It’s been busy around the Dark Acre these past few weeks. While there’s been a number of things to talk about, there really hasn’t been the time to slap together a post about them.
Work continues apace on Project Zero Five, otherwise affectionately known as The Child. The entirety of the last month has been spent elbow-deep in the guts of an Autodesk workflow, coming to grips with the ins and outs of Mudbox, Motionbuilder, and further knowledge-building in 3D Studio Max. While far from claiming any level of proficiency, there’s enough understanding there now to produce art of a quality that can be called “something other than amateur”.
[Lost content, image. Likely the screenshot from The Child showing the titular character with its hands pressed up against the glass of an isolation cell.]
While the original version of The Child had straightforward box-room environments, the update will have rooms within rooms and other objects that may hide the player from view. To prevent getting lost, a new system of hiding geometry has been developed.
The thing both great and terrible about being an independent game developer is learning so much as projects develop. There’s always the temptation when making a breakthrough to go back and refactor or update all of the existing assets to come in line with the new knowledge. If this temptation is given into, it’s quite possible the game may never ship, as learning and improving is a daily process! At some point the developer simply has to accept the new lessons and use them going forward, rather than poring over old ground again and again.
In this particular case it was important to implement the new transparency system across all of the existing assets, so that required the remodeling of a lot of assets. Fortunately the second time around was at least twice as fast as the first, and very good practice. It doesn’t pay to be afraid to do things again, even scrapping and rebuilding, as each layer of repetition adds both competency and confidence.
There are still several rooms and many assets to implement before final, as well as a daunting and complex animation system. It’s important to focus here on quality, however, as this will be Dark Acre’s first “for pay” effort. It’s got to be worth both your time and money. While still barreling forward with the full intent on achieving the planned ship date, should the game not meet standards more time will be added to the cycle. This would be the first time since Dark Acre started that this has happened, but this project is special enough and the passion high enough to warrant it.
This past week saw the creation of a new Twitter account to manage Dark Acre project-specific updates, and to separate ‘professional’ Tweets from personal ones.
Ironically, the topic was raised moments later in my own personal Twitter feed about whether an independent game developer (or any independent content creator) should have a ‘business’ account.
Opinion seemed to be split, but my own feelings on the matter are fairly clear: It depends on the goals of the given developer.
I have a long-term plan to transform Dark Acre from “lone guy starving in his apartment” to “triple-A quality studio employing hundreds of talented developers”. This has always been my goal, from the very start more than 10 years ago. So it’s absolutely imperative that I make moves to provide the most professional level of service that I possibly can.
Also to that point, a lot of Twitter feeds are rather negative. This may be a function of the crushing levels of stress and pressure that this world can produce, coupled with the fact that many Tweeters are also very young, but there’s a ton of “f-this and f-that and my f-ing life is an f-ing mess and this f-ing sucks and that f-ing blows and by the way I had a ham sandwich while sitting on the toilet how do you feel about that?”
[Lost content, image. Alt-text: “Are you one of these? Chances are I don’t check your tweets as often as you’d like.]
This is why my personal feed doesn’t do so many follow-backs. I do put every proven independent game developer into a proper list that I can visit at my leisure, but I keep my main followed stream “clean”. I don’t have time to wade through a ton of vitriol to get to the information I need. “Oh, but make a separate list of the people who tweet stuff you like and just look at that instead” some may advise. That is certainly a solution, but I find it ruder and more deceptive than simply not following or unfollowing a negative tract in my main feed. It’s like how I treat my Facebook presence, the people I Friend or Follow are ones I’d actually be able to call friends in real life. And like Perry Farell says, “ain’t no way, man, to be everybody’s friend”.
Additionally, separate lists require further navigation and organization to view correctly. It’s far easier to have a clean feed. If I’m away from the main machine and my Tweetdeck setup, I know I can just go to Twitter.com and see what I need to see without clicking around. Those seconds add up, you know, just ask any pro Starcraft player.
I learned a harsh lesson when I first set up the account for Dark Acre Books. There’s a very common opinion among Twitter users that its ideal use is to establish relationships, one person at a time, by following them and getting to know them. While this may be a beautiful thing, I find the espousal of that technique just as superficial as using Twitter as an information outlet. How many people do you really think you can ‘get to know’ to the level that this utopian ideal sets? 10? 50? 150?
How many of Justin Bieber’s followers would he consider “known”, by this standard?
I think it’s perfectly acceptable to use Twitter to disseminate information to people who are interested in what I do and who I am. The problem here is that what I do and who I am are starting to diverge in ways that follow the natural development of a business, so it’s become important to branch these tributaries. The Dark Acre Games Twitter feed will generate a follow-back for you, if that’s what you’re after, but it’s extremely unlikely that it will reply to any public messaging (messages with @DarkAcreGames) while the Dark Acre Jack feed will probably not follow you but will reply to public messaging. Confused? It may be a bit, but to have clean feeds that contain targeted information about the games and books that Dark Acre produces is very important to me, and the future of this organization.
If you really want to get in touch with me you can use that old, near-obsolete workhorse they call e-mail. My line is open 24-7. (Used to be. Not anymore. –Ed.)
Tomorrow, June 30, I’ll start second-drafting Ambia. The hardest thing about this part of the process has been the waiting! Many writers recommend taking an emotional shore-leave from a given piece of writing after completing a draft, to create some distance from the work and to allow it to be approached with fresh eyes that can clinically dissect and rework the piece. For Tale of the Madeus that period was a month, and at that time it had seemed long enough to allow me to objectively make major changes to the piece. I’ve set the same limit here.
It’s hard to believe I pounded the last punctuation mark into Ambia nearly 30 days ago. In the time since I’ve been adding to other pieces, and I completed a short story. Unfortunately, the short in question has run into some technical difficulties and I’m currently working with Apple to get it up on the iTunes store in working order. It will be absolutely free to download, and while I would like to simply release the file into the wild here I would also like to get some form of statistics tracking on the number of people that acquire it, so it would be nice if it first saw light on an outlet like the iTunes Bookstore. I’ll be sure to announce it when it’s ready, it’s a rather personal story to me and explores on of my favorite science fiction tropes, that of human-machine integration.
[Lost content, image. Alt-text “Akianinavas, homeground of ‘the Trader’”.]
One last literary note here, I’ve recently re-subscribed to the formidable EVE Online. I know that their recent decision to offer status-based micro transactions has been met with a lot of controversy, and I sympathize. They’re making a rather huge omelette, and it’s expected they’ll break a few eggs in the process. That’s not why I rejoined, though. I’ve always found the game world of New Eden a fascinating place, given my general bent for space exploration and capitalism. I consider CCP‘s game to be my number one inspiration for Project Zero Zero, and I hope to capture even just a fraction of the success they’ve garnered.
This time through, though, I’ve decided to chronicle the adventures of my capsuleer. It’s helping me stay focused on my prime goal of producing that dream game. If you’re at all interested in the life and times of a player in the EVE universe, or just want a quick sci-fi fix, you can check out the ongoing story of the Trader. He transmits an update every Sunday, so please subscribe to stay up to date! (All related posts are lost to the mists of time. –Ed.)
EVE Online and related people, places, and things are copyright © CCP.
2011.06.01 – 2011.06.30