Author: Sarah Northway

  • Summer in the Pacific Northwest


    Sarah and Mrs Mooberry
    Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

    As usual the weather in BC was totally perfect this summer. For July and August we stayed with and generally mooched off our awesome families (although I did try to do some cooking). We went snorkeling in the almost-don’t-need-a-wetsuit ocean around Nanaimo, toured local farms and wineries in Cowichan Bay and Saltspring Island, and searched for frogs at Ammonite Falls. I worked hard to finish Rebuild 2 which is now in sponsor bidding.

    Labor Day weekend found us once again in Seattle for PAX which was nearly overrun with indies this year, many of them our friends. We spent the usual nights drinking and playing board games with our friends from San Francisco and Vancouver. We stayed to help pack up, affording us a behind-the-scenes peek at the incredible ballet that is the expo hall tear down.

    We stayed a couple extra days and went to a Mariner’s game with our cousins Pete and Leah, which was my first baseball game. We had incredible seats – the first two rows right behind the LA Angels, who lost even though Pete says they were the better team. It was the most fun I’ve ever had at any sporting event.

    Our plan was to stay in BC until the end of Septebmer but Colin heard quite suddenly that he’d been accepted to present his new game at Sense of Wonder Night at the Tokyo Game Show. Unfortunately we had to miss OrcaJam and IndieCADE this year but we squeezed in Beerfest with Colin’s parents where the theme was decidedly British style cask ales.

    Then it was off to catch our 3am Air China flight to Japan…

  • Rebuild 2: Playtest and Playtomic

    The Rebuild 2 main menu
    The Rebuild 2 main menu may be the creepiest art in the game.

    The Rebuild 2 playtest is over and was a huge success. I sent the test out to 63 applicants, and of those 45 played at least once and 21 sent me some sort of useful feedback (and get their names in the credits – thanks guys!). A couple shared their access despite being explicitly asked not to, but it was worth the risk and I had some security to impede ne’er do wells. So far my faith in humanity is intact!

    Some testers were above-and-beyond awesome, playing lengthy games on multiple difficulties, finding all the endings and rooting out my many grammatical errors. They found dozens of bugs I’d missed, and helped me make Nightmare difficulty (now called Impossible) harder than ever.

    Being fans of Rebuild 1, they weren’t as good at finding noob issues, so I did some extra tests with people who’d never seen the original. In person is best for this, although I find it nerve racking to watch people play my games. Like every other aspect of the game, the tutorial got an overhaul.

    Stats broken down by day and difficulty
    Playtest stats broken down by day and difficulty

    I collected stats using Playtomic (formerly SWFStats), including the fact that a few games went 300, 500, even 800 days. That’s dedication!

    Playtomic wasn’t ideal for such a small test. I broke down the survivors, squares, and food by day and difficulty, but when I added map size it all got out of order and became a wall of numbers. I needed more options to sort and filter, or download the data in an xls. I also logged any errors as custom metrics, but without room for stack traces all I knew was how often each error happened. Again, not what Playtomic was designed for, but it would have been useful.

    What Playtomic does do well is analytics for published games, like Google Analytics but simpler and more game-centric. I wish I’d put something like it in Rebuild 1 so I could at least know how many plays that game has. 6 million confirmed on the big portals… maybe another 2 or 3 from the hundreds of smaller sites?

    Anyway, with help from my army of volunteer playtesters, Rebuild 2 is now (just about) finished, and is off to sponsors for bidding. The process usually takes a month, so you’ll finally all be able to play the new game in September!

    Until then, here’s a very brief Rebuild 2 trailer I cut together:

  • Rebuild 2: Guess who

    The Dream Team
    The Dream Team: Derek Yu, David Hellman, Tiff Chow, Steph Thirion

    You really may have to guess, as the face modelling doesn’t always produce a perfect match. But I’ve been having fun putting my friend’s faces into the game with the FaceGen Modeller, then mix-and-matching their hair and facial hair.

    Terrifying new art from EvilKris
    Terrifying new art from EvilKris

    The major components are all in, and I’m starting to slog through balancing now. In the end, some stuff still didn’t make it in, but Rebuild 2 is closer to what I imagined the original should have been. I hope you’ll agree!

    I’ll probably do some private testing soon so if you’d like to be considered for test duty, please leave a comment on this post.

    Edit: the playest is over, thanks everyone for helping out!

  • Rebuild 2: Progress Continues

    EvilKris and I have been working hard on Rebuild 2. Skills and plots are in with about 30 other changes, and there’s another 20 to go. Recent additions include renaming survivors, saving in multiple slots, shotguns, helicopters, prostitution, and more kittens.

    There are also new buildings and I tweaked the map art to use more gradients and textures. I’m still working on the blood bar; need to make room for more information up there. It’s still pretty similar but here’s how it looks today:

    New buildings in Rebuild 2
    New buildings in Rebuild 2

    EvilKris is nearly done the new attack screen art, small illustrations to go with various events and possible outcomes. These will be in a kind of a comic book style, hopefully not too gruesome for the squeamish but showing a more realistic depiction of life in the land of the dead. He has more art on his blog.

    EvilKris's attack screen vignettes
    EvilKris's attack screen vignettes

  • A Northway tour of San Francisco


    San Francisco
    Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

    Yes, the Northways came back to SF for three months, which as Colin says fits us like a glove. We’ve got to move on to BC in July, but I’m already planning our next SF visit for GDC 2012. A friend asked us for advice on what to see and do in San Francisco, and listing out all the best places for him has made me start to miss the city already. Here are, more or less, our favourite things to do in SF:

    If you’re going to be there on a Thursday, start by planning that day around the Academy of Sciences nightlife event – adults-only cocktails in an aquarium! That starts at 6:00pm in Golden Gate Park, so you can spend the day in and around Golden Gate Park. Start by taking the N Judah MUNI train (here’s a bus map), get off at Carl & Cole (great sushi for dinner there) and walk down to Haight & Ashbury and Magnolia’s brewpub for brunch because it’s never too early for a beer.

    Stroll down to the park, check out the drummers on hippie hill, and make your way to the museums. Across from the academy is the De Young which has awesome creepy skulls and fetishes from New Guinea, and a sweet tower that’s free to go up with a view of the city. Nearby on 9th is the new Social Kitchen brewpub and Arizmendi which has delicious pizza and other baked yum you can pick up for later.

    If you have time, come back to the park on a Sunday when they close the first half of JFK drive for people to ride their bikes (rent bikes at Haight & Stanyan). If the weather is warm (March-April is best; in July-August expect sunny mornings and chill windy afternoons), go all the way to Ocean Beach and follow the walking trails north through the ruins of Sutro Baths to Golden Gate Bridge. The trails continue east from the bridge along the water all the way to pier 49 but it’s a long way; better to head in to Geary to catch the 38 bus back. But first stop at the Russian importers for some sausage and poppyseed pastries. It’s always good to have snax for later.

    I think Alcatraz is overrated and pier 49 is a tourist hell hole, but it’s worth going just for the Musee Mechanique. Then you can walk from there to check out the best parts of North Beach and Chinatown. Hike up to the base of Coit Tower then walk down the paths on the east side to Embarcadero. Follow that south along the water south to the Ferry Building which is cool in a yuppie kind of way, especially when they have the farmer’s market on Sunday.

    In terms of museums the Exploratorium is my favorite, but it’s best if you can go to their monthly after dark event so you don’t have to share all the cool interactive science stuff with the dumb kids it was designed for. Colin likes the SFMOMA and YBCA art galleries just south of market near 4th, and there’s a comic book museum and other little galleries nearby that are cool, and free the first Tuesday of every month.

    That’s it for downtown though. I wouldn’t bother with the area around powell, market, and union square because it’s just commercial tourist blah, and busy. Avoid wandering into the Tenderloin west of union square around 6th + market unless you’re looking to buy some crack or converse with crazy people.

    The cable car museum near chinatown is free and cool, and if you must take a cable car, the California line is the easiest to get a seat on. You can take it to the end then walk down to Van Ness to hit up Tommy’s Joynt (or perhaps somewhere classier).

    Take the BART to the Mission to find all kinds of good restaurants, urban culture and people speaking Spanish. Wander between 24th and 16th, Valencia and Mission st. It’s what I think of as the “real” San Francisco, and it’s a little grimy. It can’t be denied, SF is a stinky city and inhabited by a lot of homeless people. That’s part of the… charm? Head up to the Castro for a break; it’s much trendier and whiter and gayer.

    If you have a car and can organize who gets to drink and who has to drive, our favourite outside-the-city thing is to do a day of wine tastings around the Russian River area to the north. It’s a couple boring hours on the highway to get out there but once you do the roads meander and the countryside is lovely. There’s a burger place called Mike’s At The Crossroads that’s great for loading up on grease first, and another brewpub in Santa Rosa for when you’re sick of wine. If you don’t want to go so far, buy some $5 wine from Trader Joe’s and have a picnic on the hills just north of the Golden Gate bridge (if it’s not too foggy – earlier in the day is better).

    And of course before you go, take a look at what events are going to be on, maybe take in a concert or a play. I love a good street fair or craft fair, and then there’s Bay to Breakers, Gay Pride, LoveFest, the Folsom Street Fair (scary!), etc. SF likes to throw big, weird parties.

    For those who might not know, we started a new development blog at NorthwayGames.com for game and work-related stuff. We’ll continue posting here again when we’re “abroad” once more in French Polynesia this fall.