OK – he’s back, rested and ready to dive back into dev work.

…ok, maybe ONE more round of Compound before we get started.

GDEX was again amazing, and I’m always ever thankful to the Cleveland Game Co-Op for the opportunity to show my game. It was my 3rd time doing it and each and every year has been an experience I will value for a long, long time.

I also greatly appreciated just getting there in one piece.

Two weeks before I left, the wife had a social engagement after church, so I loaded up the kids in the family car and followed her so we could part ways afterwards. I noticed that her muffler was swaying gently in the breeze; and any bump in the road sent it dancing. I could see myself having to deal with it on the 2.5 hour drive to Columbus and having to jury-rig a solution on I-71S, especially on the return trip on Sunday evening, right around sundown.

So, I enlisted my neighbor Tom (who is rebuilding a ’71 AMC Javelin and knows cars) to help rig up something to at least keep it from falling apart for at least a few weeks. He stopped on by, started poking around and suggested we drill into something and run some metal wire hanger to hold it. As he was drilling, there was a ‘thunk‘ and he handed me the above piece, saying it was part of the frame – but probably not a “necessary” piece. So he tried again, using part of the plastic bumper assembly and off I went.

I got to the convention center and the rest of the day (and setup) went smoothly – I was excited to see the new postcards that I got for being part of the Playvue app and they did not disappoint:

DAY 1:

The first day is always exciting because its the hardcore gamer community – the people who really love games and want to see what the indie community is up to. I get into a lot of technical discussions and a lot of folk are surprised when I tell them this is a blend of VRTK, Playmaker and duct-tape. I always get a ton of suggestions, info, business cards, offers of help and introductions to other devs that have similar interest. I have several sheets of paper filled with hastily scribbled notes and future searches that I need to do.

Since I’m flying solo, I don’t get to see a lot of other dev booths, just the ones in my neighborhood; and I’d swear – whoever is across from me gets TONS of traffic and usually has a crowd 3 deep. I also get tons of ideas that I’d love to implement (once I have a budget for such things) – a larger screen and a big banner seem to garner attention quick and draw people in. As soon as people start looking, others seem drawn to the crowd and feed off the excitement – which draws in even more people. Maybe I can sell a kidney or something…

The best moment of the day came at the end, when my friend Leonard (and first ‘customer’ I ever demoed my game to) came by. He was feeling the overload of too many people, too much noise and an overabundance of info. He looked at me, looked at my game and asked if he could take it for a spin. I was anxious to get on the road and get some food as my day is spent at my booth and subsisting on power bars and thermos coffee. But, I couldn’t refuse. Leonard is like my good luck charm and whenever I see him, I know its going to be a good show. So I let him play and busied myself cleaning up and prepping for the next morning. After I while I realized I wasn’t hearing the usual game sounds / voiceovers / collectibles being picked up – he was just wandering around the level and enjoying the interactables – jumping in the water to hear my kids making ‘splash’ sounds. After 20 minutes or so, he took off the HMD and smiled, ‘it like a dream’ he said, and that phrasing just stuck with me. Glad to know that my work can be a source of calm happiness.

Day 2

The second day always has a different vibe – its more families and kids and people tend to linger a bit and chat more. This year seemed to be a bit slower and my fellow devs agreed. What was nice is that I had several developers that I had worked next to in previous years sought me out to see how I was doing – I’m always humbled by how many people remember me, the game and the story about my son and how this all came to be.

I also got a pleasant surprise of a visit from my wife’s cousin Bob, who hung out, talked, roamed the floor and even got me a much needed sandwich. When attendees stopped by my booth, he added a nice counterpoint to my frenetic rambling – and gave my strained voice a much needed break. His visit also seemed to fill in a bit of the quiet time and when he left – the crowds started coming back after the post-lunch lull.

As the afternoon started winding down and the end of show raffles started, I did get a chance to wander a bit and see people’s displays before they got dismantled and gleaned several ideas I need to put into practice; the booth above had so many cool ideas (and won some awards after the show too!) on how to engage with the community and I might crib and adapt some of these ideas for next time. The coloring station was especially clever and I might take a bunch of my kid’s drawings, clean them up and print them to do something similar. Not to mention the wishlist sign.

I have to admit – there is a certain sadness in wrapping up. Even though I’m pretty introverted; demoing my game brings out a big chatty part of me that I’m still amazed is lurking somewhere inside of me. I had a fellow dev run up and hand me a swag bag full of candy and asked if I’d give it to my kids. I was really touched by how this game connects people and brings out such feelings of kindness. And I dwelled on this during the long ride back.

The best part was after I got home and was just resting, cleaning up and getting back into my normal dad routine; having just got home the night before – slept fitfully, got up early to get the family up / dressed / fed and out the door to work and school. And I got an email that really just struck me in the most profound way:

I only just found out about Booper this past week, so getting the chance to see it in action only a few days after was super cool. But hearing the story of the development process was insanely inspiring. Thank you so much for bringing your game down to demo at GDEX! Really looking forward to seeing the whole thing, and having my own little guy play it with me. 🙂

Man, excuse me – getting kinda dusty in here…

That image has always struck a chord with me.

I’m not sure where this phrase came from – but when I saw this drawing, it kept nibbling at the dark recesses of my brain. I had turned it over, puzzling it out until I was trying to take a nap, and a daydream-ish vison came to me:

Booper, just in a sea of white, and no way to see where you are. Kinda like Morpheus in ‘The Matrix’ when he introduces Neo to the construct:

Except- its a maze.

And my daydream was that the only way you can find your way out is by walking. And as you walk, you leave footprints. I’m not sure if the walks would simply be invisible and the player would have to run into them and see they could go no further; or if the maze was high up and falling off the edges was instant failure and restart at the beginning.

Luckily, my kiddo LOVES drawing mazes.

So I grabbed one, a quick one he made on his Boogie Board that I managed to photograph before he deleted it, and cleaned it up in Photoshop, then ran it through the Cubester add-on for Blender.

I also just got the latest Unity Humble Bundle, which has the Aura2 asset – and its VR compatible. So I quick added some fog and BAM! – I have the start of a new level. I just gotta figure out where it fits in story-wise.

edit – my youngest solve part of the mystery. There Is No Game came from the days they were addicted to online Flash games (most notably, ‘Red Ball’) and they had discovered one called, ‘There Is No Game’ – its a lot of fun; you should give it a spin.

After the debacle of having my SSD (the one with my OS on it- of course) start disconnecting at random led to me having to run the gauntlet of reinstalling everything, frantically trying to recall passwords and resetting a bunch of others in an attempt to get back to a fully armed and operational battle station.

I did get everything up and running – was grateful to have a larger SSD just lying around to migrate to, and despite my system freezing up for a minute or 2 several times a day, I’m back in action.

Having lost a couple of days to the usual time suckage of taking care of kids and preventing my house from falling apart completely; I did have a small (but powerful) moment that got me reinvigorated and felt like a big ‘win’ on the dev front:

I thought up a game mechanic, added it- and it just… worked.

I mean, this is huge.  For the guy who seriously debated having a 3rd person game where the character (and the player) could ONLY look forward – no turning- because he did not know, or even consider that a Playmaker action for mouse look had already been made and was trying to reinvent the wheel from scratch. The dev who spent weeks (and still has problems with) getting a VR headset to fade on command – actually got something to work – and on the first try.

For all intents, I should not be so impressed with myself over a simple mechanic like this, its just a trigger zone in front of the door that plays a ‘door opening’ animation, and a black rectangle that fades the view for a sec while moving the player to a new location, in this case, a cube with a wall & ceiling removed and surrounded by a bigger black cube to blot out the sky and environs.

Now let’s see if that streak holds as I try and get my demo on Steam, 2 weeks before I’m showing my game a GDEX…