What Happened at SRRN 10/1/12 - 10/5/12

The News

  • This week was a bit more relaxing than last. We all enjoyed the slight reprieve. No all-nighters were pulled.
  • A spider killed a ladybug on our balcony (so sayeth Nick; I haven't actually seen it myself)
  • Apparently SRRN is on a health-kick; we've stocked our kitchen with carrots, apples, and... mountain dew.
  • Allen learned to print "Hello World" to a Unity scene. He's very proud of himself, and this win comes off a great victory last week in which he figured out how to place particles.
  • Lots of minifying! We're wrapping up an HTML5 project for BlackBerry OS, and so optimization is the order of the week.
  • There's a new image in Dan Magnusson's Art Gallery, "Slow Down Chooe!" He made this 3 years ago, and frequently drops it to the rest of us on Skype whenever Chris Hooe is being Awesome.

The Links

What Happened at SRRN 9/24/12 - 9/28/12

Another extremely busy week, at SRRN. Going back over the week's links and happenings it seems there wasn't very much that was both a) interesting and b) non-confidential, but let's see what we have here...

The News

  • We're largely settled into our new office now, which is really nice. Our game room is still a de facto storage closet, which needs to be addressed, but at least we're all able to see our desks again. Brendan enjoys having more walls so he can sneak around the office making noises as if he's a rat in the walls. I'm not joking.
  • I replaced my iPhone 4 with an iPhone 5. It's extremely shiny.
  • A lot of work by the team on a demo for what we hope will be our next original game. We can't post any details yet, but we hope it'll come to pass and that you'll like it. All I can really say for now is that these pictures are tangentially related.
  • We discussed a lot of mobile app sales data and monetization strategies as part of a presentation we're preparing on behalf of a client. Some links of interest below, but... I warn you, it's largely very dry.  

The Links

I want to live in that place...

Clearly SRRN's artists don't live in the same world I do.

We're implementing a journal feature in a demo that SRRN is working on right now, and needed some placeholder art so the devs could keep implementing while we wait for finals. 

It was about 11:30 PM last night, and we were all getting pretty tired. By placeholder art, we meant, you know, squares of the right size. Instead... this is what we got:

What Happened at SRRN 9/17/12 - 9/21/12

The News

  • It was Dan's birthday last week. I forgot to mention this in the last weekly update, because he didn't tell anyone, and, let's be honest, no one cared anyway. We've also moved him to a new-and-improved virtual-presence, thereby (1) ensuring he crashes less frequently, and (2) multiplying the size of his face by 4. He's very unhappy that there's a VGA cable involved, though.
  • In what's apparently a very Dan-heavy weekly update, Dan has submitted for consideration several pieces of "art." You be the judge, in The Dan Magnusson Art Gallery
  • It's Nick's birthday this Sunday
  • We may not be the only company in the building with nerf guns! We saw someone walk into our (very corporate) downstairs neighbor with a Nerf bow-and-arrow on Wednesay.
  • Another busy week at SRRN, but, in typical game-industry fashion, we can't really talk about what we spent it on. Hoping that changes soon!
  • Talk Like A Pirate Day passed largely unobserved, except for a brief incident in which Brendan ran through the office yelling about a goat in a pirate accent.

The Links

    What Happened at SRRN 9/10/12 - 9/14/12

    I'm going to be honest, here -- I was on the west coast this week with Aujang for meetings with some of our business partners, so most of this week's update is second hand. In fact, some of it may just be untrue.

    The News

    • Our office has been moved! We started the process on Saturday, and I've been told the team finished up over the week. (Many thanks to the landlord for their patience with our ethernet cable between suites while we waited for Verizon...)
    • I've been told that John actually has new glasses now. When I saw him for 10 seconds last night, though, he still had the sunglasses on, so I'm skeptical.
    • The team worked all night last Sunday to hit two early-week deliverables, and did an incredible job of it
    • Chris almost certainly came to work in a Dallas Cowboys jersey

    The Links

    • The Last Express behind the scenes (warning: some spoilers): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DygVxOWd_9o

    What Happened at SRRN 9/3/12 - 9/7/12

    The News:

    • The team has been very busy this week, as we have end of week deliverables on two work for hire contracts. We're also trying to finish up a top-secret prototype of SRRN's next game, which Aujang and I will be heading to the west coast to show off next week.
    • SRRN's moving! Well, not far -- just upstairs. But it's significant enough that Allen has been drawing layout mockups for days, and shows no signs of stopping.
    • Yesterday was Brendan's birthday
    • One of our team members -- whose anonymity will be protected -- has suggested that we incorporate Gamma builds between Betas and Release Candidates. This idea was unanimously rejected.
    • John -- who's been wearing sunglasses indoors for three weeks now, after breaking his glasses -- claims to have finally ordered new ones. We'll believe it when we see them.
    • I'm writing a blog post, which, as anyone who's been following our infrequent updates will know, is pretty newsworthy.
    • Chris is wearing the same shirt he wore in his Team picture.

    Come to think of it, we aren't positive he owns any other shirts.

     

    The Links:

    A few of the links we've passed around this week...

    • Some interesting thoughts on mobile game monetization: http://www.treysmithblog.com/the-fall-of-angry-birds/
    • One of the oddest bikes we've ever seen: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/08/a-concept-bike-designed-for-running/261706/
    • Engineering the new Facebook App for iOS: http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-the-hood-rebuilding-facebook-for-ios/10151036091753920

    Some insight into what's going on with Ash II

    Originally posted: July 11, 2012

    Hi everyone-

    I know it's been a long time since we've posted any kind of update, and I'm sorry for that. I'm going to lay out some of what's going on with Ash 2, and what we're working on now. As always, if you have any questions, you should feel free to ask them. If you haven't gotten a response from feedback@srrngames.com, you can feel free to email partners@srrngames.com. The whole point of making games is for the fans, so you should have access to everyone at SRRN.
     
    The first thing we want to do is apologize for the delay in chapters.

    We made a promise to our fans, and we haven't lived up to that yet. I know a lot of you have emailed us asking about bug fixes and new content. The unfortunate truth is that we don't know ourselves when any of that will be pushed. As some of you may know, Konami has recently rebuilt its mobile division. Because all updates must be submitted through them, SRRN is in a holding pattern. As soon as we know the future of Ash 2, we'll let you know. We promise. And again, we're sorry. A lot more of the game is complete than we've had the opportunity to release, and we're as anxious as you are to have it available.
     
    To all our fans: we owe you, and we know that. If you've purchased Ash 2, we're going to figure out a way to make it up to you. We also hope you'll continue to check out our work. While waiting on Ash 2 we've been hard at work on some new projects, and we can't wait to show you!

    The New SRRNGames.com

    Hey everyone-

    Welcome to our new site! We're slowly assembling things over here, so please let us know if you have any problems with the site, or any suggestions. This new site is the beginning of a refresh of SRRN's entire online presence, and we'll be rolling out new content and updates soon.