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And the day is done

October 10th, 2008 · 119 Comments · GameDev.net, Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Great day today. Woke up early and got out to the conference venue early. Picked up Rich’s badge and went out to find something to eat for breakfast. Came back and chowed down while waiting for the keynote to start. Alex Seropian form Wideload Games gave a nice speech on the state of indie games and how the market is going to expand and how indies can take advantage of this expansion. Andy Yang came up next with a lecture on InstantAction.comm which was basically a public revealing of what I heard yesterday at the GG offices. But it was nice to hear it again and further solidify the concepts in my head.

Next we partook in a catered lunch and browsed the many games being loaded onto a good two dozen computers available for such a purpose. I sat and talked shop with many people.

The two sessions after lunch on Torque tech coming up were exciting as well. Can we say Torque 2 people? Hells yea. Unified platform was the big feature being pushed, as GG is currently utilizing an engine in-house (and to contractors on a case-by-case basis) called Juggernaut that combines all the strengths of TGE, TGEA, TGX and TGB. Juggernaut will be iterated over the next year or so (that’s my own guess at the timeline) to create/become Torque 2. They have tons of plans for the new engine, I’ll be detailing those and the future of the Torque tools landscape in my full coverage.

After a short break the round table sessions began. There were two concurrent sessions, but one was recorded, so I attended the other one and learned about various partnership avenues with GarageGames. The second round table session had three tables running at once – again one was recorded, the second was Tom Buscaglia Sr’s contract advice but he told me I could get that info at GDC so I sat in on the round table discussing other tools out there (non-Torque) that indies can put to good use. Coverage of these round tables (you guessed it) is coming up next week. I took copious notes don’t worry.

Finally after eating some catered dinner, Randy Dersham showed back up and I invited him to sit with me while he ate and I pitched Galaxy Conquest and Blitz Blox at him. I also had the pleasure of having Mike McCoy, who designed Rack ’em Up Roadtrip’s GUI for some interface/usability feedback as well. They both liked the games a lot but saw the potential for people to be very confused learning how to play them. We discussed several options as to how to lessen the learning curve, and I’ll be talking more with Randy and working on these issues. InstantAction? Time will tell…

Oh yea then we wrapped up with a Wii Tennis tourney and now we just got through being entertained by Jeff Tunnell’s band The Procrastinators. They were awesome. Now a mix of developers are joining up to jam out. If you check my previous entry, you can watch it all Live, yes the camera is still rolling!! If you happened to catch Jeff and his band I hope you enjoyed the treat.

Okay so that’s all from me for now. Be back tomorrow with more teasers

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