Ska Studios » Charlie Murder

Good Morning Gato # 84 – 28 Days Later

Michelle — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:00:38 +0000

It has actually been 28 days since our last post here on the Ska Studios blog, hence the movie reference and glassy-eyed Gato. I know a lot of you look forward to your weekly Gato fix (which has become more of a monthly thing), but we’ve been working like mad to finish our game, prep for GDC, and get geared up for PAX and–let’s face it–Gato is not photogenic. In the meantime, enjoy some crabs and a big roundup after the break!

Conventions and Stuff
As I mentioned before the break, Ska Studios will be exhibiting at PAX East! This time we aren’t entirely alone, as we’re grouping up with other indie developers to form a Mega Indie Booth! More details to be revealed in the coming months.

James and I will also be making our way to San Francisco for a visit to GDC. This time, James has a panel all to himself titled DIY XBLA FTW: The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile Postmortem. If you’re lucky enough to be a GDC attendant, you’ll definitely want to make your way to this presentation.

Link Roundup
It’s also been a while since we linked to others talking about us on the internet so it’s time I had a mini link roundup.

Sunday Sidebar: Meet Ska Studios – A dialog style interview with us!
James Silva will destroy anyone who gets in his way – A discussion more oriented around the aesthetics of violence rather than the usual “will it destroy our children’s minds” angle.
Last PAX Prime, James and I were asked to contribute to a sketch book. But not just any sketch book: a sketch book for charity! We said “sure!” and here was the result. We’re under “Indie Bundle 2″. Although only James was credited (AHEM), I contributed the top sketches while James drew the “Funleashed” doodle. Heck, even my name is signed on there. Grumble, rant, grumble. It is for charity so I suppose I can forgive.
Review: Z0MB1ES (on teh ph0ne) – Yay, Z0MB1ES!
Top 5 Xbox Live Arcade Games You Didn’t Play in 2011 – If you didn’t play Vampire Smile, you certainly should now!
And for a little self indulgence, I’m linking to thisTop 10 Geeky Marriage Proposals . Somehow James and I only made number 9. OK, those other ones are pretty cool but James MADE his proposal! Grumble, rant, grumble. Making it yourself is always number one awesome in my book but I guess that’s why I’m marrying James and not those other 9 dudes. He’ll always be number one to me. < /sappy >
To finish off this not-so-mini-anymore list: If you are of the proper age and have enjoyed playing, and more often dying, in Z0MB1ES, you may enjoy this drinking game.

Fandom
In addition to the Art Unicorner and our Facebook Fan Art Album, I also have a little Ska Studios Deviantart Group put together. Feel free to join, submit pictures and start a dialog with fellow fans.

Good Morning Gato # 82 – Creepy Groundstalker Photobomb

Michelle — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:49:09 +0000

Gato is awesome. This is a picture of her. That’s right, just cute little Gato and EVERYONE FREAK OUT THE GROUNDSTALKER HAS ARRIVED

Halloween Re-cap
We got 4 fan pumpkin carvings. This makes me very happy. You can check them out at our Facebook Fan Art album or at the Art Unicorner. Maybe next time I’ll bribe everyone with prizes for submitting fan works.

D of the W!
James here, with an ultra-deal reminder! You can still get The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile at an astonishing half off (for gold members). If you were one of those people who were all “game looks okay, it’s certainly not worth ten of my Ameridollars, but perhaps five,” you now have absolutely no excuse, you crazy frugalista! Remember: it’s okay to convince yourself that by buying Vampire Smile on sale, you’re actually saving money (bitter economic reality: you’re still out five dollars).

Z0MB1ES Wrapping Up
Between CREATING MAGIC on our punktastic BrawlPG Charlie Murder, I’ve been doing some loose-ends-taking-care-of for Z0MB1ES!!1 (on teh ph0ne). The game runs seizure-inducingly great on Mango, hopefully all you Windows Phone users out there (no jokes about user base, please) will be able to get your mobile Z0MB1ES action on soon!

And if you don’t have a Windows Phone yet, a magical one will arrive in our realm on Monday. I’m not due for a new phone yet, but you know who is? Michelle. Who wants to get a petition going?

Good Morning Gato #76 – Crouching Neko, Hidden Gato

Michelle — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:04:45 +0000

Gato is really weird. That’s all I can really say. She spent 15 minutes attacking the fringe of the rug with all her might and then spent the next five furiously trying to get under it. She seems to have won whatever imaginary battle was going on.

WPCentral on the Zombies!
James here. We were fortunate enough to do an interview with the kind folks at WPCentral about our upcoming semistellar shooter Z0MB1ES!!1 (on teh ph0ne); wouldn’t you like to give it a read?

Over 9000
In the universe of Charlie Murder there is an energy known as Anar-chi. It flows through all things awesome, be they awesomely good or awesomely evil. It can be harnessed by the power of rock and roll to perform devastating attacks, heal up ailing bandmates, or launch some of these brand new team combo attacks that were totally missing from our PAX build! It’s very Simpsons arcade in execution, but very tactical in intent: any bandmate combination is possible, but team attacks use up a healthy amount of Anar-chi and some are more specialized than others. I foresee much tweaking with this, but preliminary report is: I love it.

XNA’s not Dead!
With lots of Windows 8 news coming down the wire, probably the most doom-laden bit was that there would be no XNA in Windows 8. Well, that’s not totally true. XNA games on PC (like Bastion) will continue to work on Windows 8 exactly like they do on Windows 7, but if you want to make a Metro-style app, XNA is out.

So what of XNA’s future? You might say I’ve got something of an interest in XNA’s long term plans. XBLA is overwhelmingly C++/DirectX, but a handful games (like ours!) are XNA. For a Comp Sci grad, I’m stupidly inexperienced in C++, so XNA has always been more or less a godsend to me. The launch of Windows Phone 7 with XNA as the primary game development framework struck me as a signal that XNA wouldn’t be going away any time soon. So, with the announced absence of XNA support for Metro apps in Windows 8, has doom been prophesied? Who knows! Whatever the case, there’s sure to be something out there for C++ newbs like me. In the meantime, I’ll just keep plugging away on the XNA awesomeness that is Charlie Murder and Z0MB1ES! Cause XNA’S Not Dead!

Good Morning Gato #75 – Chubby Bunny

Michelle — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:02:48 +0000

Gato and Neko may be unusually small for domestic shorthairs, but Gato is quite the little piglet when it comes to food scraps. She’ll stick her face in your food the second you aren’t looking, rendering it quite unappetizing. I once caught her stealing some broccoli and devouring it. I mean, broccoli? Are cats supposed to like broccoli?

World Map!
James here! One thing we didn’t show off at PAX was Charlie Murder’s world map, because, well, it was in a rough state. The big hassle, which sounds simple enough but turned out to be stupidly complicated (partly because of how I store world map nodes) was in unlocking new nodes, fogging out inaccessible nodes, and only allowing travel to nodes that have been visited or can be newly visited. Part of the solution involved making all nodes compare themselves to a list of areas the player has unlocked, setting visible and visitable flags (turns out “visitable” is not a real word), PLUS MORE CONFUSE. I pulled it off, but not without channeling Computer Science Class James, eager to solve some problems, always showing his work. Thank you, world map, for making me feel dumb again.

Project Polish
Michelle again! Ever wonder what your Art Unicorn is working on? Since I started giving Charlie Murder a makeover, I’ve had to figure out the balance between keeping the rough style the game embodies and giving it just enough polish to make it shine. To do this, I’ve gone over much of the existing art redrawing lines and adding depth. Some things, such as the cars, I tossed out completely and started over from scratch.

They’re still the same car: same color and same general shape but completely redone. These simple cars, that players will spend most of their time destroying and throwing around, somehow took a big chunk of time to get “right”. I probably redrew these cars a baker’s dozen times. It’ll never match perfectly but if we can find a way to make our two styles blend and look good together, then that’s when we have succeeded.

Initially, I struggled. I struggled a lot. James can attest to my cries of frustration. In doing my own personal work, even when teaching myself something new, I can do what I want. In terms of doing art for other people, I’ve done much freelance work and even some art when I worked at ArenaNet. All of this was easy. I didn’t have to think very hard about someone else’s style.

James has tried to explain what he’s going for many times but it never really sunk in until one day I was reading an article about Ratfist, the webcomic by Doug Tennapel. James’ art and Doug Tennapel’s are not the same for many reasons but there is an energy and line quality to it that I could learn from. I tried doing some Charlie art while loosely keeping Doug’s style in mind and BLAMMO, I had something I could work with. It’s probably still not entirely perfectly matched.

By the time Charlie Murder is done, I’ll have redrawn same lamppost or crate a hundred times. But that’s OK, because that’s what iteration is all about.

Good Morning Gato #74 – A Prior Engagement

Michelle — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 15:00:26 +0000

You might have found that last Friday’s Good Morning Gato was notibly absent. We do have a good excuse though. We were at PAX! This was our second time exhibiting at PAX Prime and a quite eventful one it was!

Win!
I may have mentioned this before but this was my first time organizing Ska Studios for PAX. I think I did a decent enough job considering the giant shoes Dustin left behind to fill. I’m certainly nowhere near as awesome as he is at being a marketing coordinator but PAX turned out to be pretty darn successful, nonetheless. We showed off Charlie Murder, sold some shirts, talked with fans and oh yea, James and I got engaged!
Here is a sweet video of Ska Studios at PAX Prime or you can view the photos on our Facebook Page!

A Different Kind of Game Proposal

It’s official. Your Lead Dishwasher and Art Unicorn have graduated from boyfriend and girlfriend dev team to engaged couple dev team. Prepare your box of tissues and check out some media taken of the event:

“Ska Studios Proposal” by Clingermangw
1UP’s “PAX 2011: A Charlie Murder Proposal” video
Postcard from PAX: The Most Touching PAX Moment Ever
IGN Facebook Album
A Gear Fish post
An in-game proposal

Much to the pleasure of those irritated by the other day’s twitter spam about wedding dresses, I won’t bore you with planning details but if something especially awesome and game or zombie related pops up, I’ll be sure to post about it. If you happened to capture video or photography please send it my way to michelle (at) ska-studios (dotcom)!

Mini Link Roundup
I’ll be posting a bigger roundup when more articles come in but for now check out these nifty links:

Giant Bomb Quick Look!
WonderHowTo Article