Last week, I received this e-mail from Dan, our gameplay guy:

"Ryan and I came up with a one-button video game idea.

You are in a diner, first-person view. The aiming reticle sways and
moves, independently of your swaying and moving viewpoint. You can click
on things when the reticle wanders over them- bitch at people, refuse to
eat food, drink, throw utensils and knock plates off the table.

Eventually your viewpoint gets up and staggers out, allowing you a
chance at knocking over waiters and busboys, flipping off other patrons
(a Dejobaan trademark!), and shoving hot coffee urns at bystanders. The
miniboss is hitting the elevator button. The final boss is swiping your
keycard to get into your room. If you manage that, you fall into the
room and it fades to black.

The name of the game is 'Belligirent Patron at 24-Hour Casino Coffee
Shop.' Subtitle: 'You had to be there.'"

I'm beginning to suspect that this isn't an idea for our next game, but rather a recounting of what happened in Vegas while we were up for the Indie Game Challenge.

This Valentine's Day, say "I love you" to that someone you love -- the Dejobaan Games way. Download the big version below, print it out, then make someone else have it. That someone else should be sexy. We guarantee a sensual weekend of sensuality*.



(*No.)

Here's a quick, dirty timelapse video on some of the building work we've been doing. Much of this content will make its way into the final game in a hopefully refined form.

The above images are based on an experimentation with lots of math and procedural level generation for Musorqua (working title). We can create twisting, looping things using Designer Script (a subset of C-Script):

// Create the pieces:
#loop

// Increment this piece's position:
pattern_position.z -= distance_between_pieces;
pattern_orientation.pan += angle_between_pieces;

// Create the piece:
stamp(begin_catalog_number);
vec_set(piece.x, pattern_position.x);
vec_set(piece.pan, pattern_orientation.pan);

loop1+=1;
if(loop1<=pieces_to_create) { djump("loop"); }

The trick here is that creating such patterns by hand would take infinity billion hours, but by function, they only take a few seconds.

Nothing official, of course...

Written by our PR/Marketing intern, Joan Ho.

[Link to Video]

Hello, world! This is Ichiro, speaking to you from our offices right outside of Boston, MA. I'm happy to announce that this is a video for the final prototype of Musorqua, the working title of a game that's now officially in the pipe. What that means is that the Dejobaan Team...

• Dan Brainerd, Gameplay Architect
• Leo Jaitley, PR/Marketing/Biz
• Tamlyn Miller, Programmer
• Ryan Chadwick, Artist
• Joan Ho, PR/Marketing Intern
• Mary Yovina, Art Intern
  

...and of course...

• Ichiro Lambe, Asst. Janitor
  

...are all going to be working on this new title through to completion. Right now, it looks suspiciously like Aaaaa!, and plays really rough, but that's okay, because it's just a prototype. You heard it here first!

And Also...

It's time to say au revoir (but hopefully not adieu) to Caitilin Lynch, who has just completed a Fall PR/Marketing internship with us, and is headed to Amsterdam, home of what Dejobaan considers a more sensible way of living.


(L-R: Joan Ho, Caitilin Lynch, Tamlyn Miller, and Ryan Chadwick.)

Caitilin's latest article is up at ModDB, so if you haven't read How to Create a Prototype in 5 Easy Steps, give it a go.

We're trying to create an interesting aesthetic for Musorqua, since the visual appeal is a third of the game. (The other two thirds are musical expression and something else which I don't know what it is, but it keeps me up at night.) Everyone's familiar with fractals, but I think artists tend to underuse them because they're such a technical thing.



Of course, they're found everywhere in nature, from fern fronds to humble broccoli. You can create complex things easily by repeating and building on simple components. We used a lot of that in Aaaaa! for the skycubes -- the unchanging backdrops within a level.



That one's a simple pattern created in Genetica.



We added a transparency layer, then laid them out over several parallel planes. Voila, instant skycube. Simple, but effective. So, why not extend that to what's actually moving around within the game? It's trivially easy to experiment with this, and I find the results immediately gratifying.

We're researching for Musorqua, Dan our Gameplay Architect, came up with this. Lassegg can't play the drums or the piano -- but he can sure edit video. And, just in case you're a music geek, and you've missed this for 3 years:

Now with the excitement of 10 concurrent music tracks. Here are the four basic tracks you can bring into earshot by capturing yellow, red, blue, and orange blips:

• Drums - Boom. Chakka. Boom. Chakka. Boom. Chakka. Not like a solo.
  
• Bass - Resonating, rich, and delicious. Like musical chocolate.
  
• Lead - Bright melody of leading line. Pianos, trumpets, and strumpets.
  
• Vocals - Can every song fill something in about the Musorqua world?

With those, you have a song. Catch six types of secondary, hidden blips to make the music more interesting:

• Effects - Non-melodic elements and accents. Like scratching.
• Perc - Double your layer of drums for complex, eargasmic percussion.
• Synth - Use this judiciously for a synth line that weaves around the lead.
  
• Oooh - More vocals! Utterances! (Maybe not that one.) Oooooooooooohmmmmmmm.
• Deep - Double the bass line. Hovering around 220Hz. Makes your subwoofer woof.
  
• Pads - Synth pads support the song by adding a background layer.
  

Yeah.

A recent Kotaku post outlines "What Marketing Can And Can't Do With Microsoft's Avatars." Here's an excerpt:

• When Avatars are used in a group of three or more, at least one Avatar must be female.
• When Avatars are used in a group of three or more, consider including different ethnicities.
• When Avatars are used in groups of three or more, one of them should be facing forward and looking outward.
• Avatars must be playful and mischievous, not devious or inappropriate.
• Do not show Avatars with closed or blinking eyes.
• Do not show Avatars using any hand or body gestures other than those provided.
• Do not use an Avatar as the main message of a marketing piece.
• Do not show Avatars interacting with the Xbox 360 Sphere.

Our two PR interns are creating illustrations for our blog. We call them comics, but they're so much more than that. Here are some guidelines for building the characters within these:

• When Characters are used in a group of three or more, at least one Avatar must be nonhuman.
• When Characters are used in a group of three or more, one must be biracial White/Asian, because Dejobaan founder Ichiro Lambe is biracial, so everyone must be biracial, because Dejobaan founder Ichiro Lambe whines if things become too unfamiliar.
  
• When Characters are used in a group of five or more, one must have an odd number of legs: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 34, etc.
  
• Characters must be drawn as to imply that they browse pornography, but not on the Internet. Figure that one out.
  
• Do not show Characters with asian-style slanty eyes.
• Do not show Characters as globally well-known humanitarians who advocate for the poor and helpless, due in part to a documentary, and book, Something Beautiful for Dejobaan, having won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and India's highest civilian honor, the Bhaarat Ratna, in 1980 for their mild humanitarian works.
• Do not use Characters a group of people who live within a cave, where objects passing before a fire cast shadows against a wall, causing the people to ascribe forms to them, and are the only things that the people ever see, as a contrast to the Philosopher, who has been freed from the came, and comes to realize that the shadows are merely a simulacrum of reality..
• Do not show Characters interacting with the Xbox 360 Sphere.

Thanks.

Hot off the presses, it's Aaaaa! for the Awesome/Musorqua Prototype #4. It's a small (but useful?) iteration on our previous two concept videos. If you haven't seen them, here are two earlier prototypes that lead up to this:


(Prototype #1)


(Prototype #2)

I think it's looking more interesting. Are we moving in the right direction? We'll add a few more iterations before we're done with the prototype stage. If it looks like a game, at that point, we'll move it into active development.

We're creating music for the Aaaaa! for the Awesome/Musorqua prototype using FL Studio. Lay down some drums, a bass line, and a guitar, and we're a tenth of the way towards making a Musorqua OST.

Meet President Ichiro Lambe, BizDev director Leo Jaitley, and Gameplay Architect Dan Brainerd at this month's Boston Indies meeting. Ichiro and Leo will be giving this talk:

TALK: "Here's What Dejobaan Games Did to Market Their 13th Title, AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity"

WHAT: Just like the title says. Dejobaan President Ichiro Lambe and BizDev Director Leo Jaitley talk on the successes, failures, and lessons learned in creating the studio's latest game.
WHEN: 7pm on Monday 11/17
WHERE: Microsoft New England Research & Development Center (NERD) at 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142

We're also giving away a free copy of AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! to attendees. Join us!


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