Here’s a video from a few years ago of our historian, Roberto Borrero. It’s a bit long but interesting, I hope you enjoy it. 
–Josh
Our Historian
October 8th, 2009Announcing our first official game!
August 9th, 2009Things have finally come together and we can officially announce our first Arrival Video Game which will be released on the iPhone (and other platforms soon after).
Please excuse the video quality, we’ll use a better camera next time.
–Josh
Insurmountable Obstacles
August 6th, 2009Regarding Josh’s previous entry, I told him the world was ending and that was the whole of his response until we talked later that day. Always a sense of humor and I have to say it got me laughing and things didn’t look so bad!
There have been many challenges for the art team and it seems there is always much more for me to do than is humanly possible. But there are also many, many positives. Our team continues to grow with very talented people who are willing to help in anyway they can. We have a completed human model and the riggers and animators are able to get started. There are several other models that are close to completion and should be ready to go soon. The modelers are also working on many of the inanimate objects that are needed by the animators, along with objects that will really enrich our environment. It looks like we may have all required objects done well before our deadline and may be able to work on some of my “wish list” items!
Looking over the last week of our particular “theatre”, there could not be a better quote than the “Shakespeare In Love” quote! Things do have a way of working themselves out and many of the overwhelming problems from a few days ago have just fizzled out to make way for new insurmountable obstacles!
Susan
Video Game Projects
August 2nd, 2009The other day Susan and I were talking and she was expressing her concern about how impossible the tasks ahead of us seemed. This little snippet explains this type of project rather accurately so I thought I’d share it publicly.
From Shakespear in Love
Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?
Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Hugh Fennyman: How?
Philip Henslowe: I don’t know. It’s a mystery.
–Josh
Coming Together!
July 6th, 2009I have been spending my time managing the art team, learning the Torque 2D game engine, adding cultural information to the “help” section of the design doc, and working on character sketches, Taino word lists, and the cut scene stories we will need for our game. To say it is a full time job is putting it lightly!!
We have a great core of artists that are making great progress in making our 3D models of people and huts. I hope to have them complete soon so we can finish up on the other required game objects. We are also experimenting with the backgrounds and coming up with our plan to tackle that.
It is exciting to see this first iPhone game making such great progress. We have a great group of dedicated people working with us and I know this game is going to reflect that fact. Just let me play it already!!
Susan
Current News and Progress
June 13th, 2009I haven’t posted anything about development or progress in a while. It seems when I go in one direction there is always something to pull me in another one. So, what has been happening? We are presently exploring an iPhone game which would be a subset of Arrival, it could even be considered a prequal though the story for the first prequal may not be connected to the main Arrival game. If things go well there is a chance we will do a series of iPhone games. This could help us in many ways including practicing on a much smaller scale, earning funds to pay for bigger game development costs and building a reputation which could help us receive funding from a publisher. At the moment I am in negotiations with a publisher to get funding for our first iPhone game. It’s a long process but assuming everything goes well we should begin full development by July (sooner I hope!).
So building an iPhone team, reviewing and commenting on docs, starting a real company, negotiating the contract, etc etc has kept me away from programming and experimenting. I hope to get back to that soon but with all my project manager tasks I may not get to do any programming on this iPhone game. Ah well, the joy of being the team lead.
I hope to be posting another blog soon with good news on funding. Until then wish me luck!
–Josh
We Now Have a Company
June 13th, 2009I finally bit the bullet and took the time to create an actual company. At the moment my focus is on getting the word out about Arrival so any other entity, including a company name, has been secondary. Here it is: www.vivosinteractive.com. Not much there at the moment but we are now official.
–Josh
Progress!!!
May 12th, 2009We have some awesome ideas for our first iPhone game. Looking at the design doc, I can’t wait to play it myself! We have received some conceptual art that is absolutely breath taking. This artist has been able to really capture our idea for the iPhone and produce over view maps and UI screens that are just what we were looking for. Our team is expanding to include more 2D and 3D artists who will really be able to assist us in developing our games.
My time has been divided between actively looking for new team members, learning the Unity game engine, working on the storyline/levels for our main game, Arrival, as well as going over the docs, artwork, and planning for the iPhone game. The kinks are being worked out and the story is really starting to take shape. I am finding that there are just really not enough hours in my day!! So much happening all at once!
Susan
New Content Posted
April 18th, 2009I added a new section of the site today on historical information. I want to give a special thank you to Susan for doing an awesome job researching and assembling all the information. Here is the page:
http://www.arrivalgame.com/content/history.htm
I also fixed a bug on the site and worked a bit on performance. Unfortunately from what I can tell the real performance fix will be to switch to a new host. The fun never ends.
No gameplay experiment this weekend, I hope to have something to show next weekend.
–Josh
Painting Experiment
April 12th, 2009To view the experiment, go here.
This was an experiment in how doable/fun/hard it would be to paint in an iPhone/Facebook game. I spent approx 5 hours on and decided to post the results publicly. The good news is painting works. The bad news, the performance degrades very quickly which may indicate I will not be able to use this for the iPhone or even Facebook.
I used some pre-made scripts as a timesaver. I am also learning Unity so the experiment has a dual purpose. I purchased this script:
http://www.lastbastiongames.com/middleware/decal/index.shtml
and implemented it for painting using the right mouse button (if you try it, first go to full screen when you right click, press ESC to exit full screen). It works but the FPS (frames per second) gets low pretty fast. On my system it was unusable once the number of decals reached approx 400. Which isn’t much if I want to use this for painting. I still think that decal renderer is nice and am sure I will find a use for it. It just wasn’t designed to be used as a painting application.
I also used code from the Unity forums to attempt a different method:
http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=15414
which worked but also had performance issues. For that one (use the left mouse button to see) it slows down significantly while you use it. At first you can slowly draw a shape and as you go it will get very jumpy.
I don’t recommend using the painting in this experiment for more than a few minutes or it could slow down your browser/computer.
There were a couple additional features I tried but they did not work today. I wanted to add a sound when the right mouse button was clicked but it would actually stop the painting from working and the sound didn’t play. The second issue was I wanted to have the painting working on a 3D model of a woman (you can see her in the background). The first method did work but the second would not work on her. In the interest of testing how it works (rather than determine how my model needs to be modified) I switched to a simple sphere and both painting methods then worked.
There is still a big question, would this actually be fun? If the painting was refined (so you don’t have to move so slowly) and the performance issues addressed I believe the answer would be yes. But without those issues fixed I can’t be 100% sure.
–Josh