WEEK 3: Posted June 26th 2006 12:10 AM
Good-Bye
Posted by Sara "The Boss" Raasch

So it is finally done. That’s right we did it we made a game, and it rocks. We had a wrap party in the studio tonight. Lots of people were there and played our game (sorry but I can’t get over the fact that we made a game) and every one seemed to enjoy it. It has been a long, and at times stressful three weeks, but in the end we did what we set out to do. Red Bull has a great game to put up. Some of the riders and characters got cut, but that’s ok, they would have made the game too complicated anyways. Multiplayer is still really buggy, and probably won’t make it up, but that’s ok the single player game is great. We had a great time making the game and we wall went home tonight with a sense of accomplishment. We all learned loads, about ourselves, about the business, and how things work in the real world when there aren’t any teachers around to tell you how to do things. We made some mistakes along the way, but hey that’s ok, we did what we set out to do.

So starting Monday we will all get on with our normal lives. Alex Hodgkiss will continue in his undergraduate studies, and hopefully continue on to grad school after he graduates in the spring.. Bobby Nettles is switching to a different track of the UCF Digital Media program in the fall, and we hope he will continue to be successful in the coming years. Christian Franqui is finishing his last undergrad Digital Media class this summer and will begin grad school in the fall; we all know he will continue to rock. Gabe Mariani will get his last class and graduate, and in the end he will still be the best flash coder any of our team has met. James Efstathiou, who came out of nowhere to help us will, I’m sure, continue to code and just be a general all around awesome person. And what is on the horizon for me, the lowly project manager? Well I got a year to go in my degree and then I hope to pursue grad school in Digital Media.

As for the future of Zombie Cow Studios, who knows? We all pretty much had a blast working together. There has been random talk of making Zombie Cow into something real. It looks like University of Central Florida’s Digital Media program is thinking of starting an incubator program, to help start student companies. If so we may turn Zombie Cow into a flash game development studio (at least to start), but that’s a little further down the line.

We are definitely going to miss the space. Red Bull did an incredible job and we would like to thank them for giving us this opportunity, words cannot express our gratitude. We are going to miss it all so much (especially the free Red Bull). Its been a really great experience and we are sad to see it end.

But I guess we all have to go back to real life at some point.

Thanks


Sara


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WEEK 3: Posted June 24th 2006 03:34 AM
Sooooo Tired
Posted by Sara "The Boss" Raasch

Dateline – Saturday June 24th 4:29 a.m.

So yeah, we are all really tired, but we are in for the long haul. Some of the major bugs have been worked out. I managed to teach myself Sony Vegas video in one day and spit out an intro movie. Christian learned Garage Band in a matter of hours and made us some music to use in the game. James Efstathiou, and Gabriel Mariani, our programmers, have continued to be invaluable. Two of their friends, Mike Wilhelm and Timothy Metzler, showed up to lend some last minute assistance. Mike has been helping fix some problems with the animations and Tim has been helping with the sound and coding.

Gabe was the first one to pass out. I have been at the studio for a total of 16 hours now, and it doesn’t look like I will be going to sleep or going home at this point. There is still quite a bit left to get fixed, but our game does look like a game at this point which is a good thing. Some of Bobby Nettles friends have stopped by to help him compile videos and play some halo.

We are nearing the home stretch though. We now have approximately 19.5 hours left to finish this game.


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WEEK 3: Posted June 23rd 2006 10:59 PM
Ohh pretty.
Posted by Sara "The Boss" Raasch

Woo Hoo guys I uploaded some new animations. You should check them out.

And with that I am back to video editing and playtesting.


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WEEK 3: Posted June 21st 2006 08:44 PM
Almost There!
Posted by Danny Riddell (Panelist)

I spent the last couple of days here in Orlando with the winning Red Bull Build students. Just walking into the studio was inspiring itself, large screen TVs, huge monitors, high-end machines, even a small rendering farm kept me in awe as I explored the Red Bull Build space. In typical college fashion the students mainly worked in the studio at night gathering around their monitors with cans of Red Bull and hot pockets to keep them going.

When I arrived the students were just about to submit their first Milestone drop to the Red Bull team. From what I could tell they had all the items in place that they had planned on and were able to showcase the baseline functionality of the game. This included some of the initial gameplay, animation, and backend components. Wow, it was clear they were off and running. The Red Bull team and I reviewed and gave suggestions for the initial delivery, which gave the students plenty to think about and incorporate into their end product. They made the first deadline but clearly the bulk of the work was to be shortly on its way.

We spent some time with individual students giving specific advice and helping out where we could. With all the Red Bull pumping through my veins I later decided to take on the students in a friendly game of Halo…24 them, 0 me…hmm, not so friendly, I feel the love. There were plenty of activities in the studio today as a film crew from National Lampoon stopped by to take shots of the students and the pros. There is nothing like trying to work with questions and lights coming at you but they handled the pressure like it happens everyday. It will be fun to see how the final product of today’s shoots.

I am headed out today as I hand it over to Beau Ambur to finish up with the students. They are just about at the halfway point now and seem to be going strong. It’s been a good few days, good luck to the students and thanks to the Red Bull staff for treating us so well!

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WEEK 3: Posted June 21st 2006 08:15 PM
Wednesday
Posted by Sara Raasch


So it’s Wednesday. We were supposed to have a fully working game for Red Bull on Monday but that didn’t quite happen. But it looks like we will have one for them today. We currently have multiplayer and single player working. There are a couple of bugs still to be worked out, but that’s ok, we plan on using the last 3 days on play testing and bug fixes. James and Gabe, the loyal programmers have come so far. Most of the code has been done since Monday; we were just waiting on textures and renders. The final texture was done last night and the final renders were done this morning. Since the code is pretty much done, when to programmers get in tonight all that should need to be done is throw in the assets and start testing. The scary thing is the testing is going to take so much work. Basically we have to try to break the game. We also have to try out every feature of the game over and over to make sure everything works right and make sure it feels right.


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