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GDC2011 Lessons learned in successfully marketing

TOgburn — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 16:49:00 GMT

Lessons learned in successfully marketing games on PSN/XBLA and pc digital; what worked and what didn't

James Brooksby

James.brooksby@doublesixgames.com

Http://www.doublesixgames.com

Good relationships with Microsoft and Sony

Working in partnerships with game funding, non work for hire

Office reflects Peter Pan syndrome

Building direct relationships with community and marketing and will continue to enhance through social networ portals and club building

Achieves marketing strategy through minimal internal resource and select contractors (low cost)

Burn Zombie Burn!

Time to build, 10 months, maximum 9 staff

Special deal with Sony, exclusivity in return for guaranteed revenue

Launch window activities

Launch party at major industry event, zombie actors and stickers

Pr round trip in us

Sony eblast

Sony blog

Sony website competition

Facebook advertising

Talking to everyone, including smaller sites as you never know

Post high score on YouTube, sent out 3d zombie models to top few

Continuing activities

Competition in USA to win holiday to Paris and Egypt (extra 4000 sales)

Ps home launch 34% increase in sales and virtual items for sale

Premium theme

Halloween party in ps home with extra virtual items

Sony Asia

In to Germany (was initially 18 rated and couldn't be sold there)

Amazon.com

Strategy guide (first, digital)

Pc version (boxed and through steam)

Expansion pack (bzb in space)

- highly recommend DLC if your game can support it

More home items

Price fluctuation - half price

Bundle packs

Promote at Halloween

Playstation plus

Future activities

Japanese launch

Mac version

In a retail box

Toys and more...

Next expansion pack (zombie sushi)(in line with Japanese launch, but will be worldwide)

iPhone / smartphone version

More home items, price changes, bundles

Move

NGP

Follow up;-)

Digital sales not good before thanksgiving, large game releases during that time frame

Sales spikes with each little marketing or added content

Huge spike in sales with playstation plus

spikes and pits, weekends vs weekdays

Don't look at your sales on Wednesday, wait until Sunday

Drop right before thanksgiving, back up before Christmas

About 50% attach rate on DLC

Launch party cost, total $8000

launch value

Great launch press coverage

Launch window sales 38,000

Strong industry positive feedback including from platforms

Conclusions, take aways

1st months number approximate 19% of lifetime

1st months approximate 14% of lifetime

Many suggest 1st month up to 40%

don't panic on weekdays

Promote on holidays

Play with price, especially on holidays

Except thanksgiving

Make DLC

Reach the world

Port, but don't be lazy with polish and attention

Virtual goods are great

Competitions work

Create good relationships with platform holders

Think about your release date

Be good with stats/ numbers

Spend money on PR and marketing

Talk to others who are doing it

Make a game the team cares about, and you will make a good game

Have a great team of enthusiasts

Understand the new world and pay attention to it, it changes all the time

Talk to everyone

Try stuff, experiment

Expand your franchise, I can't stop ;-)

Production cost about $700,000 - marketing cost about $90,000

Audience q&a

Price points vs dev costs, amount of content, etc

Easier to drop price, very difficult to raise it

Think hard about it, don't want to see everything trending downward

Qa - how to choose a PR company

Ask gaming mags who they like, ask other devs for recommendation

Look at your favorite game company and whom they used

Qa - value of facebook, twitter versus traditional channels

Storefront is biggest, beyond that it's difficult to work out value

Depends on your game and product, what do they like and use and target them

Balance cost versus common sense

--Tom Ogburn

GDC2011 XBLIG success stories

TOgburn — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 16:44:00 GMT

Pre-Note: because it was brought up in a thread on neogaf.com. Yes, I was attempting to summarize and transcribe this as I was sitting there in the room. I'm not the fastest typist, especially on an iPad's tiny keyboard, and it was kind of difficult keeping up when everyone kept switching back and forth. I captured as much of the info as I could, and when they were talking too fast or over each other I tried to capture what I felt was most pertinent at the time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

XBLIG success stories - how to make the best of Microsoft's self-publishing service

Brandon Sheffield, Ian Stocker, James Silva, Nathan Fouts, Robert Boyd

Sitting left to right Brandon, Nathan, Robert, Ian, James

Ska studios, 3 people now

What time do you change from coffee to booze

Everyone shows up in basement and normal workday

Ian does it all

Wake up shower, coffee shop for 2-5 hours per day

Don't push too hard, crunch only at the end

Text file in project folder with list of tasks

All small, draw 1 sprite, reproduce this one bug

Break it down to useful starting points

Have a defined scope of what will and won't be in

Nathan

Takes breaks, let your mind think and rest

Robert

Douglas Adams -love to set deadlines because like e sound of them whooshing bye

2 people

Was teacher working on games part time, now going full-time

Setting goals daily and weekly

Nathan

Play with kids in morning, work 10 - 6 unless crunching

2 in office, work with others remotely and contracts

All full-time now

Brandon - how to get people into xblig store, marketing

Winter uprising

Robert

Many people don't do any marketing and rely on Microsoft's top list, new releases, etc

Games coming out every day

Have a websites, gives legitimacy to game and co

Have a trailer, give people something to see

Did winter uprising because there was a lot of anger in the community, it was hidden in menus

Got covered in a lot of big sites that now continue to review xblig

James

Don't blame Microsoft, this promo showed the opposite, microsoft moved it up in the dashboard and promoted

Nathan

Put out a trailer, help yourself

James

No one picked up press release for I made a game

Nathan

But it didn't hurt

Brandon

Once people started playing, the press release gave people something to refer to

Do you all feel it is worth releasing on xblig as first game vs apple, android

Nathan

Absolutely

And get in the community and on forums, it helps others and helps you

-explains peer review-

James

I get emails asking if I get paid in MS points

(no, and not with DLC either)

Robert

Talk to people, go to different forums, consumers like talking with devs and feel connected

We have to rely on word of mouth and being open with your audience

Ian

Twitter really helps too

XNA forums gives great feedback

Nathan

Be good on the forums

Brandon

Ratings, there's genre and letter, but really only separated is in ratings

Do you like them, how to get more people to submit them

James

I like ratings, doesn't sell a lot but it does help some

Nathan

Top rated is full, really hard to get into it now

Point a friend at top rated

Ian

Don't need to be $1 to be in top rated, some higher priced there too

Pricing psychology can play into it

Will have to be $1 to be top selling until they add a top grossing

Brandon

People may feel higher price is better, but like app store they just don't want to pay it

Do you feel you undercut yourself on zp2kx

James

Yeah, maybe

Robert

Now the list is pretty solidified, so james cant even beat himself

Would like to see a current top rated

Having difficulty getting back into top rated with their games

Brandon

Any kind of deck or naming tricks you can use

James

I think 0 comes first

Brandon

James, any tips for implementing multiplayer

James

Just follow the docs, easy compared to pc

Live implementation is easy

Would have to completely re-implement for pc and not worth it

Only big issue, you have to have many creators club accounts for testing

Has 4-5 accounts

Brandon

Ian

Don't really like nag screens

Need to have good content in demo

James

Can't make games where you kill Nazis, we grew up on that

Brandon

How about selling extra stuff like music alongside game on website

Ian

I have soundtrack via pay pal, sold a few

Even if you don't sell a lot, builds a brand

Nathan

Makes you seem more serious about supporting and growing your game

James

A fan got I made a game with zombies in it in rock band, had more downloads than third eye blind

Audience q&a

Patches, sales versus other marketplaces

Robert

Patches are pretty easy, but cant do short term sales

Nathan

Don't make bugs, but easy to get patches in, try not to introduce more

Follows standard peer review process

Audience

Does xblig count towards resume, getting into major industry

Nathan

Absolutely, whether pc or xbox just get it done, it shows you care about your work and can finish

Audience

New types of lists, digg style

Ian

Would like to see them, recent top rated, definitely in favor

Audience

Average sales of single game at price points

Nathan

All over the place and totally depends on your product

If you have something they can't get anywhere else, will do well, otherwise it needs to be really well done and different

Audience

What does panel think of using xna to leap from xbox to pc

Nathan

Taking explosionade, doing much more with pc version to charge more

Have to deal with more hardware types, but not difficult

Audience

Talking about lists, if you have a large task how do you break it down

Nathan

If you dont know how to do it, check forums, someone else has already done it

Ian

Break it down to tasks smaller than 1 day

James

I'll put it off until one day I wake up and say, I know how to do it

Ian

Have different types of tasks to move around through, programming, design, art so you don't get bored

Brandon

Don't put off least favorite to the end, then you have to Domitian during crunch and double miserable

Audience

Robert, what made you switch from education, consider educational games

Robert

Wanted to make games as a kid, not making a lot, saw xna and started messing around

It would be cool to make educational games, but not sure how

Most make education first and not good games, need to make game and have education second because kids are smart and know when they are in school

Brandon

What do you wish you had known before starting

Nathan

When top downloads are going to crash

Robert

Make good tools before starting on game, will save a lot of time

Prepare plan before hand

Ian

Share your ideas, no one will rip it off, but will share good ideas to help make yours better

--Tom Ogburn

GDC2011 10 lessons from 20 years as an entreprenuer

TOgburn — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 16:41:00 GMT

10 lessons from 20 years as an entrepreneur: a post-mortem

Don Daglow

Start with money stuff

Next strategy

How in the practicing of our craft we combine heart head courage and hope

Preparing to manage cash
When starting a team, when recruiting, when trying to get critical mass

Cash is king

Keep the nut small

Be nimble like Guerrillas in the hills, not in fortresses

No personal guarantees or second mortgages

Always be thinking - we are about to run out of cash, is this a good buy

Your life partner is more important than your company

Item 1

if it seems stupid but everyone else is spending that much...it may still be stupid

Thinking through the issues

The publishing equation

-Publishing equals the sum of:

-Financing, development, test, distribution, marketing

Item 2

It's better to have 10% of something than 90% of nothing

A partner at 10% is better than a wholesaler at 20%

Item 3

Decide, don't accept

Who's in charge? How will things be resolved?

Cubes or doors?

Exit strategy? What are the victory conditions?

Who owns how much?

Salary or equity?

item 4

Culture matters

1st 10 will define the first 100, then 1000

"warm bodies" strategy leads to a cold grave - they just help a failing project fail faster

Item 5

If you think you need to change course within a year, change in 6 months

If you think you can't change, the truth is: you can't not change

Change hurts, radical change hurts more, but is sometimes necessary

Building great games

Item 6

You can build something you'll love and treasure as a player

You can build something some one else will love

20 years later on a street in Philadelphia...what can you do every day so that 20 years from now someone will say to you: you made that game, I loved it and....

Item 7

Strategies:

Show off technology

Pursue an audience

Don't chase opportunities

item 8

My friend was going to leave e&g to come work on the game but...

I couldn't get funding

No one will want to hear a pitch from someone like me

---translation---

I'm afraid of failing so I didn't start the game and blamed it on my friend

I'm afraid to ask for money

I'm afraid I'll be humiliated by publishers so I didn't pitch anything

Item 9

The legend of the dog that chased the car

And caught it

Be careful of what you're doing when you fully and totally commit

Dog chases car, car stops at stop sign, dog just barks, doesn't know what to do with it

Be careful what you want because you might just get it

Think about the 1 thing you are committed to? What would your team say?

Item 10

Do what you love

If you can't right now, think about what actions can I take to move me toward doing what I love?

Not necessarily doing it every minute of every day, but a single mindedness of what you love and pursuing that

--Tom Ogburn

GDC2011 The Identity Bubble

TOgburn — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 16:38:00 GMT

The identity bubble -a design approach to character and story development

Matthias Worch

Mworch@lucasarts.com

Http://www.worth.com

Twitter/@mworch

Writing for games is different than writing for any other media

Games are participatory, others are reflective - viewer vs player

Identity approaches

Avatars

The character is a tool, a puppet, an object for the player to manipulate according to the rules of the game - rules of play

A sort of vehicle from which a world can be seen and otherwise experienced. This character both constrains us....

Identity range

Puppet. ------- vehicle

The player willing becomes a schizophrenic and pushes part of their consciousness away to experience the game

Character vs player vs person (outside of games)

3 frames that each whisper and want their way

Double consciousness

Shared fantasy - Gary Alan Fine

Harvey Smiths identity fragments

Character -writer biggest concern

Fictional

Literary pop or mythic archetype

Player - game designer biggest concern

Solving problems, completing tasks

Sense of skill level

Primal emotions

Person

Sense of skill level

Sense of idealized self

Self as person with life demands

ludonarrative dissonance

Identity range

Ludonarrative parity --- complementary goals ---- mythic archetypes

Portal, halo -------- Fallout 3, COD4 ------- uncharted 2

Ludonarrative parity - character and player are aligned in goals, primal motivation, get to the end and kill glados

Highly story driven game

Complementary

Char wants to find father, player wants to explore world

Need to match quests to final game goals

Puppet the player controls, but has it's own backstory

Scrapping and exploring

Ludonarrative harmony

May not care about char goals, but still follow it to some degree and are reminded of story goal by game

Games are essentially myth reinforcing activities... Players tend to choose the kinds of games that reaffirm their own personal beliefs - bob bates

mythic archetypes

Player sees qualities of themselves in the char and try to live it out

The journey is more important than the goal

Identity absorption

Like driving a car, we stay separate, but refer to it as ourselves - oh my gosh, he almost hit me (not my car)

Highly scripted, cutscenes

Need to keep sending I pulses to keep player and character identity together, frequency changes based on game type and how tightly they are tied

Don't send mixed signals, if you are a robot, shouldn't need to eat

myth

Creation ------- recall

The power of myth - Joseph Campbell

Save the cat goes to the movies. - Blake Snyder

--Tom Ogburn

GDC2011 Scoping Success

TOgburn — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 16:36:00 GMT

Scoping Success

Rod Fergusson

How am I defining success?

More than just quality

More than just commercial

it's both, and

the team is happy

Iron triangle

Scope vs schedule vs resources

Really need a predictable schedule tone a success and to get there

Normally change, cut scope

Scoping

Goal: Shipping the right product at the right time

Right product is quality

Consider team - size, tech, and process

Consider player industry expectations

Right time is timeliness

Consider window of opportunity

Consider marketing

Lack of maturity will cost you time

Team, tech, or process

Need knowledgeable people, established process to ship on time

Scope should reflect design process

-Epic is highly iterative, 33% buffer for gears 3

You will find work that needs to be done for quality

Scope should match quality expectations

-Epic prefers smaller and polished

Consider player/industry expectations

You can't scope in a vacuum

What is the state of the art for your type of game, what is the best of the best that you are competing against

What would be considered the minimum bar for entry

How can you easily exceed expectations

Managing expectations with scope

Look beyond version 1 to allow for focus on the core

Start with a very tight core that you can build on

Versioning allows you to react to

-player feedback

-industry trends

-competitive landscape

There comes a point of diminishing returns

Franchises are grown

Gears 3 > gears 1 + 5 more years of development

Consider window of opportunity

When's the best time to be on shelves

What is the competitive landscape

What else could be taking the players money (entertainment competition)

Are there other initiatives you could piggy back on

Consider marketing

Or why "it'll ship when it's done" doesn't work anymore

Marketing is a global, synchronized initiative

Publisher sales regions allocate their budgets and forecasts months in advance

Major store buyers are looking 180 days out for what's next

It can take 14 weeks to get into a store flyer

------------

Have a fixed ship date mindset

The belief that the ship fate is both realistic and unchangeable

-date can change but must be justified

-date not actually fixed until very confident

Provides a clear goal for the team

Forces prioritization and creativity

Provides a decision making constraint

Establish your pillars

Key areas of focus, what is the core of the game

May be an aggregate set of features

May be their own overall design goal

Empowers scoping decisions

Usually serves as great talking points for press

Candidates for back of box features

Cut early, cut often

Due to unknowns, teams tend to underestimate effort

Every feature takes polish time away from the other features

forget sunk cost, look at opportunity cost

Always keep test and support burden in mind

Test decisions against your pillars

It's all about the buffer

Realistic scope does not equal the collection of known tasks

Recognition that the future is uncertain

The longer the duration, the greater the uncertainty

The more uncertainty and risk, the more buffer

Polish time is not buffer time

Estimating

Top down scheduling provides constraint

Bottom up estimating enables ownership

Group estimating creates accountability

Always track your actuals

Evidence based scheduling provides history

-http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html

Find the right granularity

NiMBLe process

New, better, more, less

Prioritize things to add, do more of, or do less of

In conclusion

It takes more than just quality to be a successful game, it takes a window of opportunity and strong marketing support

Scope based on your team, on player/industry expectations and your ideal schedule

Realistic and constant scoping, along with buffer, allows you to keep a more predictable schedule

A predictable schedule allows you to hit your window of opportunity and receive the full benefit of marketing

Ship the right product at the right time

--Tom Ogburn

GDC11 Green Light! Persuasion skills

TOgburn — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 16:32:00 GMT

Green light! Persuasion skills to put and keep your game in the fast lane

Dick Butterfield

Richard@butterfieldspeaks.com for soft copy plus other tips

It's showtime! Butterfield speaks on the power of persuasion - book

What is your nirvana?

A metacritic score, that you just got a pitch approved, ...

Important to keep to your own particular style

What are the skill sets that make great persuaders

The power bite - The elevator speech, very crisp, eloquent to get next meeting

Aspirational story, speak to peoples hearts and imaginations that makes them want to help you

Meeting prep, decks, paperwork

Navigating q&a, what skills to stay on message

What makes great companies great?

Passion, twinkle in the eye - people buy people

Victor not victim, know you will be successful, know you will get the team and ship the product, think about it first, what will you do to succeed

Great detectives, find out their fear and tell them how you can overcome it, pay attention

-----Listening skills are important

The vision, how do people perceive you and the technology

Be student of your technology and industry

Be predictive, be the vision, an insight leader not just a follower

Be the person people go to

Reduce the firehouse of data to a short precise presentation

Embrace the rule of 3

-avoid laundry list persuasion, selling beyond the close

understand that they want fact based show me the money mind and their heart, speak to both

-be prepared and understand the context of the meeting, understand where and the people involved

Anticipate questions and have the answers

-have a structure to communication, like a narrative in a game or book, not necessarily a structure like a series of slides

Every time you pitch, first 30 seconds you have to capture their imagination or they will start thinking about other things or the meeting they just came from

Quickly get to promise of presentation, what will they get out of it

-you will believe x, you will see y

The roadmap, tell them how you will use their time

-I will show you how we will, I will show you...

---------Practice it--------- very important

Where do you need To go slower, how will will you do your transitions

If only short time, practice beginning and end, that's where you win and lose people

Develop your own winning style

Be an actor, use your voice and gestures and expressions to own the room and tell a story

Turn a question and answer session into a question and message session, bridge your answer into a message

Remain authentic and answer the question quickly, but work in your message

Know what your message is

power bite

Start with conclusion, then 3 pieces of evidence, and what does it mean to them

Conclusion, evidence x 3, so what

Aspirational storytelling

Dare to paint a picture of the future

Don't make them all improvs, build a repertoire of them, write them, practice them

--Tom Ogburn

GDC2011 This is your brain on game dev

TOgburn — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 16:29:00 GMT

This is your brain on game development

Crabtreesbrain@gmail.com

Twitter/@scottcrab

Many books, just a few with good science on psychology of happiness and productivity

Manage your mind for better results, 3 steps

Logic just part of picture

Manage stress

Work for happiness

----logic is just part of the picture

We focus too much on logic and prefrontal cortex, very small part of brain and tires

Small, logical prefrontal cortex can't multitasking. Multitasking drops iq by 10 points and increases errors, about 15 for men, 5 for women

Task switching expensive for computers, people too

Not really multitasking, fast task switching

Lessens ability to filter extraneous data, separate unimportant from important

Conscious thinking is limited resource, prioritize prioritization, keep it simple, and help with visuals and lists

Important-Do it when you are fresh, not necessarily first thing in morning

To get insights from some parts of brains, you have to quiet other parts, perhaps with mindfulness meditation

Insights come better when you are peaceful and happy

Summary

Conscious thinking is limited - prioritize prioritizing and don't multitask

Help your brain with visuals and lists

Insight comes when conscious thinking pauses

20 minutes to get into flow, 2 minutes to get out of it

-----manage stress

does not mean eliminating, need the right amount of "eustress" to be most effective

Low stress, boredom, depression - area of optimal stress challenge - high stress bell curve

Fight, flight, freeze response is bad for brain function

We are wired to cooperate with each other, empathize

We are wired to view the world as "us" and "them"

The happier you are, the bigger your circle of "us"

Happier people are less socially biased

Label and reappraise (don't suppress) negative emotions to manage them

-if your opinion isn't heard you get more stressed about it, brain same way

Exercise eases stress and improves thinking

Summary

Excess stress is bad for brain function

Mitigate stress with reappraisal and relaxation

Exercise to manage stress & boost your brain

Doodling can help retain more, requires no thinking

Anything that can be automated and doesn't require conscious thought can help conscious thought

--work for happiness

Happier people are more productive, sociable, cooperative, creative, resilient, successful, and engaged

Happier are healthier and live longer

Widens the scope of attention

Increases behavior repertoires

Largely determined by set point, but also intentional behavior

50 genetic, 40 intentional, 10 circumstance

How

1 Flow toward goals

2 strive to maintain a positive Attitude

3 invest

Set goals that are important to you, measure progress toward those goals

Different brains have different strengths, learn and use yours

Michael Jordan didn't try to improve in baseball, did his strength at basketball

Spend time on strengths, not always focus on improving weaknesses

"strengths finder 2.0" "go put your strengths to work" - books

Get into flow - pie graph

Get into challenge at right level for you and stay focused

Attitude is as important as it is cliche, nurture optimism and positivity

Write down positives, will make you happier

Best teams have positive to negative comments ratio of > 5:1

Tipping point is about 3:1

moves team from minimize risk to maximize reward

Feedback sandwich, positive comment, negative, positive

Too much is a bad thing, feels fake, > 20 to 1

Invest in people and relationships - It will boost your network, coping ability, and happiness

Happiness is contagious

Express gratitude, makes you and them happier

Happiness outside work will make you happier at work too

Exercise, smile, relax, meditate, focus on present

It takes knowledge, subtlety, and support, and persistance

--Tom Ogburn

GDC2011 3Ds Max tips and tricks

TOgburn — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 16:21:00 GMT

Modeling

Animation

Modeling with matchmover

Workflow

Shoot footage

Convert to bmp, runs faster in Matchmover

Load into matchmover

Camera becomes camera in max

Create model from 3d points

Project footage on model

Bake to object and texture

Shoot footage

Try to get good coverage, move around

Do not pan and tilt, do not use tripod

Need to see all angles for modeling and texturing

Avoid blur and artifacts, don't move too fast

Convert to image sequence, pick best frames, too many frames take a long time and many have duplicate data

3rd max-rendering-ram player- to convert to bmp image sequence

Automatic tracking

Good tracking to make camera but points are useless

Manual tracking, use auto camera but set points to make model from

Create axis and scale, etc, then export to a 3rd max script

Run matchmover tracker

In preferences make sure you have z axis set to up

CPU is very important to make this run fast

Hide tracking points

In point tracks add new group

Add new track

Place point, scroll to another frame and select same point, when it turns green it means it was able to track it

Create more track points

Yellow means not perfect, move it around or go to another frame and try

Pick which one will be origin

Pick at least 3 points on different axis so it can model it as 3d

Make as many points as you want, more is better model

Make points where architecture changes, different direction, different texture,etc because these will be used to make your model later

Pick 2 points that you know distance and set that, use u it of measure matching system prefs

Select all modeling points, except auto, and export

Open model script in max, sometimes causes error due to groups

Tip - always Delete groups and groups name sections before opening

Select all points

Maxscript editor and script change size to scale up to a realistic size

Grab a few points on a side-alt q to isolate

Start drawing planes and shapes, faces to make the object

Choose snap to pivot to snap to selected points instead of grid

Trick add your tools to a pane/ custom ribbon, then set a hotkey to make it appear

After model made for texture use a camera map

Find a good view of specific texture in camera view

Render to texture, auto unwrap

After texturing

Select all and then link to make 1 model

Then render to texture on a new channel, unwrapped and baked to move all textures to 1 map

Move channel 2 to channel 1 and then remove channel 2

Now it's ready to export to a game engine

Best to use for cubic, planar shapes

For cylindrical shapes, place points at top and bottom, then create a cylinder since it would be impossible to create enough tracking points to make a good circle

Can use multiple cameras and point of views for camera, but for modeling can only use 1 and is easiest with static object, eg a building

--------------------------------

Substances = new several new types of texture assets in 2012

Contains diffuse, normal, texture, shader, ... Maps in 1 file

Easier to use in slate manager rather than classic

Can use animated texture, ex sliding door opening, instead of moving model

Can use to easily change color, ex leaves on a tree as season changes

--Tom Ogburn

Sky Defender source code

TOgburn — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 12:59:00 GMT

I am making available the Sky Defender (XNA version) source code. Please read the included info.txt file as it spells out the different licenses involved. Basically the source code you can do with as you please as long as you leave the attributions. The content is various licenses depending on the source, which is listed out in the document.

The source is an integration of Torque X, the Microsft XNA Game State Manager, Nick Gravelyn's Storage Device Management, and Enchanted Age's high score component. I added in multi-threading to the level loading screens and code to handle trials and the buying process. I think there's a few other things in there, but I can't remember them right now.

The Torque X source code is NOT included in this package. It is linked to in the solution file, so you will either need to re-point it to your source copy or reference the compiled dll's instead if you don't have a source license.

And now for the link: http://www.StarlitSkyGames.com/files/games/Sky_Defender_Source.zip

--Tom Ogburn

Motor Psycho first video look

TOgburn — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:22:00 GMT

I've posted an early alpha video of Motor Psycho (a Road Rash style motorcycle racer/fighter) up on youtube. It is a short video of a small level I'm using just to test the physics, pathfinding, fighting, etc. I'm expecting the game to be done in the first half of 2010 and to ship on XBox Live Indie Games.

Click here to go view the video, then let me know what you think in the forums, twitter, or facebook.

--Tom Ogburn

Screenshot of new Motorcycle game

admin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:22:00 GMT

Starlit Sky Games, LLC is currently working on an unnamed motorcycle racing-fighting game, similar to Road Rash. View a screenshot in the gallery at http://www.starlitskygames.com/photos/motorcycle/picture203.aspx and help pick a name. Either post your suggestion in the forums or send me a tweet at TOgburn with your suggestion.

Tom Ogburn

Sky Defender now available on XBox 360

TOgburn — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:21:00 GMT

Sky Defender is now available in the XBox 360 Indie Games channel. You can download it directly to your system from XBox.com by following the link below.

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550246

--Tom Ogburn

Win a 12 month XBox Live Gold code

TOgburn — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:56:00 GMT

On April 26, 2009 I will be giving away one 12 month XBox Live Gold code to a randomly chosen person that retweets my StrikeForce-Psi announcement between now and then. The announcement is here: http://twitter.com/TOgburn/status/1575409771

and after you do that, go ahead and download the game and try it. Go ahead, I dare you... :)

--Tom Ogburn

StrikeForce Psi available on XBox 360 Community Games

TOgburn — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:15:00 GMT

Download it now from http://xblcg.info/link/strikeforce-psi/0

StrikeForce Psi - nearing release and credits

TOgburn — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:45:00 GMT

StrikeForce Psi is now in review on Xbox Live Community Games and should be coming out soon. Of course I will update as soon as it is released. I also want to mention the people I worked with to get the game done.

Art Lead project manager - Mindaugas Jokubaitis (Dami Digital)
Art - Dami Digital http://dami.lt/
Characters - Maxim Lyulyukin http://www.robomaniac.invitinggames.com/store/
Audio - Spencer Sternberg http://www.spencersternberg.com
Level Editing - Tom Ogburn
Ben Ogburn
Dan McCollum http://www.danmccollum.com/
Programming - Tom Ogburn

More to come when the game goes live.

--Tom Ogburn