Think outside the mind

Did You Miss Me?

2013-10-22T19:43:00.001-07:00

Sorry to all who are following this indie dev blog, I have not been working on the game, since my big melt down due having to draw every single sprite that I used from a pack of tiles that were not licensed by my game creation software. I have been doing some work on my alternative company and I will be firing up my game creations engines once everything with that company is settled. I will probably be working on a new title and keeping the old one on the back burner again, at least until I can get my sprites all organized. Where Are You? A Tale of Love will see daylight, just not yet. I have gotten some inspiration for the game though, and will be in my free time writing up a better version of the story, along with some better level designs for the game. I will post those as the progress on that continues. I would be like a lot of the other indie devs who devote all their time to building games, but I have a family to feed and have to work other jobs... At least until this one can make me money ;)

A little late.

2012-10-02T22:29:00.000-07:00

Well, sorry for the late follow up on what happened in PAX. Well, I can safely say that I really don't like flying during typhoon season. My family and I got stuck in Korea for 3 days while we waited for a new flight, to Vancouver. Needless to say, when I arrived in Vancouver instead of having 2 days to adjust, I had an hour before I jumped on a bus south bound to Seattle. I was nearly dead when I arrived in Seattle, but the important thing was I arrived, and it was already 9:20pm. After walking 20 minutes from the bus stop to the convention center. When I arrived the show floor was closed. That didn't bother me too much, I wondered around till I found my friend, whom I was meeting. We talked for about 10 minutes and organized for tomorrows schedule.
When we finally parted ways till tomorrow, I decided to watch a few panels about the game industry. As I sat in the small, hot room, I began to nod off and was abruptly awoken by loud voices. Long story short, I remembered that I could use the internet in the center and found that, my favorite podcast was having a meet up just up the road. Well once I knew that, I was out of there. I rushed to the pub, and joined the Idle Thumbs meetup. This was the best part of my first night in Seattle. I met loads of game creators, and within 40 mins i was already drunk with joy and oversleep, so much so that I felt like I was floating. Lets see, I met Chris Remo (DoubleFine) Jake Rodkin/ Sean Vannamen (Tell Tale Games) Steve Gainer (Formally of 2K Marin) Branden Chung (Blendo Games) and many many more. After saying goodnight to everyone I left for my hotel, which wasn't a hotel, it was a youth hostel.
First Full Day of PAX
Day One, I woke up early, and got ready for a long day of games talking, I stocked up on Monster and food, and then set off for the center. When I arrived, I met my friend and was taken, to the show hall, before everyone was allowed in. I set up myself with my friend and waited for the people to come. I didn't know what to expect, all I knew was that a lot of people were about to pure into the hall.
As people came and left, some interested and others not, I felt happy to be a part of this. The efforts of last year, and this year had paid off for me. As the day went on I took a break and wondered around the show floor, saw some new games, played a few as well. In the two hour break, I saw all the other indie games, played a great deal of them. The triple "A" games that I could tryout, were Pikmen WiiU, World of Warplanes, Scrolls, Natural Selection 2, and Doom3 3D. All these games were good. Doom3 was still Doom just in 3D. World of Warplanes was awesome. Played that for about 20 minutes, and killed 4 PAX guests. It's an awesome game. The games I just saw, were Far Cry 3, Resident Evil 6, WiiU Zombie Game, and Dishonored. The funny thing was, that when I saw the game Dishonored, I was talking with a Bethesda PR person and for some reason we ended up talking about my game, and again long story short got invited to a house party, that a lot of developers were invited to go too. So after, returning to my computers and discovering that my cell phone was stolen, I decided to go back to showcasing my game. Later that evening around 6:30 I left the building and headed up to the parties location. My friend said he would come later so, I started without him. Boy that was a good and bad idea. It was good because I could meet, people from the press. Bad in the way that only the press and regular people had to wait in line to get in and developers could go straight in without any problems.
So after waiting for 2 hours, I could finally get into the party, but to my surprise my friend was already inside... the party was great, and I think I drank too much, while talking with people in the VIP room, because I don't remember much about who I talked with, all I remember was talking to Markus Pearson (Notch) and rubbing shoulders with Tod Howard (director of Fallout 3 and many other titles). The evening was great.

The next and final day for me was Sunday. I had to pack up my stuff, in the hostel, and head out with everything on my back. That was fun! Sunday was my final day, and I decided to show off my game to other developers, I was a little reluctant to do this, because I was shy. After swallowing my nervousness I started showing off my game to developers, I showed my game off to several indie developers and got several, creative suggestions, as well as, keep up the good work, it looks good so far. I was really pleased and overjoyed that the newly redone version of my game was well received by, regular people and game developers alike.
I've put my name down on the list for the IndieMega Booth for next years PAX Prime and possibly PAX Australia. More updates soon, as we are coming close to the Oct 17th deadline for the IGF. Stay tuned.

Where Are You? A Tale Of Love

2012-08-21T22:34:00.001-07:00

Here is one of the trailers that I will be bringing with me to PAX Prime. Red Sun Games is going to attend PAX. Comment and let me know what you think of this little slice of a years work.

PAX Prime Website: http://prime.paxsite.com/

The games new look, and direction was inspired by a great little indie game called Dear Esther.
If you haven't played it or seen it, I suggest you take a look at it.

Now without further ado, here is the trailer for Where Are You? A Tale Of Love.

Not dead just working slowly

2012-07-22T22:38:00.001-07:00

Well, it has been nearly two months since I posted that I am charging into battle. Well I am happy to say that, I am still charging and am hard at work at sprite building and story writing. Though I am not moving as fast as I would have hoped, I'm never the less still moving forward.
Yesterday I took a two hour break and played through Dear Esther, a great interactive story. When I finished playing through it and realized I had not shot anything, jumped over hazards or killed any baddies, but was able to have a memorable experience, it made me stop and think.
"What was I trying to tell in my story?"
My take away from Dear Esther, was a way of telling a really good story, without overly designed and ultimately hampering game play.
Now that I've finished playing, I can go back to work on my own game, and hopefully improve on my game. That's it for today. I will update more in the near future, hopefully with some concept and latest build pics.

If you don't already have this game I suggest you get off your lazy ass and get it. It's only $4.99 on Steam, that's 50% off the regular price. Get it before the sale ends.

If you don't trust me watch the review on IGN

CHARGE INTO THE FIELD OF BATTLE!

2012-06-10T18:23:00.000-07:00

Well, It has been a hard two and a half months. I tried to get support for my game via IndieGoGo, and that failed. I tried reaching out to the community of TIGSource and at least found them to be somewhat helpful. After posting in the indie forums and getting some reputable indie devs to try my demo I got feedback. Basically they said that the concept was original and but the mechanics were all over the place. That feedback was good and bad. Good in a sense that I now knew where my game sat in the real world, but because it zapped all my motivation.
I am happy to say that today I am back and I am ready for the long and tedious journey of re-building and re-tooling my game Where Are You? for some reason I just can't let it go. I want to get this game finished and I want it to look and feel good. Today as I sat in the office I had lightning strike me and with that a new spark of motivation and creative ideas. The game will be stripped down and re-done with the new RPG and Platforming engines that I have written.
CHARGING INTO THE FIELD OF INDIE DEVELOPMENT BATTLE. CHARGE!!!!

IndieGoGo Campaign is live

2012-04-04T16:37:00.003-07:00

I have my IndieGoGo campaign up and running. Please show your support to see this wonderful game brought to life. Together we can make dreams come true.

Show your support by visiting my IndieGoGo Campaign page here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/88181?c=home&a=526887

No amount is too small, every little bit counts and brings Where Are You? closer to completions.

New and Shiny

2012-03-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

Well, for the last 2 hours, I've been pouring over the RPG code of the game and after taking pieces of it, and stitching it together with my new code, I've finally completed the first part of my games new RPG/Platformer hybrid game engine. (That's a mouth full)
There is still a lot needing to be done, but at least the first half of the engine is together. I have the Platforming engine built, the only thing left to do is to test the two engines, once the code that connects them has been complete. This time around I will take my time, and address all the problems that I find in the games code.

Updates updates updates

2012-03-23T15:23:00.002-07:00

Well, work on Where Are You? is back in full swing. I am getting my games foundations ready for the actual game build. That's right, the game is coming out of concept/prototype stage, and going into full production. To start off construction The levels in the IGF demo are being stripped and all sprites being build from the ground up. I haven't gotten any support from the community because all I've been posting on is facebook and twitter, and you know how reliable those sorts of people can be.
In other news I've entered Where Are You? into the IndieCade, this is a great opportunity to show off my creation, and get some real feedback. To help me get started on my feedback and testing, I've joined the tigsource forums for Indie Devs and have already started to get more assistance, then I could have dreamed of. Well that's all for now from me. If you want to try an updated version of the game that was updated Feb 20 in preparation to full production, click the link marked demo.

Red Sun Games Self-Kickstarter. Take a look.

2012-03-20T08:25:00.001-07:00

Well, it's finally here, Red Sun Games has started its self-kickstarter. For those who haven't heard of kickstarters please check out http://www.kickstarter.com/ (brief summary of kickstarter.com. It's a website devoted to allowing people to show off what they are working on, and giving everyone the chance to back projects that interest them. Kickstarter is not an international organization as of yet, and what that means is I can't start this on kickstarters :(

Anyway back to what's important, the game "Where Are You?" Hopefully it will see the light of day sooner then later, providing that you the people are interested in supporting such a project. Take a look here and better acquaint yourself with the game.

Now that you've gotten better acquainted take a look at this. http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2012.php?id=514 Where Are You? was in the IGF and though it didn't become a finalist amd gain fame and glory like the other entries have, I want to develop the game nonetheless. For anyone wanting to try before you buy as it were, you can try the demo link over here >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

or you can go to http://www.indiedb.com/games/where-are-you

My goal with this self-kickstarter is to raise $4000. This is to give the game the base funding to get it started and rolling.

The game was scheduled to be released back in January but due to production issues and then hardware issues the game was shelved. Now that I have blown off all the dust and looked over the code base, I have deemed this project do able. I will start from scratch with a new clean build of the game and fresh original sprites. Please take the time and watch this video if you are in need of any more information.

This is a must watch. The Self-Kickstarter Video.

For those wanting to donate here are your donation options:

$5 Gets your name in the credits

$10 Gets you a drm free version of the game and the above option.

$15 Gets you a you in the game. This means I will make you a civilian npc with your name. Plus all the above options.

$20 Gets you 2 post cards with original art from the game and all the above options.

$50 Gets you a custom made magnet of one of the in game characters. Plus all of the above options.

If you are feeling so inclined to donate more please contact me with the amount and I will let you know what your benefit package will be. Also please note that if your backer package includes a physical item i.e. post card or magnet please include $4 more dollars for shipping.

Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions or comments at jptechgamer@gmail.com

Also if you like this please follow Red Sun Games on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Red-Sun-Games-Studio/215246351828718

Thank you for your time and support. Let's make dreams happen!!

Do it yourself Kickstarter is on the way.

2012-03-13T03:43:00.002-07:00

Well, after writing my last post no less than 4 hours ago, I've decided to put together my own Kickstarter video to showcase my indie studio, my games and my hopes. Look for the video in the next day or two.

Games to be talked about will be Where Are You? and the new game Journey To The Center.

This is for real, and if you are interested in bringing these two games to life please stay tuned.

If reading this post has already gotten you interested in helping out, please by all means donate and your contribution will help, plus if you watch the video and read the next blog post you will find out just what you will receive as a benefactor.

So let's see what's new.

2012-03-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

Lots to do and lots of time to do it in... Wait a minute... Let me say that again. I'm starting a new project and if you've been following my facebook and possible my twitter you might have seen my info on this new project. First of all my first game Where Are You? has been shelved, for the time being, as I've looking at the mountain of work to be done just to the existing code... All I can say is Oh My GOD!! it's horrendous. I also lack a certain expertise in the field of coding to be able to go through and fix everything, because of this I have decided to shelve it for now and come back to it when my coding skills can do it justice.

Now you might be asking yourself what am I going to do in the meantime? Well the answer is simple, start a new game. I am currently working on a new title right now. The game itself is still in early stages and I have only had the time to do the animations for the main character. Here are some screens for some movement tests.

As you can see my character resembles a cross between builder bob and Mario.

And he falls to his death

The game is a fairly simple platformer with some minecraft, puzzle, and Mario elements added in.

This games code base is easy for me to work with and I don't have any conflicts with RPG elements, like I had with Where Are You? With this game I will be taking it slow and working very carefully on all the elements of the game. I want to put out a game that looks good, but also plays good. I will be making a new indieDB profile for this game and I will be posting pictures and updates there, and of course here as well.

In other news I am planning on building a sound recording room for recording the narration, dialog and sound effects for the game. This will be a fairly simple process and after reading about the closet adventures of the Bastion sound producer I thought about doing a similar thing, but since I do not have a large enough closet for recording purposes I have decided to build a budget sound room.

The last piece of news was my disappointment that Kickstarter.com does not host international projects that are not based in the US. What I was happy to find out was Kickstarter will open their site up to international projects later this year.

Well that's all for the updates from me. I will be keeping the blog more up to date on this, and other projects that are in the pipeline.

Bye for now.

Checkout my new Blog

2012-02-08T20:20:00.000-08:00

Checkout Life on the Rim a new blog about the stories of Eric the Red a Nord with a destiny.
http://storiesfromtherim.blogspot.com/

Bite the bullet in more then one way.

2012-01-31T21:38:00.000-08:00

Well I have been fighting eye strain for the past while, as I posted in my last update. Today I decided to bite the bullet and start up work again on the game. So I worked for about an hour on the game and find two problems, the first being what I knew already. My eyes became sore, irritated, and difficult to focus. OK so that puts me KO for games work today. After realizing that the pain behind my eyes had turned into a full blown migraine, I took two Bufferin (Japanese equivalent of Aspirin). Still got my migraine, but it has been kind to me while I type this.
My second problem came while I was working on the game. So before I tell you what the problem is I will tell you a little story.
Back in August when I first starting thinking of building games, with the new found knowledge that I had learned, I stumbled upon the IGF contest and thought "hey I want to try and enter that" so I asked my wife if it would be OK to work night and day on an entry. She said that would be OK. So from the last week of August till October 17th I worked night and day to produce a demo for my entry. During that time I was struggling with the games concepts and mechanics, it was a huge undertaking. I AM BUT ONE MAN, scaling a mountain.
During production I ran into several problems and coding issues. Sometimes things never worked right and sometimes things got broken when new things were added. Well due to the deadline and my fear that I would never be able to make the cut off date, I cut corners, bypassed code, and cut out important features of the game that would be beneficial now.
Fast forward back to today, when running some tests and organizing the new content for the game. Those overlooked and bypassed part of the games code have come back to bite me in the ass. After figuring that I need to fix them, and then trying to fix them. Have determined that in my hast to produce the games demo, and bypassing too many things, if I fix those problems, I will create a domino effect with several other systems.
I have foolishly integrated the problems into the games so much so, that if I fix them it will break the game. The only way to fix this problem without having to spend hours upon hours of code hunting for the new problems. I have decided to do a clean build of the open world elements of the game. (These being the only parts that were having issues during production) I will rewrite all the code for these parts and then integrate the platforming elements and stitch them in so that everything works perfectly. If all goes well I should have access the features and elements that I damaged back in early production, such as controller controls for the game. This just keeps getting better and better.

What's Next?!

2012-01-25T17:27:00.000-08:00

For the past 5 months I've been working hard on the production of the game. But all that has been brought to a grinding halt because of 2 different things. First, I had a computer failure, that I was spending the time to repair, during that time I was not using the PC for no more then 2 hours a day. When I had finished to repair my work station computer, I was so happy and started working on the new content of the game, I also indulged in some gaming. To my dismay I discovered a new problem.
Over the course of the last 5 months I had been getting headaches, sharp pains behind my eyes, sore shoulders and back. I didn't know what exactly was causing this, I believed that it was due to over working at the schools and the very dry environment that I'd been working in. This only turned out to be part of the slightly larger problem. I was dragging my eyes through the dirt, I was spending hour upon hour working on a computer, without any rest. I have subsequently developed a sensitivity to the glare and constant shifting from screen to documents and screen to environments. Now I can barely spend 2 hours straight looking at a screen without feeling a headache and or a sharp pain behind my eyes.
I noticed this during the time when my computer was offline, and when the computer was back up and running, so was my headaches and problems. So as I said in the beginning of this post I have brought my production to a grinding halt. That is until I get a pair of computer glasses. I am currently searching for the best pair that suits me. I've checked my vision, and I do not have near or far sightedness. I just need glasses to use the computer. I do not wish to get Glaucoma, so I will do everything I can to prevent that from happening. Game production will continue after acquiring my new glasses.
Game release date will now be moved to TBA(To Be Announced) I can not say exactly when release will be. I am but one man carving away at a mountain. So it will be finished when its finished. For sure in 2012.

Hard Start To 2012 and A Long Road Ahead

2012-01-12T18:03:00.000-08:00

Well, on January 10th the nominees were announced for the IGF. Sadly though, Where Are You? was not selected. For me this was OK, as the game is no wheres near ready to be shown to the public as a fully functional game. Also to keep in mind that the games, alpha and IGF demo builders were conceived, and created in under 3 months. That was a big accomplishment me. I will try again next year and see what happens. Developing games is a long, stressful and for the most part enjoyable job. I will continue to develop Where Are You? and work on my secret project on the side.
I must also say congratulations to Tom Francis creator of Gunpoint http://www.gunpointgame.com/ and Kan Gou creator of To The Moon http://freebirdgames.com/to_the_moon/ for their nominations in the IGF. Good Luck to them.
In other news, I am sorry to report that Where Are You? Episode1 will not be released this month. Development of the game was going along as scheduled, until I hit a wall. A week and a half ago while compiling the games data a total system failure occurred. Apparently the water cooler that was cooling my CPU had a faulty seal on the water cooler block. This seal failed when the CPU heavy task of compiling was started, causing the closed water cooling system to leak onto the CPU and Mobo. This in turn fried the CPU, and Mobo. I then set out to replace the 2 parts. After getting replacement parts and finally changing everything out, another problem presented itself, the computer wont post.... $(^% So now I am in the process of solving this other problem.
You may be wondering what this has to do with the game, well this has everything to do with the game. My latest build of the games continuing levels are saved on the systems hard drives and because of the failure happening during compiling, I am yet to know the damage that may have been done to the games data. So needless to say I am a little worried about the state of the game.
At the very least the game will be released mid to late February... I hope. Well I must return to my teaching, I carry the weight of 3 jobs plus a family. Until next post.

A new look

2011-11-25T07:01:00.000-08:00

DETAIL DETAIL DETAIL

2011-11-04T08:51:00.000-07:00

Before Detailing

95% Final Detailing

Final

This was fun now to do this with all the levels. Sorry about the demo being so bare.

Lightning has struck

2011-11-02T18:57:00.000-07:00

I just got a great idea for Where Are You? and its mechanics. I am excited I will get to work on it tonight. For now I will be spending time with my family. I am really pleased with how this game is coming along. It's not perfect and it still has rough edges, but its polishing up nicely. I hope enough people try the demo and let me know their feelings about it.
Will post pics of the games new and slightly more detailed look later this week. Wish I had time like the members of Stoz Studios who are making a game a week. Well after my first game is released perhaps I will have more time to work on other projects.

Demo has Arrived!

2011-11-02T06:13:00.000-07:00

Where Are Yous? demo has arrived. This is just the IGF demo. I want to know what you all think of this concept. I would appreciate comments and thoughts about what you thought. I want to make this right and input is welcome. Hope you enjoy. I am a little nervous to release it to the public, but I believe that it is time to share. Enjoy!

4th and hopefully final revision.

2011-10-30T09:26:00.000-07:00

Today October 31st I finished the 4th revision of the IGF demo. I have also finished making a quick video trailer of the game. Take a look and tell me what you think.

There is still hope... FINALLY!!

2011-10-25T06:49:00.000-07:00

I finally fixed the collision in the RPG part of the game. Now the main character wont bounce off of everything. This means that the 4th revision of the IGF entry will have the RPG elements of the game. God I hope I'm not to late for this revision.

Tomorrow I will be editing every RPG element in the game to incorporate proper collision. Please Please God let this be quick and painless.

Working hard on new content until I saw this.

2011-10-23T15:17:00.000-07:00

So yesterday was my son and his friends birthday party. We had a blast and so did the kids. Today is another day of work on tweaking mechanics, and, well trying to make the game better. That was until I saw this.

Now all I want to do is play StarCraft II.

In other news I noticed my private You Tube feed had been watched by 7 views. This feed was for the IGF so I imagine the judges have taken a look at my game. I hope I still have a chance to update it some more.

The IGF and the game.

2011-10-21T23:05:00.000-07:00

Today, I submitted my 3rd revision of the game. I noticed a glitch in level 5 and decided to fix it, and send the new version to the IGF's FTP server. You will notice that some of the levels are the same as in previous builds, and that there are actually no JRPG levels (a top down JRPG style world) in this demo. The reason for this, is because I wanted to demo the platforming, and the platforming mechanics, for the IGF. The JRPG elements are more for the story and moving the plot forward.

This is not a complete Demo as there is no music added yet. My music man is working on it and it will be added as soon as its ready.
The actual retail game that will be released in 2012 is being worked on in 3 stages. Stage 1 is to get the IGF Demo ready by building levels that will be utilized in the demo and full version of the game. Stage 2 is to put the story elements of the game together. This means building the JRPG top down sections of the game. (Over World). The 3rd and final stage, is putting the two parts together and testing them. Once these three stages are complete the game moves into beta testing and glitch repairs.
This has been a labor of love, and an amazing experience. I know that the game, might not look like the next Mario or Metroid, and that it looks a little rough around the edges, but this is my first and hopefully not last game. I've got other ideas that I'm dying to try out and show. If this game does't impress you let me know. I want to hear feedback the good and the bad. If many people think this is a feasible idea, and one that should be explored further, I will work harder at perfecting the game.

Almost There

2011-10-16T05:42:00.000-07:00

Almost ready for IGF submission. Thank God we could make it. Tonight is Narration recording and inputting it into the actual game. I just spent the last week re-doing all the art and sprites. The game has a revised and cleaner look to it. Music is in the works and when the IGF You Tube link is up I will post it to the blog. This has been a long and challenging road. But for only 6 weeks of work this is pretty good, so says my music man, who has also doubled as my play tester. I think once the results of the IGF come in and the subsequent public demo release I will think about switching to Unity for competing the game. Game Maker is a great testing ground for new game ideas. I think one of the biggest insperations into trying Game Maker for me was watching and trying Desktop Dungeons, a last year IGF winner. http://www.desktopdungeons.net/ Try the free version, that was the version entered into the IGF. That's all for now.

Back and Ready to POST!

2011-10-08T19:03:00.000-07:00

Well it has been a long while since I posted on this blog. I guess fill you all in on what I have been up to. As you can see I have changed the blogs name. This is because in the last four and a half weeks I have been producing a game. This is the fruits of my labor. Check out my games trailer.
Creating Games is fun as hell, can be frustrating at times, but generally it is very enjoyable. I will keep up to date with this blog now. I will post news about the development of the game as it happens.

Main Menu

In the first encampment.

The Platforming and Puzzle elements