Parties, Alcohol, and IGC

Well, Heabo and I hosted another party, this one a little hedonistic (see her post for more info on it 😉 Lots of half-naked people running around. I did a little bar-tending on this one, splitting the duties with Heabo. She edumicated me before hand, so at least I now know what most of the terminology is (a bit more complicated than one would expect), and how to do it. I’m still messy at it, but, at least that takes some load off of her during parties like that one.

We also introduced our first home-done spiced rum. It’s cheap ass rum bought at the store that we poured over top of the leftovers from wassal (cinnamon sticks, apple bits, and other little goodies.) After setting in there a month, it tasted and smelled wonderful – nothing like the original rum that I poured into it. Heabo & I dug up more recipies (some of it for expensive stuff, like Kaluah) and we’ll start makin’ our own stuff for parties from off the shelf liquors (Rum, Vodka, etc. – the cheap stuff)

I’m also considering the purchase of a Beer Machine. I owned one before, but, the seals dried up and it died. But it did make an excellent beer. And they have improved it a bit – they now have a version designed for bottling it after brewing is complete. It’s not REAL brewing though – you don’t make the mash yourself (actually, you can if you want to, and toss the ingredients into the Beer Machine), but instead buy a can o’ pre-made mash, and pour it in, add water and yeast, then wait 7 – 14 days. Easy stuff, fairly cheap (except the beer machine it’s self – the price has gone up, and the new bottling version is $109. Ouch – ok, so I’ll be waiting for a while on that one – but I’ll snag one eventually ;-). It makes the cost of a bottle of beer about $.50 – cheaper than buying it by the case. And if you do get into making your own mash, it gets cheaper (but messier 😉

I’ve also looked into a still – I’ve found them both in kit form and in DYI directions. Unluckly, I’m still a bit hazy here on the law – I need to make a phone call to the state one o’ these months and find out what the law is for sure. Of course, running a still is a much different process than making beer – and much more dangerous. With beer, the worst you can do is blow up the container by letting it develop too much pressure (and if you have it vented properly, there shouldn’t be an issue.) With a still, well, you can blow yourself up. You are workin’ with fire and alcohol vapor in a closed vessel – if the two ever mix, BOOM! Shrapnel everywhere. I’m not as keen on working with a still – I’d almost rather go out and buy Everclear as a base, and mix ingredients to create flavored alcohol or liquors of choice from that.

Live is still busy, but, I’ve let things slow down a bit. Trajectory Zone’s ship date is going to slip (intentionally), and we’re putting a new product in the middle. That gives us more time to perfect the game, instead a’ rushing this. Now that we are concentrating on making a deal with a real publisher, the rules change considerably. Everything about the product has to be tight.

So we started the Maze Panic! project. It’s another Torque based game, and it’s already partially done. I looked for the simplest possible game that could be ran pretty much without modifying the engine or scripting system very much. I think I accomplished that, and right now a small sub-set of the TZ team is now working on MP!. As you might have guessed, it’s a 3D maze game. However, it can be played single player, multi-player race, or multi-player war (war just adds two weapons – the freeze gun, and the kicker. Hit ’em with the freeze gun, and they are stuck for 5 seconds, giving you time to get some more distance between you and them. The kicker explodes, tossing your opponent around.)

However, it’s not as simple as you might expect. I’m breaking some of the typical rules for mazes. Not all mazes are Right Hand Rule compliant (normally in a maze, just place your right hand on the wall, and you will eventually find the exit. There are ways around that.), some are multi-level, some have mutliple solutions (great for multi-player race – the goal isn’t just to solve the maze then, it’s to find the optimal solution 🙂 It’s not going to be a huge hit or anything, but, provides a great ‘filler’ game while we finish off getting TZ ready (not sure what the ETA on that is now, since we’re changing our distribution focus. It’s now reverted to “When It’s Ready”, I think.)

Heabo and I have tickets, hotel room, and car rental setup for my Indie Games Con trip. This should be fun 🙂 David Michael of Samu Games and I will be co-speakers for “Can I Make Money as an Indie?” David and I broke things down into 10 minute segments where we tag-team it. I’ll be speaking first on project selection and self funding, then David speaks about some real numbers for how much you can sell, then I speak on managing the project to completion instead of burnout, and then David speaks again on selling your software over the Internet. Then we open things up for the remainder of the time (which should be about 20 minutes, probably a little less) for questions and answers. David came up with the tag-team approach idea, and it sounded pretty cool. Jeff Tunnell’s original concept was for us to speak for 15 minutes, have Q&A for 15 minutes, then switch speakers and repeat the process. This will allow us to both to concentrate on certain areas, and tackle the Q&A session together.

This will be a good opporunity for Midnight Ryder Technologies PR wise, and should be a good opportunity to meet a lot of the people in the GG community that I’ve been talking to off and on. (And someone else pointed out to me, it could also be a good opporunity to become a speaker at these type events, possibly even the “big show” – International Game Developers Conference. Ok, I’d go to IGDC as a speaker, no problem – that would save me almost a grand in ticket costs just to get in the door!)

One more thought about the party we held – it was interesting to note the mix of styles. Some people who showed up were pretty conservative about things, and some weren’t at all. Jess showed up Lady Gediva (sp?) style – she just placed her hair strategically, and wore a skirt (which I really didn’t notice for quite a while – it wasn’t until we were working the bar together that I realized she didn’t have anything on under that hair!), but Dave showed up in boxers and a Tshirt, with a robe on over it. It was a really strange mix of styles, and I should have gotten more pictures just for comparison’s sake.

Ok, back to work – just thought it was time to update the journal, so that people know I’m still alive and kicking, and that things are indeed going well 🙂