Seriously? It’s already February? Insanity!
I’ve been slacking and haven’t ramped up my marathon training as much as I should have. Though I’ve added a couple of core strength training days into my weekly routine. I hear this should help with the endurance running. Vancouver Marathon is only 3 months away!
I started taking piano lessons! I’ve always wanted to learn so I’m really excited. Been having tons of fun.
My mind is squarely focused on GDC next month. I really can’t wait. I’ve purchased an All-Access Pass and will be attending the Indie Game Summit. I’m still undecided on whether to attend the Flash Game Summit which happens the day before GDC. What I’m most excited about is meeting all of the folks I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know through the Ludum Dare community. It’s going to be madness, the best kind of “ness” there is.
I’ve started playing with Flixel. It took me a while to pick it up because I was scared of giving up the main Flash IDE. I will say that using someone else’s API has it’s pros and cons. Pro: Flixel does a lot of what I’d want a 2d Flash Game Engine to do. Con: It doesn’t always do it in the way I would like. It was interesting playing with the Flixel code to see that a lot of the logic was very similar to what I was building on my own. The biggest benefit of Flixel has to be the passionate community built around it. This alone is making the pill easier to swallow. My next game is being built using Flixel. I’ve gotten quite used to Flash Builder and will switch to it as my primary Flash IDE.
As for that “next game”, I should be ready to talk about it more around GDC time. For now let’s just call it “Project G”. The biggest thing holding me back on this project was the art portion. I want it to look great, but I can’t afford to pay an artist right now. On Friday I got inspired by a design technique that I can handle myself. So I spent 6 hours on Saturday prototyping a visual look. It turned out awesome so I’m ready to go on this project now. Again, I’m hoping to talk a bit more about this around GDC time.
Two games have dominated my time over the past month or two. Assassins Creed 2 and now Mass Effect 2. Both games are spectacular. Mass Effect 2 is really really winning me over. I can’t remember the last time I was so obsessed with a game. So yeah, go play Assassins Creed 2 and Mass Effect 2.
On the indie front… Have you bought VVVVVV yet? If you haven’t, you aren’t my friend. Also, Dock’s adorable TumbleDrop is available for iPhone (and a finalist for the IGF). He needs help flying to the GDC. You can donate, and/or buy his amazingly adorable and fun game.
