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In the Name of Progress
The company I work for, Tietokone Consulting, is slowly starting to move away fom development work. This means that in order to keep my creative side active I have had to take on all manner of side projects. Currently I am developing a flash game, called Xenotrader, building a website for my guild, the Sovereign Legion, and also trying to get some work done for the Ausukusa team.
Needless to say, I'm going a little bonkers. But even still, I have managed to dig up a few interesting links... First of all is this one, one that I find very interesting. Why? Here's a little story, a few short months ago I proposed to my girlfriend, making her my fiancee. During that process I of course had to find a ring, and I found a pretty terrific one that I pretty much broke the bank on. But she loves the ring, and I think it's great. What would have been greater, though, is if I had been able to get a stone twice as big for half the cost. Well guess what, pretty soon you might be able to do just that. Read this article at the BBC, and weep if you have already paid for your diamond...
And in sad news, Lucasarts has decided to can Sam and Max 2. I have to say I am VERY disappointed by this. The original, Sam and Max Hit the Road, was one of the defining moments in gaming for me. It was a brilliant game, filled with quirky humour that I still try and work into day to day situations whenever it is humanly, or nerdly, possible. Maybe some rogue developer will steal the source code and it can be finished by a community of zany underground programmers. Or does that sort of thing only happen in my imagination?
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A few people out there might not have heard of the Rent-a-Coder site, but I love it. Although I have yet to be accepted for any of the projects I have bid on it's still a fun site just to browse through as it gives a good indication of what sort of work is going on in the development industry. I recently posted my first ever bid request there. So far I have received several decent sounding proposals, and one or two, er, well, indecent proposals. By indecent I mean the quality of the samples the bidders have sent to me have scarred my tender eyes, and left me wishing that there were some sort of certification for artists like there is for IT professionals. Of course, immediately after posting the bid request I found out that a friend of mine can draw, and well. Here are a couple of the samples that I like that he has worked on:
Now of course the dilemma arises that of the artwork I have seen so far, his is head and shoulders above the bids I have received. And seeing as the images I have seen so far are only heads and shoulders, that basically means that the other artwork I have received amounts to nothing. So what do I do? Do I cancel the bidding on the project because I have found someone else? Or do I take the best looking bidder and use both sets of artwork?
I have been surfing Netdiver a lot lately, looking for design inspiration for the Xenotraders interface, and so far all I have manged to find out is that there are a lot of people in the world who have more than their fair share of talent. I have also been frequenting GotoAndPlay, a site devoted to flash games, and have found a lot of great help on their site. If you have any interest at all in making your own flash games, I highly recommend you start there.
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