Work on Alien Party

I need to break this silence.  Three weeks working full time on my game project and not a single blog entry?  Shame on me!  So, what have I been up to? Well, first I had to take care of boring but important matters, such as creating a detailed budget sheet, sketching a plan and a timeline and figuring out the health insurance situation.  That last one is not quite resolved yet, but hopefully I will hear from Mass Health soon and I can start sleeping a little bit better.  The next part was easy, quick and fun:  Code like a maniac for a few days to turn my existing first prototype:

into this:

Yay! That was easy! Surely the rest of the plan could be executed just as smoothly, right?  You can guess the answer to that one. I spent more than a week looking into finding a server to host the server online, looking into name trademarking, securing domain names, researching the legal issues related to starting a business, getting a Mac computer to produce iPhone builds, etc, etc.  Also, I had to try finding the artist in me to force him to come up with a logo and a design for the website of the game.  I struggled mightily with Inkscape and, under the watchful eye of my wife and little daughters, produced a few graphic elements that I am not quite proud of yet.  You can take a peek at the work in progress website here http://alienpartygame.com or  here http://alien-party.com.  Do you see what I mean?

Next station: Drama.  I have been working with my friend Jose Luis from Puerto Rico for months on a number of projects that did not go anywhere, and we had been trying to get Alien Party going as an evening project for a bit without much success.  But last week we had to call our collaboration quits.  We have not found a way to work together in a satisfactory way, unfortunately.  So now he is working on an RPG project while I finish Alien Party.  It was not great, but it was the right step. Such is life...

Something that was been working very well is the networking.  I have been out and about meeting and reconnecting with people in the game and 3D community in Boston.  This is a great crowd of folks doing what they love purely for the love of it.  Some have their own successful companies, some do it at night and weekends, but they all do it with passion.  I am looking forward to lots more of that.  One potential outcome  of that is a collaboration with a great local artist and artist mentor.  I have been talking to him a little, and in the next week or two I should better understand where that is heading.  I could definitely use some help on the design and artsy side of this, that is for sure!

And that is what is going on.  I am on an exciting road and planning to enjoy every minute of it while it lasts :)