My game for XBox

So i think this would be as good a time as any to start talking about the new game I'm working on for XBox Live Indie Games (XBLIG). It's called HumanSubject and you play as a human that has been abducted by aliens who are using you as a test subject (HumanSubject, get it?) to determine if Earth is suitable for invasion. The game plays out as a platformer with puzzles that you must solve to reach the end of a level as quickly as possible. I actually started this blog as a place to talk about the game (and others I work on) and it's development. Along with whatever other nerdy stuff I have going on. I'll be posting some conceptual design topics about how I organized the code along with snippets of code. I think it's more important to get across concepts than just give people code (teach to fish, rather than give fish). I believe that if you understand concepts and can write code, you can figure it out.

Anyway, I've got to get back to installing Office 2010 on my Mother-in-laws computer and then move on to implementing a global volume setting in the game. Protip: you should setup a global volume setting in your game early in development, rather than later. Oh yea, and Gears of War 3 releases tonight. I feel some schedule slippage coming for HumanSubject. Later...

Trip to the Chicago Comicon

Last month I was lucky enough to get a chance to take a trip to Chicago to go to the Wizard World Comicon with a few buddies.  I say lucky because the con actually landed on the same day as my anniversary.  It says a lot about how cool my wife is that she let me go with out any hesitation.  Thanks Wifey!  I <3 U!

We had a great trip.  It's an 8 hour drive from my house to the convention center so I left at 4am on Friday and picked up each partner in crime along the way.  We got there right at noon and immediatly hit the floor running.  Doug and I went directly to Felicia Day's booth and stood in line for 90 minutes for a chance to talk with her and Jeff Lewis.  It was worth it.  She seemed like a really easy person to talk to and Jeff is freaking hilarious.  I was amazed they seemed to be at that booth for about 20 hours over the course of the weekend and they seemed to be very happy to talk with people the entire time.  We also got to meet several other celebs and saw tons of great CosPlay.

We also so several panels but the highlight had to be Bruce Campbell.  I've never seen a person walk into a room with thousands of people in it and completely take over the way he did.  And he is hilarious.  There was even a marriage proposal on stage with him (youtube).

Anyway, this was a great trip and I think we're going to try to do something like this at least once every year from now on.  Be sure to check out the pictures in the gallery.