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Welcome...
Video games have come a long way since I first plugged in my Nintendo Entertainment System. Expansive, explorable terrains give players a whole world to play in. High poly 3D characters immerse users in spectacular beauty and detail. Accurate detailed physics models allow players to interact with their environment in realistic ways. Adaptive AIs that can learn and adapt to the player present new and unexpected challenges. Each new generation of games takes us one step closer to breaching the wall between the virtual and the real. Despite our best efforts, however, video games remain merely almost interactive...
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News & Events...
Hello from Nintendo
Some have noticed that I've been extra busy these last weeks, and it's true; I haven't been able to dedicate 10 hours per day to Drake like I have been the past couple months. The reason why? You can probably guess by the title... I'm working at Nintendo now. I can't say anything about the project, of course, due to Non Disclosure Agreements, but I can tell you that I like it. The people there are friendly, are always laughing, and generally seem like good-time kinds of folks. I'll fit right in! Except for the fact that I'm not a huge baseball fan. I didn't know this, but Nintendo owns a controlling portion of the Seattle Mariners, and with Griffey's return to the team, the buzz in the office has grown to a roar. If I don't become a Griffey fan soon, there may be hell to pay!
Fear not, though; I have not given up on Drake, and I still work on it during my free time, as I have for over a year now. :) It's a wonderful project, and I'm so very happy to see how far it's come in the past few months. I've been working on the underlying structure for so long, which is important, but it's not especially "showy." With people helping out decorating the map, doing voice work, and with the more recent coding being done on more "visible" systems, there's a lot more to look at now and... well, it's just really exciting!
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Whats up?
Well guys, I've had many people try to talk me into working on Go FiSH! 3. Rest assured, I have every intention of doing so! Go FiSH! has been a fun series, and I'm really looking forward to doing a third installment. However, for the last eight months or so, and for months to come, I have been working on my own MMO project.
Its a small project, codenamed DRAKE, but even small MMOs take a long time to do... especially when I'm working alone. This has been my longest running project to date, and so far, my favourite. Its in an Alpha state now; the engine has been proven and much of the underlying technology has been written and is working. Most of the work right now is doing content: building the towns, scripting the abilities, creating the NPCs, and similar tasks.
I hope to have a Beta version (that is, fully playable with most of the content completed and most of the major bugs worked out) within the next six months. It may seem like a long time, but that still may be cutting it short. Still, I'm going to give it my best. The few people who I have let play the game have given wonderful feedback, and seem to really enjoy the concept. I strongly believe that this game will be enjoyable by all of you. :)
Enough babbling... time to get back to work!
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Now On Sale
Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Strom went on sale on Saturday the 14th. With preorders numbering in the thousands, the launch of the game went better than expected. The game's been out for a week now (as of this writing) and reviews and comments are popping up all over the internet. I'm happy to report that every review I've read has been positive, with reviewers stating how true to the show the game is! We're all very proud. :)
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Worlds Worst Blogger
I know, I update this about as often as Bush does something right (oh, politcal zing!), and there's no excuse for it. I don't have a lot of time (obviously) so I'm going to try and wrap up the past six months as succinctly as possible.
Employment: I'm employed! After a long dry spell, and that nasty bit of work at that "5C" place, I've landed a nice job as a programmer over at Liquid Dragon Studios. Now, don't let the web page fool you, we're not doing a casual game. This ones a nice big one. Sorry, but thats all I can say until its released. They really like me there, and whats better, I really like being there. No crunch time, great pay, good benefits, wonderful small-studio, social atmosphere... What more could you ask for? Charasmatic boss, flexibility and freedom in job tasks, a voice in the company... got those too. Did I mention no crunch time? Sa-weet!
Personal Projects: Yeah, like I'd ever have less than two games going on at once. As most of you know, I've put the WarCraft III modding aside. I know, I know, it was a hard decision, and I'd like to go back to it someday, but I just don't time for it with my new project. Sorry guys. But hopefully you'll all be excited to play my new game when its done (or at least in Beta). I'm building an MMORPG. (WHAT? You're nuts!) Okay, really, its more of an MSORPG: Massive Singleplayer Online Role Playing Game. Now, I know that doesn't make much sense, and it could be that the whole concept is broken and the game flops, but the prototype was very promising (over 300 accts in the first month) and I have to believe that I can do this game up right. The game'll be free to play, and even though I was working on my own MMO client/server, I wont be using that. I dont have the free time to make that a worth-while engine, so I'm using some other software that I'm already familiar with: PenUltima Online Server, of which I'm also on the Core Dev Team. I've been working on it for over two months now, and lots of the core mechanics are in, and even a healthy dose of content. I dont know when I'll have First Playable, but I don't expect it'll take too much longer.
I guess that about wraps things up. I'll try to update the news more frequently, promise.
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