Blogs - MachineSaysHello

So I am closing up shop for 3 months at the very least. I am having a wee baby soon, so I had quite some decisions to make in the meanwhile. I took the last orders, totalling at figures that will allow me to begin again with a decent monthly pay. Sold some more of my old softwares, giving me some extra breathing room financially. I secured three new partnerships that will help with creating more jobs and money flow both ways. Finally, I managed to take in two dudes in the office, so it pays half of itself while I am gone. I hope to get back and find my HQ in one place. My indiegame Garvest Boon is now accepted for release on desura, Indiedb.com, and will soon be downloadable. It is my very first game, and I am proud of having come this far with it. I am setting the price today, and finalizing the uploading process during this week. I have to hurry because the wee baby is coming in 4 days if he/she’s punctual. At home we’re ready for the arrival.

Gold rush is over for this season, what will I watch now? I am playing tons of monster hunter tri ultimate on wii u right now, find me there under the name "kalamari". My little bro assists me with his 3ds every saturday at three o'clock stockholm/rome time. It's a great game, try it out. I am nervous of how my life is gonna change, but hopefully I left everything in order.

See you on the other side!

Follow my live programming on New.livestream.com
My latest work has been to make you able to work in town! Gain some hard-earned cash by working the ovens of the bakery or the anvil at the carpenter's. I've also decorated a bit more the interiors, created the ability to sit on chairs (always useful to get a rest from work) and a scarier and tougher nighttime system. I am now letting some villagers sell you stuff that could be useful to your well-being.

Sometimes I get stuck, sometimes I get a good flow. Anyways, if you're into sparetime coding or gamemaking, you should definitely check my livestream out!

To create new features is always tempting. I wanted to keep it simple as the old games, where selling items and managing your economy was either a very repetitive action such as throwing produce in a bin, or a menu-based activity. Lots of clicks and little action. But in general, why build a shop or a bazaar stand if you cannot experience the joy of serving customers and delivering your products straight over the counter? So I am considering to take this feature one step further and make it into a full-fledged build-gather-open shop- work the counter deal. You can manage the tempo and be good or bad at it, choose which customer to serve first etc. Also strategically choosing what to sell might have an impact? Please give your 2 cents while it's still being done

Good day to all of you. This is the programmer and in-game-graphics-designer speaking. I've had a lot of fun with Garvest Boon so far. I am a big nerdy fan of the retro Japanese 90's SNES microsim games with anime feeling. I've played all of them possibly, all of the Natsume's games except tree of Life and yes, i've been playing the Rune Factory series on the Playstation as well, although it could be seen as heresy to some and completely rational to others.

I just adore this series. I am no stranger to regular pc games and 3d modernities, I play or follow most games. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Skyrim you name it. But this has nothing to do with the project per se. This project started off with me coding small tile based garvest boonish minigames already 6 years ago at the very least. They never got finished, but to start anew and make it better gave me a good sense of peace and quiet. It relaxed me deluxe.

I never really gave it much thought, it was kind of like when other people draw on sketchbooks or stuff. They don't necessarily start with the intention to publish what they draw. But after a while, my codings kind of got more and more complex in less and less programming time, until I finally told myself. Why don't I actually go for it and make a game with a beginning and an end? In between projects and deadlines I kind of got buried in this project, and after a few codes that started on the wrong assumption and consequently got thrown into the virtual trash-bin, I got one done that looked very promising. Since then I spent a lot of my free time, as well as recuperation time in between crunches, clearing up my mind by adding features, animations, cleaning up the code, optimizing, redoing and such other amenities. That's the beginning of all this. Thank you for your time, and NICE TO MEET YOU!
よろしくね!

/the Programmer

So here I am crunching for this last deadline this fall. After that I have not much left in the stress department, hopefully until new year's. When I'm crunching or on deep vacation I cannot program the little Garvest Boon game. I really think though that it's these types of side-projects that keep you happy through your life. I wish sometimes I could do this all life long, but at the same time so I used to say about my regular line of work.. which I still adore. But the press of knowing you'll be paid to do what you love will probably take some fun out of just about anything. Included your favourite thing.

So no more whining, chin up, and wait for some more free-time days to complete the final touches on this little retro dream.