Hi friends,

A long, long time ago I started an RPG and recently I finished it.  I call it “Frontier.”  It’s my first RPG.

I think of it as my “hey I’m a kid with Flash so I want to make an RPG” project.  Every game developer gets that itching to make a massive overly-difficult project and this was mine.  Any visit to a Flash game site can result in at least a handful of “I’m making an RPG!” threads and sadly a lot of these fall apart.  To be honest, this project followed suit.  After working on it for about 2 months I got terribly burnt out on the project so I pursued other projects.  But I was eager to finish it, even if it was nearly 1-2 years late.  So I picked it back up off and on between projects.  And today it’s done.

Enlisting the help of The-Swain for art and the musical talent of Mohammad Fikree for music, we managed to pump some life back into this thing.  The-Swain did all hand-drawn artwork and managed to bring my imaginary world to life.  Mr. Fikree managed to capture the emotion in the music and score the game quite well.

It’s fifty cities, trading, two quest lines, battling, and world conquest… and some other stuff.  Either way, it’s baked into a trading game.  Buy low, sell high, travel, and survive.  It should take you nearly 4 hours to complete all four endings (not including your death!).

I also call it 1.0 because one day I’ll continue working on it again.  The engine is open enough that I can continue working on this when I feel like it needs another go.  I have so many other things I want to do to the game, so many ambitions that can’t be fulfilled in just this release.  Maybe I’ll channel it into another project but for now I’m calling this project as done here and one day, one year, I’ll visit it again as a fun side project.

I’m sure there are bugs, I couldn’t find them all.  But I’ll revise a file once I get back from the wedding and Australia (which is this weekend!).  I’ll be gone for a bit, so I’m sure many will crop up.

I’m proud of it, and I’m proud to get a large project done.  And I love making something that is not my typical bread and butter.

Enjoy.  Go play.  I’ve got many things to prepare for.

Hi friends,

This week I am doing a schedule Question and Answer session with game developers and the public alike via Flash Game License.  They are putting on a chatroom-like area where people can ask questions about game development, sponsorships, and whatever they want to ask.  You are more than willing to join us, and info can be found here.  It starts at 1 pm Pacific on Thursday, August September 3.

RPG should have its first draft done tomorrow, for people interested in progress.  No ETA yet.

This weekend I went to the beach with Carlie, we enjoyed the beautiful SoCal coast.

Enjoy your wonderful Wednesday!

Still chugging away at this trading RPG game.  Will be doing it all week and probably the next as well!

Australia in 18 days, Wedding in 17 days, and half marathon in 12 days.  Time is ticking away…

This year I went to Shelton, WA for Christmas.  It was the first Christmas away from the family so it was quite a change; especially when it’s with your future in-laws!  Carlie and I were up in the Seattle area for about five days.  A lot of Carlie’s family was there (even Roo was there!).  Anyway, the reason I bring up this terribly cold weather (it was in the 20′s to 30′s while we were there) because this week in Irvine it’s going to be about 80-90F!  Quite the opposite I what I expect for Winter.   Today was already ridiculously hot and this entire week the hot spell will continue.  I’m trying to get as much sunlight as I can while I’m working by opening up the windows; there’s no knowing how much longer this will last.

While I’m inside avoiding the heat I’m in the middle of a few games.  On the Xbox360 I’m playing Prince of Persia.  I have to say… it’s a pretty good game.  While I did get an achievement just for starting the game it’s ridiculous moments are far surpassed by the fluid control and awesome gameplay.  It’s probably what Mirror’s Edge should have had more of… less fighty-fighty and more climby-climby.

I’m also playing Chrono Trigger DS.  Chrono Trigger is one of my favourite games ever and having it on the DS is definitely a treat.  It also joins the ranks of being one of the only games I own multiple copies of (man it’s a great game). 

I have also been playing LittleBigPlanet with Carlie.  She especially liked the wedding level in which she could wear a wedding dress on her sackgirl (I wore a lion costume, I know it wasn’t appropriate but it was awesome).

At work I’m currently working on two projects: 1 is the platformer influenced by my most FAVOURITE game of all time (guess which!) and the other is that RPG I’ve been working on.  The RPG artwork is 90% finished by Mike (The Swain) and he’s doing a phenomenal job.  I’ll post artwork soon!  The platformer is slated for Friday and the RPG is slated for the end of the month.  So two games this January if all goes according to plan.

On the website I have been polishing things up.  Some issues included game pages not working and redirects not reaching their final destinations.  The forums are still waiting to be transported but so far the forum speed has picked up with it being separate from the main site.  I might just keep it there FOREVER (or not, it sounds easier to me ).

Everyone have a good evening! -John