Past few weeks have been taken up with Mike helping his wife start a new business, and some slow development of AirWave.  In addition Joe has been consulting on a book a relative is writing, helping with fight and action scenes.  Some creative consultation with another author is definitely good for expanding one's own creativity.  It's also good for moderating ones ego when they, as Mikes says, tell you you're laying down some whack tracks.

Some time was taken to see the movie Logan, which is about as good a piece of super hero entertainment as you'll find.  Some actual character development with a small number of characters and an edgier, more personal story made for a very good movie.  I'll miss Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine.  The next guy will have some huge shoes to fill.  I hope the young actress does well in future roles, though the track record of such things tends to be spotty.

Back to 1212Gaming developments.  The Air Wave game is still moving forward with the format of the level design and direction taking shape.  Interestingly I've found that it seems to get more interesting if you slow it down a bit.  There's something addicting about being able to think for a few seconds about what is happening on the screen vice being in complete reaction mode with a dozen things or more all moving at once.  That kind of gameplay is fine of course, but pushing it a bit further toward strategy and a bit away from twitch reactions seems to make it more intriguing.  Work continues on the new gameplay mechanics.  We have a very basic game which can be expanded greatly.

For now the focus is to gets something that can be demoed at a near future event.  Something that can perhaps peak the interest of a third party.  It's also helping us develop the requirements and initial concept of the training effort we want it to evolve to. 

1212Gaming is "Serious and Gaming".

In January of 2017, 1212Gaming participated in a Global Game Jam where we learned a lot.  What did we learn?  Probably the most important thing we learned, or perhaps confirmed, is that we can work together through the creative process.  We can in fact, create something together.  I think we both figured that was true, else we would not be doing this, but it was nice to confirm that.  I learned that Portland has good beer. 

The Game Jam we attended was in Portland OR, put on by the local PIG Squad (Portland Independent Gaming Squad).  Lots of good people, if a little weird around the edges; but considering it was Portland perhaps it was just normal.  Trump had just been elected so they were in full protest, though it doesn't take much for them to get their protest on!  despite the local shenanigans, it was a great event.

The prompt this year was "waves".  So we didn't stray too far from our roots and chose to use the idea of radar waves as a basis for the game.  We'd kicked around several similar ideas already so we decided to build a kind of tower defense game based on radar intercepts.  As we're older retired types, we did all this over a beer and some food.  Was great for the creative juices! 

We used the Unity game engine and within 3 days we had cobbled together a bit of UI and a single level.  While it was far from the polished end result most of the teams came up with it was a significant step for us. 

For my part I came into it knowing how to open up Unity and that was about it.  By the end of the 3 days I could do some very basic manipulation, and probably more significantly I had learned quite a bit about how to navigate through the program and how it worked in a basic sense.  Mike did all the coding, but I could help around the edges.  Pretty good for a couple of retirees.

We've continued to work on this basic game, added some levels and learned a bit more.  The game jam was a big step, there are larger ahead.  The question now is, which door?