*eek* so June came and went without an update. I'm sorry to say that I also missed the end-of-June deadline I'd tentatively set to release PipeDreams, now before you all go wagging your fingers at me (that is if anybody actually reads this stuff), there is a very good reason for this...
Unfortunately I decided to part company with the first art guy I was working with, followed by a chance encounter on a forum that lead to me signing an agreement to work with (in my opinion) a very talented husband and wife team from Australia.
Stephen from Silkjade has done some fantasic looking backgrounds and pipesets. There's a title screen grab on the website should anyone be interested. Changing the resources and making stuff more organised so it's easier for the artist to make changes locally and see how they look has caused a bit of slippage, but seeing as this is (at the moment) a part-time gig and I have the good fortune not to have to release the game until I feel it's ready I don't see it as too much of a problem. Obviously if I'd got crowds of people sending me daily emails begging to know when the next update will be released - then that's more of an issue 8-)
However - development continues, the game and all the puzzles are finished and a beta version will be released before the end of July (and that's July THIS year!)
I'm even going to have an pre-release sale and so the first 50 people to send an email to pipedreams@whitetreegames.com with the subject "HOCK A LOOGEY" will recieve a coupon valid for 50% off the price of the game. I'm planning to retail the game at $9.99 so this will not only get you $5 off, but also you'll be entitled to all the other benefits and bonuses that fully fledged WhiteTree Games customers will enjoy (more about that another day).
Until next time (which will hopefully be before mid October *grin*)
Jon...
Thursday, 19 July 2007
Tuesday, 22 May 2007
Same Month, Last Post
Ok I admit it, I've been very lax with the updates - mainly because I've been very busy with the game updates. This getting up at 6am every morning is working out very nicely - I can heartedly recommend it 8-)
Work on PipeDreams is progressing quite nicely - I've finally got an artist on board (hi Frederic) and I think my deadline for a PC version at the end of the month is still quite realistic.
In the next couple of days I'll start the countdown and release a few teasers, until then here's a couple of links to browse through...
Crystal writes one of the funniest, day to day blogs I've read for a long while, I can't imagine what it would be like to have this lady in my life - but by god it wouldn't be a quiet life!
For all you closet geeks out there - especially you at the back with the kids - Nuff said!
And to round things off a little and make us all feel a little more grounded about the important things in life...
In the next couple of days I'll start the countdown and release a few teasers, until then here's a couple of links to browse through...
Crystal writes one of the funniest, day to day blogs I've read for a long while, I can't imagine what it would be like to have this lady in my life - but by god it wouldn't be a quiet life!
For all you closet geeks out there - especially you at the back with the kids - Nuff said!
And to round things off a little and make us all feel a little more grounded about the important things in life...
Till next time, I'm off to hug my wife and kids!
Jon...
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
New Month, New Post
Another month *eek* where does the time fly to, anyway trying to get work done on PipeDreams whilst holding down a full-time job and being a husband and father is almost a full-time job in itself.
I'd decided on setting a deadline for the end of May to have a finished PC version ready to roll, followed by the Pocket PC version 4-6 weeks later (there maybe a J2ME version in the works as well - I'll let you know about that one later).
Anyway - the deadline is fast approaching but I'm confident I can make it, especially since I've discovered that from about 6am till 7am (before everyone else get's up) is the most productive time of the day - trying to fit dev time in at work is a no-no and the evening's get taken up by the usual mundane house things and the biggest evil of all TV (don't get me started on that one), so having followed an old artist friends advice, it's with the larks every morning - I guess there's something in that "early to bed, early to rise" adage after all...
As I may have mentioned before, I write code for a living (my drawing abilty is non-existent), so getting the graphics to look good has been one of the most difficult things to get right.
To get round this problem I decided to take a novel approach, any startup developers may also want to try this...
If you are an indie developer or take an interest in how video games are made you'll have probably come across a few forums, taking the bull by the horns I went round all the indie / game dev forums I could find (most have dedicated sections devoted to for looking for art resources) and posted a message asking for help.
Because I'm self-funding my own time (ie making the game for nothing), I don't have the money to shell out for resources in advance, so what I did was make a promise - I offered a generous share of any net profits on a royalty basis and more importantly I offered full credits and a letter of reference atesting to the quality and reliability of the artist - a lot of actors start out doing work for nothing, just so they can build up a portfolio, it's generally a win-win scenario for the producer and the actor. I've had some favorable responses so far so hopefully this strategy will work out as a win-win for me too.
The more polished the overall product is the better chance of it being a commerical success (it won't take many sales to recoup development costs *grin*) and the more chance the artist will make some cash, either way - I get my art and they get to add to their portfolio, top idea all round I think...
Lastly - I've decided to hide a few unlockables / easter egg's / secrets / what-have-you in the game, a couple of them I'll only release info about here, so if anybody (hello out there) is reading this then you'll get the scoop on the rest of the world... If there is anybody reading this, drop a comment to say hi
Jon....
I'd decided on setting a deadline for the end of May to have a finished PC version ready to roll, followed by the Pocket PC version 4-6 weeks later (there maybe a J2ME version in the works as well - I'll let you know about that one later).
Anyway - the deadline is fast approaching but I'm confident I can make it, especially since I've discovered that from about 6am till 7am (before everyone else get's up) is the most productive time of the day - trying to fit dev time in at work is a no-no and the evening's get taken up by the usual mundane house things and the biggest evil of all TV (don't get me started on that one), so having followed an old artist friends advice, it's with the larks every morning - I guess there's something in that "early to bed, early to rise" adage after all...
As I may have mentioned before, I write code for a living (my drawing abilty is non-existent), so getting the graphics to look good has been one of the most difficult things to get right.
To get round this problem I decided to take a novel approach, any startup developers may also want to try this...
If you are an indie developer or take an interest in how video games are made you'll have probably come across a few forums, taking the bull by the horns I went round all the indie / game dev forums I could find (most have dedicated sections devoted to for looking for art resources) and posted a message asking for help.
Because I'm self-funding my own time (ie making the game for nothing), I don't have the money to shell out for resources in advance, so what I did was make a promise - I offered a generous share of any net profits on a royalty basis and more importantly I offered full credits and a letter of reference atesting to the quality and reliability of the artist - a lot of actors start out doing work for nothing, just so they can build up a portfolio, it's generally a win-win scenario for the producer and the actor. I've had some favorable responses so far so hopefully this strategy will work out as a win-win for me too.
The more polished the overall product is the better chance of it being a commerical success (it won't take many sales to recoup development costs *grin*) and the more chance the artist will make some cash, either way - I get my art and they get to add to their portfolio, top idea all round I think...
Lastly - I've decided to hide a few unlockables / easter egg's / secrets / what-have-you in the game, a couple of them I'll only release info about here, so if anybody (hello out there) is reading this then you'll get the scoop on the rest of the world... If there is anybody reading this, drop a comment to say hi
Jon....
Wednesday, 25 April 2007
Just Blogging Along
Ok, so no-one's yet taken me up on the casual games challenge so I'll just post a little of what I'm upto instead.
If any of you have had a chance to click through to my website (www.whitetreegames.com) then you'll see I've been starting to develop some casual games. It's my ultimate ambition to go full time and make a decent living out of this and so I'm finally ready to release some more information about the projects I'm working on...
The first project to be released is ca
lled PipeDreams (here's a screen grab from the title), and for those of you who may be interested, it's a single screen puzzler, where you have to help our hero Jack (the eponymous plumber from the title) get a good nights sleep and not be plagued by every plumbers worst nightmare... (can you see what I did with the title there??)
Anyway, the game's starting to shape up quite nicely and hopefully the finished project will be quite polished.
One of the things I'm particulary pleased with is the games personality. Rather than trying to get all serious or hardcore, this is a game with a sense of humor (albeit one like mine - so be warned!)
I thought bringing out a pleasant, polite personality in the game would widen it's appeal and hopefully make it more commerically successful (plus politeness is always nice, regardless of the source or the reason), especially as the demographics for the casual sector often involve women, older folks etc etc. I'm also working very hard on making the game as easily accessible / playable by as many people as possible, so even the die-hard luddites should find the game a pleasureable experience.
Any that's all for now, so keep your eye's peeled and I'll release more info as and when.
Jon...
If any of you have had a chance to click through to my website (www.whitetreegames.com) then you'll see I've been starting to develop some casual games. It's my ultimate ambition to go full time and make a decent living out of this and so I'm finally ready to release some more information about the projects I'm working on...
The first project to be released is ca
lled PipeDreams (here's a screen grab from the title), and for those of you who may be interested, it's a single screen puzzler, where you have to help our hero Jack (the eponymous plumber from the title) get a good nights sleep and not be plagued by every plumbers worst nightmare... (can you see what I did with the title there??)Anyway, the game's starting to shape up quite nicely and hopefully the finished project will be quite polished.
One of the things I'm particulary pleased with is the games personality. Rather than trying to get all serious or hardcore, this is a game with a sense of humor (albeit one like mine - so be warned!)
I thought bringing out a pleasant, polite personality in the game would widen it's appeal and hopefully make it more commerically successful (plus politeness is always nice, regardless of the source or the reason), especially as the demographics for the casual sector often involve women, older folks etc etc. I'm also working very hard on making the game as easily accessible / playable by as many people as possible, so even the die-hard luddites should find the game a pleasureable experience.
Any that's all for now, so keep your eye's peeled and I'll release more info as and when.
Jon...
Monday, 16 April 2007
Casual Gaming
So what's this casual gaming malarky all about anyway, and how can it be casual if people are glued to their games for hours on end...
I was intending to write a long discourse on this but then I thought I'd see what other peoples takes were on this first - if you've got any ideas or comments you'd like to share, send an email to the address above, that way I won't just be blowing my own trumpet and hopefully can inspire some thoughtful debate.
Eventually you'll see what my take on casual gaming is all about by the games that appear on this site, who knows you might even help to influence the kind of games I make and the target audience...
Next time I'll blab a bit more about WhiteTree Games, the return of the fabled back bedroom developer and how to hold down a full time job AND develop video games professionally as a hobby *eek*.
I was intending to write a long discourse on this but then I thought I'd see what other peoples takes were on this first - if you've got any ideas or comments you'd like to share, send an email to the address above, that way I won't just be blowing my own trumpet and hopefully can inspire some thoughtful debate.
Eventually you'll see what my take on casual gaming is all about by the games that appear on this site, who knows you might even help to influence the kind of games I make and the target audience...
Next time I'll blab a bit more about WhiteTree Games, the return of the fabled back bedroom developer and how to hold down a full time job AND develop video games professionally as a hobby *eek*.
Friday, 13 April 2007
And so it begins
Friday the 13th was probably not the most auspicious day to launch a new site, but what the heck... It's not as if I'm suspicious or anything. Anyway hello and welcome to my new blog - eventually (when I get the hang of this HTML malarky) this will turn into a proper blog with comments etc, but for now you'll just have to put up with my ramblings - besides you can always drop me a mail at jon@whitetreegames.com if your really desperate to get in touch.
So today the site went live, shame there were no games demo's to go with it (*cest la vie*) but it shows progress all the same...
I've thought about blogging for a while but until I felt I had something worth while to say, I thought the best bet would be keep shtumm, but now with the development of my first two casual games speeding along I thought it would be time to annouce myself to the world...
So who am I and what do you care anyway...
Well in anwser to the first. My name is Jon Howard and I'm the owner / boss / top developer / general dogsbody of the entity known as White Tree Games (see the about us section for more info). White Tree Games was setup to develop and promote "old skool" classic style video games - what are currently referred to casual games. I'm not (at least not anymore) a hardcore games player, but instead have matured to a more abstract type of game, ones that you can pick up and play for five minutes but five hours later still have you hooked. Think solitare, minesweeper, tetris etc etc etc the net is full of these time sinks and rightly so, according to the latest trends casual gaming is now big business and the big players are starting to take note.
Casual gaming also offers one more exciting benefit (and the one were here for), many people have called it a return to the halcyon days of the one man band, the single developer, the bedroom coder (does using your laptop in the living room count?) anyway more on this next time...
So today the site went live, shame there were no games demo's to go with it (*cest la vie*) but it shows progress all the same...
I've thought about blogging for a while but until I felt I had something worth while to say, I thought the best bet would be keep shtumm, but now with the development of my first two casual games speeding along I thought it would be time to annouce myself to the world...
So who am I and what do you care anyway...
Well in anwser to the first. My name is Jon Howard and I'm the owner / boss / top developer / general dogsbody of the entity known as White Tree Games (see the about us section for more info). White Tree Games was setup to develop and promote "old skool" classic style video games - what are currently referred to casual games. I'm not (at least not anymore) a hardcore games player, but instead have matured to a more abstract type of game, ones that you can pick up and play for five minutes but five hours later still have you hooked. Think solitare, minesweeper, tetris etc etc etc the net is full of these time sinks and rightly so, according to the latest trends casual gaming is now big business and the big players are starting to take note.
Casual gaming also offers one more exciting benefit (and the one were here for), many people have called it a return to the halcyon days of the one man band, the single developer, the bedroom coder (does using your laptop in the living room count?) anyway more on this next time...
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