The Price of Admission

Part of the point of my efforts to make games and stories online is to prove what one can do with very little. And by very little I mean a computer, the Internet, and time.

The stuff I am doing on this site is done with free software. I am using GIMP to create the board for Zombie Stomp! I will use Open Office to write the rules and generate the PDF for Zombie Stomp! Corporate Raiders is being developed using Eclipse and Java—both of which are free. The writing I am doing for Big Time is with Open Office—again free. When I get around to podcasting I plan to record with Audacity which is also free.

While I have a domain name and a hosting account, these items are not strictly necessary. I could be at guyroyse.blogspot.com instead of guyroyse.com and I could host my images and PDFs on free sites if I looked around. I choose to have a domain name and hosting because I have the resources to do so. I have a day job that pays for it. It is a luxury.

The application hosting for Corporate Raiders and the other games that I will create, either through Hard Boiled Geek with Benjamin or on my own, are hosted with Google App Engine which is also free up until a certain point. A point which we will be well below for some time.

This hardest part of doing this is the time. Many folks have lots of that. Many don’t. I fall into the latter category so I have chosen to sacrifice television so that I can make these cool things and provide them to you. That frees up more time than anything else I could possibly do.

Folks, the point here is this—the price of admission is free. There are no barriers to entry. Poor college students can do this. Retired folks on fixed incomes can do this. My mom can do this. Anybody can do this. And I would know because I am anybody.

You should do it too.

— September 5, 2009

Zombie Stomp! Work in Progress (Part 3)

Just a little update on the progress of the Zombie Stomp! gameboard.

As you can see, the ship is pretty much done now. All that’s left to do is damage the ship up to match the sketch, add thrusters, and then add details in the interior of the ship. After that, I can work on a nice, spacey background and all the labels, lettering, and logos.

Then, of course I still have to make it into a PDF complete with rules and all that. But now that I think about it, the rules might be simple enough to just put right on the gameboard. Or not, a summary of them at least.

Enjoy!

— August 29, 2009

Zombie Stomp! Work in Progress (Part 2)

I thought that it might be a good idea to update you on the progress that has been made on Zombie Stomp!. So, here it is.

The board is progressing nicely but I have been running into barriers with my general graphic design skill level—or lack thereof—and that is slowing me down. Here’s what we have so far.

I’m actually rather proud of what I’ve made so far—although perhaps only in the way a father can be. I know that it probably looks amateurish to the professionals out there (you know who you are) but I’m impressed with what GIMP is capable of doing for free and I’m having fun.

The playtest that I planned to do this weekend has run into life-schedule-conflict-stuff and I have to postpone. I’m thinking a couple more weeks out so probably mid-September. In the meantime, I’ll keep working on the graphic and posting the results here for you to see.

— August 27, 2009

Status Updated and Other Projects

So I’ve been a little lax in reporting in of late. My family and I went on vacation and the last few weeks have been really hectic. But, I haven’t been sitting on my laurels the entire time, I have been working.

While on vacation I worked on my short story which has the working title of “Big Time”. Big Time is the story of a small time reporter, Theodore Chang, who has big dreams and an attitude to match. It takes place in a far future world where man has long since colonized the stars and has built a massive network of portals to connect all the planets into one metaworld that they call Pangaea. Theo gets a chance to do an exclusive interview of Gigacity’s most famous serial killer—the Portal Killer. The Portal Killer had hacked his way into the portal network and was using it to invade the homes of the rich and famous through their private portals, killing them in their sleep. That is, until he was caught. But then, why do people keep dying? Big Time should be a lot of fun and hopefully a bit surprising.

Zombie Stomp! is also moving forward. I plan to playtest the game at the end of the month and hope to have the rules written before then so I can hand them out at the playtest. I’ll post them here first, of course. And the results of the playtest afterwards too.

And I’ve also been working with my friend Benjamin on a joint venture to produce web-based computer games for your enjoyment under the brand Hard Boiled Geek. There’s isn’t much at our site yet—actually there’s nothing—but Benjamin is working on that.

Our first game is a stock trading game called Corporate Raiders. If you want to check out what the game has so far you can visit it at corporateraiders.hardboiledgeek.com. The game is still pretty young right now. We just have the mechanism to display the status of the market. Our next step is to actually make the market move. Then we can start adding features to buy and sell and start adding players.

Benajmin has a real knack for creating interesting companies for the fictitious Atlantic Stock Exchange and reading the names and descriptions of these companies can be a lot of fun. I encourage you to check it out and give us some feedback on how it looks and the content. If we like you’re feedback we might even name a company after you! Once we get some more functionality up and running we’ll also want to start inviting some beta-test users. So if you’re interested drop me a line at guy@guyroyse.com.

So, while I haven’t been posting much of what I’ve been working on, you can probably see that I’ve been a busy little beaver. And, I’m have a lot of fun making all this content, even if there isn’t much for you to see at the moment. But when it comes, all these irons I have in the fire will be done at once. And won’t that be fun!

— August 13, 2009

Zombie Stomp! Work in Progress

I’ve been working hard on the Zombie Stomp! game-board and though I would share a work in progress image so y’all knew I was working on something and hadn’t abandoned the project. So, here it is.

As you can see, I have got the interior walls and structure in place and the textures on the floor. I’ve also added doors but not any hatches yet. Exterior walls, damage to the ship and large items inside of the ship are next. After that, a nice spacey background and then details such as frost in the cryopods, little yellow and black caution strips, maybe some blood splatters. That kinda thing.

I’m also thinking I will need some kind of logo for the game. If anyone had some ideas for a logo, suggest them in the comments or email them to me directly. Major props will go out for whomever puts a logo together for the game and epic props for the one arbitrarily selected by yours truly.

Once the board is done, I’ll start working on the PDF. I’m planning on including in the PDF detailed rules and the game-board—conveniently sized for printing on card stock, cutting up, and spreading out on the gaming table—plus cutout zombies and humans that can be folded as little triangles and used a game pieces.

— July 20, 2009