So summer is here, which means no school for Jonny and Ty, and since I quit my job and moved back in with my parents, and since Ty got FIRED from his job as head waiter, and since we have money from Avatar Showdown, that means we're all working full-time on games...dream come true, right? Well, not quite, because, you see, we hate making games and we hate playing games and we hate gamers and OK YES IT'S A DREAM COME TRUE THIS IS AWESOME! ...I've actually never been happier in my entire life (of course I'll be a lot more happy once I get away from the parents, but hey, beats delivering pizza).

Anyway, the image above shows our new workplace, TokBox. It's the best site I could find that allows free webcamming for more than 2 users (we each live about 45 minutes away from each other now and we're definitely not ready to get actual office space yet). So we're treating this like a real job, every weekday we log-in to the site at 9 and work til 4 or so. That gives us each at least 30-35 hours a week, which really isn't enough, but we here at JForce Games are lazy folk, you know. Naw I kid, we'll work more than that, those are just the required "together hours." Now we're also using 14dayz to track our time, TightVNC for screen-sharing, XP-Dev for source control, box for file sharing, and of course Google Docs for real-time doc editing. I strongly recommend a system like this for any geographically-challenged indie teams out there, especially if you lack self-discipline. Obviously it's great for communication, but it also really helps with accountability.

So what are we up to, you ask? Heh, we're actually working on like 5 different games. Crazy right? Actually forget I said that. Just know this:

-Ty's been learning programming. Seeing how he's really good at everything, I have no doubt he'll become a very competent programmer, and in short time too. He's also spending time on all my required reading material over marketing and business and stuff.

-Jonny is working on the Unstoppable level editor & PC version (and a secret game).

-I'm working on design stuff for Unstoppable (plus doing some 3d animation for a secret game or two).

-Jordan is back, working on level graphics for our new Unstoppable art direction (more on that later).

-Jesse is keepin it gangster...and actually he'll be helping out with reference footage later this week.

-Egoraptor's hard at work on cutscenes, says this is his best work yet. He showed us a rough draft for the first scene awhile ago, and yes...awesome. He even said that if he was making a demo reel then this would be the only thing he'd include on it. Awesome overload. Can't wait to see it finished!

Also can't wait to play the new Zelda! And the new Donkey Kong Country! And the new Metroid!

OMG!!!

The online crashes should be gone, though you may still be disconnected from your opponent every once in awhile due to latency and synchronization issues. The problem was really hard to fix and Jonny just couldn't get it perfect, but it's still a LOT better than it was before. We also added two new avatars to the game, one of which is shown above. :D

Oh and we got Matt Myers of the Leet Street Boys to make us the new face-off sound effect. So yeah, go download the game if you haven't already!

PS: big awesome announcement will be made in the next day or so...

The game just got through peer review this morning. We're super pumped! We finally have a game finished and out on the marketplace. You can queue up the download to your Xbox 360 right here!

However, we have bad news. Some people are experiencing crashes when rematching an opponent in online mode. I'm pretty upset about this because it didn't turn up in testing, though it's only our fault as we should have tested it with more people. But fear not, we're working on a fix! And if it's any consolation, at one point we weren't even going to have an online mode. And hey, if this kinda thing happens to big games like Gears of War, I guess we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves. Plus the game's only a dollar. Just sayin. But nevertheless, a fix is on the way. Apologies from JForce, we know we messed up and you obviously have a right to be pissed. Please forgive us!

And here is our little press release for those interested: Continue »

So Dream-Build-Play is over. Dust: An Elysian Tail took home the $40k grand prize, as expected. We've played it...and it is awesome. Looks so much better on a TV than on youtube. Probably the best 2D graphics I've ever seen. Yeah. Max Blastronaut looks really fun too. It got 2nd place. Sadly our game didn't make a finalist spot. I'd like to take Nathan Fout's route and blame it on the "grenzespasse." It was just too much fun for the judges to handle! Naww, really we weren't expecting anything. The build we submitted was so unfinished, missing sound effects, levels were a mess, bunch of stuff. But I dunno if our game has the production value or innovation to compete even if it was finished. Oh well, still gonna be AWESOME.

Anyway, our lives our back to normal now. I was pretty much living at Jonny's (our parents) house during the month of July, working full-time for that contest. But he's back to school now, and I'm back to delivering pizza, so development has slowed way down. We really need to pick it up though if we want to get this thing done before 2010.

And oh yeah, we're working on another game...
A very simple one. Only on Xbox. It'll be released before JForce: UNSTOPPABLE. It should be out in less then a month, hopefully. It's a remake of a mini-game that was in a classic SNES title...BUT WITH AVATARS...and online play. If anybody in the comments can guess which game it is, I'll give you a download code so you can get it for free.

Changed the color theme a little bit. Now it's darker, and lighter on the sidebar! Also, this. What doust thou thinketh? Those banners are temporary. Hopefully we'll get Jordan to come in later and tighten 'em up. Oh, and press page. Coming soon.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You want to know what we got for Christmas. Well I'll just tell you. I got a Wacom tablet. That means I can be a better sprite artist! (Hopefully.) And my woman bought me a couple documentary books (this and that). That means I can be a better documentary filmmaker! Oh, and I got Jonny this XNA book by James Silva, the Dishwasher man. That means he can be a better programmer! It all makes sense!

Ok, I've been up all night working on this site. I sleep. You comment. *dreams of waking up to 100 plus comments*

GyroVorbis has officially declined our challenge. And it took him two whole videos to do so! Here's part 1, and here's part 2. Most of it is just overdrawn rambling and retorting our insults all seriously, so you should just skip to 4:04 in the 2nd video where it gets pretty epically funny. Me and Jesse were crackin up at that. They pretty much owned us...or did they? "We're not gonna play into your little scheme" Gyro says...which is funny, because by his responding he already has. The goal of our challenge video was to create more awareness for us and our game. That is my number one focus right now, creating as much awareness as possible. I'll worry about patchin up our reputation later...

Anyway, since Gyro asked, the smack talk I refer to is when they said our game is generic and that we're ignorant to game development and we aren't going to sell our game. That's smack talk. Doubting us.

And MrGoodah was Jesse, and he did all that without my knowledge while I was at work. He even called me up when y'all discovered him and was like "crap."

Also it's silly how Gyro exaggerates about that coding segment in episode 10. The video was only like 7 minutes long, and that segment didn't last more then 3 minutes.

But whatever. My work here is done. We'll post a response video when our game is finished.

-the scheming sign painter

Dude! Microsoft just announced that XNA developers will be able to sell their games on Xbox Live Marketplace. This is so huge, you don't even know how huge it is. And we get 70% royalty rates too! What's surprising is that we won't even be able to release games for free, which is like, the exact opposite of many expectations. So yeah, go here to read about it.

Big news! Looks like somebody wants to hire our whole team. Here's the email I got:

"Hi my name is Kaz. i am 13 years old. my current status is president and producer of my GROUP and soon to be company AI GAME STUDIOS. i have been looking for some xna programmer willing to help me create a game and release it to the XBox 360 marketplace. If you are up to it i would like to help and or hire you this summer to help with this project. before i do so i have a couple of questions.
1. how many people are in your group right now
2. what are some of your ideas

i hope to hear form you soon Kaz President and Producer of AI GAME STUDIOS"

Isn't this exciting? What do you guys think we should do?

We're going to recruit another programmer later...not now. Those old farts at the indiegamer forums were the primary influence in this decision. We're going to create a very simple, very limited version of our game first. The main reason we're doing this is to gain experience. It will make us much more prepared to work with the new programmer. It should also help us attract a better programmer, but I really don't see how we could find somebody who's better than our most qualified applicant (yes, we really do have experienced programmers that want to join us, contrary to what many people thought). The most qualified is a guy named Brian Linton... Continue »

This is not a typical job ad. It is a detailed explanation of the position, project, team, and why this game will succeed. It is very long, and kind of ‘ranty.’ It is written this way due to our lack of experience and because you're only receiving profit share rather than a salary. Such circumstances require more persuasion and details. But this is a very serious endeavor that will be a big part of your life, so you should want to know as many details as possible before joining. I would, at least.

If you don’t want to read the whole thing right now, at least read the 4 main selling points: Continue »