As an added bonus, they’ve put up some screenshots of Shane’s long-time project Boyd Quest. I’ve played a build of it, and yes, it’s awesome!

To make up for it, I did a little live broadcast for a couple hours this morning on Ustream. It was a lot of fun! If you missed it, sorry, I’ll probably do it again because it was a bunch of fun! So if you’re into watching a guy write blurry code for two hours, follow me on Twitter and I’ll let you know the next time I do a live stream!

And if that’s not your thing (and I don’t blame you) here’s some new screen shots to taijou ovah:

Update: April fools!

Well, blog, it’s been a while. As I mentioned on Twitter, I’ve found that I can be in one of two modes: productive but silent, or loud but stagnant.

Doing community and marketing stuff takes up a lot of time! And when your only time to work on your game is between the time when your two kids and wife fall asleep and the time when your eyes start closing and you start writing code that incorporates words from the dreams you start having, you don’t want to spend too much time blogging.

I actually wrote the word “sink” into a bit of dialog two nights ago that had nothing to do with sinks because I started falling asleep when writing it. When I was played that segment the next night I had no idea what I had written.

Anywho, things are still going well. I’ve had a few epic nights of productivity recently. I’m working towards yet another deadline: this time trying to get as much of the game as possible polished and submitted to Indiecade.

One thing that has really helped me get as far as I’ve gotten has been Kickstarter. I raised $2080, which made a big dent in that red number at the bottom of my expenditure-tracking spreadsheet.

Here’s what the money went to (and it was all pretty much gone in the first month!):

• Music and sound! Nikolas Sideris got a large chunk of the Kickstarter purse. He has produced some amazing tracks for the game as well as purchased and recorded a ton of high-quality sound effects. His work really brings the game’s audio to life.
• Backgrounds! There were a few backgrounds that I was going to cut for budget reasons, which would have kind of weakened part of the game, but I was spending money that could be going into my kids’ college funds! But after Kickstarter, I put them back into the game and Nauris has done some more of his stunning work! In fact, I just posted one a couple paragraphs above! (You’ve got to see it with the mist drifting across the scene! It’s gorgeous!)
• Dialog! Deirdra Kiai got some moolah for her excellent guidance and help so far with writing the actual words that come out of the characters’ mouths. I found, that writing the dialogs had become a major bottle-neck for me since I felt like all the characters were speaking in my voice rather than expressing their own unique personalities. Luckily Deirdra is a fantastic writer and offered to help! She’s done some great editing, re-writing, and writing for the game! Thanks to Kickstarter, she got a bit of remuneration for her time, which I’m sure went straight into her own game-in-progress, Life Flashes By..
• Posters! And of course a bunch of money went into getting posters printed out and sent back to the people who pledged enough to receive one. We had a bit of trouble with a couple international backers who didn’t receive posters, but I think that’s all been sorted now!

So, yeah. Kickstarter was immensely helpful. So, I hope I don’t sound like a total beggar when I hold out my hat again.

I’m opening up donations again, this time via PayPal (as some people mentioned to me that they wanted to preorder via Kickstarter before but couldn’t do so via Amazon’s payment system). My goal is to get enough money to commision the rest of the art that I need to complete the game. Right now, a decent portion of the last half of the game is still in programmer art (crappy MS Paint drawings!) and, partially due to a recent incident where I had to spend a bunch of money to get my wife back into the country (long story), I don’t have enough money right now to pay for those backgrounds. It is slowing game development.

I will be applying the same gift structure to all PayPal donations as I did to Kickstarter, so every PayPal donator can get the same gifts that were available before. Likewise, any Kickstarter backer that wants to increase their pledge to get up to a higher gift may do so by donating the difference!

Also, all PayPal pledgers will gain access to the same Special Backer Gifts that Kickstarter backers had access to. This includes:

• Never-before-seen screenshots
• Never-before-heard music tracks
• Some sneak peaks at awesome character animations.
• An amazing wallpaper
• A special video!

And of course, you get prizes based on your contribution amount. Here are the pledge levels and prizes:

PLEDGE $1 OR MORE
A mention under the “Special Thanks” section of the game’s credits!

PLEDGE $15 OR MORE
All the above, plus a coupon to download the game for free when it’s done! This is as good as a pre-order! (This is likely cheaper than the game will be sold for when it’s complete.)

PLEDGE $35 OR MORE
All the above, plus an early playable sample sent to you before the end of November! (a complete scene from the game missing only voice acting)

PLEDGE $50 OR MORE
All the above, plus a guaranteed spot on the play-testing list. Play the game early and give feedback to improve the game!

PLEDGE $75 OR MORE
All the above, plus a poster, which I’ll send you as soon as the above time period is up!

PLEDGE $500 OR MORE
All the above, plus your name in the credits as a producer!

Any and all help (including kind words of encouragement!) will be deeply appreciated! I thank you in advance for your support and look forward to sharing Resonance with all of you!

TimW of the indiegames.com blog named it one of his top 10 games of the IGF! That’s a huge honor considering the enormous field of high-quality games! Hopefully the other judges thought similarly. Thanks Tim!

Votes are, I believe, being tallied now and game makers are supposed to be informed pretty soon (unless they already have, in which case, boo…), so cross your fingers! Either way, it was fun to take part in IGF and I’m looking forward to getting the judges’ feedback and seeing the finalists!

Thanks everyone who has supported this endeavor!

But I wanted to give something to everyone, so here’s the first minute and a half of the video for you to enjoy and share! Please Tweet! Blog! Love!!!

I’ve got another very special video for you coming up on Monday, so check back!

Newsflash! In order to avoid a lengthy legal dispute with well known game developer Neocell, one of the oldest game development companies ever to make a game called Resonance, I have decided to change the name of my game.

I was never happy with “Resonance” anyways. It just didn’t reflect the edgyness of the game. I mean, this game is truly on the edge. Almost over it. And I wanted a name that will make that known to all.

So, henceforth, Resonance will now be called rEDGEonance®!

Please update your bookmarks to rEDGEonance®’s new webpage:

Thanks!

A portion of the game takes place in a hospital and I’m looking to have a stable of soundclips of secretaries/whoever over the hospital intercom saying stuff like:

“Doctor Hansen to the OR. Doctor Hansen to the OR.”

“Paging Doctor Nielson to ICU 43. Doctor Nielson.”

“Doctor Kotou, you have a call on line three. Doctor Kotou.”

“Shepard line seven. Shepard line seven.”

“Nurse Keeling to room C. Keeling, room C.”

Then, with a big collection of those, I can just play one randomly every minute or so. It helps the atmosphere and helps bring the game to life!

So, if you want to have a bit of fun with a microphone, I’d really appreciate your help!

You can say whatever you want, work in an inside-joke or whatever, just make it something that you might hear over the intercom in a hospital. Of course, I reserve the right to not use any that are inappropriate or might detract from immersion for whatever reason.

Help me out by either posting it in this forum thread, or by emailing it to Nik at nikolasideris at hotmail dizzitydot com who will clean them up and balance audio or whatever magic he does.

I’m sending the game in to IGF around the 25th, so before then! The sooner the better, of course!

Thanks!!!

You may know Josh from his awesome games “La Croix Pan” and “Chatroom.”

And if you’re anything like me, you’re looking forward to his upcoming game, Boryokudan Rue.

I’d rather have the artist spend the time he has available on the remaining backgrounds and get someone else to work on these closeups. Currently, I’ve been kind of filling some of them with programmer art just as placeholders so I can get the interactivity in place. But I’d like to have someone make them real purdy.

Requirements: you must be able to make the closeups match the existing style of the backgrounds.

Examples: Two released screenshots show one of the closeups:

The room background:

Closeup on the chest’s lock:

Here’s another example with my crap programmer art. The room background:

Closeup on the computer on the desk:

I need someone to fix those up. Are you up to the task? Send me an email at vince.twelve@gmail.com hopefully with some examples of your work.