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Jake

PAX East 2011?

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Haha, Jake did try to stare us down pretty hard. I was the red-haired guy with Apocrypha.

Also, we came across Weinhändler in the tabletop freeplay area and had to try it. That game is great. Thanks for the recommendation.

Do you guys think the Idle Thumbs meet-ups will continue in the future if you all are at conventions, or will they stop since you're not currently making the podcast?

We didn't have any hand in organizing this one. We're happy to call stuff like this out on the @idlethumbs Twitter if forum users continue to take the initiative.

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Pictures of us Weinhandling, plus a bonus shot of a deck of Wizard cards!

Btw, great panel Jake, although I'm interested in what you did more specifically. It was basically described as "a little of everything" which is pretty awesome.

Also, I'm curious as to what sort of gear you guys used to podcast with if you don't mind.

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I signed up for the GDC vault last night, and holy motherfucking shit there's a lot of stuff in there. I started off with a post-mortem for Uncharted 2 from GDC 2010, and found the interface and presentation very pleasing. There doesn't seem to be anything from 2011 there yet, but seeing as there must be hundreds of hours of everything from general game design to specific implementation stuff, and audio recording all the way back to 1994 or whatever, I should be good for at least until I die.

It's really cool to hear people talking about their games in an honest way, recognizing flaws and negatives in addition to whatever's good about their games. For people who attend these things regularly I guess it's not a huge deal, but for me it's like being let backstage at a rock concert, only it's game development instead of rock, and more of a convention than a concert.

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I signed up for the GDC vault last night, and holy motherfucking shit there's a lot of stuff in there. I started off with a post-mortem for Uncharted 2 from GDC 2010, and found the interface and presentation very pleasing. There doesn't seem to be anything from 2011 there yet, but seeing as there must be hundreds of hours of everything from general game design to specific implementation stuff, and audio recording all the way back to 1994 or whatever, I should be good for at least until I die.

It's really cool to hear people talking about their games in an honest way, recognizing flaws and negatives in addition to whatever's good about their games. For people who attend these things regularly I guess it's not a huge deal, but for me it's like being let backstage at a rock concert, only it's game development instead of rock, and more of a convention than a concert.

How much was it?

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Pictures of us Weinhandling, plus a bonus shot of a deck of Wizard cards!

Was the game missing one orange wine bottle card when you were playing? Our friend Glenn was trying to build an immaculate orange weinhandle but failed, and we eventually realized it was because the PAX deck was incomplete.

Btw, great panel Jake, although I'm interested in what you did more specifically. It was basically described as "a little of everything" which is pretty awesome.

I did all the UI design and UI art in the game, as well as what I guess would be called the art direction, though there wasn't a ton to direct. Over the course of a couple weekends, I also built the exterior environment myself (including the mine shaft down to the bar, and the elevator) which shows up on the main menu/opening cutscene. I didn't make many of the decks or tables myself but I worked with an illustrator on staff (Stephen Whetstine) to figure out what they would all be and get the details right. That's why the default deck of cards features the Weinhandler as the Jack. I also spent a lot of time early on working with the tech art guys and our animators to make sure we did things like actually animate and manage the poker chips as unique objects (instead of just displaying stacks as cylindars or the sorts of other shortcuts a lot of poker games take), and do other early setup stuff like set up the scale of the characters relative to each other, make sure their cards were rigged to be bendable and other weird things. Any overarching visual detail, I probably had my hands in in some capacity. Also any big visual bug was probably a result of my meddling.

Also, I'm curious as to what sort of gear you guys used to podcast with if you don't mind.

These days we just use a Zoom recorder (the H2 in particular). As for the old setup, Chris would have to list it all out. It was four mics and a 4 channel mixing board, going into his PC I think through an audio in box of some sort but I don't know any of the models.

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395 USD

I'm still thinking about it... SO MUCH MONEY.

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Is there an a la carte type of thing where you can pick and choose? If not, I wish there was, I'd love to check a bunch of that stuff out, but $400 is a lot when you have $0.

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Pictures of us Weinhandling, plus a bonus shot of a deck of Wizard cards!

You know, I actually have a game called "Wizard" that looks similar, though mine has some plastic counters. It plays like the card game "Down and Up" except with special cards like Wizard and Jester.

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Was the game missing one orange wine bottle card when you were playing? Our friend Glenn was trying to build an immaculate orange weinhandle but failed, and we eventually realized it was because the PAX deck was incomplete.

Maybe? I know we took out a colour because we only had 4 people. I can't say for sure, it was our first time and we only really caught on halfway into the game.

I did all the UI design and UI art in the game, as well as what I guess would be called the art direction, though there wasn't a ton to direct. Over the course of a couple weekends, I also built the exterior environment myself (including the mine shaft down to the bar, and the elevator) which shows up on the main menu/opening cutscene. I didn't make many of the decks or tables myself but I worked with an illustrator on staff (Stephen Whetstine) to figure out what they would all be and get the details right. That's why the default deck of cards features the Weinhandler as the Jack. I also spent a lot of time early on working with the tech art guys and our animators to make sure we did things like actually animate and manage the poker chips as unique objects (instead of just displaying stacks as cylindars or the sorts of other shortcuts a lot of poker games take), and do other early setup stuff like set up the scale of the characters relative to each other, make sure their cards were rigged to be bendable and other weird things. Any overarching visual detail, I probably had my hands in in some capacity. Also any big visual bug was probably a result of my meddling.

I've only seen 2 things wrong recently, both of which are very minor. The first is that if you keep your cursor on the raise button after clicking it, when it pops up the next time the "total" is not updated. The other is the occasional one frame animation flicker that may be because I have a 120hz monitor.

There's also some random images in the public release, such as the image that says "-EVALUATION COPY- NOT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE".

These days we just use a Zoom recorder (the H2 in particular). As for the old setup, Chris would have to list it all out. It was four mics and a 4 channel mixing board, going into his PC I think through an audio in box of some sort but I don't know any of the models.

Thanks for that info. :tup:

You know, I actually have a game called "Wizard" that looks similar, though mine has some plastic counters. It plays like the card game "Down and Up" except with special cards like Wizard and Jester.

That was in a store, so I have no idea how it works. I do have a friend that owns it though so I may check it out.

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Is there an a la carte type of thing where you can pick and choose? If not, I wish there was, I'd love to check a bunch of that stuff out, but $400 is a lot when you have $0.

You can pick and choose Audio recordings of the lectures.

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Looks like they've added the GDC 2011 stuff now. There's page after page of hour-long lectures about everything from Automated Level of Detail Generation for HALO: REACH to I Shot You First: Networking the Gameplay of HALO: REACH.

Myself, I'm still busy going through last year's stuff. I've watched a lot of interesting Uncharted 2 talks, and just finished Make 'Em Laugh, which is about comedy in games and features Tim Schafer, Rhianna Pratchett and... wait for it... Sean Vanaman!

If you're into games and can't attend the real thing (and maybe even if you can), this is thing comes heavily recommended and approved by me as something you might like.

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The very same. He's also done some other stuff – I think he said something about working on a Ducktales game. Anyway, yes, it's the Epic Mickey Logo Guy.

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