On the day the pirates came, the small colony you grew up in was destroyed. In a manner of minutes your loved ones were dead and your home going up in flames. Without any hope of victory, you put your faith in an old shuttle from the junk yard you worked in, hoping it would hold together long enough for an escape. It barely did, only now you found yourself alone in space, without a home or a family, but with a burning desire for vengeance. Only one group holds enough power to take on the dreaded pirate kings, and so you set out to build a new life for yourself and join the Salvager’s Guild…

I was in a funk after discovering that the sim game I had been working on, just wasn’t fun to play. I’d tried tweaking several parameters, adding new features, taking others away. Nothing seemed to make me want to keep playing. So I picked up a project I had started before the sim game; a space trader. A game I’d been wanting to make for years, but I had been too afraid to fail, to really throw myself at it.

Surprisingly most of the bugs that had puzzled me before were now easily solved. I soon found myself fixing things here and there, tweaking stuff and adding more. And more. And then some more. Days flew by, my work felt interrupted by the “Day Job” and I spent as many hours as would fit on my game. In the last month, the space trader game has come a long way. Nearly all the elements are complete, if only in function.

“Salvage Trader” (working title) is in early alpha. Half the game doesn’t have any graphics yet, and what few of my doodles that appear here and there will eventually be replaced with real artwork. As in not done by me. The same goes for the music, which is currently non-existent. At least I hope that is how it will go, because I will be relying on Kickstarter to get from alpha to a release version. However, I am not quite ready for Kickstarter yet…

Alpha access

Currently Salvage Trader is being developed for Mac OS X, though a Windows 8 version might become an option as well. I’m using Gamesalad as the engine, which makes development fast but does have limitations. Porting the project to a stronger, more flexible foundation will be a stretch goal in the Kickstarter campaign. For now, if you would like alpha testing access and help me shape the game, you can sign up for the mailing list. This list is specific to his project, and your info won’t be shared, sold or any crap like that. Note that I may cut off sign-up should I be lucky enough to drown in alpha testers.

Current features

• A small but open ended world (25 maps that wrap around).
• Collecting space debris and selling it at one of two space stations.
• Fuel, running out of it, and collecting fuel cells floating in space.
• Pirate ambushes, done old school arcade style (think Space Invaders / Galaga).
• Options to pursue fleeing pirates, or drop your cargo to escape them.
• Upgrading of your ship’s shields, weapons, cargo space and fuel capacity.
• Upgrading of ship classes, letting you add more upgrades to your vessel.
• A race track where you can gamble away your hard earned cash.
• A mission system for accepting and completing quests (only a few have been implemented so far).
• The ability to save and load game progress.

I recently made a list of all my current (supposedly) active personal projects. As in things I am making on my own time, from writing books to roasting coffee and learning a new programming language. At the end of the list, I realized there was too much on my plate. It was time to stop taking on new projects and finish some old ones.

There are always many things waiting to be done. Here’s a To-Do from one of my GameSalad projects.

This all happened just two days ago. Since then, I have wrapped up (and expanded) my first ever Python project – simpleAdventure a text-based fantasy game of exploration – but more importantly…

The portrait photography book, which I’ve been collecting data for for a while now, got a much needed injection of content. I had finished the first part a long time ago but hadn’t even started on the second part of the book. A little push was exactly what I needed, and I’ve since started writing on all the remaining parts of the book. The outline is done, and there are several ideas for extra material waiting in the wings. The biggest problem at this point is deciding which photos to include.

Sometimes it’s easier to push ourselves than we think. I found a ton of motivation just by posting my intentions publicly. An old trick, but it works because it takes advantage of that part of your personality that is afraid to lose face to your peers.

Here’s the list I posted on Facebook:
• An update of FantasyMuse (almost done)
• Three different GameSalad titles (various stages)
• A D&D Next adventure (fully written)
• An eBook on Storytelling (first draft 80% written).
• An eBook on Portrait Photography (about 50% written).
• An original fantasy RPG (ready for testing)
• A Python text adventure (working alpha finished)
• Continuing to experiment and learn about coffee roasting.

In other photo book news: I just lowered the price of The Microstock Photographer’s Guide from $8.50 to $4.99.

Before anyone panics: this story is about the band, not the elected kind, and by shooting I mean photographing. Glad we got that settled.

I recently had the distinct pleasure of photographing The Presidents of the United States of America (PUSA), performing at Seattle’s Showbox at the Market. The gig was part of Pusafest, a three day affair with concerts in Portland and Seattle leading up to Presidents Day in the US. My goal was to capture the essence of the band and the performance. Click through the gallery below, if you want to see some of the pictures.

When I think of PUSA, I think energetic and fun. These are not brooding or angry songs but rather lively and lighthearted. You won’t find any sad, acoustic ballads either. It’s upbeat, good time rock ‘n’ roll all the way! This combination, delivered by guys who very clearly love what they’re doing, makes for a fantastic performance by Chris Ballew, Andrew McKeag and Jason Finn.

Someone bought me their first album back in ’94, and they have just as much energy now as they did almost two decades ago.

Ballew is very expressive and active on stage. I wanted to capture that energy. McKeag had a flu but was powering through, and so I tried to capture the moments where the music seemed to take over. Finn held the whole thing together with confidence, fast hands and wild hair. I tried to capture all those elements.

Rumor has it that 2013 is going to be a busy year for PUSA. At the concert they did play a brand new song, so maybe a new album is in the works too? I don’t know, but I certainly wouldn’t mind it.

Pusafest 13 photo gallery

Starting today, Valentines Day 2013, and lasting the rest of February, Nebula Rescue for iPhone/iPod Touch is FREE! The game has been selling for $.99 in the App Store, but I felt it was time to get it into the hands of more people. What better way to do this than by giving it away?

Nebula Rescue is a race against the clock! It’s classic arcade action, and it requires both skill and precision to stay in the game. It has been said that playing it on the bus may make you miss your stop. You can post your scores to Game Center and unlock in-game achievements.

Want to know more? Check out the cheesy intro video from when the game first came out.

Like I said, the main goal is to get more people playing the game. If you want to help make that happen, do share the link with your friends.

In related news: I continue to make progress on the sim game. Like with Nebula Rescue, I am using GameSalad to put it all together. The toughest part is balancing the many variables, which means I have to do a lot of: test the game, tweak the math, repeat. There will be a separate update on this, when I have more to share.

I recently wrote about things I have learned from taking a part time job in retail. However, something very important was left out of that post, because it’s a topic so large there are several websites, books and documentaries dedicated to it. I’m talking about coffee.

Working in a coffee shop with high quality standards meant that I was sent to Stumptown Coffee Roasters for training. Having been a passionate consumer of the brown brew for years, I used to make home espresso (until I wore my machine out, got it replaced and wore it out again), and I’d even experimented with roasting my own a couple of times. But now I was getting some professional training, along with knowledge about how the coffee bean behaves during roasting, storing, grinding and brewing.

Suddenly, I felt my interest in coffee surge. I had to know more. I started with Google, read articles at first, about regions and processing methods. Then I lurked in online forums, where other newbie enthusiasts were asking the same questions I had. Finally, I found myself reading reviews of home roasters. To be completely honest, I went so far as to begin reading about commercial roasters, before realizing I had gone too far.

Really, I just want to learn how to do it right, and come up with a few blends that tickle my tastebuds in just the right ways. It’s the kind of thing that takes both studying the beans, experimentation and practice.

Here is how I did it the first couple of times: first, I put the beans into a pre-heated oven, and stirred them up as much as possible without losing too much heat. I would wait for the “first crack” to end, pull the beans and cool them off. Embarrassingly primitive as this technique is, I did get some decent (if very unevenly roasted) cups of coffee out of it. Obviously, if you want a perfect, evenly roasted cup (which I do), this is not the way to do it.

Actually purchasing a roaster is a bit outside my reach at the moment (this is the kit I want). That said, I was so enthused by doing all the research, that I ended up ordering a couple of bags of green coffee beans I want to taste. I can’t wait to get started, and to share some of my experiences, successes and failures in coffee roasting.

I’d like to share a bit about my process and approach to building a sim game, using Gamesalad. I announced the project a month ago, and have since been working on it in my spare time. At this point I have a bare bones alpha version, with most of the basic features in place, but still no graphics, music or sound. And of course, I have a few more features to implement, bugs that need ironing out and content that could use some expanding.

As simple as it sounds, it started with wanting to make a game, I would want to play. It had to be about growth and maintaining balance, a game to immerse oneself in, with different strategies available but without the need for absolute micromanagement. I wanted a fairly confined game world, and decided that the story of settling and growing a medieval town would work perfectly.

I started by defining an end to the game, in this case if the town ever reaches population: 0, the game is over. As a result, a primary goal of the game is to grow your population (and thereby your town).

Next, I added a few parameters to play with. I started with just “taxes” and “happiness”, and defined a set of rules for how those would affect each other, and the overall population growth. This brought “resources” into play as well, as the in-game currency. Resources are gained via taxes and can be used for “upgrades”.

With the idea of “upgrades”, a new layer was added to the game. These upgrades (from eateries to workshops) are investments the player can make. By investing in a series of upgrades, special benefits are unlocked, on top of earning points. Invest enough in any one upgrade and you “max it out”, meaning you can no longer invest resources in that particular upgrade. Some upgrades require a minimum population to become available.

I decided to introduce another game element, and present the player with the occasional choice. For instance, you might be approached by a tribe seeking to settle in your town. If you let them your population will go up, but your “employment rate” will go down. By introducing these choices, I also ended up defining more parameters (like employment rate and average lifespan), that in turn would affect happiness and population growth itself.

For an element of randomness, I introduced the somewhat rarer “events”. From gifted artists appearing to earthquakes, these represent the world outside the influence of the player’s choices. Some events are beneficial, others are damaging – and their impact scale with the population (for instance, an earthquake will do more damage on a large town than on a small settlement).

From behind the scenes, these are the “actors” currently used in the game (click for large).

I play the game a lot. I test run it for a few in-game years with every tweak, try different approaches and strategies, and deliberately look for ways to beat the game. Occasionally I will play a longer game, seeing how the math holds up as the numbers get higher. I also look for places where the game is too hard, or unbalanced, and try to decipher if I need to tweak the math or add yet another layer.

When the game reaches a point where it feels reasonably stable and balanced to me, I will ask others to prove me wrong. Which I am sure will be no problem for them to do. And then it’s back to the drawing board for more adjustments.

Every day, several new ideas pop into my head. Many of them are incomplete, or frivolous and not very good. Occasionaly – let’s say once or twice a week – something genuinely fun, useful or with potential turns up. However, most ideas go to waste or are merely jotted down in a journal or a text document.

There is an overflow of ideas, to the point where even good ones are sometimes forgotten.

You probably get a lot of ideas too. Maybe it’s a business you want to start, a hobby you might pick up, a book you could write, a party you want to throw or a series of videos you could put on YouTube. Ideas come at us constantly whether we welcome them or not (in fact, they seem to come more easily when we are not looking for them, but that’s another topic).

The point is that ideas on their own have very little value.

It’s only when we act on our ideas, that their value increases. Whether you measure value in potential income, happiness or what-have-you, an idea by itself is fleeting; just a thought or a scribble. Actions make ideas real, give them substance and depth.

Caffeine and sugar are excellent idea stimulants, should you ever run low.

Sharing ideas is not a bad thing. When you share ideas, you inspire others to get involved, to help you make it real or to develop their own ideas. Creative thinking is contagious, you see.

Too many people guard their ideas for no good reason. Secrecy can be necessary or helpful if you’re in the process of creating something for a competitive market (this is why we have NDAs). However, one reason I’ve heard over and over goes along the lines of: “I keep my idea a secret in case I want to make it real some day, so no one beats me to it.”

If that is your only reason to sit on an idea, you are not doing anyone any favors. Set it and yourself free, and go with an idea you can make real right now, rather than “some day”.

This post was inspired by an idea I had earlier today. This was for a video adventure game made for mobile devices. After writing down my initial thoughts, I read through them and realized this would be “some day” project. Mostly because it is too much work for me to do by myself, and I don’t have a team of developers, artists and writers standing by. So I decided to share the idea instead.

Maybe someone will make it happen, which I would love, whether I am involved in the process or not. I don’t think my idea is revolutionary, but it could be a solid, fun and potentially profitable game – if executed right.

—

Copy of the original note:

SELLSWORD

Mobile adventure game idea:

You are a lone, wandering sellsword, seeking adventure where ever you can find it. Each of these adventures is like a “episode” in the game. You go through a series of scenes (aka levels) that tell a story. Along the way you solve puzzles, make moral decisions, defeat enemies, build influence and collect treasure.

When there are no more adventures to be had in a specific location, you wander on to the next place…

The character:

The idea is that the character will grow according to the players’ choices. She levels up in multiple ways as she completes adventures. Weapons and other items found in one adventure will carry over to the next one, but because the wanderer is just that, there is a limit to how much gear she can carry (investing in a mule will let her bring more stuff). Surplus items can be sold for gold in town, which in turn can be spent on other items, repairs or, in some adventures, even bribes and gambles.

Apart from equipment, the character has reputations and a few stats to improve, such as combat skills, health and charm.

Adventures:

Each adventure is designed in such a way, that the difficulty adjusts to the strength of the character. Thus a “hard” adventure will be hard no matter how strong you are.

Every adventure contains choices that impact the character’s reputation with one or more factions, as well as puzzles, dialogue and combat. Each adventure should have at least two possible outcomes/endings, beyond simply winning or getting killed.

Adventures should offer at least 20-30 minutes of entertainment each.

Reputation/Factions:

Via factions and reputation, the character’s story will evolve through choices made by the player. High reputation scores unlock further adventures and locations (both free and availability as in-app purchases), tied to the specific factions. This adds both replay value and a sense of playing an actual campaign.

Death:

When a character dies, she will get penalized in some way (eg. damaged items, loss of gold) and will have to restart the adventure, she was currently on. Longer adventures will have “save points” along the way, from whence the character will start upon respawn.

Expansion:

The game comes with one or two locations and a handful of adventures. Further locations and adventures are unlocked as rewards or in-app purchases.

Gold and exclusive gear can also be bought as in-app purchases. The pack mule, for bringing more stuff on adventures, a bank account (gold stored here is unaffected by penalties for dying) or a house, for storing items in specific locations, could all be examples of in-app purchases.

After years of freelancing and being a one man company, I took a part time job. It’s three months later and time to share a few observations I have made. The job I have is a relatively simple one – I sell cupcakes and make coffee drinks at Cupcake Royale. It’s a far cry from my previous jobs, doing web projects and media content, photography and consulting, and I expected to have a hard time adjusting. Turns out, I was wrong.

The company itself is a good one, which I’m sure makes a ton of difference. Cupcake Royale is a small, local chain, they treat their employees well without any of that corporate feel (I can bring my iPod to work! Yay!). The people I work with are cool, and in about the same age range as any other job I’ve ever had. I work 4 nights a week, being the weekend closer, and though I’ve missed out on a few social events, it’s really not that big of a deal. The important part is, that I have half days and a 3-day weekend to work on my own projects, as well as continuing to do freelance gigs on the side.

Base Income = Stability

The greatest advantage of having a part time job, is that I am no longer relying on client work. Not only does this allow me to be more picky about the projects/clients I take on, but it gives me breathing room to work on my own projects, such as the sim game I’m making (currently being tested for iPad).

Less Stress, Better Sleep

Besides giving me some freedom to choose, the part time work also takes away a great deal of stress. In the months leading up to taking the job, I was having increasing anxiety, panic attacks and insomnia. All that improved greatly, now that there’s more stability.

Greater Ability to Focus

When I’m at work, I have found that I switch off the things that would otherwise occupy my mind, and just focus on the tasks at hand. This is good for two reasons. First, it gives me a mental break from obsessing over my many projects, and second, it’s a great mental exercise in focusing in on one specific project for a set amount of time, and then move on to the next one.

It also means that I am not checking my email, social media, reddit and news sites every 3 minutes, like I would when I spent my entire day in the home office.

The downside is a much lower pay rate than I’m used to, but I’m okay with that because…

Productivity Went Up

When I do have time off now, I have become more productive than ever, even though more than half my week is spent working for someone else. Part of it is added exercise from standing, walking, crouching, pulling and scrubbing (as opposed to just going for a walk, which was my only regular exercise before). But there is more to it than moving around more, namely a little voice in my head that keeps telling me to make the most of the time I do have. That voice was always there, but it has definitely gotten louder in the last three months.

People Skills Improved

I don’t think of myself as an introvert per se, but I am a terrible sales person. The pitch, in all its many forms, has always seemed awkward and uncomfortable to me (the same can be said for my dating days, and that whole game). When I sell cupcakes, the situation is fairly simple – the person in line is there because they want the product. I greet them and try to get a feel for their personality within a few seconds. Then, depending on what conclusion I reach, I may or may not engage them in either banter, a light compliment – I deliberately try to compliment people that stand out, to get better at it – or perhaps an up-sell of some sort.

By facing my demon multiple times a day, four days a week, I have gotten better at it. I was a bartender in my mid 20s, but I didn’t pick all these things up back then. Maybe I was too busy partying, maybe I just wasn’t ready to absorb. Either way, I quite enjoy having this part time job.

I’m hoping at some point to replace my current position with a better one, but have come to the conclusion that better doesn’t necessarily come down to just higher pay. Right now, I can walk to work, I have a lot of free time, and I don’t take my work home with me — except to eat it. That is worth a lot.

2012 was a year of fighting for recovery, even survival. Last year, my year-in-review post centered around some of the good people that had influenced my life. I could rewrite that same post today, because there is no doubt the fight would have failed, had it not been for the help of friends and family. There were some insanely tough times, and a few hard decisions were made.

I’m not going to write a long sob story, but 2012 sucked on several levels. We were hit hard with financial trouble, and dealing with the aftermath of Kelly’s Cancer treatment and surgery. Not just the bills piling up, but also the fact that she was out of commission for several months after the fact (radiation treatment is a bitch to recover from, throw in abdominal surgery for a few months of not being able to bend over or lift anything). At the same time, continually dropping sales in stock photography only made each month bleaker than the one before.

It was time to make a radical change, so I gave up on full time freelancing and got a part time job (in a coffee shop of course, I do live in Seattle after all). I’d been working for myself for about a decade, and making that change was not easy – but definitely worth it. The stress relief alone more than makes up for having to be somewhere, not in my pyjamas, several times a week. Having a reliable, base income has allowed me to focus on the things I want to do, instead of always running down the next client.

Speaking of clients, 2012 was a year full of lessons. I realize now, that most of my stress from freelancing comes from client relations. I do not like dealing with sales, and so I have promised myself two things to compensate for that in the coming year. First, I’m raising my rates. Second, I will strive to only accept client jobs that are fun and interesting.

Unless something irresistible comes along, the priority will remain my personal projects, designing games, telling stories and learning. I have many, many ideas, including photos I’d like to take – for a while there, I wondered if I had lost interest in photography altogether, but it was working in stock photography that had nearly killed my love for the medium. In relation to that, I finished off 2012 by canceling my exclusivity agreement with iStockphoto. Wow, what a liberating feeling that was!

I’m hopeful for 2013. The world didn’t end in 2012, though it felt like it was getting close a few times. What follows are a few links that mark points of interest from 2012.

• A Nerd Comes Home – I started the year by proclaiming that 2012 would be the year I let my nerd out. I did. It’s been fantastic!
• The Fork in the Road – in the beginning of 2012 I still had savings, still ran Another Passion and still thought I might make it.
• It Gets Better – I was asked to be part of making this video by Mike Selinker and Stepto. It was a ton of fun to do, and the message never gets old.
• Nebula Rescue in the App Store – my first video game to ever be sold anywhere! Launching Nebula Rescue was a major accomplishment for me. I’m a proud game daddy.
• Hard Booting Life – from when things were pretty much their worst, financially, I wrote about looking for work.
• “Natural 20″ – a set of three songs I wrote and recorded, inspired by my love of gaming (old skool pen and paper style, specifically).

One of my favorite game genres has always been simulation, starting the first time I ever played Civilization II. I’ve always wanted to make my own sim game, and I felt the time was right to start working on one now. I’m using the tool Gamesalad, which is amazing for people like me, who aren’t especially code savvy, though having some understanding of basic programming principles, can still be quite helpful.

The game, which is still untitled, lets you found and build a city, starting with a tribe of just a few individuals. You have to balance the local economy, keep your people happy, and develop advances for your settlement. Along the way, events happen and you will be forced to make decisions that will affect your people. There are quite a few factors to track, many of which depend on one another, and so building a balanced game is the greatest challenge here.

It is still very early days, but I wanted to share the news and a couple of screenshots, so you can see what it looks like in this extremely primitive pre-alpha version (as in: without any artwork whatsoever), as well as get a glimpse of how the game is organized into blocks of instructions, within a timer. These screenshots are all from within Gamesalad, which is the only place the game lives for now. I have yet to decide on a platform; for now it’s just about piecing the basic elements together.

I will be posting more about the progress of my first sim game. Stay tuned.