Apparently, I'm an Easy Sell

With business partners like this, you'll see me doing Flash development, too.

OpenLaszlo is an open source platform for creating zero-install web applications with the user interface capabilities of desktop client software.

OpenLaszlo programs are written in XML and JavaScript and transparently compiled to Flash and, with OpenLaszlo 4, DHTML. The OpenLaszlo APIs provide animation, layout, data binding, server communication, and declarative UI. An OpenLaszlo application can be as short as a single source file, or factored into multiple files that define reusable classes and libraries.

OpenLaszlo is "write once, run everywhere." An OpenLaszlo application developed on one machine will run on all leading Web browsers on all leading desktop operating systems.

I played around with the Laszlo in 10 Minutes test drive available here.
From the perspective of a scripter, this is a nice and seemingly worthwhile encapsulation of a lot of the trudgery required by Flash. Anyway, at least it will be fun to play with. Fun is half the battle. Laszlo is worth an install.

Shannon is Swimming in a Sea of VES*

Shannon is swimming in a sea of VES* with only software licenses to cling to.

From http://www.studica.com/ChaosStudios/

Chaos Group V-Ray v1.5
Click here for more information...After its enourmous success on the market V-Ray has become the renderer of choice in big production studios accross the world. Feature film productions, multi-million dollar game productions, huge and small architectual visualizations have trusted their visuals to V-Ray. Wouldn't you too? V-Ray has become a benchmark for speed used by many hardware vendors and other renderer developers to test against. Richest set of features, cost-effective and production-ready

V-Ray was developed by Chaos Group in an effort to raise the bar on the rendering and raytracing standards set by more expensive systems, but at a fraction of the cost. The result is a rendering tool that offers an incredible suite of features that should satisfy even the most hardcore users without breaking the bank. And the output will stun users in terms of both realism as well as overall control.

Base Price: $1000
Function: Making models look realistic

From http://pressreleases.autodesk.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=93%3C%2Ftd%3E

SAN RAFAEL, Calif., July 31 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Autodesk Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK), today announced Autodesk 3ds Max 9 software, the latest version of its world-renowned 3D modeling, animation and rendering solution. 3ds Max 9 supports 64-bit technologies, providing digital artists with the tools for next-generation games development, design visualizations, and film and television visual effects production....The Autodesk suggested retail price for 3ds Max 9 software is US $3,495. The Autodesk suggested retail price to upgrade from 3ds Max 8 to 3ds Max 9 is US $795.

From http://pressreleases.autodesk.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=295%3C%2Ftd%3E

SAN DIEGO, Aug. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) today announced Autodesk Maya 2008 modeling, animation, visual effects and rendering software. The new version of the Academy Award-winning product focuses on providing improved workflow efficiency for artists in the film, television, game development, design and manufacturing industries.... Maya 2008 will be supported on the Windows and Linux operating systems (64-bit and 32-bit versions), as well as Mac OS X for Intel-based Macintosh and PowerPC computers (32-bit version only).... Autodesk suggested retail pricing is US$1,999* for Maya 2008 Complete (Standalone) and US$6,999* for Maya 2008 Unlimited (Standalone). The upgrade price from Maya 8.5 Complete to Maya 2008 Complete is US$899*, and the upgrade price from Maya 8.5 Unlimited to Maya 2008 Unlimited is US$1,249*.

From http://www.gamedev.net/features/reviews/productreview.asp?productid=518

As for price, it lies somewhere in the "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" category. There are a lot of different extensions and servers and such. but if you want enough product to produce a game, you should count on spending about $9,500. It sounds like a lot, but you do get quite a bit for your money. You not only get a commercial-quality 3D engine, but you get a complete game-authoring environment, web-player, and a half-dozen company support options. Even if you budget your time at a few bucks an hour, the development environment and support will likely level the playing field over cheaper solutions.

From http://www.virtools.com/solutions/ordernow/virtools_publishing.asp

Solutions > Virtools Publishing Rights

Virtools™ Publishing Rights

The Virtools™ 4 license enables you to create, develop and distribute content using the 3D Life Player - both offline and online - available free on our website. Publishing rights/licensing fees depend on the type of application and support.

Below is a chart showing which types of projects require an additional publishing license. Please contact us for further information, or if you have any questions.

From http://www.devmaster.net/engines/engine_details.php?id=46

Price
Not Public

*VES: Very Expensive Software

Searching for a Heart of Gold

We are a group of game designers. We can honestly claim to be the top 3-D for Web development team in Toronto. We have made advergames and edugames. We are familiar with a variety of gaming and content-presentation technologies including Flash (2-D) and Virtools (3-D). We can offer the right business manager a team of experienced, dedicated, bright and ambitious game designer-producers. We are looking for the right business manager to be all things to a start-up game design studio.

Who We Are

Our work group is composed of three recent graduates of the George Brown College School of Design Game Design – Advanced Digital Design program. We have worked together for over a year both as students and as game design professionals. Our team members are Craig Alguire, Sue Chin and Shannon Ware. Examples of the team’s work are attached as “Back_Seat_Bash.jpg” (Craig and Sue) and “Factory_Dayz.jpg” (Sue and
Shannon). Examples of these games in action can be seen on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWuJVixZq2Y and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U09dxlP5ZJ4.

What We Do

Working as a team, we are able to produce high quality interactive games in either the Flash (which is principally used for 2-D motion graphics, interactions and games) or Virtools (used principally for 3-D motion graphics, interactions and games). We are able to produce concept documentation, concept art, game design documentation, project management plans, progress reports, game characters, environmental props, textures, animations, game logic (AI), levels, bug reports and project presentation.

What We Have to Offer

Working together as a team, we can offer the right business manager the opportunity to found a highly profitable game design studio or multi-media production company. We have worked together for over a year both as students and as professional game designers. Among the three most desirable aspects of a development project – low cost, high quality and fast delivery – we can offer the right business manager the opportunity to CHOOSE THREE.

Who We Are Looking for

We are looking for an individual who is capable of acting as the business manager for a start-up game design studio. The ideal business manager will be an enterprising visionary with a strong desire to make a name for his or her self in the video game industry, be a rain maker able to develop business, and be a project manager able to coach a highly creative team toward on-time completion. On top of all of these hard skills, the right business manager will be an individual of superior character with a heart of gold.

Summary

This team is currently busy completing the expansion to the Booster Buddies game. The scheduled completion date is November 15, 2007. We are on track to complete the game by this date. Once the game is complete, we will all be looking for work, and will likely go our separate ways. However, with the addition of the right personality, we can continue to function as a team producing high quality, commercially viable video
games. If you know someone who fits the description of a business manager provided in this letter, or if you are the one who fits this description, please contact us right away.

Sincerely,

Shannon Ware
Craig Alguire
Sue Chin

The End of Auditory Occlusion

Sound design is an increasingly specialized field, except for the fact that every designer, even a game designer, is required to to make some amount of sound design decisions in the course of that designer's career. Breaking the types of sounds required out into functional categories is foundational to the ongoing process of archive building.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

* Hard sound effects are common sounds that appear on screen, such as door slams, weapons firing, and cars driving by.
* Background (or BG) sound effects are sounds that do not explicitly synchronize with the picture, but indicate setting to the audience, such as forest sounds, the buzzing of fluorescent lights, and car interiors. The sound of people talking in the background is also considered a "BG," but only if the speaker is unintelligible and the language is unrecognizable (this is known as walla). These background noises are also called ambience or atmos ("atmosphere").
* Foley sound effects are sounds that synchronize on screen, and require the expertise of a foley artist to record properly. Footsteps, the movement of hand props, and the rustling of cloth are common foley units.
* Design sound effects are sounds that do not normally occur in nature, or are impossible to record in nature. These sounds are used to suggest futuristic technology, or are used in a musical fashion to create an emotional mood.

The Foley artist on a film crew is the person who creates many of the natural, everyday sound effects in a film, which are recorded during a session with a recording engineer. Before the session, a project will be "cued", with notes kept about what sounds need to be created during the foley session. Often, the project will have a sound supervisor who will dictate what sounds need to be covered in a foley session, and what needs to be created by special (audio) effects, which is generally left to the sound designer. The roles of Foley artists, sound designers, editors, and supervisors are highly specialized and are essential to producing a professional-sounding soundtrack that is suitable for distribution and exhibition.

Sound effects and foley are added during post-production to dialog and real effects which were picked up by microphones on set. Sometimes (especially in the case of cartoons) there is no additional sound, and all the sounds need to be added by the foley artist and sound designer. The Foley artist may also accent existing sounds to make them more effective; enhancing the sounds of a fistfight may require thumping watermelons or cracking bamboo. Many Foley artists take pride in devising their own sound effects apparati, often using simple, commonly-found materials. Some "making-of" featurettes show Foley artists at work.

The term "Foley artist" is named after Jack Foley, one of the earliest and best-known Hollywood practitioners of the art. Foley began his career in the film industry as a stand-in and screenwriter during the silent era, and later helped Universal make the transition from silent movies to "talkies".

Not Fanatics but Fan Addicts

Once upon a time no particular producer I knew completed an extensive set of models for a game. The set was two days late in a rush scenario, was quite a meticulous labor of love, and attempted to make a lot of subsequent scripting assignments easier through the technique of pre-placement. Because this modeling set was completed by the producer, who had modeling skill, the actual impact on the project budget was no more than a couple of hundred dollars, taking the manager a couple of hundred hours in total to complete. It was meticulous, as I said, and a labor of love. Had a professional full time modeler done the work, in say, Vancouver, the set would cost around 2k at 2 1/2 to 3 weeks to complete; for essentially the same deliverable. The artist's lost is the producer's gain, even when they are the same person.



It is all well and good to use top professionals when building your interactive experiences, but if you could somehow bring the work from that special category of pre-professional, or semi-professional, to the market in the context of other apparently professional work, there should be some margin there, shouldn't there? Exploitation, for sure. I was fascinated by the biography of Roger Ebert, weren't you?

I love to throw around the big words. Speaking paradigmaticly, or otherwise, I would say that understanding the nature of the young designer is a pretty safe bet for any founding enterprise. Understand that they will go on to better things, they will take secrets, they will be unsatisfied, the pay will be just enough to live in this city. Everyone's always on their way out of the door; always looking for new talent for sure; an ever revolving door with only a couple months work planned ahead.

To start everything is up in the air and nothing is settled. One thing that is promised is that content developers are paid out of liquid assets, and not on spec. The operation is of such a small scale that there won't always be extra work; they are encouraged to pursue their own designs.

Regarding the platform, I find it a pretty handy device. You have a lot of options on the table; and at this point you should pursue everything relating to the type of media you want to produce. For a while I thought Source was it for me, with Steam as the distribution channel. Probably Steam is a better deal than Source, if you have a business model. My affection for Source was before I broke through with Virtools; and before I discovered how similar they really are at core. Anyway, bon voyage.

What's next for me is to get people who have the skill set to work on their own scripts. It's called production. It's a lot of ducking hassle, but its what gets the job done by the end of the day. Nobody likes to be managed. Too bad eh? Everybody likes to get paid.