November already

Time has really blown by this year and things seem to be finally coming to fruition with Black Powder | Red Earth, the facebook game. Most of the images have been post processed and I'm building templates for use in the production front end by Altay. It's unbelievably satisfying to see something come of this property after so much blood and sweat.

Right now, I feel pretty good that release one will be a unique experience among the hordes of facebook games and we're hoping to elevate that next year to something more resembling some of the recent entries into the RPG space. It's a strange journey to go from working on an FPS for almost 6 years (starting as a mod all the way up to actually working with a legit dev kit) and now transitioning to a role play format but really, this is where our strengths lie.

The multiplayer game, which we are still iterating on, will likely see release some day, but there's so much polish and shine to the game play alone needed before that day will come. Not to mention, we've taken a honest look at what a game about our subject matter would be composed of...and it's more Deus Ex than Call of Duty, ie a totally different experience from the run and gun TST style missions in the BPRE multiplayer game ^_^;

Meanwhile, I've got some ideas on how to spin up a rapid prototype tool for a choice/result based system ala some of the Bioware games. We'll hopefully explore that next year.

We've also been working on a prologue video piece with Tim Tracy. Yes, that Tim Tracy. We have such a complex back story for the game that we wanted to communicate with the players, it was a challenge to widdle it down to a core time line of relevant events and then figure out a stylish presentation that would actually hook someone versus alienate them with a lot of Arabic names and history. It's not the "documentary" we had originally wanted to do, but when one has no $, one gets creative ^_^;

Speaking of creative, between hammering through the lyrics to a new GridLink and planning the art/layout for "Orphan". I've also begun work on the new story arc for the BPRE universe entitled Black Powder | Grey Skies. This content will first appear in the facebook game and then hopefully, as a novel based on the same content. I already have a working outline and some characters, but there's a lot to work out. I can say that the story in Grey Skies is actually the events that lead up to the stuff in Red Earth.

But I'm not getting involved in another book until I finish this record ^o^

In other news, I've been playing Modern Warfare 2 on 360...and while I really love it. The lack of dedicated servers really, really sucks. I can see it in the kill cams. I bean a guy in the melon and he head shots me instead. I watch the kill cam and not only did I not fire, the shooter emptied a mag into me. Sigh. Also really hate some of the new perks. Heart beat sensors and turrets have no place in these games. Some of the maps are really great, but I'm not sure if I will remain engaged with the MP as long as I did for MW1.

The single player experience was really well crafted, I especially enjoyed the bits in South America, but overall...I was left unsatisfied with the story. It's...terrible. I may suffer from some serious suspension of disbelief issues because of our background on BPRE but this game has the worst story I've suffered through since Halo 2. It's like they built all the levels and then, Harmony Gold/Robotech style, tried to tie everything together and then add a series of, what can only be described as, fucking idiotic twists at the end. The only positive I got from it, was that it inspired the ending for Grey Skies in a way so starkly contrasting what you get at the end of MW2...I'll leave it to your imagination until I can get it down in ASCII for public distribution^_^

I also picked up and played Flashpoint 2 on Xbox360 and have been playing with ARMA II at the office. I say playing with ARMA II because it's more of a toy than a game. So much shit is broken in it, I enjoy just trucking around and seeing some of the capabilities that were included with the product. Flashpoint 2 is also, not without it's own bugs, but it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it enough to buy the expansion pack and spend some time in co-op online...which of course made the transition to MW2, all the more painful. New controls, new expectations of weapon performance, etc.

When I finish with MW2 I think I will pick up Dragon Age...not sure if I will go PC or console with it...probably PC since it's $25 cheaper on that platform ^_^;

Happy holidays!