Keith's blog

Majestic Forest and Caster

Keith — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:35:17 -0600

We'll we've finished the work with Merscom on Majestic Forest. It should be showing up on many other portals in the next few months. I'm pleased with the experience of working with Merscom and would probably do it again in the future.

Another Indie developer has just announced an art contest for his game Caster. I got a sneak peak at the game on Saturday and it really rocks. Check his site for more details.

Crumb Reviews

Keith — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:16:42 -0500

I've been busy making improvements to Crumb and working with another company to modify Crumb for a more Casual Game focused market(more about that in a later post). In the process I've been able to make the game much more solid, fix some bugs, and make the levels better. Sales have been steady and I've enjoyed the great feedback I'm getting from customers. Hearing people say that they play the game with their kids and found it fun and challenging really makes my day. Some people have compared Crumb to games like Adventures of Lolo and Chips Challenge which are the types of game I was going for.

Report from GameFest 2008 – Microsoft Casual Games

Keith — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:42:51 -0500

The keynote address in the morning was not very good. However it did show a diagnostic tool that can be run in real time with your game. It records the frame states of your game and you can play through them on a graphical interface to see where you get spikes in graphic, sound, etc processing. The example they showed was of Gears Of War. The presenter ran through about 1 minute of play with no lag. Then he pulled up the tool and could see the same play and it’s graph at the same time. Very impressive and it didn’t slow the game down at all.
The rest of the track was focused on Casual Games. It consisted of 6 topics.

My new toys and the portals

Keith — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:24:38 -0500

It's been a busy summer. I've gotten my game out to three portals. Two (Mac Game Store and Reflexive) have released and one is pending. Hopefully it will be out in the next few weeks.
I'm very pleased with the exposure, but the sales on my own site have not been great. I suspect this is mostly to the fact that I don't have the exposure necessary to pull the required amount of downloads.
I just recently got a PS3 and have been having alot of fun playing with that. Not as many games as the 360 but I like what I've seen so far. My wife and I have been playing Guitar Hero Aerosmith and having a blast.

Marketing and Distribution

Keith — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:34:56 -0500

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

Crumb is finished

Keith — Sun, 04 May 2008 16:25:46 -0500

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.

Mass Effect

Keith — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:58:14 -0600

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.

Worst Keyboards

Keith — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:44:59 -0600

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.