Old Testament Adventures » News

The Journey of Moses on Facebook

andygeers — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 11:04:03 +0000

This morning I came across a new Facebook game based on the book of Exodus called “Journey of Moses” – and it’s pretty good! You can read a quick news article about it on CNN, but I suggest you just dive in and have a play.

The game takes the form of a kind of isometric tile-based adventure game. You search about for hidden treasures and so on in the process of trying to solve various quests, all tied into the story of Moses. I just tried the first few rooms to get a feel for it, and there’s definitely a certain fun to it. The production values seem pretty high, with a simple but nicely done intro animation. There are a few situations where the dialogue you’re trying to read goes off screen or gets covered up by GUI elements, but generally it seemed very well made. They obviously understand Facebook games pretty well – there’s lots of opportunities to publish your achievements to your wall and so on, creating a nice social feel to it.

It’s always nice to discover new Christian video games that are of good quality by people who clearly know what they’re doing. I wish them every success!

From Penguins to the Pacific – CGDC Day Three

andygeers — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 04:26:26 +0000

It was hard tearing us all away from the Christian Game Developers Conference at the end of the day today – everyone I’ve spoken to has been in agreement that it’s been a fantastic time, and such a blessing to spend time with other Christians with whom we share our passion for video games and the potential they have to touch people.

Today’s sessions were every bit as great as yesterday’s, a real highlight being some great insights shared by Lance Priebe, creator of the hugely successful online game for children Club Penguin. Here’s a brief summary:

Iterate – a marathon is won one step at a time
Listen – pay attention to what your audience is saying
Grow with your audience – you don’t need to be all singing, all dancing, all at once
Partner – as Proverbs 15:22 says, “Plans go wrong for lack of advice; may advisers bring success”
Tribe – people love to be lead
Perception – what the audience perceives is happening is more important than what really is, so sometimes you can save yourself a lot of time with a little sleight of hand. I don’t want to spill Lance’s secrets here, but one particular example he shared of this was pure gold dust.
Delight – create moments that connect your audience to your game
User Experience – make every click count
Aim, Fire, Miss – don’t be afraid to try stuff, even if it may fail
Don’t be a twip – rather than going into obscene levels of detail that will never be seen, sometimes it’s better to stay deliberately simple and leave room for the imagination
Coins For Change – this is an innovative programme by Club Penguin that allows kids to use their in-game credits to donate real money to charity

It was a fascinating and inspiring talk, even though I didn’t really know a lot about Club Penguin beforehand.

The day closed with a big discussion headed up by a panel of the conference speakers about the challenges and opportunities for developers of Christian themed games. It may not have produced any new answers, but it was still a valuable discussion to be had and provided a bit of context for those of us who are slightly newer to the game. One thing I took away was that perhaps it would be good for more Christian developers to participate in Speed Game contests (like those run by the Christian Developers Network) to experiment with novel game mechanics and so on that can create meaningful experiences.

After the conference closed, a few of us had the privilege of heading out to the Pacific coast to stay in Charlie’s beach house – thanks Charlie!!

Seattle

andygeers — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 01:31:17 +0000

Being the 6th July today, it’s my birthday! I’m being looked after by the lovely Jon Collins and his family, and today we went large in Seattle. We began at the Science Fiction museum, where they currently have an Avatar exhibition. It was interesting getting to see and play with some of the technology they used in the filming of it, such as real-time motion capture and virtual cameras and so on. It’s possibly a bit sad to say that the most interesting part of the exhibition was the Microsoft Surface they’re using

After that we made our way up the Space Needle, where you get the most incredible views out to Mount Rainier and so on. Fortunately we had incredible weather for it today, so you really could see for miles.

Burritos for lunch, then naturally we paid an obligatory visit to the first ever branch of Starbucks. We also stopped by the Pike Place fish market, as made famous by Sleepless in Seattle. It’s quite a spectacle, watching the guys throwing fish about as the customers order it.

Tomorrow it’s time for the Christian Game Developers Conference to begin – really looking forward to it now!

Portland, Oregon

andygeers — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 01:11:49 +0000

Today has been a day exploring Portland, Oregon. It’s a beautiful city, with the gigantic Mount Hood dominating the horizon off to the East, and a river running through the heart of it. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous – not too so ridiculously hot as the be uncomfortable, but really nice and sunny. A real bonus, considering that the locals tell me it’s been raining really hard until last week.

I braved the city’s excellent “TriMet” public transport system – consisting of buses, a light railway (the “Max”) and also some trams, I believe. They’ve got a great website that Transport for London could learn a few lessons from, where you can plan your route and see it all on a nice interactive mappy thing. When I got a bit lost the locals were also incredibly helpful and soon put me right.
I used the buses to go and visit the science museum here, OMSI (pronounced “Om-Zee” rather than “O.M.S.I.” – people had no idea what I was talking about at first when I was asking for directions!)

Among other things they have the Game On exhibition at the moment, where you can sample the history of video games, going all the way back to Pong and Space Invaders and so on, through to the present day. I was invited to have a go at a game involving some kind of contraption that supposedly measures your concentration to make a little man push a tomato – I can’t say I was convinced, since I won despite being thoroughly distracted by the fact that this thing was slowly slipping off my head!

In Toronto Airport

andygeers — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 20:19:46 +0000

I’m sitting here in Toronto airport writing this, before heading off to Portland, Oregon shortly for the Christian Game Developers Conference. Air Canada has taken good care of me so far – absolutely no hitches, friendly service, and even a couple of great films. I watched Limitless and Morning Glory, both of which I really enjoyed.
Limitless taps into that desire we have to actually pull off all those grand ideas we have – to operate at 100% of our capacity, with crystal clear focus. I won’t ruin the ending of it for you, but I’ll say that it really surprised me.
Morning Glory isn’t exactly profound or original, but it’s exactly my kind of film – simple, feel-good fun.
Anyway, stay tuned for all the latest news as I head on into the States!

Almost Time To Fly – Pre-CGDC Roundup

andygeers — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 12:04:12 +0000

Tomorrow lunchtime it’s time for me to fly out to Portland, Oregon in anticipation of the Christian Game Developers Conference at George Fox University, Newberg. I’ve had my passport renewed, I’ve got my holiday money exchanged, I’ve got my business cards packed – I’m ready and raring to go!

I thought it would be worth doing a little round-up of some of the highlights from my little series of blog posts over the last few weeks:

How to make the most of a conference – a summary of various blog posts giving advice on how to use a conference well
What I’m hoping to get out of the CGDC – my four big reasons for attending this year’s conference
Connecting with culture – thoughts from the Evangelical Ministry Assembly on Francis Schaeffer’s life of connecting with the people he met
CGDC Promotional Stash – details of all the gear I’ve ordered for the conference
Christian Video Games: The Underserved Market – thoughts on the Christian video games market

I should be on email over the next week but I won’t have mobile phone access – so feel free to drop me a line! If you’re going to the CGDC, then I’ll see you there!

P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for my e-mail newsletter – sent out no more than once a month

Getting Ready for CGDC

andygeers — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 14:18:10 +0000

Today has been a day of last minute preparation before I fly out on Monday for next week’s Christian Game Developers Conference.

The demo of the first scene of Ebenezer is shaping up quite nicely. I did a bit of user testing last night, and the consensus is it’s too waffly and I need to trim out some of the dialogue, but by and large it’s a lot more obvious what’s going on than it was before. It’s amazed me in all of my user testing over the last few months how incredibly consistent people’s responses are – they virtually all try exactly the same actions in exactly the same order; they virtually all ask exactly the same questions.

I did, however, find one show-stopper of a bug: when you go to talk to one of the main characters, Saul, the entire screen goes blank and you can never get it back. Oops! Wouldn’t be such a concern except that I can’t reproduce it from within the Unity development environment, only when it’s compiled for the device, making it much harder to identify and fix the problem. Let’s hope I can get it sorted before the conference starts on Thursday!

This post is part of a series attempting to blog every day in the run up to the Christian Game Developers Conference 2011

Convert the Pagans

andygeers — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 10:51:32 +0000

Thoroughly tongue in cheek, Premier Radio’s show Whispering Word has produced three stupid little mini-games collectively titled Convert the Pagans to try and raise awareness of the programme. They closely follow the mould of the Simpson’s parody game “Billy Graham’s Bible Blaster” (which you can sort of play online here if you have Flash) and are certainly not designed to be taken seriously.

It’s fair to say that no real life pagans are likely to be converted by a game like this – apart from anything else, they’re not exactly brilliant games (nor are they especially intended to be, I suspect). I still long for the day when somebody manages to make a genuinely good Christian video game – something that I really hope my own game, Ebenezer, has the potential to be.

Help Wanted: 3D Character Modeller

andygeers — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 16:00:22 +0000

Today I want to present to you an opportunity for fame and glory whilst having fun all at the same time.

As I try and get Ebenezer into shape ready for next month’s Christian Game Developers Conference, one thing that probably won’t be included is the final character designs, because as of yet I’ve struggled to find the right volunteer. I’ve got some awesome character concepts designed by Paul Evans and his Red Green & Blue design consultancy, which totally rock, but I need a 3D character modeller, preferably someone comfortable with Blender, to take those concepts and turn them into 3D models that can then be animated.

The game itself is going to be 2D, so the characters can be modelled at a fairly high level of complexity and detail, and we’ll then render them out as 2D sprites using Blender’s toon shaders. For the demo that I’m working on, there’s probably about 15-20 characters.

I’m looking for someone with proper skillz who can produce something awesome – if you can’t help yourself, can you pass this post on to anybody you know?

New Old Testament Adventures Logo

andygeers — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 16:00:34 +0000

This post is part of a series where I’m attempting to blog every day in the run up to the Christian Game Developers Conference

For a while now I’ve been thinking that it would be good to have a logo for my Old Testament Adventures blog and hypothetical Christian video game series. I’m very grateful, therefore, for Dan Gould, who has kindly put together something for me. The idea is that it builds on the kind of ‘standing stone’ theme of the Ebenezer stone, and combines it with the kind of vague shadow of king Jesus running through the Old Testament, represented by a crown. What do you think?