The first is one that I receive a lot of requests for. It is Banjo-Tooie. The first episode of that will air on Thursday at 5 PM PST. I haven’t finished the game, so parts of it will be blind. I will be doing a Q&A while I play the game.

The second series is a bit different. I will be streaming a play-through of the game “Alan Wake.” If you’ve never heard of it before, it is a game written as a horror story. The first episode of that will air on Saturday at 4 PM PST. Be sure to turn the lights off for this one.

Hope to see you there!

Reimu Party is a Mario Party style game with Touhou characters. Some of you probably already know that we have already begun working on the game. And, yes, “we.” I will be doing the coding and heading the design/development of the game. Helping me are Shintear and Native Faith. Shintear is going to be doing the character art. Native Faith will be helping with planning, brainstorming, and design. There is a lot of work ahead of us. I am currently looking to get another artist to primarily work on backgrounds and boards. (No this isn’t an invitation for you to apply for the position. I don’t need poor artists commenting saying they can help).

Once we get more done, and something to show, I will put up a project page for the game. That will also be the time when we start accepting donations. You want to show support for this right? Show that you appreciate us working hard on a game for you to play? We will accept some ideas for the game, but it is ultimately our decision how it ends up. We’re not going to add or change something due to favoritism or one person’s say. Just trust us. We will be using the new “Dev” section for managing the project.

A brief look at what we have planned. We plan to release the game with 8 playable characters, 5 game boards, and 25 mini-games. Time permitting, we might add more. In the future, after the summer, we could upgrade the game to have more content as well. The 8 playable characters are:

• Reimu
• Marisa
• Sakuya
• Sanae
• Youmu
• Reisen
• Cirno
• Komachi

The 5 game boards will be:

• Bamboo Forest of the Lost
• Human Village
• Underground Geyser
• Youkai Mountain
• Library (in Scarlet Devil Mansion)

The mini-games are still being designed, so I can’t list them all here. Other Touhou characters will be appearing in the mini-games. Unlike my other projects, I won’t be releasing a prototype, alpha, or beta for public testing. We will handle the testing.

The theme of the game is slightly cartoonish, so the characters are drawn to match. The game will be in 2D. Here are some idea sketches drawn by Shintear:

The game will be multi-player. Multi-player support will include local game-play and remote game-play. That means you can play with others online and around you. It will support controllers as well as a keyboard. We will be making it mostly like your typical Mario Party game, however will be adding some of our own ideas.

As we get more of the game done, you can expect screenshots and videos/streams to be posted. Right now, there isn’t much to show since we’ve just started. Hopefully you will enjoy the game when it is complete.

Small Projects

There are a couple of development programs I want to make. The first one is a program that generates code and network messages for a protocol. What this would do is allow users (mostly me) to create networked programs really fast. Typically, TCP and even UDP code is copied and pasted over and over. Minor changes are made here and there. The inner workings are basically the same. So I figure I should just make a program that generates the code. There’s already software out there for this. But, the problem is that they either suck, have a bad interface, or cost money. So, meh, I’ll just make my own and put it up for others to use if I think it’s good.

The other project I want to work on isn’t exactly small. I should be able to develop it fairly quickly, though. I used to develop entire web applications, so this will be easy. On this website, I would like to extend it to add features for development. Some of those features are:

• Discussions structured for promoting creativity
• Ability to easily share and publish code
• Automated build and test system
• Open atmosphere for collaboration

These features would greatly aid projects in the future. During the summer, I plan to work with at least one artist on the game(s). I’m not very good at drawing or doing artwork. A collaboration tool like this would help in these types of situations. I’ll be writing a post about it later, explaining the changes to come.

Lastly, another project I plan to do is a “table computer.” Basically, what it is is a computer built into a table. The screen is glass and multi-touch. This is very useful for things where you don’t want to sit down and turn on a computer for. Just tap the glass and start looking at what you want. It would be powerful enough to play games on it. Of course, only “touch” games would be any fun.

I will probably use Windows 8 for the operating system. Yes, it will probably be a horrible OS for desktops when it comes out. However, it is almost perfect for something like this. I would also like to be able to write on the table like I can on my tablet laptop. The screen supports pen and touch. I’m having difficulty finding providers for that type of material. The top needs to be glass so that if I put anything on it, it won’t damage the screen.

Larger Projects

Alright, here’s the good stuff. I have a few ideas for games that I would like to make. I would like to make all of them at some point, but I can’t do them all at once. Just a note to remember, all of these ideas will have single-player and multi-player game modes.

RTS Space Game

I got the idea for this game after a dream I had a couple of years ago. So the idea goes like this:

Humans have begun exploring the universe. They have built stations and colonies in space. However, a few months ago, they were attacked by an unknown race and virtually everything was destroyed. Your group was dispatched to fight them off, but you failed and had to retreat or be killed. For the past few months, you and the rest of your crew have been hiding from the attackers while searching for remains. Eventually you do find some, and it turns out to be a suitable place to start a base of operations.

This is when the campaign starts. You are the leader of the crew and you must build a base and defend it from constant attacks. You base is on a large remaining scrap from one of the stations that was attacked. As you progress through the game, you discover more places to build, and eventually start to rebuild the stations to their former glory. I am purposely leaving out the rest, because they are plot spoilers.

Features of this game:

• Massive space to explore and build
• Continue using and defending bases that you have already established
• Build ships, command fleets, and take out enemies
• Real time strategy with resources management
• City simulation
• Multiple races
• Online multi-player support – co-op and versus

This game would be free for the first 20 users that get it in the beta. After that, new players have to pay for it.

RTS Tree fort or Snow base

These game share a common system, but just have different themes. The tree fort idea is inspired by Codename: Kids Next Door. So here is how these go:

You are the leader of a group of kids on your block. Various enemies show to be a threat against you. You decide to build a fort/base to prepare for attacks. You spend your time in the game building the fort/base and controlling your group of kids.

For the design you create weapons and put them in your base. You base is also used for training new recruits. There are also traps and defenses you can add to your base. The game worlds are smaller, so you will get attacked. However, you can also easily get to your opponent, but they can have similar defenses that you will need to get around. Getting around the defenses and defeating your opponent will require some thought. There are various classes of “kids” in the game. Examples are ninjas, archers, nerds (researchers), pyro technicians (explosives), and other fun classes. Both of these games would have online multi-player versus.

Now for specifics of each game. With the tree fort game, your base is in a giant tree, or multiple trees. You can build sheds and houses, but those aren’t the main focus (or the safest). You can also build underground. Typically, the maps will be small. In exchange, there is a lot of vertical space to build. Prepare for lots of strange weaponry and items with this game.

In the snow fort game, you have to build almost everything out of snow and ice. Snow is not an infinite resource (unless it is snowing). You must command your kids to build for you. Snow forts can be very large and multiple levels. Building underground is also allowed. The primary ammunition for weapons are snowballs. Snowballs do require snow to make, so use your resources wisely. Other resources are: water, ice (made from water or found), slush, and rocks. To make some structures, different resources are needed. Game maps are bigger, and can take place in some strange locations. Like a beach in the summer, you get your snow imported. As time passes, your structures will melt.

Features of these games:

• Comical and fun gameplay
• Lots of room for creativity when building bases
• Build bases, command an army of kids
• Real time strategy with resources management
• Online multi-player support – versus only

These games would be free for the first 20 users that get it in the beta. After that, new players have to pay for it.

Reimu Party

I know already that a lot of people will chose this option. From the title, this should be pretty self-explanatory. It is a Mario Party styled game, but with Touhou characters and an overall Touhou theme. If you’re unfamiliar with Mario Party, this is how it works:

Players choose a character to play as. They then make their way around a game board. The game boards are interactive; there are traps, items, and events. As the players go through the game, they gain and lose coins. Most of the coins are won from mini-games. A mini-game is played after everyone has had a turn, every turn. Mini-games are random games in which the players compete to win or just to survive. The goal of the game is to get the most stars. Stars can be purchased on the game board for coins (usually 20). The person with the most stars when the turns run out wins.

There will be 6-8 playable characters to choose from. Up to 4 players can play at once. If there aren’t enough players, the remaining slots are filled with an AI. Time depending, there will be at least 4 game boards. Each game board will take place in a different area of Gensokyo. For example, one would be the Bamboo Forest of the Lost. I would like to have at least 25 mini-games available. Of course, it isn’t hard to add more and make an update for the program.

There would be two game modes. The first is party mode, which is your typical Mario Party game of going around the board and playing mini-games. The other mode is battle mode. Batttle mode is where you interact with other players as you pass them on the board and land on the same space. The competition between players is much higher. In battle mode, each character has a special ability that only they can use. In party mode, all characters are balanced, and these abilities aren’t available.

Features of this game:

• Fun to play
• Various games in one (mini-games)
• Two game modes, party and battle
• Mario Party!
• Touhou!
• Salt!
• Online multi-player support

This game would be free for everyone.

Thoughts?

Let me know what you think in the comments. I’ll develop the game that has the most interest.

I put up a fundraiser for the server, asking for $200 for the year. That is about a year’s worth of payments for the server. In a short period of time, I received enough donations to pay for the server for an entire year. I have credited $200 to my provider. That means that the lobby is paid for an entire year. You won’t have to worry about it going offline due to payments.

Thanks again to everyone who donated! All of you have received a donator achievement and the ability to change your profile icon.

First off, I’d like to talk about one of the employees. She is not well-liked. How she got the job, we don’t know. It is very annoying for us because she doesn’t know things for the job. That might be because she isn’t “bright” or is almost never there. She gets next to nothing done and shows up for maybe ten hours a week. To give you an idea of how much she does this, I have emails from her filter to my junk mail. “I’m working from home”, “I’m sick”, “My child is out today” etc. There’s some days that she doesn’t even show up at all, with no warning.

She is in her forties, so we’re not talking about an irresponsible teenager here. Sometimes she uses the excuse that she has to take care of her kids. But that doesn’t add up. She told us that her kids live with her parents in another town over an hour away. So why is she taking time off to take care of kids that aren’t even around? We also noticed the trend that she would show up at 10 AM, leave at 11, come back at 1 PM and leave again at 3. Bit of a crazy schedule, right?

Yesterday and today, she didn’t show up at all, no emails either. We found out that she doesn’t work for the company anymore. We’re glad to hear that. She had been on performance review (about to be fired unless she improved). It turns out, she was working a second job at another big company. She would take time off to work at that other job. Our boss found out, and she resigned. This is horribly wrong for so many reasons. She was getting paid to work full-time, but she wasn’t even showing up full-time. Also, the other company she worked for is a technology company. It is against our contracts to work another job. If she revealed company secrets to the other company, she could be sued. Wow, just, wow.

We found out more information about the new policy put into place. Contract workers are not allowed to work for more than a year. However, contract workers that are enrolled in school (a.k.a. interns), are exempt from this. Whew, I still have my job! My friend Jon, though, is still looking for a job. He is not in school anymore.

One of the interns on our team, Mike, worked his last day today. He found another job that he really liked. So we’ve lost two people from our team this week. Our boss is of-course concerned about this. We have a shortage now. So, Jon has now been offered a full-time job on our team. Which is good for him, but he’s going to see if there’s any other jobs he’s interested in before making a decision. If he decides to take the offer, he will be working on a different team.

Everything worked out okay at my job, better than expected.

I decided to move to a new host (one that I’ve heard good things about) because of recent issues with my job. The new hosting costs me $20/mo. That is a tenth of the price I paid before. However, I can’t run game servers or similar programs on it. For Soku Lobby, this means that relay will not be available on the new host. I will leave the relay running on the old host for another month. After that, relay won’t be available.

There’s a couple of minor issues that have appeared when moving to the new host. The first is that the [Link] and [YouTube] preview text doesn’t support UTF8. This means any Japanese characters won’t display properly. The other issue is with idlers. UDP is a less reliable on the new host. If you’re idling during a low-time (such as early morning in the US), you might get disconnected from a timeout. This issue will go away when the migration to Gachapon Lobby happens, which uses TCP.

One of my good friends, which is a friend to our group of interns, was told today he would not be hired full-time, and would actually be laid off at the end of April. He graduated last Spring, and was supposed to be hired on full-time. However, due to hiring freezes, he hasn’t been hired full-time. He has remained a contract worker for almost a year. This might seem ok, but others have been getting hired during these freezes. His contract actually ended February 28, 2012, but his boss extended it to the end of April. Another one of us was told the same thing about the policy.

I’ve worked for this company for three years, since before the bigger company bought us. The bigger company has been pushing more and more of their policies on us. When they bought us, however, they said “we like your work environment, and would like to keep it.” So much for that, right?

So here’s what the new policy is about. Contract workers are not allowed to work for the company longer than a year. Why is this? It is most likely a result of a class action lawsuit that happened against Microsoft. Some of their contract workers were unhappy that they were not getting benefits, even though they were being treated like full-time employees. Well, I don’t see what the problem is. If you’re a contract worker, you should not expect benefits. Simple as that. I’m not going to sue my company because I’m not getting benefits, even though I’m treated like an employee.

What’s wrong with this? Well, it puts me on the list for getting laid off in the next few months. I make a decent amount of money, considering my age and the economy. I depend on that income to keep this server up, which runs my blog, the Minecraft servers, Mumble, Soku Lobby, and soon Gachapon Lobby. If I lose this job, I will not be able to afford the server any longer. Of course, there are options. I’m quite happy with my current host. They’re really good with support and I’ve had no problems. There’s even no bandwidth cap, which is rare for VPS.

Right now, I pay for a dedicated game server so I can host game servers on it. I’ve lost interest in the primary game I host (Minecraft), so I would be ok with taking those down. I can migrate to a less powerful VPS. That would allow the chat servers and website to stay running. Soku Lobby would lose relay capabilities, since that requires a lot of bandwidth and processing (something a VPS can’t do, but my dedicated host can). A decent VPS server is about $50-$80 a month. But if I’m without a job, I have to rely on donations. Being a college student, I can’t afford to keep a server up without a job. I have been keeping an eye out for other jobs, but the chances of me getting a good paying one (if one at all) are low.

For me to stay with the company, my team would need to a lot of fighting. Not just for me, but the other interns. They would lose two of their top testers from a team of six (counting only the ones that do testing). We’re already overworked as it is. Plus, they would lose the knowledge we have. I have been working on an automation system, and if I was taken away from it before it was finished and explained, that would be a waste. It would have to be learned, or started over from scratch by someone new. This would be a waste of time and money, especially since it takes someone 8-12 months to get comfortable with the product and to efficiently use it. So they’re going to lay off people as soon as they get good?

We already know, from previous experiences, that the bigger company does not care about us, the contractors/interns. It is apparent when they do paperwork for us. Oh, and being shoved into a meeting room, all seven or eight of us. We’ve been there for three-quarters of a year now, even though there are empty cubes that we could go back to. It’s a hassle for us to communicate with team members when they’re on the other side of the building. The bigger company doesn’t usually listen to what we say. Frankly, I’m concerned about what will happen. What happened to be able to work while I’m in school and almost guaranteed a full-time position after I graduate?

While it is possible that I could keep my job, it would be best to prepare for the worst. I will probably move to a VPS, and hopefully be able to afford that.

Example of a battle

When you first play the game, it might seem a bit overwhelming. “Oh no, how am I supposed to play 3 panels of arrows at the same time?” Well, here’s the thing, you don’t. You play on one, then swap to the others when you need to. Once you get the hang of it, you find openings and switch to other panels during that time. For example, the panel you always need to pay attention to is the “Defense” panel. If you miss too many arrows on that one, you will lose. So you switch to it when something is coming up, and switch back when you’re done. It’s like playing a DS, but with 3 screens.

There’s an RPG system integrated with the game. As you play, you gain experience and level up. You can equip items and make new items. It’s your typical RPG. How this is integrated into a rhythm game is where it gets interesting. Your character has HP, Attack, Defense, Mana, and other stats. In-game, if you miss arrows on the Defense panel, your HP goes down. Your attack determines how much damage is done to the opponent’s HP when you perform a spell. There are various spells that do different things. To cast one, you have to switch to the Spell panel and hit all of the arrows in the combo. Some spells have breaks in them, which allow you time to switch to another panel. This adds some strategy to the game. The timing of the arrows is always the same for the song, but the arrows are randomized each time.

A Guardian battle

Here’s on of the frustrating parts of the game. Creating items or learning a spell costs you experience (XP). And yes, you will lose levels too. On top of that, you have a chanceof being successful. You can raise your chances of success, but doing so will cost more experience – which really sucks if you fail. And there is no 100% chance of success. There is always a small possibility of failure. So after you “synth” something (as it is called), you probably have to go grind a bit before being ready for the boss.

Each boss, or “Guardian”, has a special ability that will mess with your gameplay in some way. Some aren’t too bad, others will piss you off. Each guardian has their own personality, which brings a lot of humor to the game. One is a stunning resemblance to Joseph Ducreux, and will troll you. Another one talks like an old MUD game. There are even parts of the story that throw in internet references, like “pics or gtfo.” If you frequent “certain” sites on the internet, you’ll be busting a gut over some of the dialogues.

I do believe your mother has had nightly experiences with other men.

The music in the game is very catchy. The songs are in some sub-genre of electronic, but provide a decent variety. Some songs are faster than others, and the arrows will speed up for those songs. There is a story in the game, which I won’t talk about here because of spoilers. However, story points only occur at the start and end of each level/floor. It makes you feel on your own for a bit while you grind songs.

Overall, Sequence is a good game. If you’re a hardcore rhythm game player, you probably won’t enjoy it as much, due to the slightly awkward controls and mechanics. But if you enjoy music games, and want a good laugh, then you should try this game. I know I have enjoyed it and plan to play through it again on a harder difficulty.