Sunday, March 31, 2013

GDC 2013

I've been neglecting my blog for too long - we have big news all around. Our game was picked up by the University for showing at GDC so 7 members of Tripleslash (including myself) attended. The experience was amazing - it was great to have so many geeks under one roof! Nintendo's news of Web Framework was especially interesting for me. They seem to be posed to take Microsoft's place as the most indie-friendly of the three at the moment depending on what Microsoft and Sony may have up their sleeves.
The upcoming Havok Vision also looks REALLY cool. They will be fighting against the already entrenched Unity engine for market share but there are definitely many things going for them. Their state machine based animation system is fantastic and they obviously have a very high-end physics engine. Free deployment for mobile platforms also seems like a great move.
In GDC Play there were a few highlights for me. 'Forced' was a very fun 4-player coop game, basically Gauntlet meets Magicka. 'Super Motherload' looks like ridiculous party fun but I worry about being able to find 3 other people to play with. While it works with fewer players it would probably lose a lot of its charm. Even so, I'll be watching this one! Hawken looked amazing - that's probably why it was being used at the Oculus Rift booth.
Our game had a very positive reception from everybody who stopped by the booth. It seemed like somebody was constantly playing Magnetic By Nature at the University of Utah booth and I saw a number of people coming back time and again to see how far they could make it. We will be cutting all of the rougher  levels and likely combining all of the really difficult levels into a 'Bonus' section.
Thanks to the University of Utah, the Utah Chamber of Commerce and everyone who made our trip possible.

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