Archive for the ‘work’ Category

Why Are You Up All Night?

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Well, it’s nighttime again and I am still sitting in front of my computer, trying to get some perspective on some things I’ve been working on, lately.

See, my problem with game design is, that I am quite addicted to it. It’s not only the possibility to create living characters, plots and even whole worlds, no – it’s the possibility to make the pictures in your mind come to live.

But then there are times, like now, when my mind is just flooded with ideas and images and nothing really works out the way you imagined it all in your mind. Most times I compensate this state of mind with a really large amount of sleep. Well… mostly. Not tonight. There are very rare nights like this one, when I am afraid to go to bed because my mind constantly tells me, that doing so would kill the pictures and remove something really beautiful from this world.

No chance to get people to see the pictures lost. No chance to get people to have fun with your ideas and – the most important one – No chance to ever get your game to be the best you could make of the resources you had.

See, game design is not always million dollar budgets, years of development time and 70+ people working on the title. Sometimes it is the little games, which we care about the most. I am absolutely certain, that we can make the best games on the face of earth, as long as we keep these little ideas and pictures and don’t waste them to the endless universe.

If we then put everything into the game, like our souls, happiness, sadness, love, passion and power the outcome can be stunning and beautiful.

So if you’re asking me, why I am sitting at my desk in front of my painfully loud computer at 2:30 in the night, almost falling asleep and knowing, that the next day starts in about five to six hours – you now know the answer.

It’s because of making good games.

Keep your heads up people, the night just started!

Hardware day!

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

So, after the nice guys from alternate sent almost everything I ordered (who needs keyboards, switches and printers anyway?!)  and trans-o-flex managed not to damage the packages during their crazy maneuvers on the iced road, I can post this happy-me picture:

component packege....

So well… I love this weekend. Monday is the first day at the office, and I look forward to holding the key in my hands. This is quite a unique week. After setting up the furniture and the pcs we will descend into town to celebrate.

I registered the domain already, but it points to this page which I am going to change as soon as the ISP sets up the lines at the office.

Tomorrow is the first day of Daylight Interactive. Wish us the best and stop by every now and then to take part in the changes.

Yours, Nadim

The “shady” side of game development

Friday, May 9th, 2008

Well… It’s getting hot in here, because summer is knocking at the door of Ascaron/Studio 2 in Aachen, Germany. I know that there are places on earth that are a lot warmer than Germany, Las Vegas – for example. Or maybe Hawaii, for that matter. Still I am complaining about it and damn I hate that heat and sunshine and all that stuff.

 

Imagine me sitting in the office, having to work hard and concentraded. Then add some noise to the scene, because there is a construction side somewhere near the office. Got the picture? Good.

Now add an open window, so we get fresh air, and some energy drinks and coffee. Got it?

Really? Then add the fine and incomparable smell of steak and sausages and stuff like that. Yeah right, somewhere in the area around the office, some very unfair people just started their barbecue and this constantly drives me more and more into the arms of total insanity.

So maybe I should walk over to these people and tell them about the danger of Game Developers gone mad? Would that help? We don’t have a “do killer games make our kids become mass murderers” discussion for no reason. So the better get me some of tha reeeeeally good smelling barbecue over to my office.

They could just build a catapult to deliver it right through my office window – which is, as I told you – open for SOME reason, right?!

Anyways, I look forward to have my barbecue tonight. It will be the first thing I’ll do after a hard day at work, making games for people who don’t even want to share their barbecues

 

;)

 

 

There is something going on

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

Hey guys!

 

I have been through a lot of action since my last post. First of all, I started my job at Studio 2 on Monday.

 

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Feels good this time

Saturday, March 10th, 2007

Yaaaaapp…. THAT went well.

I won’t keep my secret from you people any more.

What has been going on?

In my last post I already told you (right?!) that I was test working for two days at the beginning of this month.

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Keeping on the good work

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

Now that we all can see the end of the tunnel, work develops some kind of extra flow. The project will go final on Monday which leaves me the weekend to fix some minor glitches in the dialog scripts. Anything else should turn out to be … well… perfect.

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Crunch and Donuts…

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

So here we go, the first waves of crunch-time reached us just a few moments ago. Our content is almost final, we do very small changes at the moment to get the last problems out of the way, because tomorrow we are supposed to hand in our internal milestone: “content and code – complete”.

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A lot more to do…

Monday, January 29th, 2007

Sometimes a bunch of work isn’t enough. When I received a phone call this evening I agreed to help out a very desperate colleague who has to write the dialogs for his team’s storyline.

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Milestone ahead…

Monday, January 22nd, 2007

After writing my last post I already knew that this night will be one of the hardest ones this year had to offer so far. Several dialogs throughout the acts 1 to 4 need a little reworking.

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Another night shift

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

Today really blew my head off. When I came to the Games Academy, my team lead told me about several “minor” story changes he discussed with our producer. What they thought of as minor changes turned out to be very dangerous, as I see it. After getting a short overview of what I can change I discussed some of the more heavy changes and finally we found a solution which should give me the chance to get work done till sunday. (more…)