Saturday, 20 November 2010

Just a little update

I just wanted to update you and let you know that Ben Jordan: Must Die (the Le Chateau Macabre sequel) is going very well and will (hopefully) be ready as an Xmas present for you.

I also wanted to officially say thank you Igor for your kind words on my thread about "losing a game" disappointment, it was very kind of you. I recently found that other projects I had been working on (for other people) had bit the dust over the summer, so it doesn't seem to be an unusual occurrence. Therefore it's sad that M$ and other OS companies don't consider the importance of keeping data when it comes to virus crashes and so forth, and that people are still unfortunately forced towards paying for crap to try and prevent it...about as well as the millennium bug.

That said the Primordia soundtrack is going well, and though the game may not be out til 2011, I believe it will be my pride of 2010 in terms of soundtrack composition.

Peace all

Wednesday, 15 September 2010

Today I aers talk about Ben Jordan 2

The movie sequel began production in August 2010 and since the shoot we did in Italy I've been editing the footage and last night watched it on a wide-screen telly - and it really is MOVIE this time :D With just 25 minutes more footage to film this will seriously be the most epic bigphat films film to date :) Watch this space.

Or the teaser! nyeehh!

Tuesday, 17 August 2010

What a loss

Hello folk. Sadly this blog I am not as chirpy or happy as my others because something drastic happened to my hard drive and re-installing Vista wiped it all. So in that process I lost all my game files for Lost in paradise and day by day I'm remembering more about what I had on that HD. A couple of days ago I realised it was also the drive I stored all my MIDI creations and films I've shot. I've never been one to back up because I've never known a re-install of Windows to erase an entire HD, so I have no idea why it happened now - it's not like I selected any options to format it.

This has left me depressed and unsure how to continue. Years of work is un-done. When I wake up I am still getting the buzz to work on my game - but it's gone - and it puts me down. The 60 minutes of music I wrote for it is gone and I'll never be able to rework it. This has left me in a very unsure position now as to my game making future.

I went to Mittens which was excellent fun and we worked on a new Ben Jordan movie which took my mind off these things, and don't get me wrong - I love it. But besides editing that, I'm almost afraid to use a PC now for fear it will just destroy my livelihood again.

People have been most kind and have sent me recovery programs that scan the HD, and as it happened a few days before Mittens I tried to recover what I could and got many of the games WMV animation files back. But after Mittens I ran another scan and nothing could be found on the HD. It seemed time alone erased the remainder of stuff, and that pisses me off, cos I could have rescued the soundtrack too.

So now I don't really know what to do. Do I restart the project, do I start a new one. Do I just pack game-making in for a while cos it's been nothing but fraught & un-successful for me since I began, (except for making music for people I suppose). I don't know. It's a major knock and I know others have suffered HD failure and lost their stuff and have been kind enough to give me advice and stuff...but I don't know. It's hard if not impossible to talk about this in the real world - normal people can understand losing their pictures and downloaded MP3's, but losing an entire legacy of your creations is something else, and hundreds of hours of rendering, composing, programming, editing....bleh.

We'll see what happens next, hopefully something good because 2010 has been an ultra shit year for me.

Peace

Saturday, 3 July 2010

World Cap

Just days away from the final now and I have drunk so much Budweiser and eaten so many meals I am officially an alcoholic and fat english bastad right now. But all that ends soon.

I released a demo Indy and the Crystal Cursors cos I was feeling creative lately.
http://www.bigbluecup.com/games.php?action=detail&id=1321

And wrote a new AGS news:
http://www.screen7.co.uk/junc/ags_news_4.pdf

Take it easy :)

Wednesday, 9 June 2010

Doing different stuff

I've had some luck lately which is much needed cos I've been feeling a bit gloomy about things. But I ended up winning a Budweiser promotion and get 5 bottles of Bud and a meal every day of the world cup - starting Friday...come on England!! I expect to be thoroughly pissed & have liver problems by July! I doubt I'll ever win FREE BEER again in my life --- but once is AMAZING enough :D

I now have a car (a lovely little Rover Metro) and went to Silbury Hill for the first time to see a crop circle for the first time also with my friend Joe. It was interesting to see how the corn is "bent" and somewhat fused at the nodes but not broken. Aliens? Who knows. Went to a local pub and had a chat with a fella that believes it's all people with boards. But his mate wasn't so sure...

Car means I can start filming again, but days after I got it and was going to get started on a new UFO Watch UK, my camcorder broke :( Looks like I'll have to buy another one off ebay if I'm to do that and BJ2...

In the gaming world I've mostly been concentrating on music and finished a soundtrack for Living Nightmare 2 which seems to have gone down pretty well! Also been working as ever on Lost In Paradise, the outro sequence is keeping me nicely frustrated! My facebook countdown app has a month more time alloted to get it finished. Whether my brain app will allow that is another matter!

Other than that not much else to report. Everyone's off to Download this weekend to metal it up, and I'm still struggling to get money together for Mittens Italia...but the World Cup is right on our doorstep now, so it's exciting times :D

Bye!

Thursday, 15 April 2010

Volcano disrupts Europe

Just enjoying a rare occasion such as this today - all flights grounded across the UK and much of Europe as an ash cloud from a volcano in Iceland passes over. An epic act of God, and what a lovely day for a completely clear, untainted sky... Peace :)

Sunday, 4 April 2010

Merry Eastermas

Two months later and whats new? Mittens is finally organised for 2010 and people went with my cheaper villa option, which is great news - now I can afford to go...just!

Lost In Paradise is so very nearly complete!! Just a massive outro animation to make and then some touch-ups. Screw the bad art near the beginning. Walkable areas and walk-behinds are no fun to create manually, well, not twice. Because it also means reprogramming character's beginning X & Y co-ordinates in about 40 rooms, and I'd rather not :P

All I really need now is Luke Rideout to help me by making an awesome GUI like he has for the (on-hold) Kinky Island game and everything will be done and perfect...ish! Oh, and the soundtrack has reached 60 minutes and over 70 tracks...the most I've ever done...*phew*

I'm taking part in a couple of other projects musically, several tracks for "No One Likes You" and also now some tracks for the "Living Nightmare" sequel.

Also some discussion, but not much, has happened on Nelly 2 and my possible involvement, but more so the games creator Alasdair Beckett has helped find a possible location for AdventureX (which failed for a second time earlier this year). It's a spooky crypt near Holborn in London. I'm going to try and get it organised for SATURDAY 30th OCTOBER or the Saturday before that.



Being a one day event will mean I can drop the price dramatically, so it'll be £10 to visit and meet/listen to Mr Boakes, Mr Cecil and other well known game developers.

Watch this space :)

Other than that, not much else on the horizon... I'm chatting with a movie studio about working on a fan-game I had planned back in 2003 - we'll see how that goes. They were originally enthusiastic and if that is still the case, I'll start production later this year. Working title: Beneath Perfection. Do some research and you may find said studio and related movies :)

I'm also working on a local, for fun movie with my friends based on Yahtzee's Lunchtime of the Damned (the first Reality On The Norm game). It'll use some of the character names and some of their traits, but is far more about a zombie outbreak rather than the place "Reality". More on this soon :)

And script writing & ideas discussion for Ben Jordan movie 2 are still in full-swing, with a draft script about a third complete, though it's very subject to change, right up until the moment we film it... No official title for the movie yet, though.

So stuff is happening, slowly but surely - and although I'd rather be getting laid, it seems there is still a never ending line of things to do with games and movies to be done, which is always good! Thanks for reading, enjoy your Easter :)

Wednesday, 3 February 2010

Men of mystery

Great news for fans of the first Ben Jordan movie "Le Chateau Macabre", a sequel is in pre-production and once again the game series creator Francisco Gonzalez is on board to play the lead role! Screen7 team up with Grundislav Games again & we hope to film it at Mittens in Italy, summer 2010. There will of course be many appearances from other AGS folk. The story is under debate so keep an eye on my blog for exciting news & developments about BJ2! Working title: Ben Jordan Goes To Hell.

Lost In Paradise is progressing nicely, making it almost 70% complete. It's my ambition now to have it ready for Mittens this year, preferably before - and with things going the way they have been, that shouldn't be a problem.

Until next time, take care!