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

Showing some games again this week at the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk!

SOKAY PLAY 4

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY, 2012
FROM LIKE 8PM – MIDNIGHT

During the Downtown LA Art Walk

@ The Medallion
334 S. Main St Unit#334-5012
Los Angeles, 90013

Showing some games again this week at the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk!

SOKAY PLAY 3

THURSDAY, JANUARY 12, 2012
FROM LIKE 8PM – MIDNIGHT

During the Downtown LA Art Walk

@ The Medallion
334 S. Main St Unit#334-5012
Los Angeles, 90013

Earlier this month we showed Thugjacker and LUV Tank at a gallery space during the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk, once again.

Here’s a walkthrough from out last show…

This time I managed to set up the night before.

A Sokay Play flyer in the Urban Noodle window.

 Some peeps checkin out LUV Tank. We used our projector this time since we got a feel for how the setup would be.

Continue Reading…

I’m showing Thugjacker and L.U.V. Tank during the Download Los Angeles Art Walk this week. A friend arranged getting a booth and I joined in, been scrambling to get things prepared!Looking forward to seeing the games out in front of people again! The stats say that lots of people play our games, but it’s always a different story seeing people experience them.

For more info on the Reality Prevention Consortium event, check out its Facebook Event page.

Artwork from the Car Segment of the game.

Work continues to progress on the Donut game. I’ve spent a great deal of the summer focusing on the Car Segment, which serves as an interactive intro. During this segment of the game, you play as the officer driving to the scene of the Great Donut Fire. You must drive through traffic, hopefully avoiding collisions with cars and civilians. The outcome of this section will be dependent on how you handle it — reckless driving will result in a ‘negative’ outcome where you don’t get to where you’re driving to.

With the Car Segment mostly wrapped up, I’ve moved on to focusing on the Fight Segment of the game, which acts as a mini-challenge within the game. David’s animating the characters for this part, the gameplay will be similar to Punch-Out!. I’m working on getting a skeleton of the game engine in place so that he can test his animation without requiring me to drop additional code in. Since this sections gameplay is so tied to the actual animation and timing, it’s important that he’s able to quickly iterate and test while animating.

The game is starting to emerge from the rubble and smoke. With every pass at detail and polish, it becomes clearer to see what the end result will be. While I chose to have the game mechanics relatively simple, I wanted to use them to play out a scenario and communicate ideas and themes from the world. This communication plays a larger role than it did in Thugjacker, where it was a bit more subtle, and is more integrated into the world than LUV Tank where it was much more blatant and abstract.

Most of the game artwork is done and in place at this point, but there’s a lot of animation that needs to be done. I’m doing planning for the game endings now, which will play a large role in the game. The way the game plays out will determine your ending — Way of the Samurai serves as my inspiration for this aspect. I’ve been thumbnailing these endings, working them out on paper while I develop the game.

Until next time…

Peace!

-Bryson

Thugjacker Half at Agame.com

Over the weekend I noticed a sudden surge in traffic and I noticed most of it was coming from Agame.com. Turned out they had just stolen it and added it to their frontpage on Thursday and a lotta people were playing it. It’s nice to know people are still playing it after 5 years! haha. My favorite part is still reading all of the insightful comments like “cool ima pimp nigga“and “DONT STEAL HIS BIKE“. Mostly spam here, but the Newgrounds comments are still gold to me.

Thugjacker’s been our most popular game, by far. A great deal of it has to do with it being our first game, with Ricky and I spending so much time with it. The gameplay has a stickiness that keeps people coming back — I think it’s just fun to mess around and beat guys up. These days, it’s easy to be lost on Flash portals so it’s usually hit or miss if people notice the game or not. Thugjacker usually does well but LUV Tank usually gets lost. LUV Tank only really took off on Addictinggames.com for some reason, but it’s usually the game that the not-so-hardcore gamers tell me they like the most.

Yesterday I was working on the Donut game with David. We had started talking about Thugjacker and I showed him a lot of the stuff we cut out of Thugjacker Half — David wasn’t working with us on Thugjacker. There were cinemas scenes that I didn’t have time to finish and implement. A lot of the real story. It’ll all find it’s way into the game eventually. This Donut game will give another side of the story.

It’s not apparent from reading this blog, but we’re actively in production of this Donut Game that I first mentioned here over 2 years ago. But you know what they say, “Time flies when you’re having fun!”

For a preview I’m just showing some line art from the game. Currently, this art is already painted and imported into the game. The background is my handywork and Ricky did the characters. Continue Reading…

This is my first public Papervision demo. I’m experimenting with some techniques for the next Sokay game. This is also the debut of the main character for the game, designed by Ricky Enriquez. Check out the demo.

My Papervision Demo

This scene is composed of 4 planes — the cop, the sidewalk, the shop, and the city. I positioned them within the scene with code. The animation is handled with code as well. I’m using Tweener to move the cop left and right, as well as his jump animation. The camera is targeting the cop.

I’m going to keep playing with this. I want to push it further by adding some movement to the rest of the scene, perhaps tweaking the rotation of the buildings as the camera moves.

If you’re looking to start with Papervision, there are some excellent video tutorials at gotoandlearn.com that’ll help you get started.