The Animal Farm

Brian - May 8th, 2012 - Welcome 2012!

... We're a bit late for this party ...

Instead of providing a preamble to this post explaining my absence, apologizing, and blah blah blah, I'm just going to jump right into things.

I saw The Avengers! Standard super hero movie in most ways - obnoxiously long build up, involved action sequences, a prologue where civilians respond to the existence of said heroes. It distinguishes itself by being funnier than most action movies and most comedies.

Favorite line: "He's adopted."

I'm playing Awesomenauts. It's a multiplayer oriented game, but I'm playing alone, because, well... yea. It's a MOBA (League of Legends, Defense of the Ancients) that's unique in that it's focused on sidescrolling action over top-down strategy. It has trumped Xenoblade Chronicles as my go to game.

Xenoblade was fun. But it got boring.

I'm working on... stuff. Can't talk about the job stuff, but I'm still employed, so that's a thing, right? Villain is rapidly approaching becoming my longest post-college job. I don't have any really active side projects, which is not usual, but I've been occupied elsewhere. I'm hoping to change that trend soon-ish.

This is the end of this post.

Unless you count this.

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Brian - December 26th, 2011 - Year in Review

It's a bit early, but I think we can go ahead and call 2011.

THE LISTS!

Projects:
See the Light, Word Duelist, and Cuddle Bears were all released for iOS devices along with their respective free versions. They were all received positively by the 10's of people that played them.

Video Games:
Dungeon Defenders & Bastion. Both are pretty different - Dungeon Defenders is primarily a multiplayer action/tower-defense game, whereas Bastion is a single player action RPG. Both brought a lot to the table and reenergized my desire to play video games for a while.

Board Games:
Super Dungeon Explore, Memoir 44 & Game of Thrones. None of those are euro games, as I'm a little tired of managing wheat and wood.

TV:
Community, Spaced, & Glee. Very awesome comedies, though Glee has lost a bit of its charm for me. Honorable mention to Game of Thrones.

Books:
Game of Thrones (book 1 of Song of Ice & Fire series). I've read a few past that but stopped when I realized just how much time was devoted to describing food. Honorable mention to the first 1/3rd of Blink.

Things Outside of Media/Entertainment:
Er... I became a vegetarian? It's been a quiet year in terms of my social life, and I don't really have a lot of interesting stories to tell, which is why the blog has been quiet outside of development related chatter.

I'll give this year 4 stars on a scale of 1 to some secret number

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Brian - December 19th, 2011 - The Nonsense Post

This blog isn't just a game development/studio blog, though you might've gained that impression from the last few months being filled with project-related posts. It's also a blog about despair, triumph, love, and being overdramatic when describing what the blog is about.

Let's talk about random things for a bit, because I feel like writing, and, well, you know.

* How about the show Community, huh? I liken it to Arrested Development in terms of level of humor, by which I mean it's extremely funny.
* Speaking of TV, how about Hulu being stupid? Vilifying Netflix is hip this year, but we forget that the devil of internet TV has been sitting right there being lame from the start. I'm not going to defend my position; I'm really too lazy right now, but I like to think I've never steered you wrong.
* I've been spending an absurd amount of time at Caribou Coffee. Not because it's an especially good coffee shop, but (a) it's employed by people I genuinely enjoy, and (b) Cary is completely devoid of non-chain coffee shops. The nearest alternative is Wake Zone Espresso, which is admittedly pretty decent. I used to make the trip out to Helios, but it's a bit of a hike - you may recognize it from the Cuddle Bears credits, because Cuddle Bears was developed 90% there.
* I was the TARDIS for Halloween! That's old news, but I still feel a little awesome about it.
* Laura got a cut-out of Edward from Twilight as a gag-gift, and now he's sitting in the living room constantly staring and judging. I sortta want to make a short stop-motion film with him & the TARDIS.
* Speaking of short films, Ricky & I had a promising idea about an amateur magician that I want to revisit. The script needs... a lot of work, but I think the premise had merit and we had a few really awesome scenes sketched out.

I really, really dislike Christmas music.

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Brian - December 17th, 2011 - Cuddle Bears FREE Released

We're on a roll over here.

CB FREE has every feature that CB paid has with the addition of some ads in various places. It's our first dive into ad-driven games, and already 5's of people are snatching it up.

I'm not sure what my expectations are here or whether I have any. Every time I make Cuddle Bears free for a promotion, the downloads jump to 200+ a day (humble by iOS standards but not insignificant by my own standards). If the free version could sustain that kind of energy, I'd be pretty pleased, though the initial outlook isn't quite living up to that.

I guess the moral here is that you should go get the game, play it, and leave a good rating to support us. Oh, and tell your friends and stuff. Friends are important, and they'll really like you if you show them the game.

That's just simple math.

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Brian - December 15th, 2011 - Cuddle Bears v1.1 Released!

Go get it!

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Brian - December 13th, 2011 - Cuddle Bears v1.1

The update to Cuddle Bears has been submitted and is currently waiting to go through the review process.

What's New:
* Unlockable score multipliers. The more you play, the higher your possible score
* Score combos now continue into & out of powerups
* Play your own iPhone music
* New powerup - fly a fighter jet
* New & colorful characters to cheer you on
* Twitter support
* Bug fixes & art cleanup

I've made the game free for the next day (or two - depends on how generous I'm feeling) in preparation for the release.

Enjoy!

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Brian - October 26th, 2011 - You Thought We Were Dead…

... and you were only 40% accurate.

This site has gradually morphed from a two man humor & life dialog into a one man game development blog. Which is fine, but when things are quiet on the development front, the silence is echoed here.

Things aren't any more active. Not with my personal development anyway. My professional games are keeping me super busy, but I can't talk about any of that yet.

But here's what's on the horizon, even if that horizon is far off:

* Cuddle Bears is in need of an update. Capps and I actually have everything planned & prepared, but there's coding that I just haven't been able to get to. There's a fighter jet. So that's cool.
* Capps & I worked on a really cool game idea. Now he's off in California and at another job, so I have no idea if that will manifest, but it's fun to dangle in front of your faces all the same.
* I really want to play Dungeon Defenders with people but can't find anyone. When did I get so bloody old? That's not development related, but it's important, so jot it down in your respective diaries.

Here is stuff that's not on the horizon but is a little more general:

* Would you believe that people are still leaving comments on my "Why Developing in Objective-C Sucks" blog post? Some time later, and I can tell you that I haven't grown any more fond of the language. My reasons have shifted - some of what's in that article was premature - but the overall loathing is still present.
* My apartment is now littered with Mac devices. To my never ending shame. Believe me, the moment Microsoft or Google makes a device that can compete, I'm burning that bridge and never looking back.

Not a very illuminating blog post, but it's a start.

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