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Pax 2012: Day 1

Pax 2012: Day 1
I accidentally left my phone in complete silence mode all night. I actually thought it was in “Alarm Only” mode but apparently I hit the button one too many times. I ended up waking up at 7:30 to the sounds of Dave checking our Steam stats for Snapshot. I wanted as much time as possible to set up the booth for Offspring Fling, so we were pretty much out the door in a flash.

Setting Up Offspring Fling!


If any of you remember the Offspring Fling trailer that was brilliantly put together by the wonderful and talented Kert Gartner, you’ll recall that it had a big focus on the whole Super Pretendo thing. My idea for the PAX10 set up of Offspring Fling was to fully embrace that once again. Alec showed up all the way from Winnipeg with the FC Twin, the box, and the cartridge in hand.

After getting my laptop safely tucked away underneath the black curtain that surrounded the table, I set up the “Super Pretendo” on the table with the Offspring Fling cartridge in it. The FC Twin had all of its cables, including the power and the composite cables for video. The TV I was using had a bunch of input options, including composite. I plugged the FC Twin into the side of the TV where the composite input was, so it totally looked like the game could be running off of the actual cartridge.

The next step was to use an SNES controller that was wired up to USB. I borrowed this from my pal Matthew and it was going to be the demo controller for the entire weekend (which means at this point I should probably rub it down with some cleaning solution.) At first I had this elaborate plan to try and cut a hole in the table cloth so that I could run the USB controller through it, and then out on the other side I would be running the actual FC Twin controller, so that it would look like the SNES controller is actually plugged in. I ended up scrapping this plan when I realized how convincing it looked when I simply had the FC twin go behind the table, and the SNES controller come out of the table at the same point.

Pax 2012 - Day 0

Pax 2012 - Day 0
PAX Prime has come and gone once again and I’m feeling absolutely obliterated mentally and physically, and maybe even emotionally. This particular PAX was pretty insane for me because I was actually a part of two different booths for two different games! First, the Indie Mega Booth came back around for another go since its successful run at PAX East 2012, and secondly my solo project Offspring Fling (featuring music by Alec Holowka) was picked up as part of the PAX10! Fortunately Dave Carrigg (the Snapshot programmer) and WiL Whitlark (the Snapshot composer) were going to be at PAX with me so that they could cover the Snapshot booth, and I could be with my baby throwing game in the PAX10.

Snapshot is Released!


The first thing to note is that I really cannot stand flying anymore. I don’t know if it’s the rough flights I’ve experienced in my life, but at this point the thought of flying drives me crazy, and so on Wednesday night before PAX I got little to no sleep because I was so anxious about the trip. The other thing to note is that we actually released Snapshot on the Thursday afternoon that I would be spending on a plane to Seattle, so stress levels were a little on the high side. I guess I should actually talk a little bit about that Snapshot release since a lot of people just went “What da fuek?!” when we released it without much notice.

We’ve been working on Snapshot for a long time, a long ass time one might even say. With PAX coming up for us once again, we couldn’t bear the thought of standing at our booth for the fourth time saying that Snapshot was still “Coming soon, we promise.” We were presented with the opportunity to actually release Snapshot on Steam days before PAX started, and we wanted to go for it.

PAX East: Day 2

PAX East: Day 2
I'm back! YEAH! Sorry about the big delay but I've been super busy with Snapshot ever since I got home from PAX East, but I'm taking a quick break to do this write up of the magical Day 2 of PAX East! This is going to be pretty jumbled as I try to piece together what happened, so I apologize in advance.

The beginning of this day felt absolutely awful. Why the hell did we stay out until half passed midnight for some concerts? I mean, I slept on the floor for a couple hours, but that didn't seem to help me out at all. We didn't get back the night before until really late, and my alarm went off at 6:45am which meant that I only got a couple hours of sleep. Waking up was a strange mix of extreme tiredness and adrenaline. I mean, my body was completely destroyed from lack of sleep, but the feeling of going to PAX for another day of showing off the game had me really excited.

I think I made at least to the car before I passed out. We were heading in a little early again so that Dave could fix more bugs with the demo and so that we could be in the expo hall at 9am. The expo hall opened to the public at 10am, but on the 2nd day they secretly open the expo hall to members of the press at 9am.

PAX East: Day 1

PAX East: Day 1
Before the first day of PAX even began we were already exhausted from the day before. There were a lot of bugs and issues with the build of Snapshot that we showed off in the Made in Mass event, so after we got back to the place we were crashing at, Dave hooked up his PC and was cranking away at the code. I also had my laptop open and I was trying to design a super high res logo for Snapshot to get printed at a Kinkos down the street from the convention center, and we didn't end up getting to sleep until about 1am. Combine that with the fact that we had to wake up at 6:30am to leave at 7am, to get to the convention center at 8am, means that we were looking at a pretty long day.

The traffic getting into Boston on a Friday morning at 7am is about as bad as you can expect it to be. For a few miles it was bumper to bumper, until the car pool lane opened up and we could take advantage of the three humans in our vehicle.

When we pulled up to the Boston Convention Center, we decided to just pull up to the side of one of the doors that was closest to the expo hall so that we could unload our stuff. We had with us a big HDTV, a computer, a big reclining chair, and a box of cables and parts and other things. As soon as we stopped the vehicle and began getting stuff out of the car, some guy came storming out of the door yelling at us that we cant stop here and unload. We told him we only needed to get out some small things for our expo booth, and he continued to yell at us, but we unloaded and went inside anyway.

PAX East: Day 0

PAX East: Day 0
PAX East has come and gone, and by the end of it every part of my body ached as if I had been bench pressing the sun with all four of my limbs. It was probably the most exhausting expo floor I've ever had to be a part of, but of course it was all worth it. The live demo of Snapshot went really well, and a lot of people seemed to really enjoy it.

PAX East really started for me on Wednesday when I had to catch a flight to Manchester, New Hampshire to hook up with the rest of the Retro Affect dudes. The studio is located in Meredith, NH, but I've been working remotely from Tempe for a little while now. The building that the studio is in actually flooded that morning, so good times were had by all when I finally arrived that night. The very next day we headed out to Boston to set up our stuff at the expo hall and also attend an event entitled "Made in Mass."

GDC2011: Independence Day

GDC2011: Independence Day
Normally I would probably start posting about Game Developers Conference as soon as I got home from it, but this time is a little bit different. This year I only have 2 whole days of being home in my room before I have to fly out to the east coast for PAX East, so the GDC recap posts will be pretty slow. (I hope that you didn't already forget that Snapshot is sharing a big booth there for the Boston Indie Showcase.)

The first highlight of GDC I will be sharing is going to be probably the best one of them all. This year I gave a 5 minute micro-talk (which I will probably post about later) which somehow lead to me being back on stage in front of the microphone talking about things, doing impressions, and finally executing the Independence Day speech with my dear friend Tommy Refenes.

This magical moment was caught almost entirely on film by the people in the audience, so check it out:


Or look at a a vimeo version.