Back in Action!

My wife made visit to Seattle, Washington a month ago and rather than getting it out of her system (she is from there and wants to live there), it fortified her desire to move back. We had previously decided to stay here in Utah and see what we could do about budgeting more money for travel because it's just too expensive to live there. Well, about a week after she got back I got an offer for a great job there that would pay enough for us to live there. So... The game begins anew!

I've accepted a position with Solutions IQ in Redmond, Washington working on computer graphics in their newly formed games division. They are a work for hire studio and they don't have any issues with "owning" my time, thoughts, and ambitions when I'm not at work. This means I feel comfortable again working on projects that are important to me. Caster will get back into swing soon, but I have one other project to do before then. My next project is code named Lovely Day. It will be a short prototype for a 2D/3D animated soccer game based on the characters from July Film's "My Little World" animated film. It will be on the XBOX 360 using XNA and the Flat Red Ball Engine (FRB). The reason this is trumping Caster is that I have a more urgent feeling about it than I do for Caster. Also, it will be short and it will be nice having another little something done before jumping back hard core into Caster.

When I put Caster on hold, I decided to start doing some other projects that I wouldn't be afraid to lose to EA. Yes, the odds of the EA legal department caring anything about what I did were extremely small... but they did refuse to grant me an exception for my work when I asked for one, so I didn't want to take any chances. I did the following:

• Created one level of a side scrolling Ninja game for XBOX 360 and Windows using XNA and FRB. I did the game design, the character art, the animation, and the audio work. My friend Victor Chelaru of FRB fame did the programming and our friend Leo did some awesome Background and tile art. A couple of the animations can be seen here and here.
• Created a match 3 game in Flash with the same core game mechanic as Chuzzle.
• Created a painting game in Flash based on the "Romeo and Juliet Sealed with a Kiss" animated film.
• Started working on a XBOX 360 demo with Ryan Petrie (hurri) for the Spark Arts Festival that will be held this October. We worked together on Isosurfer for Pilgrimage 2005 and decided to go at it again.
  
• Got a Nintendo DS homebrew setup up and going. Compiled and ran some stuff. It was very cool.
  
• Did a lot of interpersonal and business networking.

Looking back on it, abandoning Caster wasn't all that bad. It was an opportunity to get out there and try out some other things that I would not have otherwise. As a result, I also got much more proficient in two other programming languages, C# and Action Script. This in turn beefed up my resume and helped me land the job that I have now. So there you have it, I took my lemons and made lemonade.

Whereas freedom to do whatever you like in life, animation, game development, etc. is ideal, there is a lot to be said for the creativity in how you handle restrictions on your work. Sometimes, the results of having the restrictions are better than if you had all the freedom you desired.

For my closing remarks on this post, I want to give huge props to the people at EA Salt Lake. They've done a great job maintaining the quality of life that we had while we were Headgate Studios. Great things are happening at that studio and lots of exciting projects coming down the pipe for them. I highly recommend the studio for anyone looking to get in the games industry. Honestly, instead of being excited about the new position in Redmond, all I've been feeling is sadness about leaving my good friends at work. It's really been a great place to work.