Oh hey!

I forgot this even existed.

This blog would have likely continued, except for the fact that my dickhead of a former employer told me to discontinue posting, or lose my job. The guy was, and likely still is, a serious asshole. I've never met a more insecure train-wreck of a man...

I'm out!

Peace.

Of course this is mid-week

Running late, but still up for this week.

On the last Zero punctuation on The Escapist, Yahtzee reviewed MW3 and BF3, and though I'm sure that part was terribly interesting, the part that stuck out with me was the idea of building a game around the Anglo-Zanzibar war. For those who don't know, here's the rundown:

After the death of the most recent Sultan, a new guy came up to sieze power and crowned himself the new Sultan of Zanzibar. The British government had a problem with this, as they had their own man in mind, and told the new guy to step down. The new sultan refused, and the British bombed the everliving heck out of his palace until he surrendered. From the death of the old sultan to the surrendering of the new one, only 3 days past. The actual war portion of the conflict lasted only 38 minutes.

Now that the history lesson is over and done with, onto the design. Rather than try to build a game around such a short war, it seemed more appropriate to only build a game type that encompassed the whole war in one round. Without further ado, here's the design

Design a Week #7: Anglo-Zanzibar War

Not much else to report this week, folks. Paris is cold, and I'm still studying up on the toolset. Hoping everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving Day if your in the States, and talk to you all later.

- Rob

Been a hectic Week

I am back in Paris, which is why this week's Design-A-Week is coming on the last possible day. I promise to get next week's DaW up by mid week at the latest.

Some news before we get started. Lee, the other half of BCC is having to back out of any work due to other obligations. It's sad to see him go, but I understand why he has to. What does that mean for the status of our internal project? Nothing at the moment really. No true development had started on it yet, with no art, scripting, etc being done. Parts of the design have definitely been written, and I intend to forge forward with the idea for the moment solo, learning what I can about the toolset I am using so that someday, maybe this project can get off the ground.

On to the Design-A-Week. This idea came from a talk I had with a friend of mine on a walk. We were discussing the DaWs when the idea for boxing came up. Specifically, applying a long-term effect to the boxer's stats. From that came this week's entry. It explores an initial design for a system where the injuries a player's boxer accrues over time slowly begins to affect their capabilities in the ring.


Design a Week #6: Boxing Injuries

Anyway, keep on keeping on, and have a great next week.

- Rob

A missed week

So obviously, I missed getting last week's Design-A-Week up, which is a shame really. The hope was to be able to pull off a weekly creative outlet for myself, but it was not meant to be.

That being said, here we are 2 weeks later, with design #5 ready to go. This week I explore creating a multiplayer gametype based on the light and dark mechanics and specifically how they can affect both the player's characters and the level design.

Design a Week #5: Light and Dark

Do note, these are not intended to be fully fleshed out designs by any stretch of the imagination. I consider them the design equivalent of a rough sketch. There's an idea to be seen, sure, but further work to bring it to a fully developed idea.

- Rob

I'll be a day late, and a buck short

Story of my life (and if you recognize those lyrics, then congratulations).

So I'm a day late on this week's Design-A-Week, but it's still here. It's also a bit short today too (only one page long), but it's built on the idea of stress. Everyone experiences stress, and heaven knows we like to bring that stress out in players through our games. If that wasn't true, games like Super Meat Boy and Dark Souls would never exist.

 Design a Week #4: Stress

I'm aiming to be themed for next week's Design-A-Week, with something to do with Halloween and building a quick little game to play.

- Rob

3 Ms in a row

First, Medicine. Next, Memories, and now we move on to Melee Quick Time Events. The core concept behind this idea was how could we get players more involved in quick time events, and make them really feel like they influenced the actions involved? Additionally, how could such a system tie in to the already existing systems within the game?

Design a Week #3: Melee QTE

Secondly, slight change to the rights on these designs. Instead of being public domain, I've moved them to a more appropriate coverage plan, which is attribution share alike. What this means is:

• You are free to copy, distribute, and transmit the work
• You are free to adapt the work to whatever you are doing
• You are also free to make commercial use of the work as well
• However, You must also attribute the work in the manner specified by myself
• If you do alter the work, you may distribute the work only under the same or similar license.

/end legal stuff. The idea here is someday, in the future, if I wanted to pull these together into some sort of compendium or tome for my own use, I'd still have some grounds for doing so. Additionally, with the attribution to myself, or to Bull City Creative in this sense, I can see us being rather flexible.

Anyway, with Lee poking his head into this blog now, hopefully updates will occur more often than the once a week I've been bringing. New fatherhood can definitely be a hectic time, as so much I've heard. I hear that in the first few months of a child's life, they are still trying to determine their form, and are constantly shape-shifting into objects within their vision. You must always check for duplicates of items in every room, lest you confuse your infant for a second couch.

- Rob

Well, look what the cat dragged in...

As the other half of Bull City Creative, I figure it's about time I make myself known. I have a newborn at home and a full-time jobby-job so I've been a bit of a non-entity over the last month. I've been busy working at perfecting the diaper change/dodging getting peed on combo. It's a work in progress.

At little about me: My name is Lee Williamson, I'm a North Carolina native who has lived in Vancouver BC, Portland Oregon in addition to a few different cities here in NC. I've moved back to NC back in 04 and I'm currently residing in Durham with my lovely/awesome/patient wife and lovely/awesome/not so patient/newborn son. I have worked in the computer games industry for 10 years as a character animator, marketing artist and more recently a prop/environment artist. I'm currently employed as such by a Morrisville based computer games company developing titles for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii, 3DS and a few other "next gen" consoles.

I'm pretty new to blogging so the next few months will be my sussing out of how to most effectively use this outlet. At this point in time I think I'll stick to "hey check out this neat website/artist/software/robot/etc."


I'm looking forward to getting this outfit off the ground. I'm fortunate to be partnered up with a very talented and driven Rob Newns and am excited to see our project(s) come to fruition. I am confident good things will become of Bull City Creative.