B O N D P H O N E.
Words and pictures by Chris Lamb.

A particularly appropriate installment of Scary Go Round today, as Confluence and Ideaspace seem particularly out to get me.

Fucking girls. Fucking bears.

posted by chris  # 10:29 AM 0 comments

So, the game we did for Naruto is up on CN as of today. You can find it here.

I really can't tell you how happy I am to see this thing done and dusted. What should have been a very simple project (top-down scrolling shooter, nine levels, three bosses) picked up when CN yanked it from Some Other Company who couldn't get their shit together evolved into an all-consuming monster, a flash-based Devourer of Worlds that sucked up all of June and most of July while probably dipping into the future to steal moments like my grandkids' first words and finally beating P.N.03 on hard mode. There's a whole other post to make dealing with the frustration at dropping so many eleven-hour days and lost weekends into something based on mechanics as old as video games themselves contrasted with the overwhelming delight at seeing how all that work finally paid off (and on top of that, simultaneously realizing that that's pretty much going to be the way it goes for as long as I want to do this and that hey, I'm actually okay with it) that I can't even begin to put together just yet. It's just done, done, done!

Erm, actually, there's no need for another post. Turns out one jumbled ramble of a sentence does the job nicely.

At any rate, despite having a young, inexperienced, good-but-my-god-so-sloppy programmer, three producers (including, for the last third of things, me), and our every art decision being second-guessed by mysterious Overlords based in shadowy Japan, the things finally up to play and stuff. There are still a few bugs, like the ability to crash the entire thing by right-clicking, but all in all it's pretty solid. I was more involved with this game with anything done previously, handling the game design, level layouts, and the aforementioned producing chores. It could have been better, but that goes for pretty much everything.

Oh, and I designed a game for SpikeTV's latest entry into the "unemployed guys spend the day hurting each other in front of a camera" genre. You can find that one here.

posted by chris  # 11:23 AM 0 comments

Quick diversion before getting into the brain dump of the trip what was by way of some recovered pictures from my first time out in San Francisco. Further evidence that anything you're really looking for is probably in a box under some one's bed.

posted by chris  # 11:57 AM 0 comments

San Francisco is Mars, and Mars is Heaven. After weeks (Two? Three? All of them?) of New York being slow broiled by the Heat Wave That Wouldn't End, after the last couple of of months at work being dominated by ninjas, the Finnish, and marine life in increasingly difficult to explain scenarios, I am on vacation. Actual, real, paid vacation, in San Francisco. Which is Mars.

I am in San Francisco with Girl, and in a proper hotel, both of which are oddities when it comes to me and places I don't actually live. Most of me trips as an adult (pseudo or otherwise) have been alone, or en route to meet others, and all of them have involved falling out of a plane and into some one else's car to be whisked away to a sort of soft spot on a friend's floor. The last two times I was in San Francisco the house was that of Benjones, with its long white couches and TiVo full of Myth Busters and other wonders of cable television. This time though, with the house still off the Richmond BART stop and Jones doing the Jigsaw thing in Durham, NC, we're in the Nob Hill/Tenderloin district. I'm not entirely sure what a neighborhood does to earn a moniker like "Tenderloin," but I can't imagine it having much to do with the malls, hotels, bodega/liquor stores, and overpriced eateries dotting the streets. A late night fumble in the dark with word association gives up the vague impression of meat-themed Boy Scouts, spending their weekend outing learning to pitch a tent while cleaning and gutting a holstein at the same time. Paddling down some lazy river with a sort of Indian name in canoes made from T-bone steaks, weaving baskets from lengths of haggis to earn that one last merit badge...

I'm rambling. That'd be the wine.

Vacation! After getting through an unspeakable amount of flying shenanigans at the hands of American Airlines, we've spent the last four days cutting swaths across the city armed with little more than a black book of maps and the barest of understandings of the MUNI transit system. We've seen the Musee Mechanique (a haphazard collection of coin-operated entertainments from bygone eras including fortune tellers, strength testing machines, a Crusin' USA arcade cabinet and a Navy submarine out back), the pirate supply store on Valencia, the Legion of Honor, the Sutro Bath House ruins, and a dozen other spots scattered across town. There's more to say, and pictures to develop, scan, and throw up here, but right now it's late after another day of walking all over, and there's wine to drink and a Girl to curl up against. There are shitty movies to make fun of on the Hotel TV and a micro climate's breeze blowing through the window, and it can all just wait.

posted by chris  # 1:02 AM 0 comments

San Francisco is Mars, and Mars is Heaven. After weeks (Two? Three? All of them?) of New York being slow broiled by the Heat Wave That Wouldn't End, after the last couple of of months at work being dominated by ninjas, the Finnish, and marine life in increasingly difficult to explain scenarios, I am on vacation. Actual, real, paid vacation, in San Francisco. Which is Mars.

I am in San Francisco with Girl, and in a proper hotel, both of which are oddities when it comes to me and places I don't actually live. Most of me trips as an adult (pseudo or otherwise) have been alone, or en route to meet others, and all of them have involved falling out of a plane and into some one else's car to be whisked away to a sort of soft spot on a friend's floor. The last two times I was in San Francisco the house was that of Benjones, with its long white couches and TiVo full of Myth Busters and other wonders of cable television. This time though, with the house still off the Richmond BART stop and Jones doing the Jigsaw thing in Durham, NC, we're in the Nob Hill/Tenderloin district. I'm not entirely sure what a neighborhood does to earn a moniker like "Tenderloin," but I can't imagine it having much to do with the malls, hotels, bodega/liquor stores, and overpriced eateries dotting the streets. A late night fumble in the dark with word association gives up the vague impression of meat-themed Boy Scouts, spending their weekend outing learning to pitch a tent while cleaning and gutting a holstein at the same time. Paddling down some lazy river with a sort of Indian name in canoes made from T-bone steaks, weaving baskets from lengths of haggis to earn that one last merit badge...

I'm rambling. That'd be the wine.

Vacation! After getting through an unspeakable amount of flying shenanigans at the hands of American Airlines, we've spent the last four days cutting swaths across the city armed with little more than a black book of maps and the barest of understandings of the MUNI transit system. We've seen the Musee Mechanique (a haphazard collection of coin-operated entertainments from bygone eras including fortune tellers, strength testing machines, a Crusin' USA arcade cabinet and a Navy submarine out back), the pirate supply store on Valencia, the Legion of Honor, the Sutro Bath House ruins, and a dozen other spots scattered across town. There's more to say, and pictures to develop, scan, and throw up here, but right now it's late after another day of walking all over, and there's wine to drink and a Girl to curl up against. There are shitty movies to make fun of on the Hotel TV and a micro climate's breeze blowing through the window, and it can all just wait.

posted by chris  # 12:58 AM 0 comments

I quit drinking caffeine. Mostly. After a good long while spent going back and forth sinc e a bit of self realization last August, I've cut my consumption per day down to one coffee, one Coke, and the occasional green tea. This down from what roughly rounds out to "whatever I can get my hands on, oh my god give it give it give it", or the number equivelient there of. I don't know math.

The (mostly) kicking of caffeine wasn't so much for health reasons as plain ol' frustration - the amount of caffeine I had to drink to keep from getting head aches (due, of course, to not having enough caffeine) was leaving me strung out and exhausted way, way to early in the day for me to actually function for any real length of time. It took two pissy weeks of feeling physically sick and irritated at every living thing all the time, but being able to function on demand ever since has proven more than worth it. If there are any permanent side effects from the drastic change in chemical intake I haven't noticed, other othan the odd comfort of being reintroduced to my body chemistry and feeling like I ate too much maple syrup if I have more than a couple cokes a day.

posted by chris  # 12:45 PM 0 comments

I suppose there are worse times than the beginning of Summer to realize the fans in your room are dead. I have three to use in various combinations as needed: two window units that suck air in or pump it back out again and a smaller, more portable fan that was the one good thing to come out of a week of baby-sitting the sort of country mouse house guest Time Out New York writes charming features about. They were great last Summer, ensuring that no matter how hot the rest of the apartment got my room stayed ten degrees cooler or better. Perfect for staying in to drink wine all day and watch movies on the laptop when the Girl was in town, perfect for staying in trying to write when she wasn't and it was too damn hot to do anything else.

But as of last night, one of them screams like something from The Dark Crystal perched on the end of my bed when you turn it on while another one doesn't work at all. All three of them are caked in dust I can't quite clean out from months without use that, having watched both seasons of House in rapid succession, I'm now convinced will have me shooting blood out every available orifice while Hugh Laurie berates me in no time. I have overestimated the life cycle of fans, it seems, and am now left with nothing but dust-covered plastic and an ever-rising room temperature.

posted by chris  # 9:20 AM 0 comments

Hi, internet. Sorry things have been so quiet for the last few weeks - loads happening on the game design front and New York deciding it's Spring have kept me away from here. Stuff and things happening soonish, I promise. I'd like to get back in the habit of making regular use of this thing. Of course, every time I say that, my work load doubles. So we'll see.

Work music of the day: "Life's Too Good", by the Sugarcubes. 'Traitor' gets me between the eyes every time.

posted by chris  # 10:35 AM 0 comments

Talking about the Arctic Monkeys a few days ago leads all-too naturally to listening to Kenickie. A lot. A lot a lot.

Not wanting to go on too much more at risk of ending up with something on the long and shambling side of a rant, but songs about things that happen while trying to chat up girls are the best thing ever.

posted by chris  # 6:29 PM 0 comments

"Right now, I'm sitting here at my whiteboard with my dry-erase marker and I'm trying to figure out how to get this level to work in our new game for the PSP. That's all there is. On one hand, that's nice because all of the bullshit goes away and you ask yourself, do you truly enjoy the work of being a game designer? There are days where I find the answer is a resounding yes. I'm obsessed with it and I love it. Then there are days where I just want to fucking get out of here and go see the movies because I'm so not in the creative zone. I don't know if that will be it for the rest of my career, if it'll all be about the work or if something else will come along."

1Up.com reposts an OPM interview with David Jaffe, mastermind behind the love letter to reptile brain-thinking. Go read, not just for bits like the above, but to hear one of the few plain-spoken folks making games right now just shoot the shit on whatever.

posted by chris  # 1:33 PM 0 comments

So, the Arctic Monkeys. After months and months of seeing "AM: Cure for Cancer?" style headlines from NME online and the other usual suspects, their first album's coming to America at last. I've listening to an advance over headphones while working. Or putting off working, as the case may be.

They're very charming, aren't they? After three listens to the record I think I've narrowed down the trick - these are songs about going somewhere and doing something, rather than a handful of vague feelings stapled to a riff. It's hardly Shakespeare but it's worth noticing - plot, characters, setting, when's the last time pop music had all this and still succeeeded? And there's an unintentional quality to the band itself, less Cool Rockers, more Kids With Guitars. The difference is all the difference, really. More potential for greatness and failure, and definitely more fun at the end of the day. They won't make it any bigger in the states than Futureheads or any of the others have, but this time, I really don't think they care.

posted by chris  # 10:57 AM 5 comments

Doing Capoeira – Brazilian martial arts disguised as dance – last night finds me today sore, stiff, and wanting to be Batman. For all the initial frustration, for all the pent-up intimidation and doesn’t-play-well-with-others bad feelings from spending a decade and change in public school physical fitness programs that marked my first class (and came up again last night, the by-product of missing a week’s worth of classes due to lack of time), the sense of accomplishment that comes from something as simple as getting your foot off the ground in a new way is thrilling; thrilling enough, even, to make me do it all over again come Thursday night. I’m still clumsy, I still get my rhythm tangled up when doing the sequences, I still have trouble getting up the courage to play in the Roda, but I can do this one bit that’s a series of quick steps and kicks, and last night I did a handstand. Mostly. More of one than I’ve managed before, at least, and for now that’s enough.

Only it’s not, really. Capoeira is an addiction, a game that no one ever truly seems to master, something to dedicate your time and body to at the expense of going out drinking, or rock shows, or a space on the couch next to some one soft and interesting. Last night’s class was as much as lesson as anything else, reading thus: keep doing this, and it won’t hurt as much over time. Stay away too long, and you might as well not come back for the wreck it will leave your arms and legs the next morning. We’ll see.

posted by chris  # 4:45 PM 4 comments