[casual_games] PopCap developer needed urgently

[Aaron St. John]

Jeff,

My company does a lot of its work w/Popcap's Framework and Flash. In my 
opinion, after playing Squirrel Squabble and having ample experience on 
both platforms I think you should consider Flash+Zinc as a possible 
development alternative for this particular time crunched project. 
In my personal experience, flash has been an excellent environment for 
developing speedy prototypes/demos. I was able to learn flash and 
produce a full featured casual title under a similar time crunch 
(actually less!). I'm sure any of the students you have working on SS 
could pick it up as quickly if the need was great enough (and they can 
get it for a nice low academic rate $100).
Additionally, coupled w/zinc, flash demos/prototypes can quickly be 
converted into solid distributable titles (w/ fullscreen). 
The play of Squirrel Squabble seems simple enough that flash (especially 
published as an .exe) could run it with acceptable performance on most 
systems. Another interesting aspect of your title is that the art style 
would lend itself well to a vector based format. Although flash works 
perfectly well using imported bitmap art you might get some additonal 
performance benifits by going vector  as well as a smaller distributable 
file size (SS is 35megs yikes!). Finally, creating your game in flash 
will make the development of the inevitable "web-version" a no-brainer.
Anyways, I did like the game, and would be interested in discussing it 
with you further (even if you decide to stick w/ PopCap).

-Aaron


Josh Welber wrote:

> Jeff
>  
>     Hi - our studio is working actively with t2d -- and having quite 
> good results. However, I would point out that until recently the early 
> adopter release (1.0.2) engine has not really been ready for prime 
> time. At largeanimal, we ended up porting it up to work against 
> tge1.4, and that worked out well. GG is now releasing (about to 
> release) a revamped version (lots and lots of fixes and improvements) 
> which is built against the TGE 1.4 core. It's a *much* better piece of 
> tech. Before you switch over to pop-cap (another great piece of tech, 
> as well, but lighter weight), I would recommend looking at the latest 
> t2d release (it should be out this week) - and also checking out how 
> you are working with resources (there are several gotchas when 
> formatting resources too). It may be that the revised t2d would fit 
> your needs, and the "port" would be much simpler.
>     If you are interested in pursuing this question off list, feel 
> free to email. Although we had to do some work to upgrade it, we have 
> already released a t2d based game- and it performs quite well on down 
> to a Pentium 550mhz (a pretty low spec these days).
>  
> regards
>  
> -Josh
>  
>
> Josh Welber
>
> Partner/Technical Director
>
> Large Animal Games
>
> _http://www.largeanimal.com_ <http://www.largeanimal.com/>
>
> t: 212-989-4312
>
> f: 305-489-5790
>
>  
>  
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* casual_games-bounces at igda.org 
> [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] *On Behalf Of *Jeff Helfand
> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 07, 2006 5:05 PM
> *To:* casual_games at igda.org
> *Subject:* [casual_games] PopCap developer needed urgently
>
> Nevada Interactive's student interns produced Squirrel Squabble, a PC 
> downloadable puzzle action game.  The game won the 2005 IGF Student 
> Showcase competition. http://www.squirrelsquabble.com/
>
> Since this time, we have been very busy creating an enormous amount of 
> new art and animation for the sole purpose of completing a new version 
> of the game for the downloadable market.  In fact, we have five 
> distribution agreements in place based on our demo.
>
> We also made a critical decision last year.  This was to rebuild the 
> game using the new Torque 2D engine.  This just didn't work out for 
> us.  While we believe the Torque 3D engine is a fantastic product, the 
> de-tuned 2D engine simply chews up way to many background resources.  
> The result is a game that is unplayable on less powerful machines.
>
> I realize that the Garage Game folks are a vital leader in our 
> community.  And I even hesitate d to say what I have.  This post is 
> not meant to bash anyone.  I simply needed to illustrate why we have a 
> sudden critical need.
>
> We have made a decision to rebuild the game on the PopCap platform.  
> Our need is for a developer who will join our small team and recode 
> the game utilizing all of our completed assets (graphics, animation, 
> sounds effects & music).  Payment is based upon shared royalties.  The 
> time frame is ridiculous.  We need to present a working demo of our 
> new version of Squirrel Squabble to Disney at the GDC.
>
> So, if you are an insanely gifted programmer who wants to join a team 
> with a game that WILL reach the market, please contact me a.s.a.p.  
> Clearly, you won't get much sleep.
>
> Again, my apologies to Garage Games.  And just a note, I use their 
> products with great success at the University of Nevada for purposes 
> of teaching game development for our IGF competition teams. 
> http://www.cse.unr.edu/~jeff/
>
> I can be reached via email at jeff at nevadainteractive.com to set up a 
> phone meeting.
>
> - Jeff Helfand
> NevadaInteractive.com
>
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>
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