In a comment one Kyzak requested a post on work environs – who am I to deny such a request?
So come, dear reader; let me give you an exclusive tour of my workspaces.
Category Archives: Gaslamp
David’s Gaslamp Workspace
Posted in Gaslamp |
Tagged being silly, coffee, demagoguery, desk, hip-hop feud, hothead games, office, vancouver
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5 Comments
Happy New Year!
Happy new year from all of us at Gaslamp Games. 2011 is gonna be huge. Some housekeeping:
– Did you know we have one of those damn-fangled Twitter-things? Why not give it a look? In particular, I’ll be Live-Tweeting my work session for a bit today, and maybe tomorrow as well. We’ll see how it goes.
– We’re also on Facebook. Just search for Gaslamp Games and you’ll see us. I don’t know what we’ll do for Special Facebook Content, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.
– Congratulations to fellow Roguelike makers QCF Design whose game, Desktop Dungeons, was nominated for the Seamus McNally Grand Prize at the 2011 IGF this year. This’ll be a lesson to us: we didn’t end up submitting a build of Dredmor to the IGF last year because a) it wasn’t in a particularly good state at the time, but also b) because we didn’t think a Roguelike had a good chance of placing anywhere. Shows what we know. There you have it, folks: 2011 is clearly the year of Roguelike Domination!
More importantly, perhaps: over the holidays the collective Gaslamp crew managed to recharge our batteries and get a lot of work done. The game, replete with a new combat system, a new skill system, multiple resolutions, and the blasphemous presence of Numbers all over the place feels like a game, and that’s a sign that we’re getting close to shipping. Now, if you’ll excuse me – these 52 bugs aren’t going to fix themselves, you know.
Dear Linux Community: We Need To Talk.
I glanced at Slashdot yesterday while bored and found an interesting article on the CDE packaging tool. An impressive piece of work, CDE automatically packages up all of your dependencies into a self-contained directory structure. If I wanted to package up Dungeons of Dredmor and to be able to guarantee that it would work on your computer, all I would have to do is to run CDE on my computer, where I know Dredmor works, and sha-zam! Instant package.
This is something I have been fretting about: how do we distribute Dredmor for Linux?
On Engine Licensing and the Fall of GarageGames
First off, let me preface this with the following announcement: we have two middleware solutions targeting independent game developers coming down the pipeline. One of them is a user interface toolkit, similar to wxWidgets or Qt, but fully hardware accelerated and oriented towards video game UI and level editors. The other piece of middleware is a complete “game engine” on the level of, say, Unity or C4. It features all the stuff that you would want, including interactive level editing, terrain creation, and a full dynamic lighting and shadowing solution using deferred rendering. It also includes some stuff that you didn’t know you wanted, such as an easy-to-use level sketching tool, an asset store built into the level editor, and our new and improved version of so-called “Megatexturing” which lets you paint on every surface on the world, dynamically, and without compilation times or messy texture packing.
Neither one of these two pieces of technology is used by Dungeons of Dredmor; when Gaslamp Games was founded, we originally started working on a 3D isometric strategy game, but we soon decided that it was unrealistic to try to ship a fully 3D title for our first effort – especially without a dedicated 3D content creator on staff! – and so we decided to finish Dredmor instead as a way of bootstrapping the company. That said, we have been working on our next game’s technology base in parallel with Dredmor’s development, it is *very* indie-friendly, and it will be available to interested parties at a very reasonable rate in the near future. If you want to be notified about when we get set to release, send an e-mail to technology-announcements-subscribe@list.gaslampgames.com and we will shower you with love.
That said:
I woke up this morning to see that GarageGames (renamed recently to “InstantAction” as part of a buyout) has gone under. InstantAction is dead, and the Torque Game Engine is looking for a buyer. Deep in the heart of the Gaslamp command center, we’re still trying to figure out exactly what triggered the collapse of the company. I’ve worked for companies that have collapsed before – Loki Software, anyone? – and the root causes of the company’s destruction are not always visible to outsiders. What caused the collapse, and what does this mean for independent developers?
The Floor is Yours…
Our website traffic is down a bit – down 29.98% from last month, according to Google Analytics. Now admittedly that includes a spike of traffic from the SomethingAwful forum goons (hi, Forum Goons!) which is probably a one-time event, but it seems awfully quiet around these parts.
So why not introduce yourself down in the comments? Say hello! We don’t bite. Tell us who you are, why you’re here, what you want to see in Dredmor… and maybe what you might want to see from Gaslamp Games in the future. Go on, don’t be shy.
We’re Back!
We have now all safely returned from Penny Arcade Expo. I’m going to write up a brief description of my adventures, but in general I think we all had a good time. I’m not sure if it was particularly good as a networking event, but I did more networking than Daniel said would happen, and I also got to just spend some quality time with people who I haven’t seen in a long time, including my friends from Vancouver. What may be more valuable about PAX is that it reaffirmed my belief that Dredmor is something that people will understand, and will appreciate; furthermore, it reaffirms my belief that independent game developers like Gaslamp Games do actually matter, and that people do actually care about what we produce and what we create. Sixty thousand nerds like gaming enough, in all of its forms, to show up in Seattle for an entire weekend; what other conclusion can we draw but that video games matter to people, and somehow manage to touch their lives?
Gaslamp Games at Penny Arcade Expo
Many years ago, two men’s fantasy became reality with the establishment of a giant cooking arena… no, that’s not right. Well, it’s a giant arena of some sort where men face men in tabletop tournamenting and handheld chicanery. That’s right, it’s PAX.
Daniel, Derek and myself are at Penny Arcade Expo this weekend. Our goals: carousing, debauchery, video gaming, some mild networking, and harassing the Wolfire guys for secretly being closeted furries. (Really, we love you guys and you know it.) While we’re not here officially, if any blog readers are here (or members of the gaming press, or whoever) and want to check out Dungeons of Dredmor, a private showing can be arranged in our hotel rooms.
Yeah, that doesn’t sound dubious at all.
Also, we’re *really* having to work hard right now to beat Duke Nukem Forever to publishing. Darnit!
A Draconian approach is necessary here.
We here at Gaslamp command have been hard at work on a number of things:
- trying to figure out how to get our game into the hands of the public without refurbishing a CD burner and a lemonade stand
- trying to figure out how to effectively receive your input and turn it into the game that you want us to give you
- trying to figure out how to train the stalag-men into a useful work force without upsetting their labor union or delving too deep
I also realize that my ongoing task to inform you guys about what is actually going on around here totally fell off of my to-do list. I have no idea how it happened, please feel free to email me with your grievances and I will attempt to send each one of you a doughnut, if the internet will accommodate such things.
Feelings for the day: Time management is utterly crucial to being able to do more than simply what your day job requires, and Aerobiz Supersonic is a great SNES game.
Posted in Gaslamp |
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