EvolventGames will be entering Udemy making courses for teens!

I’m excited to announce that I will be working on courses in 3D game development targeting a youthful audience. I’ve been a game development enthusiast my whole life and I’d love to share that passion and exuberance with another generation of developers. The courses will include several projects to complete from start to finish that will give my students experience creating something magical from thin air.

I always feel like a magician when I’m crafting digital experiences for others. Teaching others will be exhilarating and I can’t wait to see what my students will do. I’m not sure how long this process will take and I have a lot of learning to do about recording and learning to be okay with the sound of my own voice. I’ll post some updates regularly as I make progress on the course materials.

Special Thanks to a Friend.

Today I’d like to thank a friend of mine that helped contribute to Alphabet Farm. Those who know me personally know that I’ve been friends with Erich Hafenmaier (@wanderingdev) a very long time. Originally, it was intended that we would work on Alphabet Farm together and build a game development company together shooting for products that weren’t AAA titles that take a ton of money to create. We decided on a budget to pick up what art we needed and figure out what kind of game we could make with the assets instead of dreaming up a game and having to invent all the art and tech. Over the course of the development of Alphabet Farm, Erich was always very supportive and shared his ideas and helped set up a bunch of tools for collaboration and build process. His ideas and help with release engineering process helped make the development process easier and more streamlined and made it possible to add others to the project (though I never did). I’m very thankful to have had the assistance and regret that in the end Alphabet Farm wasn’t successful enough to launch a bigger project. I don’t have a “credits” button on Alphabet Farm, but if it did he would certainly be in the credits for Release Engineering and contributing to design. Thanks Erich! I truly appreciate you..

Working on World Literacy!

This last year has been a whirlwind of activity for me. After publishing Alphabet Farm for Apple, Google, and Amazon devices, I was approached for a contract job working with a nonprofit organization that named Curious Learning. Since April, I’ve been working with Curious Learning to aid in their goal of researching literacy as well as developing software to aid in teaching children to read all over the world in lots of different languages.

Alphabet Farm hasn’t sold as many units as I hoped it would, but hey! I can buy a few Subway sandwiches with what was earned. In all seriousness, developing a game from start to finish independently taught me so very much! I learned to make particle art, modelling, animating, designing a scene and interactions, scoping a product, voice acting, and sound design. I learned how to optimize for mobile platforms, take feedback from children playing the game into design decisions, and how to publish for each platform.

Overall this journey is what set me up for working for Curious Learning. I’m grateful for the opportunity to reach a larger audience of children. I’ll be updating my progress here and also be using this blog as a place to talk about game design in general and whatever pet projects I might have going on.

Special Thanks to Mom on Her Birthday!

As I sit on the brink of shipping my first independent game, all the people who helped me along come to mind while I'm reflecting on the long journey to get here.  One of those very special people is my mother.   I have my mother to thank for being an independent and creative thinker.   There are a lot of bumps in the road of becoming an adult from a child and she helped me through some of the more difficult and tangled paths.

Growing up in Bovina was hard for me in some ways.  I've always had worlds and worlds and worlds that I create and hold in my imagination.  Imagining how life could be different, better, or "what would happen if".  A lot of people in Bovina would say "Yes... of course I support creative people."  But when truly faced with one, the feedback could be kind of harsh.  "That Neal boy is weird."  "That Neal boy is a bad influence." "That Neal boy needs to keep his feet on the ground."  Facing these kinds of comments when you are in elementary school was one thing, but junior high school was brutal.  

My mom always encouraged me to be myself.  If they don't like you, that's their problem.  Don't be somebody else just to make other people happy.  One day you'll find a group of people that can see what you can see.  Mom always said sweet things about how smart I was and that people wouldn't always be so judgmental to me.   She told me that I'd make the best friends I'd ever make in college and that all the other criticism I was being hit with would melt away.  Was she ever correct!

Though Mom wasn't a programmer or a super technical person, one thing that she did do is help me get hold of every programming book that I could get my hands on.  By fifth grade we had subscriptions to Byte magazine, Computer World, and a few others that had code samples in them.  I had books on computer architecture, assembly language, BASIC programming language, Pascal, etc... you name it.  She'd take me to computer stores to talk to the people running the stores about hardware and software.  I was always a little bit short of cash to buy a book and she always helped me out with the spare change needed to finish the purchase.

If it wasn't computer books, it was Dungeons and Dragons books and magazines.  Mom would take me to the Enchanted Sunmark in Clovis, NM.  and I'd see novels, D&D books, and other role-playing games that fed my imagination and taught me that there were others out there in the world like me.  Rather than seeking to confine my creative urges, Mom fed them and helped them to grow knowing that they would serve me very well.

This support was so important to me becoming a game developer and landing that first job at Turbine working on Dungeons and Dragons Online.  

Thanks Mom!!!  I hope your birthday is great!

Special Thanks to Dad on His Birthday!

There have been a lot of different people that I owe a debt of gratitude for either inspiring me or supporting me when I was running towards a goal.  One of the people that I really owe an awful lot to is my father.  Dad wasn't a game developer, a programmer, or an concept artist... but he taught me the most important lessons that I carry with me every day about game development.

When I was really young, I was afraid of my dad.  He was that grumpy cowboy guy that came home and growled at you if drank the rest of the Pepsi.  He worked long, long hours and didn't have a lot of energy or humor for putting up with little kids.  As I got older, I kind of understood that this was just the way of things with most of my friends too.  However, a time came when my dad quit his job at the feed lot and became a farrier (blacksmith type that shoes horses).  After the initial stress of getting his business up and running, suddenly my dad was no longer quite the bear I imagined he was and I had the benefit of getting a lot of time with him.  

One of the things we shared was interest in computer games.  We played Wizardry on the Apple GS, then Might and Magic, the Bard's Tale, Wasteland Robosport, and a bunch of other games.  Back in these days a lot of the games actually came in essentially zip lock bags with printed instructions.  I'll never forget the hilarious conversations deep in the bowels of the dungeons in Wizardry in the middle of the night trying not to wake up my mom.  "Should we cast Malicto or Lakanito on this guy.  He might be undead... he might not breath so suffocation might not work."  Dad would say "You drive... and I'll map."  We mapped and explored and beat games together and I'd have to say that those are times that I REALLY cherished with my dad.

Beyond playing games, we designed a game together.  Back on our Kaypro II we had a game called Trade.  That is all we knew it as and we had typed it in from an article in Byte magazine.  When we got our first Mac just beyond the Apple GS, I discovered Microsoft QuickBasic and for the first time I had a screen resolution of 512x384 with 8 bits of color to play with.  After figuring out how to make graphic resource files in a paint program, I started blitting stuff to the screen and my dad and I started talking about what kind of game I should make with it. 

In the past, I had made a space invaders clone on the Apple II GS in assembly language.  I had made a printable bingo game that was published and distributed at touristy gas stations and truck stops.  Prior to that I wrote a bunch of lame text based adventures.  My dad and I often played trade on the old Kaypro... so we started scheming about making Trade for the Mac with some "improvements".  Dad and I talked and talked and talked and talked about how to make the game better.  We removed random elements from the design and introduced new and exciting different random elements that made the game feel a little more exciting.  (It was a stock trading game!)  I got to flex my graphics arts muscles by painting the horrible barely better than stick figure art of "Homeless Bill", "Blue Collar Bill", and "Executive Bill".

My whole family played the game in turn-based fashion.  "Don't read the screen!!!"  "Don't you dare merge those companies!!!"  "Dad, put away the dang calculator.... "  "Are you done with your turn yet???"  I had a blast playing a game I wrote for the family and enjoyed all the banter and family feuds it caused at the dinner table.  :-)  The key thing I learned from all of this was that _together_ my Dad and I had some really good ideas when we would brainstorm together.  I learned the value of having somebody to talk to about design.  One day I'll have to dust off trade and bring it back so Dad and I can go head to head again.

Knowing that your dad really cares about you has such a profound effect on your sense of self.  Having some passion you share with your kids is really rewarding and watching them branch out and pursue their own passions is pretty incredible.  When my Dad changed jobs and was suddenly more available for me and around more, it taught me what kind of father I wanted to be for my children.  He taught me about collaborative teamwork, the value of other's ideas, and how important it is to really be there for your kids and support their passions.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Finalizing the Product for Google Play Store

I wish I had read the Android guidelines for deployment long, long before I had 'finished' the product.  I've spent hours reading the Android guide for preparing for deployment.   The style guide that they are using for their UI is really, really good and I could have used it to inform me on better decisions about how to make my icons in the UI.  I might have to rework some of the UI to make a cleaner, more crisp, and more consistent design.  Thankfully, I bought a resource pack for a lot of the icons that seem to have followed a similar design philosophy.  Only the icons I've made myself seem to be the most offensive design-wise.  It is great learning all the new aspects that as just an engineer I never had to think about or deal with.  I've taken for granted just how talented and informed all my artist friends in the game industry truly are!

Last minute rework before launch.

I've been having my two year old twins test the game lately and am seeing that at 2 they aren't quite ready for how the game quizzes the player.  They clearly see a relationship of the shapes and sounds, but the prompting doesn't seem to be working how I had hoped it would for their age.  I'm adding a simpler mode of gameplay for the younger end of the spectrum.

That means... back to recording and audio editing for a little while with a few minor code changes.   

Also in the rework, I'm trying to address some of the problems in the UI transitions.  I kind of just cobbled the UI together knowing that at some point it would be reworked.  I copy and pasted a few of the UI elements and they end up transitioning to and from the same place at different speeds and it feels kind of weird, non-uniform, and awkward.

Overall, I feel really great that I have the time and support I need to release the game that I want to release.  With DDO and other projects, I never felt fully satisfied with the product because of the necessary deadlines that were always present.  I always ended up with certain regrets for the things I knew were going to be dissatisfying for the players.  At the same time, I'm very eager to complete the game and move on to the next project.

It all started in a little west texas town...

...in a fourth grade classroom, a teacher named Virginia Rhodes asked a student named Cain Neal,  "What do you want to be when you grow up?  A farrier, like your father?"  

I had spent the previous year in English class trying to win the spelling bee each week to have 20 minutes of time on Mrs. Turner's TRS-80 playing a space invaders game.  I got so good at spelling that year that she had to make computer time a reward for other things so other kids could enjoy it as well.  At first, I loved the conquest of getting to play the game.  Then I started learning how it worked by keenly observing it.  Back then resolution was really sad and it was easy to see the pixels on the screen.  Very quickly I figured out how many pixels the enemies moved, how often they fired, how many pixels wide they were, and all the parameters of the gameplay.  I often wondered how changing those parameters about the game would change the resulting gameplay.  

I replied to Mrs. Rhodes that day, "I want to make video games on computers!"  She tossed her head to the side, knitted her brow, and in a disbelieving tone said, "You want to do WHAT?" Everybody else got saccharine sweet praise for their choices and what a great farmer, firefighter, or nurse they would be.  All I got was an expression like she bit into something sour, a hmmmmn, and then she skipped feedback altogether.  The fact that Mrs. Rhodes seemed to disapprove of this as a profession was a sudden unexpected motivator.  That week I picked up and started reading Microsoft Basic that came with our Kaypro II computer.  In a few weeks, I was writing "10 REM *** STAR TREK -- THE ADVENTURE GAME" with about a thousand PRINT and INPUT statements following it.  

Sometimes I find motivation in really strange places.