Prototyping disclaimer!  As with the first one, if you're not interested in game development, this is probably painfully boring.  But, this video shows more of how we prototype gameplay features using Unreal Kismet in UDK. 

Important note:  as with the other video, this has NOTHING TO DO WITH OUR FIRST GAME, LILI.  This is just one of many random concepts.

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Returned from Seattle this morning, caught ye olde red-eye back.  So tired!

BUT, the show went really well.  I showed Lili off to quite a few press people, potential partners, friends and fellow developers.  It's a fair statement I think to say it showed really well, everyone who saw it seemed really impressed and I couldn't have been happier with the comments.

The build we took had our elusive "non-combat" system disabled, or, rather the enemies were removed from the world… but a handful of people got a peek into what that system holds in store.  Now we're "un-ripping-out" the things from the build to get it playable again.

OMG holy shit, while I was gone, the levels got insane polish.  Mikey busted out all the remaining building interiors, and they are AMAZING.  Exploring these houses and interiors is going to be such a kick for people!  I also hear there was some cool non-combat system work, I can't wait to check out!

Got to hang out with Luke and Phil from Halfbrick, which is always a fantastic time!  Always lots of great advice from those guys, they're awesomely open with information.  Also bumped into the Hidden Variable guys, who made Bag-It… which I've long been a fan of on iOS.

While out there I also swung by DigiPen, which was hosting the Seattle Indie Expo.  There was some excellent work on display there.  Nels showed off the upcoming XBLA game Mark of the Ninja, and it is… SLICK  super super slick.  They say it's out soon, it definitely looks ready to roll, and I will be grabbing it day one.  It's like an amazing Tenchu 2D vibe.  Also Shellrazer was on hand, which is available already in iOS and it's very cool as well.  Definitely go grab it, the mood and style is hilarious and imposing all at once.

OK, back to Lili now… we're in the home stretch on much of the game, and it feels amazing!

We heard questions from a couple people asking why we didn't set up a KickStarter campaign.  Some even speculated that we were of the anti-KickStarter persuasion.

The truth is we really did not want to announce our new company and come out of the gate with nothing more than "Hey, we're Ex-Epic guys!" to show for it.  So, working over the past months quietly to get Lili far along was a priority, more so than trying to line our coffers or build early buzz.

KickStarter is an awesome platform for exposure, more so than generating actual income in many cases.  It's a great tool, but we can imagine some backlash for using it incorrectly.

Down the road would we consider doing a KickStarter campaign?  Maaaaybe, if that's still the fashion.  But it would have to be for a project that had requirements beyond what we could provide ourselves.  Maybe if there was something that required a big investment in back end support.

So, there you go.  Nothing against KickStarter, it just didn't work with our timeline or goals.  And honestly, we're OK for now; we would prefer people support indie projects that live or die based on those proceeds.  So, go out there, find some awesome little venture that's just crazy enough to be brilliant, and support the community.

Our "non-combat" system comments have created some great speculation out there.  Mikey noticed this awesome comment from Richard Kettering over in the Touch Arcade comments:

TouchArcade Story

"Lili will use a "non-combat" system for battling with enemies"  – speaking as a dev, it's unfortunate that damn near all games have to rely on killing stuff, simply because "subtracting from a count of hitpoints" is so easy to code, in a world where coding is so difficult that one is lucky to get anything out the door.  For better or worse, the coding complexity problem is intractable, but at least it'd be nice to see some thematic efforts to dress up "depleting a number" in something other than killing.

One brainstorm idea that just occurred to me, from seeing the trailer, is clockwork enemies who are far to tough to damage – but who only have a certain amount of windup, and every action they take (especially anything requiring lots of strength) depletes it until they grind to a halt.  Where "combat" is about the same depth of fast-paced movement, but rather than attack, it's about evasion.  Or possibly about gumming up the works.

Hopefully someone makes a game out of that idea.

Really cool idea Richard!  It's not anything like that, mind you, but that's a damn fine theory you have there.  Too cool.

OK, it's 7:00 AM, and we just finished working… almost.  Good news, the trailer is done, the screenshots are done, the website, facebook, twitter account, media kit, you tube… all of it… done done and DONE!  Bad news is… none of us have slept, and with any luck today will be a big day  Yay for caffeine!

Kudos to Dana over at Epic for sticking out yesterday and getting a great press release put together with us!  Thanks Dana!

Howdy all.  If you don't really care about how games are made, you should probably just ignore this whole post and video… honestly this video is going to bore you to tears.  If you're interested in prototyping, and more so specifically prototyping with the Unreal Kismet tools, you might find this really interesting.

Important note:  this video has NOTHING TO DO WITH OUR FIRST GAME, LILI.  This is just one of many random concepts we have been bouncing around, and I figured I'd film this one.

Even more important note:  I say "aaaah" a lot.  Sorry about that, it was early in the morning for me  :)

Hola!  Naturally everyone who starts a company assumes they'll toss up a blog area with all kinds of dev updates and random musings that will be interesting enough to draw people back.

So, yeah, we are too.  You're looking at it.  This page is super informal and we will drop all kinds of vids on here and such.  In fact, I'm just about to add a video of some prototype work from a couple months ago.

Enjoy!