New Year, new Motivation

A lot has happened since vectorPlains was released. Scores were on par with what I had hoped for, but in reflection the game lacked what I was really aiming for - a simple, easy to pick up game that anyone can play, but only the hardcore can master. Unfortunately the controls had a steep learning curve; the one-miss-and-you-lose gameplay combined with the lightning fast drop kick was just too hard to control for a lot of people. Some people got it well and some amazing high scores were set. The problem was that a lot of people couldn't get any sort of score going at all.

I had plans for my next game to be a mix up of Pong - the simple game complicated with things like health bars, multiple weapons and energy shields. The concept was great and it was coming along well after about a month of production, but at some point I watched the game being played and realized I was making the same mistake again - complicating something that should be simple and fun to play. The project has since been scrapped.

Thanks to things like college and many things going on in my life, I found less time and motivation to make games. After the failure of (let's call it) vectorPong, I needed some new motivation. I've never been big for new years resolutions, but this year I have one - to live up to the motto of this still new studio and redefine simplicity. From the beginning of 2007 I began another game, and this one's going to be big. Using the most simple and intuitive control scheme I've ever created, this game will scale dozens of levels in a seamless and innovative way. I won't say much now, but the controls have a lot to do with Nintendo's new system - the Wii.

All that being said, I want to apologise for letting myself and those who play my games down with the lack of activity with game development and site updates. I promise to do my best to make it up with this next game - I'm hoping to make a truly amazing flash game that's going to bring Quarton Studios into the spotlight. The game itself is still in a very early phase and thus will not be made public yet, but I am looking for anyone who's interesting in making levels. The game is going to use a very simple and solid level designer, so you don't need to know any fancy programming languages. Please contact me if you're interested, I promise your efforts will not go unappreciated!

vectorPlains

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End of vacation, start of college

I had about a week or so between my vacation and my arrival at NYU. After a week of getting to know everyone, I'm pretty much ready to start classes. Let it be known that vectorPlains will be released on or a little before september 30th, for reasons I will disclose later. To anyone that reads, this, please email me if you would like to beta test the new game.

2000 miles away from home

Just so you all know, I'm on vacation in Trinidad and Tobago (my parent's birthplace) until 8/15, so game development will be little to none. Things down here are very different from America, I might post some of my observations later. Until then, please take some time to digg or comment vectorFlakes.

vectorFlakes

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Google Pages Down?

From what I've seen today, my main web page ( http://ultima301.googlepages.com ) has gotten a 404 error. Other sites hosted on Google get 404's as well. From what I heard there are multiple power outages in California and as a result some of the web giants (Google, Yahoo, etc) are experiencing difficulties. I guess we'll just have to wait to find out.

My Mac is Back!

My macbook is back and it's better than ever. If you can make out our friend vector on the screen, you'd know that vectorPlains is back in production. Check the development blog for updates.

Guess what i got

First Post

So this is where I'll post my opinions on things, and update you on important things going on. I'll try to update this often so if my site goes inactive, you'll know why.