Mad Rantz

The hiatus from game dev that I had planned for back in January started in March instead and is now coming to a close. We had settled on the first game for Lumpy earlier this year and actually started prototyping it before my leave of absence. However, my wife (Marlo) and I have recently been revisiting the issue of what game to make first and we came to the conclusion that we should shelve our initial game idea for something more akin to SSX and Think Tanks. Something that almost designs itself (much like how it felt Orbz came together), and that is easy to just jump in and start playing without much explanation. Our initial idea is still cool, and we still want to make it, but we don’t think now is the time.

We have come up with what we believe is a pretty cool vehicle-based game idea and we’re just now prototyping a little bit of it. The basic theme of the game is more inline with the type of games that I had originally intended Lumpy to make - irreverently humorous games. Hopefully we’ll have the physics down sometime soon and once we do we’re off to the races.

We’re also starting to look around for some office space for Lumpy. Nothing terribly large or expensive, but a solid base of operations for our planned world domination . Marlo and I will be working out of the new studio on both contract work and our own games from the get-go, and the plan is to start recruiting others to the cause very soon. In fact, we’re looking now for both an artist and a coder for the new game, preferably located near St. Louis so they can work out of the studio with us. The plan is to build a primarily local team, though as needed we’ll likely use some remote resources.

Oh, and for your shmucks who insist on skipping text and just looking at pictures in blogs, here’s one for ya!

I’ve been averaging about one post a month on the old blog here lately. One post a fricking *month*. That is just plain damned ridiculous. The reason is that I have simply been taking a short break from game dev for the most part, and since that is primarily what I had been blogging about I wasn’t sure what to do in this space. I’ve decided now that I’ll blog about anything that comes to mind and see where it goes.

Tonight I finally got to view the director’s cut of George Lucas’s THX 1138. The movie was better than I thought it might be, as I think I’ve only seen it one other time in the past and my fuzzy memory seemed to recall that it was a tad “out there”. However, much like my second and subsequent screenings of Brazil, I found that I really enjoyed it much more now that I’m a bit older. I also found the screenplay for the film out on the wild woolly web, which I plan on reading tomorrow sometime I hope.

One of the extras on THX was a look back on the early days of American Zoetrope. It was cool to find out about all of the very talented people that were affiliated with the somewhat failed first attempt of that movie studio, including Lucas, Coppola, Scorsese, DePalma, and Spielberg. And coincidentally a few weeks ago I signed up for an online screenwriting course via the Zoetrope website which I’m very much looking forward to. Of course, Coppola himself isn’t exactly teaching the courses, but they do come well-recommended for a wannabe screenwriter/director such as myself.

Hey look - I actually wrote up a whole entry now. Now let’s just hope that this isn’t the only one in June.