Friday, March 13, 2009

These are the days of my life

Oh boy. I was SICK.
So I missed 3 days of work, lost some weight, and had a very crummy start to the week. Feeling much better now, actually ate a normally sized meal last night. Things seem to be on the up and up. However, now I am behind on everything important. I have a big assignment due on Tuesday I've barely started. I have to make a Demolition Derby game. Currently it loads and displays the background... Obviously I have a little ways to go. So that will likely take most (if not all) of my time this weekend. Also, I need to get more work done on Project Instant Ramen (one of which tasks should be actually finding a name...). We are setting some targets for full demo versions. To enter for the PAX 10, we need to have a full working demo submittable by May 9th, which gives us just under 2 months to essentially finish. That means a lot more work. We have another one we're shooting for too, IndieCade, with a deadline of April 30th. Once we're closer to that date, we'll see if there is a Beta or something we can make publicly available. Don't hold your breath.

I'm still very very excited for this project. I would love nothing more than to have it play like we want it to. Getting it on XBox Live Arcade, or Greenhouse, or something would be nice, making money with it would be even nicer, but just for the experience and practice it is definitely worth the effort. I'm hoping that I can sink some time into it this weekend, but assignment has to take priority.

But I should get to work here, I'll be keeping you updated.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Summer Plans

So I have been trying to decide what to do with my holidays this year. I've put some aside for the Penny Arcade Expo, as I always go, and it's a great time. This year I may be taking resumes too. But last year I took two full weeks off, and spent 1/2 a month on that coast (and loved it). This year, I don't think I'll be spending near that much time, which gives me a few holiday days to use up elsewhere.

As that was sitting in my mind for a couple weeks, I was contacted by a friend in FFXI, the MMO I play. There is a crew of folks, all of whom I know in game, who all live (somewhat) on the East Coast. They get together every summer for a BBQ to hang out and have fun. I was invited this year. They haven't locked a date in yet, but with some rough estimates I determined that it would be a decently cheap flight ($400 round trip? nice) and I would have no hotel or anything to worry about, as I can crash at friend's places. I think it would be a lot of fun, and a good chance to meet these people for real. So I'm pretty excited for it.

That sort of event always brings up debates. Some people, like my sisters, and parents, think it's crazy that I would have friends that I consider really good friends, that I have never met face to face. They thought it was very weird last time I had some online friends share a hotel room with me for PAX (which was 3 years ago now? And Ruben still owes me money for!). I think many people in our society think along the same lines. Sure, I have never met these people face to face, or even seen pictures of some of them, and constantly forget their real names (I don't even know how many of them know I'm a Cody), but friendship isn't based off that. I DEFINITELY talk to these online friends more than my Parents, and my sisters (likely combined). I know what they do for a living, I know of some of their interests. I know about the good and the bad things that happen in their life. I trust them with things like my account numbers for my game characters, which gives them access to years of effort on my part, and virtual goods worth thousands of dollars. That's more than I trust some of my local friends with.

I just find it an interesting generational divide. Making solid connections over the internet is just a foreign concept to many people. To those of us who have done it though, it just seems natural.