Archive for March, 2009

Poor Bear Update 3: Development Progress

| March 31, 2009

From our last post, you got a glimpse into Trevor’s mind and where things were headed from a design standpoint. This update shows the concrete transition of those elements into the game. The title screen and elements have been incorporated, along with stunt recognition (flips, wheelies), item collection, and finer game controls.

Help make Poor Happy!

As you can tell, Poor Bear’s life is starting to hype up, but we have him running in different directions. He is a little confused and we’d like your input. How? Well we’ve played with different goals for Poor from beat the buzzer to collect and score. What do you think would make Poor fun? Either of those? A combination? Or something else? We have tons of ideas, but would like to know what you think in terms of the fundamental game play. Please share your thoughts in the comments or with us directly!

Poor Bear Stage 2: Design

| March 26, 2009

Project Poor Bear is shaping up pretty nicely, with every day bringing in a little more “flair”. Not to leave you in the dark we wanted to post some of the design progress and process. In addition, Trevor the man behind the “flair” kindly took a step back to share some insight into the origins of his ideas for the game and process. Below are images and direct excerpts from Trevor’s mind, enjoy!

“The idea behind project poor bear is to mesh a couple of my favorite ideas with the awesome game engine Dreamsocket came up with. First, I love the idea of making a monumental escape from work. I think anyone can relate to that. Here we have a bear who is good at what he does, loves to do his thing, but is stuck inside the unrelenting system (the big top) that sucks the fun out of his work. Sound like your life? The next idea I’ve incorporated is one I’ve been sitting on for a while. As a kid, I used to skate board. Trust me, I sucked… real bad. Even though I didn’t have any thrashing skillz, I could imagine the possibilities. I would always look up at the power lines and imagine ridding a skate board, or bike, or rocket boots on the power lines. Man, that would be so cool. I don’t think there could be a better escape route for our high wire bear. Of course we can’t just let our poor bear ride off into the sunset all golden parachute style. We have included a few challenges that should make for an interesting ride. 🙂

For the overall look, I wanted to make something that was just really fun to to interact with. I was initially going to make something all stylistic and out there, but it has been a while since I just made something tat felt cartoony. It’s almost a bad word these days. “CARTOONY.” Yeah, I feel bad even typing it. Well, I’m glad I did, because I think it really has a nice goofy look.”

Splash screen development

The development of the splash screen from a hand-drawn image to the (almost) completed image.


In-game assets

Potential objects you can expect to see in the game, from deadly barbed wire to not-so deadly squirrels.

Level one intro video

A sample intro/theme video we are using to defined the game. It shows Poor Bear making his death defying escape from the circus.

Kenny Speaking at NAB2009 on Games and TV Collaborations.

| March 26, 2009

I was asked, agreed, and received confirmation that I will be speaking at the NAB conference in Vegas this month. The presentation/panel is titled “Game & TV Collaborations” and is focused on solutions that integrate games with video based entertainment. I will be showing off the Playstation Megasode that we built a few years back and participating in the subject discussion.

The presentation is slated for Thursday April 23 at 10:15.
You can find all the details here.

It should be quite interesting presenting at NAB, since the crowd is so different than a lot of the places I speak. It also marks my first attendance to the event, so I’d love to hear feedback from others that have attended in years past.

Annoucing Project Codename: Poor Bear

| March 4, 2009

The iPhone bug bit and we have started working on a side project code named POOR BEAR. The project is a small iPhone game collaboration between the folks at Dreamsocket and <a href=”http://tvmstudio.com/” target=”_blank”>Trevor Van Meter</a>, who we consider friend of the family. For those who aren’t familiar with Trevor, you may remember his game <a href=”http://trevorvanmeter.com/flyguy/” target=”_blank”>Fly Guy</a> that garnered a lot of praise. Trev and I (Kenny) actually went to school together and were part of the same crew of friends, so we have roots. Personally, I look at him like a renaissance guy when it comes to illustration work. He literally does it all: cartoons, toys, comics, games, you name it. Needless to say, we are excited to be working together. Right Trev 😉

Plot

Trevor is working out the dynamics of POOR BEAR’s story line and it will evolve as we progress. Nothing is nailed in stone, but we have our basics. Our main character is a circus bear who rides bikes on tight ropes. Pretty hype already, huh? Who doesn’t love bears on bikes??? The game starts with our fearless character blasting out of a circus tent and landing on some power lines. He has some where he has to go, and he has to get there fast, so it is up to you to help him get there. A side scrolling bearrific race against time!

Current State

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You can see from the video above, our development started by just getting basic mechanics working in the game along with a few art elements and menu screens. Some how the luck of the Irish hit, and we already have our fearless hero iPhone ready and controllable via the accelormeter and screen interaction. Tilting the phone to either side controls balance, touching the front of the phone speeds him up, and touching the back slows him down. Although some of the game elements are limited now, they along with the terrain are getting generated from a custom level editor we built in AIR. This gives us the ability to really map out and throw things in pretty rapidly. Expect good things 😉

Future

Moving forward, there are many hours of work left at this point. We still need to settle on layouts for all the menus and screens, get art for them, add sound effects, add background music, and create levels for the game. Perhaps one of the most important tasks left is to implement a scoring system. We have not ironed out the details yet but are considering making the levels time-limited and scoring based on quickness of MR BEAR. If we go this route, things like power-ups via time bonuses and speed boosts come to mind. Finally but not least, our bear FLIPS, yes he FLIPS while jumping his bike! Obviously, we might have to take that into account too!

All that said, welcome to PROJECT POOR BEAR. Expect us to post our process and progress here, so you can follow along and add your 2 cents into the game. Help us shape it into something great. We want POOR BEAR to pull you into the bears shoes and have you craving to play!