Where Does the Time Go?

Monday, May 10 2004 @ 02:40 PM EDT

Contributed by: Matthew

I might've jumped the gun a little bit on my previous post. Obviously, I haven't had much time to update DevLab; certainly nowhere near the time I spent on it last summer. Here's what I've been up to lately:

GDC/Independent Games Festival

We were at the GDC as an Independent Games Festival finalist with Beesly's Buzzwords. The show was great--it was an awesome amount of exposure, and we certainly made a lot of contacts. We were also the recipients of the "Project Goldmaster" award, which was announced as a pseudo-prize alongside the IGF award winners. Project Goldmaster is a collaboration between Cartoon Network and AOL, where we'll be creating a game for a Cartoon Network show/property and record our development progress on an AOL blogging-esque service. We're really looking forward to it, since it's both a paid contract job and a huge opportunity to get our name out there.

Some links:

More info on Project Goldmaster [gamespot.com]
Our IGF booth [picture]

[that's me on the podium]

Upcoming Flashbang Titles

We're currently working on three titles, although two will be put on hold as soon as development begins on the Cartoon Network game. All three are targeted at the same casual market as Beesly's Buzzwords; although we're beginning to take more risks. The project farthest along is looking extremely promising and should be released in late July. Here's a quick screenshot (sorry about the size--geeklog limit of 300 pixel width; too busy to change for now):

The other two games are looking very promising, as well. The second will be released in late August, if possible, but the release date will obviously be variable relative to the Project Goldmaster workload. The third is a our first 3D casual game, which is a recent project we started along with a recent contractor. All told, Flashbang is now four guys working full-time as well as three part-time/contractor audio workers.

Anyway, Back to DevLab

I do have plans to continue work on DevLab, although I'm not sure exactly when yet. I have some more physics ideas to try (especially if Virtools fixes a few bugs in the physics pack). E3 is this week, though, and I'm moving to an apartment later this month; I'm a single man again after 6.5 years with my now-ex-girlfriend. As soon as things settle down again look for some new DevLab work. Honestly, I really will post some new stuff fairly soon.

In addition to physics tests I plan to release some beginner tutorial-style documentation on learning the fundamental concepts of Dev's schematic scripting. I feel it'd be useful to a lot of other people, and certainly useful for us internally (our intern would love to learn, could always have the artists be doing more on their end, etc). Look for the first of the tutorials to start showing up sometime over the summer.

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