F.A.Q.

This F.A.Q. is based on questions received so far from Ask.fm and a long-dormant Tumblr game devblog.

> ASK YOUR OWN QUESTIONS HERE.

 
OH, HEY. WHAT’S UP?
Not much. Just hangin’.

I HAD SOME QUESTIONS.
Yep, that’s what that there form is for. Let’s have ‘em!

I JUST STUMBLED UPON THIS, THEN I DECIDED TO MAKE A REAL EFFORT TO FIND SOME KIND OF DEVELOPMENT ON THE INTERTUBES AND I CAME ACROSS THIS. I AM IN LOVE.
Love at first sight! I’ve heard about this phenomenon, but not in relation to my humble indie game projects. Thanks!

WHO ARE YOU? YOU’RE NOT SOMEONE THAT’S PRESENTLY ON THE DEVELOPING SCENE.
I’m an art & creative director who worked full-time in the advertising industry, and these days I mostly do freelance art/creative direction & design. I’ve been an adjunct/associate professor at multiple major universities and a small college or two in the Philadelphia area with a concentration on interactive design & development. The occasional traditional art/life drawing class or two managed to sneak into my teaching schedule as well. I’ve also presented for various companies at Siggraph, way back in the late 90’s/early 00’s, and had a couple books published around the same time on 3D computer animation and digital audio production.

I’ve worked on a few games over the years, those mostly back when “indie games” were still called “shareware” and we concentrated on making fun games for people to enjoy playing instead of . . . other stuff.

Also, I don’t do “scenes.”

HOW THE HECK DO I DONATE TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN AND GET ALL KINDS OF AWESOME THINGS?
I’ll be announcing the specifics of the KickStarter campaign/IndieGoGo campaign/Patreon account game sales soon. Awesome things will be available to be got and happened as game(s) is/are completed.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE GENRE (AND SUBGENRE) OF VIDEO GAMES?
I’ve always been a big fan of adventure games, from the early text adventures (INFOCOM 4 EVA) up through modern revivals.

As for favorite subgenre, I enjoy many of the more story/adventure-based single player FPS like the Half-Life series, the lastest incarnation of Wolfenstein and the awesome, depressingly funny, extremely Russian Metro series.

WHAT WAS THE MOST INTERESTING COURSE YOU TOOK IN SCHOOL (INCLUDING COLLEGE/UNIVERSITY) AND WHY?
The VR classes I took as part of my coursework in college were probably the most fun as a whole. Back then we were working on refrigerator-sized SGI Onyx 2’s with around 4MB memory that could push polygons maybe 2x what the N64 could handle, and the software we used to create our projects was more or less the same as what N64 devs were using. Some of the software we were using was the same as that used to create worlds for Mario 64, Atari’s arcade game San Francisco Rush, and other early 3D games. I think kids these days would be surprised at how primitive the early 3D tools were.

Unlike the more modern attempts at VR like Oculus Rift, in class we were working with VR gloves that provided tactile feedback which was pretty neat, and we had full head tracking. One of the professors had come from the military side of VR and mentioned we were working with the same grade of gear they used for tank & flight training simulators. Pretty mind-blowing stuff to hear at 19 (which was a long time ago). As to why . . . it was early VR and it was fun to play with the same tools as our favorite cutting-edge game developers. I also blame Lawnmower Man.