Christ, I've been busy. I've got my fingers in about 20 different pies right now. Here's a little concept art for Conjurer to tide you guys over.
You can read more about what I'm up to at my production blog.
I'm a freelance game developer working for all sorts of companies big and small, as well as spending time pushing out my own indie titles.
James Dalby
@mongoid
Age 45, Male
Game Developer
UC Irvine
Irvine, CA
Joined on 1/3/02
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Man, I've been busy.
Comments
You're working on Conjurer for like, 4 years now? How big is it gonna be?
LOL! I get this a lot, so let me give everyone a bit of history....
Conjurer started as a hobby project halfway through my computer science degree at UC Irvine in California. After working with ArmorGames and not really enjoying the two week deadlines on my projects, I went off on my own and started doing my own thing. I met up with Tom Fulp at Comicon 08, and we talked about me doing a game that would get sponsored by Newgrounds. Tom wanted to see something that emulated an old Neo Geo game he played called Magician Lord. I took it from there.
I would program and develop Conjurer in my off time at school. As I got better and better at computer science, I kept on adding new features and scrapping old, inefficient code. I used it as a means of learning how to implement Object Oriented Programming, asset management, implementing bitmaps and sprite sheets, programming paradigms, version control, artificial intelligence, etc.
It got bigger and bigger until I was almost ready to graduate college. By then, I realized that I had a pretty good idea of how to build Conjurer into a full fledged desktop application. I looked at the art style and realized that it was out of date and lacked polish. The story was piecemeal. You could probably beat the game in an hour. I saw the limited level design and knew that I could make it much more expansive without it being too expensive on RAM and CPU. I looked at the enemies and realized that they were simple and uninspired.
So I decided to reboot. Conjurer has gone from a simple flash browser game to my first epic indie project. It's already received a lot of positive feedback from local game companies (despite its incomplete state), and may turn out to be my first major title when I finally break into the video game industry.
I know it's been a long time coming, and I'm very grateful for everyone's continued support and input (I have actually implemented many suggestions that my fans have offered), but believe me when I say that the game you saw three years ago is nothing like what it has become today.
^__^
This is a fuckin GREAT concept of a dragondude flying thing. I wish I was makin a game with you, cos you're good at all the stuff I'm bad at.
Except finishing projects.
I'm releasing a game as a pay-to-download GAME game n I'm not even that smart. If I can do it then you definately could.
I liked the old art for the main guy better, it had more personality.
Would you mind sharing what service you're using for digital distribution? And are you using any DRM?
Your art is really amazing. But, the gameplay i saw so far is not that good. :(
Probably because not a lot of final gameplay hasn't been implemented. Keep your eyes peeled. I'll post demos when it's finished.
Well I have a marketting guy who sends out press releases and alpha-builds to distribution sites like BigFish Games and Gamersgate, some foreign sites and a bunch of places I've never heard of. Obviously the white whale is Steam and Apple, who've both asked US to SEND THEM the game instead of us trying to punch through.
And the main reason I'm getting any attention is ALL because I met this guy in marketting. I stick to makin the game and he sticks to sellin it, then we'll split the profits. All I'm doing personally is just makin the game.
The only conversation I've had about DRM is that we should promise post-launch content like levels or characters or something, because pirates hate having a 90% version of a game and they hate having to download anythin more than once. My marketting guy says "they'll buy it because they'll support innovation and indie blah blah" which I don't believe at all.
Also we're definately allowing Paypal and major credit cards...
In a nuthsell: no, but ask me again later
Gianni
You had a kid right?
You cannot feed the child with only concept art! It hungers for full production!
This may be a really stupid question, but do you already have a cast for voices? It looks like an awesome project, and if you're going to be holding auditions some day, I wanna bear it in mind because I would love to try out.
mongoid
I will definitely keep this in mind.
Full production on Conjurer is being put behind RockCandy for a good reason. RockCandy is immensely smaller in scope, and is sort of a practice run for making a desktop app. Sort of a "toe-in-the-water" project compared to a full on cannon ball.