Back from Oregon
by Affectworks · 10/10/2006 (7:48 am) · 6 comments
Just a little note to let you guys know what's happened with Switching Gears and us. We took our little tech demo of Switching Gears and headed out to Oregon for a weekend of debauchery in Eugene. Stopped in Portland for a couple of days first, staying with our producer. If you haven't been in OR yet, it's quite a... different culture from the midwest. First off, I have never seen so many damn trees in my life. It's lush, gorgeous and clean. A fantastic state to live and work in it seems like.
Anyway, we showed off Switching Gears to both positive and negative (constructive criticism?) feedback. Since it was more or less a tech demo we didn't really have any sort of tutorial or direction for the player to follow and that was the thing that people were most negative towards. Besides that we recieved a ton of feedback of things that can and will be improved upon. Thanks to all who sat down with the game and gave us their thoughts and feedback.
It was really nice to meet some of the more prolific community members such as Ian, Joshua, Phil and more as well as all the garagegames people. A great bunch of people who couldn't be nicer or more enthused about the games being on displayed. I have to say that the quality of the games being showed off at this dev weekend has increased quite a bit from last year.
Determinance is looking better and better every time I see it, and the system of custom animations that the player can set up was just, for lack of a better word, awesome. Well done, Ian!
Metal Drift seemed to be a favorite of the weekend as everywhere I turned people were killing eachother (digitally).
Blockland is.. well.. what can be said of it? It's a great game that is already hugely impressive.
There was also a mini golf game (sorry, can't remember the title of it) which was suprisingly fun. The layout of the lanes were fun, inventive and colorful. Putting the ball is intuitive and it's just a lot of bite sized fun.
The game Josh mentioned in his plan was of course immensly impressive. Not surprising when you look at the pedigree of the people working on it. I have no doubt in my mind that it'll be a huge success and they will be bathing in money soon.
During the weekend we learned a LOT about what was wrong with Switching Gears, recieved a TON of great feedback of what we should improve on, and had a great time doing it. Also cool to meet Magnus and get to speak some Swedish. :)
Also, huge congratulations to Josh for scoring the internship!
Cheerio!
Fredrik S
Anyway, we showed off Switching Gears to both positive and negative (constructive criticism?) feedback. Since it was more or less a tech demo we didn't really have any sort of tutorial or direction for the player to follow and that was the thing that people were most negative towards. Besides that we recieved a ton of feedback of things that can and will be improved upon. Thanks to all who sat down with the game and gave us their thoughts and feedback.
It was really nice to meet some of the more prolific community members such as Ian, Joshua, Phil and more as well as all the garagegames people. A great bunch of people who couldn't be nicer or more enthused about the games being on displayed. I have to say that the quality of the games being showed off at this dev weekend has increased quite a bit from last year.
Determinance is looking better and better every time I see it, and the system of custom animations that the player can set up was just, for lack of a better word, awesome. Well done, Ian!
Metal Drift seemed to be a favorite of the weekend as everywhere I turned people were killing eachother (digitally).
Blockland is.. well.. what can be said of it? It's a great game that is already hugely impressive.
There was also a mini golf game (sorry, can't remember the title of it) which was suprisingly fun. The layout of the lanes were fun, inventive and colorful. Putting the ball is intuitive and it's just a lot of bite sized fun.
The game Josh mentioned in his plan was of course immensly impressive. Not surprising when you look at the pedigree of the people working on it. I have no doubt in my mind that it'll be a huge success and they will be bathing in money soon.
During the weekend we learned a LOT about what was wrong with Switching Gears, recieved a TON of great feedback of what we should improve on, and had a great time doing it. Also cool to meet Magnus and get to speak some Swedish. :)
Also, huge congratulations to Josh for scoring the internship!
Cheerio!
Fredrik S
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#2
10/10/2006 (8:40 am)
pictures?
#3
Over all I was enthusiastic with the level of quality of the projects that were shown. I think it would be incredibly inspirational to people in the community who are unsure of what tge is capable of to see the sort of stuff groups like yours is doing.
10/10/2006 (11:22 am)
It was a pleasant surprise seeing you guys at the office. Your project impressed a lot of people here at GG with what you were doing. It definitely shows a lot of promise. Over all I was enthusiastic with the level of quality of the projects that were shown. I think it would be incredibly inspirational to people in the community who are unsure of what tge is capable of to see the sort of stuff groups like yours is doing.
#4
10/10/2006 (3:15 pm)
I'm uploading some pics to our FTP right now. Hopefully Fredrik can update his post soon.
#5
10/12/2006 (12:39 pm)
Fredrik, great to meet you and sorry we didn't chat more, for a "not IGC" it was surprisingly busy! Switching Gears was looking hot (someone said they spent HOURS not playing the game, but just exploring the great city environment) and it shows a lot of promise. No doubt you will keep in touch with us as your game progresses :)
#6
Dont be afraid to send along any interim builds or anything if you want me to look at anything. I really like the visual style and not withstanding the issues of "what do I do" its already showing tons of promise!!
Great work!
10/13/2006 (1:50 am)
Fredrik: I meant to come and get some proper time with you looking at the game, but every time I remembered, I saw you were deep in chat with someone :)Dont be afraid to send along any interim builds or anything if you want me to look at anything. I really like the visual style and not withstanding the issues of "what do I do" its already showing tons of promise!!
Great work!
Torque Owner Magnus Blikstad
Switching gears certainly look interesting, as you said it was a bit difficult to figure out what to do but if that's all you have to worry about I'd say great. It's something that's resonably easy to fix. I had a good time just running around with the bubble gun anyway, so... =)
Oh well, anyway. I'm sitting at the Eugene airport at the moment, bah. Not looking forwards to the 20 hours of flying.... sigh.