If you have the inclination, please post a positive comment on her entries. My understanding is that japanese game development is a rather thankless task let alone being a female developer.

So, you're probably wondering - how'd my startup business go? Well, the answer is it didn't.. or rather, it did but not in the form I anticipated.

I was given the opportunity to head up Kung Fu Factory's Vancouver office branch and it was too good an opportunity to pass up. It gave me the opportunity to run a studio while minimizing the financial and business logistics I'd have to deal with.

So yeah, I sold out.

Does this mean all the work I had put into setting up an indie development company been for naught?

Far from it. The research and effort I put into the indie endeavour helped prepare mentally prepare me for the travails of running a studio. Even now, I'm boggled by the amount of personal growth I've experienced.

Well, that's the end of the blog for today. Expect more entries in the near future.

Spending 8 days trying to condense a wide swath of research material and execution plans into a 4-page business plan tends to do that.. or at least, I think it was 8 days.

The point is that I finally have what I feel is a good first pass summary regarding the company goals and objectives. Of course, that just leaves me with the task of writing the sections which expand on the items I had worked so tirelessly to summarize.

You could almost call it the 'circle of life'.

Oh... and the epiphany? Blogging is a fantastic way of getting rid of pent up negative energy.

Thanks for reading.

I never thought setting up a business plan would be so much work! To make matters worse, I find my attention constantly wandering back to my game design and implementation details.

I guess I'm more of a game builder than a business man.

However, I have to say that putting together a business plan is probably the best decision I've made. Putting a plan down on paper really helped sharpen my vision. As a result, there's strong cohesion between my short term goals and my long term ones. In addition, I'm currently re-evaluating my project timeline and budget.

Time to head back to my business planning session...

In keeping up with my small budget approach, I've decided to go with the free accounting software, GnuCash. It's perfectly suited for tracking an indie development. It lets me keep track of my assets, liabilities, and expenses using plain English. It also lets me enter amounts using different currencies (a real big plus given that I'm Canadian and most software sold online are in US dollars). It even has the option to retrieve the currency exchange rate from the web on a daily basis.

Most importantly, GnuCash helps me quickly plan out a several budget scenario within the program. It tracks my cash flow and let me compare it to the budget scenarios.

Oh, did I happen to mention that it's free?

If you're planning to ask how it stacks up to commercial accounting software like Quicken, I have never used any other accounting software so I have no clue... nor does it matter. It lets me get the job done and get it done fast.

If you intend to use the software, I highly recommend that you go through its Tutorial. Not only does it teach you how to use the software, it also teaches you how to practice proper accounting. My head's just bursting at the seams with information about tracking loans, mortgages, and taxes. A definite plus.

For all the wannabe Canadian entrepreneurs out there, there's a great article on managing the finances of a small company using GnuCash by Aerospace Software. Look for the 'GNU Cash for Business Users' series found at this link. It's a real eye opener - or it was for me.

There's a great article on how to pay yourself if you're the only shareholder at the site. Click here to read it.

Finally, if you're looking to put together a proposal budget, I found the R.I.T. (Rochester Institute of Technology) website to be an excellent tutorial on drafting out the budget. You can find the tutorial at this link.

What's especially exciting is that the latest news update contains actual gameplay video footage! The video briefly demonstrates the game mechanics and the various game modes. Follow this link to see the video.

Personally, I can't wait to see the end product.

Good stuff, Owen!

It doesn't hurt to start figuring out the long term financial plan even though the short term development is financially secure - it helps me sleep better at night. In fact, the low development cost is both a blessing and a curse. Because the financing cost is low and the return on investment (ROI) are equally low, I can't approach venture capitalists. Instead, I'm going to have to go with the government, friends-and-family and/or angel investors as my primary financial source.

At the same time, I'm planning to take the initial prototype to the next level - by adding multiplayer support.

The combination is going to make for an interesting week.

Before I sign off, here are some noteworthy links regarding financing:

• Boston business journal article
  Discusses general financing tips for first time entrepreneurs (fairly old but I'm guessing, just as relevant)
• GameOn Finance
  A Canadian website dedicated to the task of finding finances for game development
• Infusion angels
  An angel investment company
• captureplanning.com
  Covers the delicate art of drafting business proposals.
• "Writing a successful proposal"
  A step-by-step tutorial on writing a business proposal by the Rochester Institute of Technology.

I've included a video of the prototype for the more visually inclined. A big shout out goes to Aaron White and Roger Lee for providing the art. If you're wondering about the guinea pig theme, it's a product of Aaron's crazy imagination. You can find out more about him at his website designerwhite.ca.

Now, on with the actual evaluation of Torque Game Builder 1.7.4.

Let's face it - my main focus is on getting a game out there as quickly as possible. The sooner I get the game done, the sooner I'll see profits. Any development corners that I can cut (without reducing quality) increases my chances of success.

The issue with 3D art is the amount of time taken to create it. You need to do 3D modeling, you need to texture the models, and if you have characters who animate, you'll need to invest some time into building a skeleton, creating a skinned mesh, and then creating animations for the model... and that's just the effort required prior to putting together a game level!

On the other hand, doing 2D just requires a good paint program and a passable 2D level editor. To that end, I'm looked for an all-in-one solution and found one in Torque Game Builder by GarageGames. To be honest, I didn't actually spend that much time looking. I had used the Torque Game Engine (TGE) previously and I was very impressed with the engine and its documentation. As a result, my decision to start my exploration with GarageGames' 2D solution was a no-brainer.

Like its 3D brethren, Torque Game Builder is packed to the brim with development features you would need to build a 2D game. After going through some of the basic tutorials, I was able to slap together a non-interactive 2D demo fairly quickly. The only downside to the engine is the documentation - some of the tutorials look to be outdated (the tutorial on creating datablocks in just plain wrong). The good news is that the reference documentation looks to be up-to-date albeit a little sparse in details. But then again, I was playing around with the demo version...

For me, the real test is the ease in which the engine lets me slap together my game prototype. I should have a fairly good idea by the end of the week.

My primary focus has been on getting organized as quickly as possible. Without a steady revenue stream, any unproductive time hits me where it hurts the most - the wallet. As such, there were a few practices that I put into place immediately.

Due to the economy, Nexon was forced to shut down the Vancouver development studio that I worked at. This cataclysmic event (or at least that's how it felt) occurred on January 27. Things haven't been the same since.

As my first experience of losing a job, I'd like to extend a hearty thanks to the executives for handling the situation with grace and compassion. I don't know how most studio closures are handled, but our studio ended with a few rounds of applause for the studio executives and for the company culture. This was then followed up with a round of drinks and friendly chatter at a nearby pub. I'm not an emotional person by nature, but I was deeply moved that day. Humanature Studios, you will be remembered fondly.

... which brings me to my announcement. Legally, I'm now free to talk about the technical implementation techniques. In addition, I can now freely develop my own indie free-to-play MMO game. As such, I'm officially announcing that this site will no longer focus on the generalities of game design - rather it will be a day-to-day blog of my (first time) experience of an indie developer.

Please note that I've updated my Bio page to reflect the recent changes including the removal of the legal blurb.

It's been awile since I last posted anything on the blog. That's because December is usually THE busiest month for me. With Christmas in the air, thoughts of my family are in the forefront.

... and that's exactly what happened. I had a fantastic month spending lots of quality time with my wife and my two children. Of course, something had to give - the blog in this case.

The good news is that I'm climbing back on my blog saddle and I'm ready to continue sharing my design perspective - starting with the conclusion of my post regarding game design requirements. However, the bad news is that I didn't get as much done on my game prototype as I'd like. Still, I did manage to integrate TileStudio data into the engine.

Still, there's plenty of time left in the year so stay tuned for posts about my game prototype.

1. It turns out that it did have the capability of embedding tags directly on the map instead of into a tile. It's not exactly how I would have wanted it, but it'll suffice.
2. The ability to customize the output from the editor is a huge time saver. I can focus on getting the maps working properly in the game as opposed to getting the map data loaded correctly into the game.
3. It had the most complete set of editing features - at least with respect to my work process.
4. I can add/modify features to the editor as its source code is freely available and compiles right out-of-the-box.

I cannot emphasize the importance of making sure that code packages should be a no-fuss install-and-compile procedure. This means not having to manually search and download Open Source libraries that a project is dependent on, not having to alter makefiles/project files, and/or not having to make obscure alterations to my environment variables prior to compilation.

The fact of the matter is that I'm not interested in how the project is compiled or what libraries it relies on. I'm sure at some point in time, I'll probably need to know these details (these details are documented in the package, right?). However, it doesn't change the fact that delivering a package that compiles as-is is a good policy - especially if you intend to turn said package into a business opportunity.

Next up, I'm working on integrating the map data into my game engine. This means my game development is now back on track albeit 2 weeks late.

The current challenge facing my game development is finding a level editor. Can I develop my own level editor? Yes - but is it prudent to spend time rolling my own level editor as opposed to working on the actual game design itself? Absolutely not. I still remember the advice my project lead once gave me - work on what you're interested in, for everything else, there's the Internet.

OK, so that's not exactly what he said. However, the main gist of it is true. Building a game requires a programmer to delve into many different areas - sound, graphics, AI, infrastructure, and databases to name a few. In turn, each of these areas will have game-specific issues you'll need to resolve. Let's face it, not all problems are equally interesting - so why spend the time working on a problem that (a) does not cater to your strengths, (b) has probably been solved before and (c) that you're not interested in?

For me, the area of least interest are tools. Don't misunderstand - tools (and pipelines) are crucial towards the development and iteration on a game. It's just that I don't find tools and its problems of particular interest.

... which bring me back to my plight - the search for THE map editor. For the past week, I've been searching for a 2D map editor for Tanktics. The most popular ones so far (if you trust Google) seems to be Mappy and Tile Studio. Both of these are pretty good 2D tile editors with their own strengths and weaknesses. However, what they both lack is the ability to embed events/scripts tags directly into the map or to attach them to tiles. Mappy had the closest functionality in that it had the capability of attaching strings and/or user number tags to tiles. However, neither had the ability to display the tag information on the map directly.

So far, I've resorted to trolling through SourceForge and Google Code looking for Open Source projects that meets my needs, or which I can easily extend to meet my needs.

Hopefully, my game will have a map editor by the end of the week. Stay tuned for further updates on this.

The following is my list of top picks:

1. The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford

   A game design book that talks heavily about the interdependency between design and technology. It was written in the early years of computer games but its theories are just as relevant today for the most part.

2. The Chemistry of Game Design by Daniel Cook

   The article talks about decomposing the game design into a testable model of skill chains. A must read.

The search for high quality online game design resources continue...

1. It's a one man show and Scrum is great for handling small team projects
2. I know my end goal but I expect a lot of changes along the way
3. It lightens the project management side of things
4. There's Scrum management software which will quickly help you chart the project's development and how quickly its converging to its end goal

My project management software of choice is Scrumworks Basic. It's is a free Scrum project management software by Danube (If you're an indie developer, I highly recommend using it. Scrumworks Basic is free, easy-to-use, has fantastic customer support, supports the most critical project management reports, and it enforces the basic tenets of Scrum.
Make sure you understand the fundamentals of the Scrum methodology before diving into it or its user interface and project management process won't make any sense.

Coming back to the original goal of the post, here's a snapshot of its development status:

It looks that my project will take approximately another year to complete assuming I complete it after 15 sprints (my sprint durations are 3 weeks). It's not altogether surprising as I spend a total of 5 hours a week developing the game (I work on the game during my half hour commute to and from work).