great work has been done by my artists at Sherman3D. They have created some great artwork. So now it's up to me to finish up some features and complete levels. The levels take alot of time. It's really takes time to make levels that are nice to view as well as being fun to play. I have to make sure they aren't too hard, but also not too easy.

A few other things to mention. Aveyond 2 has been released by Amaranth. If you have a chance to download it I'm sure you'll really like what they have done with this game.

Time to give an update. I've been very busy with BBQ competitions and vacation so I'm finally getting some time to get back to work. Our team got 9th in Chicken but didn't do as well in other categories. We're still getting better every year in our overall scores, so I'm happy with our showing.

Time for a programming update.

Among the things I've got to show are my new tile sets that I've gotten from my friends at Sherman3D. They are working hard to get me the 3 final tile sets and additional art assets I need to finish Crumb.

Here are some of the great tile sets they have initially worked on.

Fall TileSet for CrumbWinter TileSet for Crumb

Also, my PiddlePup Pirate Poker game has had some major bug fixes and been tested on Vista. So I'm going to incorporate those fixes into my next version release as well as into my Mac release.

Today Popular Science posted an article on the 10 greatest challenges of making video games. It's an interesting read from the game design/art/programming perspectives in a broad sense, but has less of a relevance to the Indie Game Community. Still a good read.
There was also a post today about a 12 year old entrepreneur who received 6.5 Million in venture capital for his game startup company. It still shows that some things are still so easy a 12 year old can do them.

I still remember playing Adventure on my girl friends IBM "portable". Even though there were no graphics, it was still a great experience. Recently it was announced that Will Crowther's original source code for Colossal Cave Adventure has been found. The FORTRAN source code can be found here. For those too young to realize the significance of this, it's like finding the holy grail of adventure game programming.

You can see the posting here. It includes pictures of the real caves used for inspiration in the game and an explanation of the code.