Postmortem: Adam Jones Productions’ Word Builder

Introduction

With the recent release of the Flash game Sandbagz: Medeval! here at Adam JonesProductions we want to keep the momentum going by releasing another game wedeveloped. This brings us to the game WordBuilder and in many ways it is largely different from Sandbagz. Even though WordBuilder has little in common with our previous game it was still done bythe same team that worked on Sandbagz;with exception of the artist. At Adam Jones Productions we like to makeourselves varied in the genres we tackle from action, puzzle, adventure, and soon. The company wants to show that we are capable of going from one side of thespectrum to the other without any hiccups. Without further ado, here is asummary of development of Word Builder.



What Went Right?

ActionScript Programming

Jordan was the lead, main,and only programmer on Word Builder’s development time. Overall the developmentof Word Builder went smoothly. Since the game takes place by dropping tiles onto a grid, Jordan startedby building a functional grid system for the each wordblock’s placement. Also he was able to gothrough and build the overallfunctionality of the game with moderate ease. While he did hit some bumps inthe road he was able to solve the problem quickly and move on to the next partof the project.



The Audio & Art Assets

Here at Adam JonesProductions we pride ourselves on the quality of the games we release for eachgame we produce. When programming a sophisticatedpuzzle game we in turn want art and an interface that reflected that look. Incomes Roa to design and create all the art assets for the game. Roa has hasa unique style that sets himapart from other artists. Every piece of art asset was able to reflect thesophistication of Word Builder’s persona.

Since Word Builder wasdifferent from Sandbagz the music had to reflect that idea; ergo no beatboxingfor the soundtrack. As much as we wanted it this game had to contain an audiotrack that would let the player think calmly to execute words in Word Builder.Dieppa, who did the audio for Sandbagz, came onto the project with an audiotrack that was a good fit into Word Builder. Using Sony Acid Pro Dieppa wasable to engineer an audio track that featured pianos playing in the background.A looping song with a nice, smooth, calming air aimed to encourage the playerto slow down and think while creating words.






What Went Wrong?

Functionality in ActionScript

At first we created a grid and then created the tiles, and originally wewould have the tiles drag-and-dropped onto the grid itself. However, twoproblems arose. One: having the tilesreference the grid location was a challenge. Two: the layering itself with sometitles appearing behind other tiles regardless of the z-loc. The way we fixedthis problem was by using a sleight of hand technique where the tiles wouldrepresent a trigger that would change the grid square from being an emptysquare to a square with a letter in it according to the tile dropped. Thissolved the layering issue as well as the referencing problem.

The Differences from Sandbagz and Word Builder

It is quite obvious that WordBuilder is on the opposite side of spectrum from Sandbagz as a game. Sandbagz was an action game and WordBuilder being a puzzle game, respectively. Programming a straight forwardsimple action game can coincide with how a programmer can code the base syntaxlogic. However, programming a puzzle game brings a lot more complexity to thelogic; e.g. as we stated before referencing the grid locations was a difficultfeat to overcome.



Conclusion

Overall, working on WordBuilder was a different experience for the team at Adam Jones Productions.The approach to programming the game was more complex, and the music was a bitmore sophisticated. Here at Adam Jones Productions we believe we were able toshow off that we are not just programming action games all the time; we candefinitely develop a variety of genres.


Credits

Programmer – Jordan Card

Artist – Michael Roa

Audio – Andrew Dieppa

QA Lead – Andrew Dieppa

QA Testers – Matthew Santiago, Mike Albanese, Claudia Rolle

Producer/Game Designer – Adam Jones


Programs Used

Adobe Flash 4

Sony Acid Pro

Adobe Photoshop 4


Links

http://www.adamjonesproductions.com

http://www.andrewdieppa.blogspot.com

http://www.mochimedia.com/games/word-builder/

New Year's Eve with a Blue Moon, and Rolling into 2010 with new Opportunities

Reflection in the Year of 2009

It is New Year's Eve today I take this time to reflect on the events that happened to me this year. All that was set in motion that led up to this Final Day of the Year. I am excited today that when the clock strikes 00:00 ringing in January 1, 2010 there will be a Blue Moon. I want to see it and think, reflect, and move on with my life. . Near the end of last year I was laid off from my job, and then I was given a job at Paychex in January of 2009. This year I was able to meet a gentleman that gave me the opportunity to work in the independent video game development.

Moving onto 2010

Near the end of the 2009 I was given the opportunity by Adams to take on a design position at Adam Jones Productions. Also, the last two weeks I had received an e-mail from a gentleman who is an Marketing Research Executive from Packt's Publishing. He saw that I was interested in developing Unity Game Engine and approached me to review his company's book that was made to teach Unity which was aptly named Unity Game Development Essentials.

I am really excited to read this book and to gain the knowledge necessary to develop in Unity. This book is written by Will Goldstone who also has a website with video tutorials on working in Unity. The book it self is written with the purpose to expand on techniques from the video tutorials from the website.

Conclusion

All these opportunities coming my way makes me think heavily and reflect on this year. 2009 has been an quite experience in my life. These thoughts run through my head as everything seems to be falling into place for me at this point in my life. I am looking forward to 2010, graduation, interning at AJP, working at Paychex, working in Unity with the aid of the book, the GRE, and hopefully FIEA in the Fall of 2010.

Links

Unity Game Development Essentials:

http://www.packtpub.com/unity-game-development-essentials?utm_source=andrewdieppa.blogspot.com&utm_medium=bookrev&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=mdb_001943

Sample Chapter from Unity Game Development Essentials:

http://www.packtpub.com/files/8181-unity-game-development-essentials-sample-chapter-4-interactions.pdf

Postmortem: Sandbagz, Writing, and Reading

Sandbagz Production

Recently at my internship at Adam Jones Productions they have released a flash game called Sandbagz: Medeval! to be played on a browser. The game was released just yesterday and was able to make it to the front page of GamePro's Free Games page. Needless to say my boss is very ecstatic over that and the number of hits we been getting. My involvement of the game was being the quality assurance administrator. In other words I was in charge of the testing and who tested the game. We were able to get a lot of positive feedback on the game as well as some suggestions for the sequel of the game. I was also involved with managing the sound effects and the soundtrack of the game. Joe Adams and I did a lot of the sound effects using our vocal cords, and at one point I took a punch to the leg to get an effect of someone getting hit.

Writing and Reading

Lately in my life I have finally been able to read books for pleasure now other than just for educational purposes. I picked up three books that I have read in the course of the last two months. I read the Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff which is about the explanation of Taoism with the use of Winnie-the-Pooh. I also read Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters which was an excellent novel. A model with a prominent career and a great husband ruined after her lower jaw was shot off. Currently I am reading Crooked Little Vein and Unity Game Development Essentials to learn more about the Unity Engine.

For the last part Jordan and I have been collaborating to develop a comic book that takes place during the 1930s, but it is set in a cyberpunk universe. I am writing the main story line and Jordan is doing all the art. Right now we are currently in the development stage where I am writing character bios, timelines, and Jordan is doing some character art based off of what I wrote. Hopefully we can get a lot done in the course of the next months.

Links

Here is a link to the recently released flash game Sandbagz: Medeval!

http://www.davigames.com/games.php?id=9760

Here is a link to the postmortem for Sandbagz

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AndrewDieppa/20091218/3864/Postmortem_Sandbagz_Medeval.php

Assigned a New Task

I am an intern at the company Adam Jones Productions. I was first hired on as a content provider for fiction for a game that is being developed. After a while though I was assigned to QA administering for their game which granted me the power to have people test the game after they have signed an NDA. My friend Jordan Card went from being an intern at the company to a full time worker programming games in Flash for Adam Jones Productions.

A few weeks ago the project manager at the company asked me to do some XNA programming for a couple of mini games to be released on Xbox Live Indie Games. However, upon a meeting with Joe Adams (producer, and owner) and Jordan Card at the CoLab I took it upon myself to start learning the Unity Engine. When Joe Adams was observing me learning and familiarizing myself with the interface of Unity, he asked me if I should develop the mini games on Unity rather than XNA. I would like to learn and develop on the Unity Engine, but I would have to discuss it with the project manager to see if he would be all right with me learning a brand new engine I am starting to learn or keep going with XNA which I have used in the past.

Welcome to Enigmatic Mind

Hello to all my readers that probably do not exists, yet. My name is Andrew Dieppa and I welcome you to my blog. What is my blog about? Well, to answer your question it is to serve as a place to post mortem anything I write creatively. I aspire to be a game designer in the video game industry, but I have a passion for writing fiction. Now I want to post what I write online and give you my readers a background of what you may be reading in the near future. Hopefully I can get some fiction done soon so you guys can get to reading my literary works.