Jazz, GDC & who's story is it anyways?

It's been too long and so many things to talk about. 

First off thanks to @lisehosein for a really fun interview on Jazz FM. Also to Aiden Johnston for his article at Now where Lise found out about the game. Thanks for being interested in what i'm making even though personally i'm still really early in development. Have to up my game now...

One thing that was brought up in both interviews is about the immigration story that underlies the entire game. That most of the wizards are older asians that are living with their families and supporting their income with can returns. Part of this is informed by second hand sources who have personally talked to them and my not quite successful attempts at a first hand conversations. The other part is telling aspects of my own experience as my extended family immigrating to Canada, living in our basement when they first arrived and my parents working all the time. I've been wrestling with how to exactly tell these aspects when I attended a talk at GDC where Ben Esposito told about his missteps in trying to make Kachina (now Donut Country)

RPS does a great write up about the talk here

Ben inspired by the Kachina doll of the Hopi tribe through some innocent missteps tried to tell the story of the Hopi and do it justice, not realizing that it was their sacred story and they didn't want it told outside of their circle. A humbling case of misguided cultural appropriation which Ben bravely told.

And here is where I have to question myself.

Do I have the right to tell their story? Am I telling their story? Part of it is my story, is that fair? What can I do to do this right? What happens if I do tell this story?

...and I'm kinda short on answers till I can talk to the wizards personally. So if you're reading this and can speak mandarin or cantonese I could use some help.

Chris

Happy Birthday! ...or the funny thing about making a game with drinking hipsters

So a quick post birthday post.

I was showing some code to my wife who then started to laugh. It is kinda ridiculous what you end up commenting when you're trying to replicate park drinking...

void Update () {

        // drink timer
        if (drinkTimer > 0f && drinks > 0) {
            drinkTimer -= Time.deltaTime;
            if (drinkTimer <= 0f && drinking == true) {
                // done drinking? make a can
                MakeCan();
                // have more drinks? keep drinking
                Drink();
            }
        }

        // out of drinks?
        if (drinks == 0 && drinking == true) {
            Headhome();
        }
    
    }

Yup. Go home code, you're drunk.

Progress... That kinda looks like a park

After months of tutorials and learning how to code in Unity I finally have something that feels like a game. Going to lockdown the demo feature set at the end of January and get on to making art assets for a demo hopefully i'll be bringing to SXSW.

So right now i've got:

  • a rough layout of the south east corner of Trinity Bellwoods
  • point and tap control of a wizard
  • hipster spawns, behaviour and can spawning
  • tappable info UI's and selection logic that I can use to control multiple wizards (possibly)

...and stuff to finish off:

  • can inventory so I can create gameplay around picking up things other than cans
  • trashcans and recycling bins for such gameplay
  • rough mockups for the beer store, home & store
  • a title screen and tutorial

After this I can finally get into designing some art assets!

Huh, looks like a park.

Huh, looks like a park.