Off Grid Sprint Update 11.12.2015 - File transfers

Our last sprint was mainly about building the simulation of mobile and wireless networks, how devices connect to them, and converting all out existing data systems to send the data through these networks. But of course the goal wasn’t just for the existing things to work with the networks, there was a bigger reason why we needed to build that simulation…

Off Grid Development Update 11.11.2015 - Networking

One more sprint mainly focused on background systems, but this time at least it’s something pretty integral for the game we want to build, and something we’ve been needing for a long time.

Off Grid Development Update 5.10.2015 - Eyes in the skies

EGX

It’s been one more month in Off Grid development, so what have we done this time? Well, the EGX expo in Birmingham, for example, where we spent a few days displaying the game and doing a bit of live prototyping & development at the same time!

Sprint Update 04.9.2015 - Experiments and future content

Hello there, long time no talk!

We’ve been away on our summer holidays, Pontus headed back to Finland to catch up with family, and rich got married for the second time (to the same person). We’ve had some contract work to do to keep the wolves at bay, but fret not we have been continuing away on off grid development in the background! and so here is an overdue catch up on what we’ve been up to…
Rich took the opportunity to use some of the time for getting back in tune with a pencil and paper and wrote the first draft for the Off Grid script. As you may know we have had the premise and the major characters fleshed out for some time but the new script ties together all the current designs for future levels and features with a coherent narrative, and pretty much lays out the entire player journey for the main story missions. This has been really helpful already for working out what to prioritize in the next levels we are prototyping, and what the player journey for the game is in relation to the character’s development.

Sprint Update 23.6.2015 - A.I. Guards have needs too!

Once again we’ve had a longer sprint, with plenty of new things and changes added to the game.

Motivational breaks

This sprint we’ve been working on adding a bit more depth to our artificial intelligence. The idea is that based on character personalities, they have different needs and default values, keeping track of their motivation, alertness, amount of coffee needed for them to stay awake and so on.
So, to start building complexity, our AI guards will now keep track of their current motivation level, decreasing it slowly as they do their normal, boring patrol duty. And once the motivation level reaches zero, they really don’t feel like patrolling any more and instead decide that it’s time for a short break.

Sprint Update 15.05.2015 - Sock Puppet

It’s been a long sprint this one, as we had a couple of long and time consuming tasks to attack. But first…

Cabin Fever

Last month saw a lot of activity on the indie scene as devs rushed to get in applications for a new indie incubator, called Stugan, where 20 innovative developers are chosen to take 2 months out working on their projects together in a remote cabin in the Swedish wilderness. Unfortunately this sprint we got the disappointing news that we were down to the last few but we weren’t selected. Congrats to our friend and fellow London Game Spacer  Robin Baumgarten who got in though!
Part of the process was to make a team intro video, we’re looking forward to seeing more videos from folk we know who applied, but for the time being we figured you folks might enjoy seeing ours:

"the video is no longer available"

 

Not a bad effort eh! Wish we were going to a log cabin in the woods for it, but at least we got a new team member out of it, Sock will be joining us on the Semaeopus Ltd. team as the Business Development Officer pending contract negotiations.

Sprint Update 15.04.2015 - Encrypted Spring Cleaning

Our files and folders are once again blooming, and a prune here and there over the last sprint has helped everything burst tidily into spring!

When you are making an indie game that has a longer production lifetime than a couple of months, and more than one team member on that game, it can be pretty surprising how much project management and organization is required. That is why larger companies (that are well run) are more economically viable up to a point, as you can dedicate a role to handling much of the admin and smooth running of a company and its production schedule.

Sprint Update 23.03.2015 - Last of the Winter Bugs

We weren’t only dealing with software bugs, we were dealing with ones that cause runtime errors in the human body. Rich got a fever that put him down for a large part of this Sprint and so most of what we got completed was down to Pontus’ herculean efforts.

Sprint Update 6.3.2015 - Follow Cam

Boring production stuff, managing the company and dealing with a broken laptop

Well its been a not so fun sprint for parts of it, we’ve been extremely busy but its that time of year for us and so a lot of it has been accounts and paper work as our annual return is due. I suppose that means that there is something to celebrate there though, Semaeopus Ltd. had it’s 1st birthday at the end of last month, and we didn’t even remember to buy it a present! We would talk you through all the boring production and admin associated with running a company but I don’t think that’s why you came to read this blog so we’ll save that for another time!

To add to the paperwork-heavy sprint, we also ended with a broken laptop, and a broken computer in a two-man development team definitely makes things difficult. So great thanks to everyone who helped organising a new laptop, in the end it took only a few days to get one (which was actually sent all the way from Finland!). Thank you everyone, we now once again have both members of the team working on the project!

…Which brings us to the few actually interesting things we were able to work in this sprint:

Sprint Update 09.02.2015 - XML Heaven

Some nice progress on editor tools and paving the way for player modding of NPCs and data content in the game…and we managed to get out of the proverbial ‘indie-office’ (our sofas, indie co-working, London Gamespace etc.) and into the real world for a bit too!

The Future of the Darknet

 

Sprint Update 26.1.2015 - Fresh brains!

First full sprint of 2015 completed, and we definitely made quite a lot of progress in this one!

Sprint Update 09.01.2015

Happy New Year! We extended our last sprint to run into January so that we could tidy up a few tasks at our leisure over the break and so that means it’s time for our latest Sprint Update!