A Sirius Game has been released on 18th of January. I was busy doing marketing stuff, so could not update my blog. My testers had done a great job and I would thank all of them again

The sad thing is, I didn’t know that 18th was a blackout day of the internet due to SOPA and PIPA protests. The press releases didn’t see the light of the day in most websites.

So I will be sending out the promotional stuff again this week. Let’s see how it works out.

Aaaaaaaaand we are almost there! No siriusly! We thought that our game will be complete by November end, but the smaller tweaks and fixing is eating up a lot of time. I have been so busy that I could not even send newsletters this month. Hopefully by this week we shall be able to complete it and then start the beta testing. Beta testers who are interested can keep checking the newsletter, twitter or facebook where I will announce when the testing starts.

I am apprehending a small delay in between because I will be going home for a few days as my mom is not well. Overall, by December I am hoping to release my first 3D game- A Sirius Game. Here are a few in-game screenshots I thought of sharing. I would be happy to hear your feedback!

Click to enlarge-

I would also like to thank the artists who have let me use their beautiful artwork for the character backgrounds- thd777, Gurgur and pk87.

I have been thinking of releasing this game on Steam, though it is a difficult feat to accomplish. And I have a strategy for that- As per Steam’s FAQ, there are two ways to get accepted by Steam. And I am opting for the second one which is much safer and probable. Though I am not that big on game reviews, I need to get some really good reviews for my game from players and other eminent game websites and some decent sales to make them even consider my game. For that, it will take us a wait period of 3-6 months depending on how fast we get reviews. So lets see how things go, I shall keep my fingers crossed.

Seriously…we found a name for our game. Ship adventures game is now A Sirius Game, where Sirius is the name of the protagonist. And no, it has nothing to do with Sirius Black.

By middle of November we plan to start the beta testing, which we shall mail to our newsletter subscriber and announce in our forums for tester sign up. Here’s a peek at the title image of the game -

And the loading screen of the game turned out really nice. The models, land, trees, etc in the image below are from the game. So I thought of putting it up too!

That’s it for now. Once we have completed the game, we shall be putting up the screenshots of it when we launch testing. Feel free to leave your feedback, we would be happy to hear from you.

Sitting in one place working whole day and no exercise has only made me fatter. Just thought of sharing the pictures of our current team members (includes Phantasm Games studios’s developer just beside me and his two awesome interns one on each side )-

Nothing much to share this month except that our game development is going on in the background and that newer obstacles are popping their heads out to delay our project. I am too tired of ranting *sigh*

Just to share some smiles-

We got some character art done for the ship game-

Read the rest of this entry »

Now that I am back to Bangalore to complete the ship game, here are some updates of our progress (click to see full image)-

The Trophy screen (when all trophies are obtained).

The Weapon screen (not all the prices are given) Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been long that I blogged about anything. Shifting to a new place has done one bad thing- high cost of living. Self funding in business and living on your own without any external source of income other than games is taking its toll on game development and my general sustenance. For the past two months, I have been struggling to make payments to artists due to the restrictions raised by Reserve Bank of India on international payments. The progress has slowed down because of that and forced me to come back to my home and work from here for sometime. I am hoping to complete the ship game in two months if things go as planned.

In the mean time, I thought of making a comic series based on ‘Pascal’ from my game and sending them in newsletters. He was quite popular amongst players and it would nice if players can enjoy more of his outrageous jokes outside the game. Here’s the first one, the others will also be posted in my blog apart from the newsletters (Click on the image to enlarge).

The problem of being an indie is you get a lot of money once your game is out for a month or two. After that sales start decreasing, and unless you have a lot of your own game titles or affiliate sales, you will start to feel the pinch. Being an indie is not just making games, but making a living too! And to make money, it is important that you understand and take care of the business aspects of game making. In my earlier post of ‘Life of an Indie’ series, I had mentioned the problems one faces in this career. In this post I will be discussing how I have solved some of those problems and plan to solve for those who are facing this. So let’s take the issue one by one-

1) Sustenance- This is a major issue for indies. From what I have heard or seen other indies doing and also what I have done, here are some ways to manage a sufficient income to sustain yourself (can’t say if you have a family).

a) Get a job which is less time consuming and if  this is your first game in development. Teaching is a good option as it is not as exacting in terms of time and energy like other jobs. You will have a fair pay and sufficient time to do a game in your spare time. I am sure there are plenty of other online freelancing or contract based work that you can do depending on your skills. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a bit sad that I am unable to put some funny stuff I was intending to share now because I want to finish this game. Neither am I getting time to publish Life of a Indie series second part. I might be able to do that after I am done with the dialogues I guess. And before that I have to finish other stuff and get rid of procrastinating . Here are some more ships friends, these are the submarine types and attacks player ship suddenly from under water

(Images are taken in Maya, not in game. Click to see enlarged)

So far I liked the whale more than the others, Jim used Killer Whale texture which I really liked and was a surprise as I thought he will use the conventional whale. Which ship did you like so far? I mean judging both the bird and submarine ships? Leave your comments, I would like to know your opinion.

We just received the 3D art for the fantasy ships we are going to use in our game I spoke of. We have named the game as ‘Ship Adventures’ for reference/working title, though the actual title is yet to be decided. The images below are taken from Maya, just the side view of the ships which look more like birds, but deadly and dangerous. There are another set which looks like sea fishes and will function like submarines. The pirate and ghost ships are in the making.  The concept art was thought by me LOL and implemented by Manu. Those concept arts were modeled and textured by Jim. Erek and his wife has taken over to take care of the 2D art and I really love his painted style of art. I will also post his artwork here once some is completed. So presenting our fantasy ships, tada!

Click to see its enlarged version.

That is it for now. Will post some more when some gets completed.

I think you might have noticed that I’m not blogging too frequently. Blame that to my new work atmosphere at Bangalore! There are so many interesting stuff and I am spoilt for choice as to what to do and which one should come first. While I am still struggling to put Arevan on BigFish Games (their QA is quite strict and takes time), I have started working on the GDD of my first 3D game. The game draws it’s inspiration from Tradewinds Legends, though the underlying principle is different. I shall post screenshots when I have something ready. I am going to take care of the 2D graphics, game design and marketing while the 3D art, sounds and development is going to be conducted by our partner Phantasm Games Studio. This going to be my first 3D game as well as a non-RPG. Which is why the game’s IP will be that of Phantasm Games as we publish only RPG games at Over Cloud 9. The game will be featured at our site because it has some partial RPG elements like quest system, battles, etc, but primarily will belong to my partner’s website. The project is coming along quite fast, and the artwork and development is already in the process. The GDD is almost complete, I am working on the the dialogues currently. I will try input some outrageous humor like you might in Pascal in Arevan . Apart from these, I have too many other plans on my mind. Like working on my 1st 3D RPG game which is coming next to this project, starting a marketing service for indie developers, researching on indie problems and coming up with solutions to those, etc, etc. The latter is going to be continued to my 2nd part of the ‘Life of an Indie series’.

This is all for this time, I might have a couple of random funny updates following this one. So keep checking back.