Wohoooo. We just got back from the Nordic Game party at the club Debaser in Malmö and it was great.

The first day at Nordic Games went good. We started to show Exhaust, but we changed to a “work in progress” beta of Penalty of Heroes. Many features is missing but the “core gameplay” is in so we tried it on a lot of people. The response was over all good, there were of cause some things that were pointed out, but now we can change or design them in another way. So all the worlds game developer were our beta testers today :p

I also went to a couple of lectures. The best one that I went to was Ryan Schneider seminar about communities. Ryan is the community manager at Insomniac Games (Resistance, Ratchet & Clank etc).

There were also “some” people that took a chance to play PoH. The video is shot from a distance and PoH is shown on the TV to the right.

Also today two games from Gotland University was nominated at the awards, Vertigo (best new game studio) & Penumbra (best game of the year). Though none of them won : (

* There were also some people coming up to us and saying hi and thanking us for keeping this blog up working. It’ feels really great to get that response from people you never met : ) This makes us want to do this blog even better : )

Yesterday was a hard day, I had to abandon my own child, “the ninjas” and the student unions regular ninja party. I had looked forward to this party that I and dwarf once started and still lives on.

The reason I made the sacrifice for free beer and free absinthe as the younger member of Databox now attended to (BASTERDS!!!) are because of our deadline. Yesterday we have to have our first  demo version ready for game testing, how much I love my child I have to let it go. I have a new target in sight that still demands a lots of works and I’m not gonna allow it to fail.

After six beer and code crank, me, Ninja, Dwarf, Nixi, Andreas, Jens and Jakob successfully build a satisfying demo, 15 min after the closing time of the pub, crap

Darwin is a skinny old man, who always carries his crossbow with him. He fled his hometown of Giza as it was enslaved and corrupted by people that gave false promises about a better future. Darwin has lived in Era for just as long as Zedwig and knows all of them very well. Though he is old fashioned and somewhat an outsider in the party, he is still a good friend and a skilled armsman.

From the start of Penalty of Heroes I have seen the release of the game Darkfall as a major risk in our project. Jona, Zaffe, Tobbe and Johan have now got Darkfall and will probably forget to sleep, party and even work on PoH (I think I have to bring out the whip).

This is truly a dark day for PoH and the only thing I will hear about at the office for several weeks/months now are how great Darkfall is.

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Watch how happy Baba gets when he receives the message “service is not available” when he starts up Darkfall. At the beginning Baba says -”I pee my pants of happiness” (in Swedish). At the end of the video you can see Jona making animations for Llaknel.

Eight of the members of Databox Games are stage on Gotland in our home office, it has it’s benefits that you can just turn your head or walk over to the other office when something is unclear. It’s easy to see when people work and make progress or mistakes. The good part is also the bad party, because when you work on the same ting all the time you can easily blind yourself with your work, or take design question for granted if you over heard some people in the team working.

Those are the reasons why I’m very happy to have Jens that always question how things are or progress, so I don’t overseen some important stuff. As he said yesterday “I have to drag out information from you”, this is because I sometimes believe that everything is crystal clear, but if something is not it well easy / early be discovered by the people.

** Jens comment **
Well I have a tendency to take the role of “the devils advocate”, this so important things are not forgotten or things overlooked because no one take care of them. Also I’m quite a control person so I like to know where things are, and when things will be done. So it’s natural for me to “drag out” information from Håkan :p Håkan is also from the northern part of Sweden, so it’s in his genes to not tell me everything :p

Anyway I (and other people  on the team) got some good info from Håkan yesterday, so now everything is crystal clear … I think :p

As we say in Sweden -”communication is A and O” (means communication is everything).

At yesterdays meeting we decided that we had to do something about people dropping in late for meetings. Two persons showed up in time and then people dropped in over 1 hour late. We had brought up this problem before and it was mostly generated by the fact that people stayed up until 06.00 in the morning working.
Anyway we decided that a Penalty will be in place for being late to a meeting:

The fees:
20 skr (≈$2.5) being late for a weekly meeting
10 skr (≈$1.3) being late for a Scrum meeting

All money will be collected in a “party pot” and will support the companies parties :p

You could say mixing pleasure with pleasure (working and partying). The time is 00.15 and the day just turn from Saturday to Sunday. Right now we’re working on finishing the Databox Games web site and drinking a bit. Drinking and working isn’t good if you’re a bus driver, but if you’re making games it can sometimes help to get really great ideas, … well until you sober up :p

Yesterdays Lucia party at the university was hard. So there will not be much work done today on the game. Anyway it was so fun we won’t post any pictures :p
Now I think I will play some Mirrors Edge or watch some reruns on the TV.

Gidiapp goat beavers!

Tomorrow we in Sweden celebrate the darkest day of the year with the annual “winter light festival” Lucia, where the Catholic saint, saint Lucy of Syracuse (Saint Lucia), is celebrated. The tradition goes down something like this:

A nice blond girl with lights in her hair wakes you up in the morning and sings for you. If you’re lucky she brings her friends.

The day before this miracle happens (which is today) it’s one of the biggest “party night” of the year in Sweden. Guess what we will be going?!?

Write code, draw concept art and have long meetings ….?

Nooooooooooooooooot gonna happen. We will party so much that this Island will shake. We might post some pictures from the party.

Yesterday it was Halloween here in Sweden and of cause it was party for us. Håkan and Jona was dressed as two “tv Swedish redneck comedians” (Ronny & Ragge), Nixi and Dwarf were bloody, Baba as Super Natural (TV show) and Jakob as James Bond.