Post ReplayFX

Whew... Finished up four days of ReplayFX and had only a minor disaster on the last day.  Got to meet a few hundred great people who tried out the game (and one somewhat inebriate.) Gave out half the cards we had printed and may have picked up another contract. All in all a win.

This was my neighbor, he was really nice and draws comics. You can check his stuff out at jonchad.com Behind him was a guy that restores pinballs and arcades.

And this was the creepy automated puppet show across from us. This would play traditional children's themes from time to time. This was on sale for 600$. Don't have the space. Also don't want to be murdered in my sleep by tiny puppets.  Whenever they played "It's a small world" all I could hear was :

"It's a world of dread, it's world of fear,
The good people do not end up here.
It's a fact, you'd been had. You are here, cause you're bad!
You're the dead one after all. "

Well, you get the point.

This was Mike's booth. He's with a Cleveland dev team and they're working on a head-to-head both where you're blasting balls over to the other side of the arena. They kind of had him at the ass end of nowhere. I knew where he was and had trouble getting to them. I had to traverse around the inflatable obstacle course. He did end up winning best indie game in show, though!

In addition to all the marketing we learned about three other possible events to attend. Magfest maybe? ArcadeExpo in LA? (maybe that one.) There's also Kurokiro Festival.

Well, need to catch up on several hours of sleep deprivation.

Moving Day...

                     

                        So we've moved down to a smaller house and finally got the homestead up and running. Just amazed on how many companies don't have their shit together. We had a hard to navigate road in our old place that didn't allow large, 18 wheelers up without getting stuck. You'd think alerting the moving company to this would make them come up with a plan. You'd be wrong.
                        So after getting stuck they look for one of their smaller trucks. In the days were everyone has a cell phone and GPS I still don't know how a dispatcher can't locate one of their vehicles. The driver works for you, right? He isn't just some guy off the street?
                        I understand that if your situation doesn't fit the mold than there might be some issues. Though when places like a closing company have one job, and that job is to deliver a check, how is it that they can screw it up? Rather than mailing the check to pay off our mortgage, the person just handed it to a random UPS guy. That's one step away from putting thousands of dollars in a wheel barrow, rolling it downhill to the bank, them hiding under some covers and hope for the best.
And that's not the only check they've lost.

                       ReplayFX is around the corner and I'm very happy to see how well it's been advertised. The local food store I walk to even had a poster until some jerk ripped it down. It was a nice motivator while it lasted.
                      We're going to have two lap tops to show off the game, one with the rift and one without. It's good to have two, there's always something that comes up. I plan on having the game on a thumb drive and the number of a rent a center in case something happens to a machine. I'm not sure where we'll be located at, but if a kid goes flying out of the bouncy castle and knocks our table over, I want to be prepared to be back up and running.
                       ReplayFX is going to be four days, and that's a rather long time. It never been held before so there's no telling how big it's going to be. It could be an echoing empty hall, or we may have huge lines. Who knows, maybe they'll out do the furry convention, something that Pittsburgh is now known for.
                       The shot above is the sky we've added. Keith thought the level needed it, and after looking at it I agree. Previously it was just darkness, which I think worked a lot for some areas of the first Silent Hill. But I think it worked out rather well.
                       

It's too easy to drop the habbit

Miss a couple weeks of blogging and next thing you know you haven't posted for months. The older I get the more time seems to compress into just one continuous moment.

Phantom Menace released 16 years ago. I had to look it up on imdb to make sure I wasn't crazy. I swear I just watched it in the theater a few years ago.

So since we got the riff I've added three small areas in front of the game. I think there needed to be some time where the player can just walk around before any puzzles needed solving to continue. Before you woke up in a cell and had to figure a way out. I think it wasn't a bad way to start, but if we're pushing VR with ReplayFX then I think people want to see more than just a cell to start with. Some people fly through puzzles, some people struggle, and I didn't want each person have to spend a half an hour at the booth to see stuff.

Things seem to be going smoothly. Going to try to cast Joe (the player) for a few lines and get some actual voice acting in.

 And I'm also selling and buying a house, for ultimate crazy busy.