Good Deal!

I'm missing all sorts of exciting stuff back in Illinois - holiday parties with snacks and punch, snowstorms with inches (inches!) of snow. Here in South Florida it's always the same - sunshiny and 70 to 80 degrees. Boring. I guess I'll survive.
Made some great progress on one of the last few images for Incident at Long Rock Junction. Work on the home front is going well Nathan's wrapping up work on the written/fun game elements and our target "release date" is early 2008 (awesome). Incident will done around the same time, so we should have an easy transition to getting it ready for publishing. Here below this text is a sneak peak on the image I mentioned above. True, it's just a desk. But I think it's cool looking.

I'm finding the Rules of Play book to be suited more for those with an academic interest in game design then for people trying to make better games. The authors should be given credit for the thoroughness of their explanations, but the works density makes casual reading impossible. That being said, picking through it with a highlighter has already yielded a few good notions, which in turn have led to ideas for the Help Desk games.
The second book I ordered on game design has arrived. It's called A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster. In just three chapters it's managed to change the way I think about how the human brain interacts with fun and games. It's great stuff.
More on the books as I get deeper into them.
My fiancee and I found out we're headed to Fort Myers, FL this weekend! Considering the temperatures there have been in the 80's, we're thrilled. I need to find out if there are any interesting game studios in the area...

I'm back in Champaign today!
A very knowledgeable friend named Carl suggested several books on game design. One of these arrived in the mail today; Rules of Play by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. It's essentially a textbook which attempts to tell what game design is (tricky) and how it might be used to accomplish X,Y, and Z (very tricky). Being a game enthusiast, I've read textbook style game development books in the past. Like all textbooks, they can be very dry, or really interesting. It's to early in my reading of Rules of Play to determine which way it will turn out, but it comes highly recommended, so I'm hoping its useful.
Other then that I wrapped up the drawing part of game two today. The images are all scanned and in photoshop, ready to be dropped into their backgrounds (already in progress). Today also spelled the two-thirds mark on the game - I'm happy where I'm at in the development (about two-thirds done).
More on the book when I've had a chance to read a few chapters. Until then, here's a mystifying slice of the image I finished today;

On the Road

I'm in Telluride Colorado today, and will be in Denver this evening. One of the perks of being on the road as often as I am is that I get to occasionally visit video game development studios. Sadly I haven't found a great way to search for studios by city. I was hoping to find something to check out in Denver, but haven't had any luck yet. The search continues!
I'll be back in Champaign next week, where Nathan "The Captain" and myself will be plugging the final learning content into Voyage to the Unknown! It's looking great - we'll have a post with the updated public-facing link soon (for real this time).

Progress in Portland

I've been scratching my head all day, trying to figure out what aspect of game-making I wanted to discuss in this here blog. Since I spent the day in a bookstore which featured T-Mobil's $40 a month wireless connection fee, I went without the internet. In honor of this, here's some information on the online resources which help me out. When I can actually get to them.
Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/): Evocative name aside, this site makes a real effort to cover as broad a range of game development topics as possible. Their features section is what I've found the most use from, as its articles go into great detail.
Game Creation Resources (http://www.ambrosine.com/resource.html): They update this place pretty often. Lott's of folks put a lot of hours into making programs that can make game-making easier. Links to a lot of those applications end up here.
More to come!

I could be characterized as a "big fan" of the Halloween season. While other Holidays are great for seeing family, eating, or planting tree's, Halloween is all about (to me) watching scary movies and looking ridiculous. And there's candy, which is a wonderful incentive to look ridiculous.
In honor of Halloween, here's a spooky creature drawing... As I sit here working on Incident at Long Rock Junction, I'm watching Halloween 2. I really should be watching John Carpenter's The Thing, because the similarity's between the plot of The Thing and Incident at Long Rock Junction are positively uncanny.

In Communicado!

Ah the joys of free wireless. I'm back in Illinois for a few days, where business owners are decent enough to provide free wireless if you're buying a cup of coffee. Unlike some places *cough* California *cough* where even Starbucks expects you to pay $8 for a one time connection. Seeing as how I'm online I'll drop a quick sneak peak on you.
This is the grimy kitchen in the mining facility called Long Rock Junction. As you can see, green ooze will be present in the game. This will actually play a major role in the story, being the perfect vehicle for all sorts of terrifying things, like terror, for one. More to come!