GDC 2011

Explosion! GDC25! Flash to me, John Spellman, arriving in Oakland by plane at dusk. Carrying two large bags and wearing an out of town teams bright orange beanie on my head, obviously not from around here. I wander around the airport, then the train station, finally catching the right train and heading into downtown San Francisco and to my Hostel. Unfortunately, though I didn't know it at the time, I was heading to the wrong location of the same chain. Thankfully I had time to fully regret that and came to learn my lesson while wandering down a street lined with folks who may not have been junkies and crack addicts... but they sure as hell looked like it. I was going to be robbed this trip, but not tonight. This night, I made it safely to the correct hostel safe and sound and ended up getting a good nights sleep.
That's how my fifth visit to San Francisco started. Fortunately it was about the only time that actually felt like I was going to be robbed this trip. Usually you can always count on San Fran for at least two of those occasions during a weeks worth of late night stumbling through the off streets, but this year was good to me right up to the very end. When I was robbed in the lobby of my hostel. But it was only thirty bucks and I wasn't in any real danger, so I didn't let it get me down.
In fact, he pretty much did me a service by waking me up, after I fell asleep in the lobby. I'm not sure why the receptionist let a random person walk in and not even ask them who they were, but she did. And when this stranger wakes me up asking me if I called a shuttle, I figure it's the driver. Same as when he says "Okay so it's going to be 30 bucks", the same number I was quoted over the phone. As soon as I hand it over to him he runs out the door and up the street. Meanwhile, just outside the door, my shuttle sits there waiting. Driver making no attempt to see if the sleeping guy with the bags sitting by the window of the hostel is the guy he is there to pick up.
Despite the very beginning and the very end, though, I loved every minute of this year. It actually ended up being my luckiest year at GDC yet. Intel gave me a tablet, as part of a promo program for AppUp & MeeGo, their development center and new OS. It took a little getting used to how buggy it was, but it's only in Alpha and you could see the potential of the OS. I also won a Chromium Laptop (CR48) in the CA Raffle at the end of the trip and have used it almost daily every day since, though mostly out of necessity and not love for cloud computing. Still its nice to have a laptop that is ready to use in 8 seconds, on or off.
What was better than a touch tablet, better than a Google laptop, better even then winning a Xperia play for drinking for free and watching beautiful girls dance was landing a job at Bioware Austin. I had a phone interview with them the first day of the conference and a skype interview the monday after GDC. Luckily for me things went well and one week after the conference I was planning a move to Texas.

The month of March

What a month I've had! Whew... I'm only now getting some time to settle down and get back to work on the blog and my projects. I've been the good kind of busy though. I'll try to post the gist of the story in this post and I'll throw the more detailed stories into two others.

As you know, last month was the yearly Game Industry Pilgrimage to Mecca, A.K.A. Game Developers Conference. Once again I had the honor of being a Volunteer and, as is the tradition, this year was even better than the last. For starters this was the first solid year I went without seeing all of my friends from AZ. Just being around them I could feel the creative wheels in my head start to turn. I guess thats what happens when you're around passionate and creative people. On top of that, I ended up with a couple of cool computers at the end of the conference. It was also great to see Tim and Ian get some recognition for everything they do. Especially the bad ass CA trophy built by Amber and Carrie.

Another great thing to come from that week and my CA family, is my new job and location. Bioware Austin in beautiful Austin, TX. As I type this line I'm sitting near downtown Austin enjoying beautiful weather and fantastic food. Next week I start the new job (QA Core Tester) at a company I've wished I could work at many times before. I'm blown away by not only the fact that I have a job there, but how everything kinda fell into place to make this happen. Luckily, it worked out for us and here we are. We? Yes! My wonderful girlfriend Angela made the move with me so I had some company to explore Austin with.

So thats the short version of my March. Now its a new April in a new town with a new (way way way better) job and a ton of exciting ideas to work on. If you've had a better March or even a good one, tell me about it in the comments. I know I can't be the only one :)

Computers & Websites & Card Games, oh my!

So its been a pretty intense past couple of weeks for me, but I am ready for the big trip to San Francisco for the GDC on Friday! I really can't wait to see everyone again and catch up with the (CA)family. I'll be staying at Hostelling International for the extent of my trip and already have a few days/nights of exciting stuff planned. Mostly though, I am looking forward to seeing Tim & Ian receive the ambassador award. These two have done so much for our industry. If it wasn't for them and the CA program, I don't know where I would be.

I got a paper prototype of "Greening" (working title) done, and while its not exactly as I imagined the game would be, the core mechanics seem to work. Now its a matter of adding content and balancing it so that I can move forward to the electronic version, which I will be doing in Unity3D. If anyone has any ProTips for unity that they think will be useful, I'd love to hear them. I'm still pretty green with it, but luckily its not very hard to learn and so versatile.

I've got PeopleGames.us up with my old portfolio on display. Some of the links are broken and there are some typos, but its better than nothing. The new site I'm working on has thrown me a few curve balls which I'm trying to work out, but should be up in a rough form very soon. I had hoped to be done with it a couple weeks ago but getting my new computer has been a pain. I finally got it running last week only to have it shut down on me and refuse to start again. So now I have to deal with that, but when I have way too little time to focus on anything besides getting ready for GDC. Looks like it'll have to be a couple sleepless nights now to save me from sleepless weeks post-GDC. Wish me luck!

Website update

Alright so I've got a few ideas for how I'm going to build my new site, and I would like your feedback on them. So far the idea I like the most involves me putting a wedge shape in the upper left corner of the page and having it float there. So if you click one of the buttons on it, the rest of the page changes to show the content and the navigation wedge is still there. The wedge would have a picture of me in it with my name over it and the buttons would line the curved side of the wedge. Each button that you mouse over, changes my facial expression & such on the wedge. I know people usually say to stick with a simple page layout, but I want to know what you think.

Also, I'm thinking of going with Orange & Light Blue over a Dark Brown background. I'll post some pictures of what I have already as soon as I get back to the work station.

Revving back up

Alright! Great news everyone. Looks like I'll be working at the GDC again this year as a volunteer. I can't wait to see everyone and that awesome city. This one week is literally the start and end of the John Spellman Calendar year. Everything builds up to the conference. So of course, the blog is going to be getting a healthy injection of life as I start focusing my time on landing that perfect job!

Goals:
Website re-design - I already bought a few www.PeopleGames.(org, info, us, net) domains, so now its just about getting the website reworked and looking good.
Portfolio - Take the design ideas I have and make screenshots and a short description. Avoid trying to over explain just one part of the game and instead reflect the whole experience of it.
Blog - Keep track of it all here.

I'm really excited to get the concept online for the puzzle/city sim I've been working on. When the website is online, that will probably be the first project up. A touch screen game after that. Until then, I'm definitely going to need some sleep. Hopefully I don't make a habit out of posting at 3:20am :)

Whats Next?

So lets get caught up here. First I want to say I have NOT given up on this blog. The past couple weeks have kept me pretty distracted so I haven't taken the time to blog about the games I've been playing. I will say that Starcraft 2 has been fun as hell... even though I can't get out of the bronze league. Maybe I'll get a chance to blog about that after it comes out.
I'm really enjoying writing these posts, but it seems like its going to be really difficult to do one mechanic each week. While there are plenty of games for free online, not all of them will have the mechanic that I'm looking for and the board games that I find tend to be pretty pricey and require time to be shipped. Lastly, I have trouble picking through the games online because of the huge number of them out there.
So what I'm going to do is post up a list of some mechanics I've been thinking of blogging about with a checklist of some games under each and as I get all the games from the checklist, I'll start writing the new set. This may take me a little longer than a week to put up a new mechanic, but when I do I'll be able to finish it in a week.


Mechanics
Modular Boards
- Settlers of Catan
- Betrayal at house on the Hill
- Carcassonne
Physics based Warfare
- Scorched Earth/Worms
-
Secret Unit Deployment
-
Trading
-
Simultaneous Action Selection
- RoboRally
Pattern Recognition
- Set


I'm open to any ideas you might have for other mechanics or games which might be an interesting study.

Fantastic Contraption

Fantastic Contraption

by: Colin Northway

http://fantasticcontraption.com/


To round out the first Mechanic series, Passive Control, I'm finishing up with a physics based puzzle game called Fantastic Contraption. Players are given a pink wheel, 5 types of building components and a goal which they must move the pink wheel to. Each level has a set of obstacles between the Pink wheel and its goal which must be overcome by building, you guessed it, Fantastic Contraptions.

The main Pink Wheel starts the game in a light-blue zone, which is also where the player is limited to building their devices. Once they are finished creating, the player hits the start button and the device goes to work navigating the level. Once the Pink Wheel moves inside the goal, the level is completed and the next one is unlocked.

You have 21 different puzzles to complete using as many of the 3 different wheel and 2 different rod components as you need, however the way you connect the pieces makes a huge difference to the functionality of your machine. The rods are used primarily to hold the wheels together but also can be used to modify wheels and build frames. Two of the wheels act as engines spinning clockwise and counter-clockwise, while the third is neutral. Out of these 5 simple pieces, complex machines can be built.

Out of the three games I've tried so far, I like this one the best. Not only did Colin Northway keep this game from becoming too overwhelming by limiting the variety of components available, he created obstacles which are constantly challenging the creativity of the player.

With Fantastic Contraption you have the fun of exploration and discovery that comes with playing The Game of Life but with an actual goal you strive for. The fact that you have to craft these machines using just a few tools gives you a great sense of pride when you finish a level. Colin hits a grand slam with this game and gives up a great example of how to build fun out of a simple idea.

It also doesn't hurt that you can make machines that look crazy as hell!

Colin Northway's website - http://www.colinnorthway.com/