Dejobaan Games

Ichiro’s Random Post on Music Fingerprints

// April 19th, 2012 // Comments Off // Ugly Baby

This is what Enya’s Boadicia looks like:

This is Enya’s Lazy Days:

This is one Fatboy Slim track:

This is Fatboy Slim’s take on Groove Armada:

This is Fatboy Slim’s That Old Pair of Jeans:

Bottom line: I’m still trying to figure out how to get Ugly Baby to recognize different types of music. It’s going slowly but surely.

PAX East Report Part 1: Elliot’s Take

// April 16th, 2012 // 2 Comments » // Dejobaan News, DRP

We thrust our newest hire, Elliot Borenstein, into the spotlight to demo Drunken Robot Pornography for PAX East 2012, and he came out an indie superstar. As you can see in the above photo, we knew Elliot (in chair) had many talents outside of programming — two of them being how to come prepared with tools to an expo show and how to use those tools.

We weren’t the only ones who felt Elliot stepped up his game; he felt the same, too. He recalls showing DRP to a trio of highschoolers on Saturday. After talking about it for a bit, they asked if they could interview him. He told them how he got into the industry (Ichiro likes knitted things) and encouraged them to network (and take up knitting).

Elliot reflects, “[T]hen I realized that I was now the ‘professional’ game dev that students were asking for advice, instead of the student trying to get advice out of the big fancy game dev. That was a weird mental shift, and I guess it shows that the difference between the lowly student and the high-falutin’ game dev isn’t as big as it seems.”

When not hustling the crowds, Elliot sure is a humble guy. The three days of standing made him and the rest of us even more so. “Standing for 3 days sucks, and traveling stool salesmen are closed on Easter,” Elliot laments.

One of the lessons Elliot learned was how to perfect his pitch. “It helps to have something (anything) in mind before trying to explain the game to people, but it’s also important to let the pitch evolve based on audience reactions. I started by using something Ichiro tossed at us, and slowly massaged it based on what got the best reactions. For instance the word ‘centerfolds,’ when repeated multiple times, can work wonders.”

Getting people to do Dejobaan’s challenge (“do the Drunken Robot”) for the Indie Megabooth Passport was even more of a challenge than the challenge itself. “Some people were highly amused by the idea of doing an interpretive dance for their Indie Badge of Courage. Far more were very quick to hand the passport back when I told them about the dancing.” He eventually learned a few ways to convince hesitant booth-goers to part with their dignity:

• Don’t tell them the prize is a tiny pin
• Tell them that after they dance for us they get to hit Alex Schwartz (of Owlchemy Labs) over the head with a plastic axe
• Dangle a jellyfish in their face and/or get their friends to talk them into it.

Speaking of jellyfish, did you know Elliot knit two after our mascot for PAX East? Some PAX-goers thought the knit jellyfish were much better than those plushies produced at a big ACME industry for Fire House International’s AAA title: Go Home Dinosaurs!

Fire House CFO Eitan Glinert was boarding his big, private jet as of this writing, unavailable for comment.

Dejobaan in the PAX East 2012 Indie Megabooth

// April 2nd, 2012 // Comments Off // Dejobaan News, DRP, F=ma, Indie News, Ugly Baby

From April 6-8 at PAX East, we will be part of the The Indie Megabooth, situated on expo floor prime realty and encompassing 16 of the most creative studios. Collectively the Megabooth includes 20 titles, and (we’re 90% sure) 3 of those are ours. That means Dejobaan’s Games make up 15% of the Megabooth. Not bad!

We think you should be able to name our almost certain triple threat. Say it with me: Drunken Robot Pornography (that one sounds even better if a whole crowd yells it, like at a game show), Ugly Baby, and F=ma. We’re frantically polishing up the first two to be playable and fun, and we’re really stoked about how so many people love the iOS version of Aaaaa!

We admit PAX East is huge, and we are thrilled to show off all our hard work. To help guide you to almost all of the awesome indie titles on the PAX East show floor and to give you a reason to goof off even more with us, we Megabooth devs created the Indie Mega Passport. So that no mobile indie child is left behind, we appended the six games from this year’s Boston Indie Showcase to the passport hunt, topping it off with some Joe Danger spice from our friends at Hello Games.

But rather than hunt down a couple dozen indie booths, do you instead want to maximize your time stalking Ichiro at PAX East? Check out this post for a detailed map where we all will be on the floor and what exciting indie talks he will participate in.

We hope to see you at PAX East, and maybe even get a restraining order on you.

PAX East: T-Minus 2 Weeks

// March 27th, 2012 // Comments Off // Dejobaan News, DRP, F=ma, Indie News, Ugly Baby

Dejobaan’s preparing to meet its friends and to make a few thousand new ones at PAX East 2012. There, we hope to show off F=ma (now available for iOS), along with the Drunken Robot Pornography and Ugly Baby on Unity prototypes April 6 -8 at the Boston Convention Center, booth #661.

Dejobaan’s no noob when it comes to PAX East. We had two stations at the inaugural event in 2010, thanks to MIT GAMBIT and the Boston Indie Showcase. We’ve grown since then, and now have our very own booth. Understanding the strength in indie numbers, we joined more than a dozen other developers to create the Indie MegaBooth, making it easier than ever for indie game fans and press to find us all. (We’ll have lots to reveal about the MegaBooth in the coming weeks, too.)

Fourteen developers make up the proper Indie MegaBooth, which is spread among three large areas adjacent to the Boston Indie Showcase. PAX East has uploaded an official map of the expo floor. Take a moment to find Dejobaan’s booth, #661.

Make sure you stop by, as most of the extended Dejobaan family will be there: Alicia (mistress voiceover of ceremonies), Elliot, Ichiro, John, Leo, and potentially others!

When Ichiro isn’t at the PAX East booth talking to fans and press individually, he’ll be addressing two rooms full of gamers. He’ll be speaking in the “Indie Game Development: A Day in the Life – Part II” lecture in the Cat Theatre on Saturday from 12:00pm to 1:00pm with Ska Studios and Arcen Games. His second talk will be “The Indie Rant: Indie Developers Gone Wild” in the Naga Theatre on Sunday from 4:00pm to 5:00pm with a slew of indies, local and international!

While Ichiro’s appearances at those lectures are finalized, our game line-up and physical booth are still in development. We hope you’ll join in cheering on the team on Twitter and Facebook, as we enter these final two weeks. Our resident drunken robots can turn all that positive reinforcement into smutty developmental energy!

Drunken Robot Technicolor Dream: Hue Experimentation

// March 22nd, 2012 // Comments Off // Dejobaan News, DRP

Our Drunken Robot Pornography prototype has taken the clean-room approach, with simplistic palettes (visible in the abundance of whites). That grey and red hovering titan is the first-generation glossy plastic variety Titan, with drilling tentacles of metallic penetration and titillation (living up to Drunken Robot Pornography’s namesake). Along with funky new, mutli-functional appendages, we’re hoping to experiment and showcase that Titans are more than a collection of simple shapes.

Our own Elliot Borenstein recently visited Worchester Polytechnic Institute to gather some feedback on DRP’s design, including art choices and gameplay. There were more people who didn’t do the survey for whatever reason (*cough* former Dejobaaner Ryan *cough*), but Elliot estimates 35 students took part. Elliot says, “It went smashingly. Every computer was taken, and extra people were crowding around to watch and discuss. By the time we got to the contest at the end, some people were getting kind of competitive.”

Elliot continues, “The folks all seemed to agree that the movement, while fun, could be tightened up a bit. In this video, the jetpack can now stop premature death 74.2% of the time, and it allows players to do more fighting from high in the sky without needing to land.”

With constantly refined art and gameplay direction, DRP seems to be headed somewhere and fast. Fingers crossed we get DRP sexy enough for PAX East edification!

Ugly Baby Under the Knife for PAX East 2012

// March 20th, 2012 // Comments Off // Dejobaan News, Ugly Baby

We are hard at work to polish a playable slice of Ugly Baby on Unity for PAX East, with only 2.22222221 weeks to go! Start from the beginning, with a huge, ugly baby head on the title screen. Then: a new, totally awesome song selector. The graphics aren’t final, but we are happy to report it now allows players to select from all drives and folders:

Those asking for more control options are in luck; we’re working on [WASD+mouse] and [gamepad] (though we’ll focus on the latter when we try for a PAX East showing).

Tying the music to the gameplay is still a cornerstone for Ugly Baby, in addition to the core gameplay of dodging or kissing, shooting, and collecting. While we are tweaking algorithms to exploit the music/gameplay relationship for all types of genres, we are thinking the PAX East demo will focus on a few playable songs. Ideally, though, we’d love a scenario where fans could bring their thumbdrives and play the songs they want to.

How many enemies we get in the possible PAX East demo (or if we get the game there at all!) is up to timing. Either way, be sure to check out our booth at PAX East April 6-8, where Ugly Baby on Unity should be playable, along with F=ma and Drunken Robot Pornography. Don’t fret if you can’t make it to PAX East, as Ichiro hopes to release the new playable build of Ugly Baby to current owners not too long after.

Will the Winners of the Titan Building Contest Please Stand up?

// March 13th, 2012 // Comments Off // Competitions, Dejobaan News, DRP

Not one but two fans walk away with the Steam-enabled Dejobaan Complete Pack for wowing our (admittedly biased) judges with exceptional creations of titanic proportions. We also chose three creations which grant the designers whatever Dejobaan game they want the most.

We asked fans to build a damned Titan, using a lovely editor developer Elliot Borenstein had constructed. Dozens of fans heeded the call and submitted titans we’d never imagine in our wildest dreams or nightmares (in a good way). In the end, Elliot chose Tyler Coleman of Retro Game Studios for his unnamed Titan. Elliot said of all the Titans, Tyler’s was the one he’d want to fight the most:

One of Elliot’s honorable mentions was John Polson’s favorite of the bunch and second winner of the Dejobaan Complete Pack: Andrew Rudge’s Scorpion.  John concedes that he’s played and watched a little too much sci-fi. Thusly, Andrew is celebrated for having touched on one of John’s soft spots.

Elliot’s other honorable mentions give us the excuse to share a few more great designs! Each designer also gets one Dejobaan game of his or her choosing! Check ‘em out! Ms Kitty Fantastico from Adam Howell:

Elliot particularly appreciated this accompanying text:

Here are some more of Richard’s that caught our eyes:

Lastly, we introduce the world to Juan Del Rio’s Mini Titan Hugs. This one is pretty damn cute and is a great way to end the blog post. Thanks for everyone who submitted! We send you all titanic hugs!

Ugly Baby Unity Prototype: Building Bling

// March 1st, 2012 // Comments Off // Dejobaan News, Ugly Baby

Dejobaan R&D is progressing smoothly with an Ugly Baby Unity prototype. We are finally able to call out to Python, which handles all the fancy procedural content generation, through Unity. As a basic example of this success, the following video shows a level generated with buildings that blink to the music.

These buildings GOT RHYTHM! We’re still using Awesome assets for now to speed along Unity migration. Ugly Baby’s visuals will be back and better than before once everything else is in place on the Unity Engine.

Our next steps will be to convert the level format to JSON and to get Python actually to build a level to the music, beyond blinking buildings.

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for iOS

// March 1st, 2012 // Comments Off // Aaaaa!, F=ma

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (Force = Mass x Acceleration), for F=ma for short, is out for the iPhone and iPad.

This is what I can say about it. It is what’s said! Check it out here!

Build a Titan. Win a Prize.

// February 23rd, 2012 // 1 Comment » // Competitions, Dejobaan News, DRP

Titan orgies sound fitting for our first person, jetpack boosting, heavy bullet firing Drunken Robot Pornography prototype, and we’re eager to see what folks can come up with!

Contest Time!

A Video

First, check out what Elliot does in this titan builder tutorial:

Da Rules

Step 1: Go to the Titan builder page (it may prompt to install a Unity plug-in).
Step 2: Make a Titan.
Step 3: Submit screenshots of your titan to stuff@dejobaan.com by March 2, 2012. Photos from more than one angle will help us judge.  If you submit more than one Titan creation, please label your photos appropriately.

We’ll subjectively pick the best looking Titan,  based on the tingling sensations felt in our nether regions, and give its creator Steam codes for the Dejobaan Complete Pack.  Three runner-ups will each get one Dejobaan game of his or her choosing.

Legal fine print to make our lawyers happy because we’re running a contest: All submissions become property of Dejobaan Games, LLC, and may be used in any fashion, including (but not limited to) printing microscopically on rice vermicelli for use in pho or other Vietnamese cuisine. Take that, law!