“Time flies when you’re having fun.”

This is one of my favorite sayings simply because the cartoon 2 Stupid Dogs made an entire episode based on it. And I found it quite funny. It still sticks with me today! It’s the only explanation I have for the sudden realization of a passing of time.

My last post on the blog was 6 years ago, practically to the day. This was shortly after the release of Raybeem, our VR music visualizer. I remember feeling worn out after that project and not having a clear direction of where to take it beyond its initial release.

The last post was Feb 2018, and a few months later in May, we presented Raybeem at the VRLA convention at the Los Angeles convention center. I was working on a VR project for Amazon at that time so it’s all a bit blurry to me now. We had a great showing at the convention but I felt a bit of frustration in continuing VR development because of how challenging that project was.

The blog has turned into one of those things that “I’ll get to later.” Initially, I wanted to update the WordPress theme to work on mobile better. I had some new ideas for how I wanted to organize the blog. Then it became maintenance issues, how do I even login to this thing? Then a site migration forced me to finally get around to updating stuff but I didn’t know what to say.

We’ve got a new game coming out soon so I waited just about as long as I could before I had to face this ‘dragon.’ So I’m posting something to get past my initial restraint. I can’t figure out how to center the images in this post! But I’ll worry about it another day!

Our new project, Cheddar Beach, is NOT VR. It’s not even Unity, but it’s a game at least! A large part of Sokay is the spirit of breaking new ground, at least for us individually. Each game or application has been unlike the one before it. This one is a story-based visual novel game, but it’s developed almost entirely by myself! Me, Bryson! So that’s a common thread.

This is a project where I forced myself out of my comfort zone to take care of all of the in-game artwork. I typically avoid the character stuff and Ricky draws it. This time Ricky has got my back by helping out with character designs though!

I’m looking forward to sharing more!

Nice to see you!

Peace!

-Bryson

Raybeem is available on Steam for Oculus Rift & HTC Vive.

Raybeem is the first VR project from Sokay. It’s not 2D. It’s not a game. Yet, it’s as close to my heart as any of the previously released Sokay products. I spent 2017 working full-time on Raybeem. I can describe it as a whirlwind, which was hard to make sense of while I was in the middle of it. I’m writing this mess to dump what’s been going on in my head into a huge blog post.

Raybeem is a virtual reality project that started out as a desire to listen to my favorite Drum & Bass station, Bassdrive.com, in Virtual Reality. As an adolescent, I spent dozens of hours of my life gazing at Winamp visualizers. Switching through visualizations to find my favorite, tweaking settings, and downloading new ones.  This was the prime way of listening to music for Bryson in the year 2001.

This was my dream for 2017, listening to Drum & Bass music in VR. In a world of my creation.

Raybeem’s been a large project for me so I’ve had a hard time figuring out what to say about it. At it’s core, I consider Raybeem to be a VR music visualizer. That was the starting point for the concept, anyway. I just wanted to create an application for listening to music in VR. The different visualizations in Raybeem are thought of as “Themes.” The way I imagined, a Raybeem theme is any environment that reacts to music in some way. So a theme could be anything – realistic or abstract, interactive or non-interactive.

When I started working on Raybeem, I had a strong idea of what I was trying to build. As it turned out, even with all the notes, sketches and prototypes, I fooled myself into thinking it would be less work than it was. Here’s a brain-dump of a lot of the things I figured out on my Road to Raybeem’s release. Continue Reading…

 
The Sokay Fam ready to exhibit Raybeem at Super Future last weekend – rockin new Sokay shirt designs.

I’ve probably spent more time creating Sokay clothing and other merchandise than I should have been doing. I’m supposed to be making more games, right??? But you know, I have fun doing it! Can’t help myself. Last week, we exhibited our VR music visualizer Raybeem at an art show in Downtown Los Angeles – Super Future by Futra. Since we were showing some Sokay stuff out in public, I took the opportunity to try to sell some Sokay shirts, at least put them out in front of people. This got me thinking of the journey of this Sokay clothing experiment.

Back in 2012, when we were getting close to the release of Donut Get!, I became obsessed with creating merchandise for the game. Even longer ago, a friend of mine had pitched me this idea of creating mini-games that were tied to the designs of shirts he was making. I thought it was a great idea but I took forever to finish games, it wasn’t an idea I thought could actually follow through with. I think this was before we even finished our second game LUV Tank, so I probably wasn’t in the mindset of making bite-sized games at this point. I revisited this idea with Donut Get! – could I sell a shirt for a game that I was essentially giving away for free?

Continue Reading…

Introducing…

Raybeem! The first virtual reality concept from Sokay. It’s a step towards my longtime dream of creating a music visualizer. I spent countless hours gazing at the Milkdrop visualizer in Winamp back in the day. I had no clue how it worked – back when I just starting to dive in Flash ActionScript.

Here’s my homie giving Raybeem a shot on the Samsung Gear VR.

My concept for Raybeem started with imagining how great it could be if you didn’t need another person to give you a personal lightshow if you were at a rave. And what if you could take all of that great visual and aural stimuli with you anywhere? What if you never had to leave your couch to experience a spectacular show?

Above is a screen-capture of the playback controls. In the prototype, you can cycle through 5 embedded tracks. I tested using some of my favorite copyrighted tracks. I also got permission from the homies Eezir and Cryptic Circuitry to use their music in the final build. Each track has a different effect on the environment around you. Eventually I’d like the user to be able to load in their own library.

Here is a rough video demonstrating what it looks like on a 2D screen, from within Unity:

Continue Reading…

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!!!

We’ve gone and done it. We went backwards from the internet to print. Introducing… Sokay Zine!

Download Issue #1 PDF at http://zine.sokay.net

Sokay Zine (zine as in magazine) is an idea that had been tumbling around in my head for a while. It’s a 20 page 4.5×4.5″ booklet. During the development of Donut Get! I was printing out a ton of flyers for our monthly LA Art Walk show, Sokay Play. To come up with the art for the flyers, I was digging through folders of old art work gathering dust on my hard drives. Looking through all of the unseen or unfinished assets got me thinking. There was a ton of stuff that I forgot we even made. I figured something should’ve been done with it.

When I was out on the streets hustling Donut Get! and Sokay, I made a buncha flyers, stickers and buttons. It felt good to be making physical stuff again. Reminded me of drawing on line paper in class back in the day. I’d seen people online making zines about things they’re fans of and I thought, “Why can’t I do something like this for Sokay?”

A Sunsoft newsletter from Summer 1988

I remembered back in the 80s and 90s game companies often used quarterly print newsletters to reach their audiences and let them know more about their games coming out. Nintendo Power started out as one of these. This was another source of inspiration.

The making of our first game Thugjacker became the focus of the zine. We made Thugjacker before I had started blogging so it was a fresh topic to write about. To put it together, spent a ton of time digging up artwork, exporting frames of animation out of the game, looking at cut content and trying to piece together the story. It was a challenge to put it to words and be concise with it (unlike my blog posts).

Example of a Japanese guide for Faxanadu (1987-ish)

My last blog post was a review of The Untold History of Japanese Developers. On the behind the scenes DVD I got glimpses of just how in depth the Japanese game world’s print industry was. You could find a thick strategy guide for just about any game you could imagine. Seeing how they laid out game levels in those books became inspiration for my “walkthrough” of the first stage of Thugjacker in the zine.

So after assembling the zine digitally, I had to print these things out. I had a short timeline since I was aiming to print about 100 for my trip to Bitsummit in Kyoto, Japan. So I opted to print them in my bedroom rather than look for a professional printer. For 2 weeks, I was swimming in CMYK. I learned a lot through trial and error but I’ve got a decent system for printing up batches when I get a chance. Up to now I believe I’ve printed about 160 copies but I’m always short. Hit me up if you’re interested in a copy! Still need to look into a printshop though!

So take a look and let us know what you think.

• Download the Sokay Zine Issue 01 PDF at http://zine.sokay.net

I ported DONUT GET! to OUYA with the hope of it being a OUYA launch title. I anticipated that it would at least help bring a bit more attention to DONUT GET!, especially since it didn’t get as much coverage as expected. Fortunately DONUT GET! was listed as one of the 104 OUYA launch titles, and mentioned on sites like Destructoid.

We’ve made our download stats available for DONUT GET! on OUYA. It’s a totally free game — there’s no in-app purchases.

Our DONUT GET! OUYA Download stats are available here: http://www.donutget.com/ouya-stats/

A large problem within the OUYA community is that the company is slowly trickling out the ~60,000 Kickstarter units. For developers it’s a bit unsettling with the low download numbers, and the myriad of other software problems we’re dealing with. Continue Reading…

[ PRESS RELEASE ALSO AVAILABLE HERE ]

Los Angeles, California – Oct. 29, 2012 – Sokay.net is proud to announce that DONUT GET! is now available for iPhone, iPad, Android, and web browsers. DONUT GET! is a game about a cop eating donuts raining from the sky.

Everyone knows police officers fantasize about the burning of Donut Shops, and Officer Brown is no exception. With donuts bursting in air, there’s proof in the night that Officer Brown will be there. You assume duty as our rotund hero crosses the thin blue line with sweet dreams of round treats bouncing behind his eyes–plenty o’ donuts to get.

The web-based Flash version is 3 games in 1: driving, fighting and donut getting. The player’s actions change the game itself and multiple cinematic endings are available.

The mobile and tablet versions of DONUT GET!, developed with Unity, are a streamlined, arcade version of the game. The objective is simple. There are donuts. GET THEM. As many as possible. The game integrates the GREE platform for leaderboards and achievements.

DONUT GET! is available on:

• Apple App Store for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad (http://www.donutget.com/download/iphone/ )
• Google Play Store for Android phones and tablets (http://www.donutget.com/download/android/ )
• Play it for FREE on the web at http://www.sokay.net/play/donut-get

COME AND GET IT!

More information available at http://www.donutget.com

About Sokay.net

Sokay.net is an independent game development team in Los Angeles, California. They say it never rains in Southern California. At Sokay, we make it rain. Sokay.net has developed the games Thugjacker, LUV Tank, Rush Hour Plus and Sammy Samurai.

ANNOUNCING — DONUT GET! for Android Has Been Released!

Download it for FREE at:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.sokay.DonutGet

Last week I spent some time prototyping our next game in Unity. Of the block matching puzzle game variety.

This week I jumped back to focusing on Donut Get! iPad version and finishing up where I left off with the in app purchasing. I was running into a problem of it just crashing when a purchase started so I had to do a bit of optimizing to prevent that. So far so good, as now I can at least get it to work!

In app purchase screen to remove ads.

Thank you screen!

The textures for the sprite animation is eating up a ton of memory. I’ve tried to keep the cop animation sharp and crisp but I’ve had to bring down the res a bit to accommodate all the lower-end devices it keeps crashing. 🙁 So for now, I’m trying to stop crashing Android phone! haha

Later I hope to do some research to switch between spritesheets based on the memory available on the device. Not quite sure if that’s possible/reasonable yet.

Donut Get! Android is available on Google Play so check it out if you can. Let me know how it works for you!

iPhone version available soon!

The OG Flash version still at http://www.sokay.net/play/donut-get

Thanks for reading.

Peace!

[Repost from our Tigsource DevLog]

We’ll be debuting the game this week during Sokay Play 8! Our gallery show during the Downtown LA Art Walk…

This week during the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk. Check some photos from previous events on our Flickr.

So E3 was this week so I went out and hung out the homies. Playing some games, drinking, etc etc.

A lot of stupid times, but I had a blast!

[repost from our TigSource DevLog]

This week I started cleaning up some promo art that Ricky drew…

Planning on making a Donut Get! t-shirt with this artwork.

Sent out a Beta link to a buncha peeps yesterday, thinking through the feedback to see what I should try to address and what I’ll decide what is “intended to be like that!” haha! It’s a tricky thing for me because there are some things people want/expect to be explained clear as day, while I intend for the game to be a bit of an exploration. You’ll figure out more about it the more times you play. But the major issues I’ll need to address first will be things that make it easier to replay — shortening slower parts, making it easier to skip parts, etc.

I’ve been reworking the Donut drop patterns which have been super rough. Trying to create a flow to it.

These are the items that fall from the sky in the Donut segment

• Donuts: variety of 5 types, these are like points
• Debris: these mess up your day, fall on your head and make you drop to the ground
• Coffee: speeds you up, makes your jumps floaty, lasts briefly

With the unspoken objective of collecting as many donuts as possible, the player runs back and forth collecting donuts. Bouncing on the heads of the NPCs allows you to jump high into the sky and lets you collect many more donuts than you can get on the ground. You must do this while avoiding hazardous NPCs that knock you down or fight you. Also debris is falling as well so you need to avoid it. The coffee powerup is meant to be a temporary speed boost, I’m trying to design the pattern so that you can get a flow of coffee boosts if you navigate through the obstacles well.

Working on the donut drop pattern is a tedious mess because I’m doing it with a ghetto array and it takes a while to build the game and test changes. I would do this a completely different way if I was starting the project today but that’s another story… haha!

David’s waiting on me to do some more animation, I’m gonna setup some additional characters that will be added to the game sooner or later. And I need to take another pass at the fighting game…