Paying for all that ramen with some quick AR
Howdy Homeboysandgirls,
A quick update on Defectiveland: we’ve made a handful of improvements to the Gimbal Cop build we submitted to IGF on the 17th, have a few more improvements to make from that state, and will be sending out to our little super-alpha list pronto. “Before November” was my plan… mayhap.
Why the holdup? Well, a few days after the IGF deadline, a pretty ideal contract landed in our lap: the great creative agency we worked with on our Big Hush-Hush Contract Of 2011 came to us asking to finish off a mostly-done mobile Augmented Reality app for a maaaajor international brand, paying our monthly burn rate every 3 days, slated to last for 3 weeks. So, strapped for ramencash as we are, and always happy to keep good doors open (like, ours…. and good relations), we went for it, meaning that Schoen and I have our hands a little tied up last week and this week, and, if all goes according to plan, less and less so after this week.
I’ll also mention that we have a few nifty and new AR ideas we want to play around with in indie-mode, so this is a good excuse to get paid to learn how to AR. So look forward to Defective fuzzifying your reality/illusion barrier and making you question your surroundings and sanity sometime soon.
This is all part of a larger riff on contract vs. independent work that I’d love to elaborate upon soon: guaranteed financial security of contracts vs. artistic fulfillment and potentially much greater payout of indie projects… yes, a larger discussion for another day.
But, worry not about any Gimbal Cop stagnation! Danger works away on Gimbal Cop’s AI (we know you’re not always going to be having a First World iPhone Party), Elliott touches the pretties, Miles jams and foleys into your earballs, and Junkles animates into the Vancouverian nights, working on the first Gimbal Cop animated featurette (turns out there’s a lot more code than animation to be done on a procedural tentacle-racer… who knew?!). Between tasks on the unnamed contact, I’ve been fixing up some GUI and controls business and jamming on the next gameplay iterations, and Lead Tentacle Technician Schoen puts the final track transition, UV and doodad placement fixes into place.
Also Defectivehaus might get blown over by this Sandy madness. That would be no good.