Apparently, TRAUMA was nominated for the Independent Games Festival 2010. In 3 categories. I say “apparently” because quite frankly, I can’t quite believe it. Getting nominated for IGF was one of my big goals for this project. However, I never had my hopes too high. After all, I’m just one guy (apart from TRAUMA’s Musician and it’s Voice Talents) an not even a very tech-savvy programmer. TRAUMA isn’t even done in a REAL programming language, it’s “just” Flash. So being nominated blows my mind, especially since it is in 3 categories. I’m really happy and I’m looking forward to go to IGF, meet the other Indie developers and show my game to a wider audience.
My girlfriend made Epic Win cookies. Have one.
The bad news is that I wasn’t able to release TRAUMA yet. I’m still working on it and I’m making some progress. I got into a bit of a slow-burn situation because I’m doing some filming for the intro sequence and the “cut-scenes”. They are quite important as they provide some narrative context to the otherwise quite obscure and metaphorical game content. However, I was ill-prepared for a Film production and switching workflow from programming to filming is difficult. But I got a lot of footage in during the holidays and I believe I will be able to get the remaining 4 shots in this week.
Since I missed my deadline I will now provide weekly updates on my progress with TRAUMA so people, who were looking forward to it at least have some consolation. I’m really sorry for the delay. I assure you that it’s for the best of the project and in the end – for you.
I am looking forward to giving this game a try, hope you are satisfied with it when you release it.
Congrats on the nominations! From what I saw, a lot of people initially had negative reactions to Trauma on account of it using real-life stills (I guess all those FMV titles left a bitter taste in the mouths of the masses), but inevitably turned around and seemed quite impressed with it.
Also, developing it in Flash might not have been such a bad idea: http://www.edery.org/2009/12/igf-observations-1-compatibility-problems/
Thank you!
@Leroy – well, if it is ever released I will be satisfied by default. I just want to make sure the high expectations are at least partially deserved. The problem is that the expectations seem to rise constantly. I need to accelerate the development up to expectations-escape velocity.
@Radek – Good point on using Flash. I totally agree with that observation. It is one of the many reasons why Flash is the only development environment I would use for PC right now. I could imagine also using XNA but only in order to go for Xbox. But then again, the audience doesn’t seem to be that large there.
Still, using Flash there is that unsettling taste of wasting enormous amounts of processing power when even the simplest effects slow down your framerate. I always feel like I’m just pretending to be a programmer.
Hah hah, well, despite its inefficiencies, Flash is probably the most ubiquitous game-platform out there. As such, it’s a more sensible option for people who don’t have a Masters Degree in Computer Science or simply don’t want to spend time building their own engines (all the while worrying about portability).
I’m not a huge fan of Flash myself, but I certainly recognize its advantages. With that said, it pains me to see things like Machinarium not having a right-click inventory management system, i.e., right-clicking to bring up the inventory/dismiss the currently held items. Instead, it forces you to drag the cursor to a pop-up menu, click on the desired item, drag it to a potential hotspot, and then drag it all the way back to the inventory when the activity is finished. Not that the right click system is necessary per se, but it’s familiar, and Machinarium didn’t accommodate for its absence by creating an interface that was better catered to its platform’s limitations.
Also, I believe there are workarounds in Flash so that right-clicking doesn’t bring up the Adobe menu, but I can’t say for sure.
Either way, not every game can be made in Flash, but an awful lot of them are suitable for it regardless of any backend inefficiencies.
Totally agree with the Flash-discussion here. I was having lately much discussions with unix-people about that. You can imagine, that most of them not really love Flash. For me, it is a little bit of a love/hate relationship. There are clear drawbacks, but on the other side: show me anything other, that is that portable in terms of multimedia like things made in Flash? And while AS3 is very grown-up from a coder perspective it is nice to work with. Frameworks like Flixel are the sugar on the top. I think this is best for doing protoypes and quick sketches of games. If you are doing it in an agile fashion, you can grow-up from there as well.
was soll man da schon sagen, krystian? du hast es geschafft! und die erwartungshaltungen zu deinem spiel: keine angst, es ist auf jeden fall gut genug. dieses skurile kombiniert mit ruhe, das ist gelungen. keine angst vor leuten die zuviel andere flash games, konsolenspiele und strategische adventrues
gewohnt sind und sagen werden “dass ist voll mies”. das ist es nicht. das war es nicht als du es mir das letzte mal live gezeigt hast und das sieht auch nicht im video so aus als würden die hinzugefügten teile so sein. entspannen, gedulden, dran bleiben. ich meine zu wissen, dass das schon immer deine stärken waren. daniel.
[...] a pleasure to tell, that Krystian Majewskies work in progress game TRAUMA was not only nominated to the IGF 2010 one time, but tree times: Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Excellence in Visual Art, Excellence in [...]
Congratulations, Krystian. I’m looking forward to the game and hope it does awesome in the IGF awards.
Congratulations on the IGF nomination Krystian. I see you post over at the Experience Points blog a lot. Then one day I was reading through Kotaku and saw your name in the list of nominees for IGF. I thought, “whoa! I know that guy!” I’m looking forward to playing Trauma once you finish it up. Good luck in IFG 2010!