Religion is not all bad, and perhaps is mostly good.  The biggest thing that bothers me about religions are their claims to be true.  If religions were simply promoted as systems of useful metaphors, I’d probably have not complaint against them.

There are a few things that have creeped into my godless life that were not present in my godful one, and that go against what I think is right.  My current belief system seems to lack the motivational impetus to control these behaviors.  But now that I’m sitting down to write about them, I seem to have forgotten what they are… well, I remember one, maybe there only was one:

1. Anger- Without Jesus, I find that I am prone to express my anger in ways that I later regret.  It’s not physical, as I have never hit, nor do I believe I’ve even threatened to hit, my wife or children.  It’s more an inner feeling that I didn’t use to deal with.  I used to believe that God commanded me to be happy, and so I was.  Or rather, I behaved happily (not all christians find it that easy, but as I’ve mentioned in other posts I seem to have something of a disconnect to my emotions).  Now that I no longer hold that belief, I find that I’m more easily agitated.  For example, if my boy is hitting my girl, I might grab his arm and yank him behind me as I pick her up.  I’m sure it’s scary for him, because that’s the emotion that radiates out from me.  It says, “I didn’t hurt you, but I really wanted to.”  For the above reason, I find that I have to apoligize to my family more frequently than before.

If I think of anything else I lack without Jesus, I’ll add comments to this post.

I’m proud to announce that www.midnightflock.com has reached open beta. Not that our site is as ambitious as a game or any of Google’s projects or anything, but we don’t want people to hunt us down with pitch forks or tar and feather us if there are some broken links and such at first.

I can’t explain what it is to be a member of the Midnight Flock. So rather than waste my breath, I think you’ll find it well worth 45 seconds of your time to take our short quiz to find out if you are a member.

I wrote up the following link for a post on GarageGames.com, but figured it might be interesting for people here as well.  Don’t feel bad if you don’t know what nurbs mean

History
Midnight Flock started as an indie game company in February 2005. At that time our artist thought nurbs were celestial objects, our programmer (me) thought C++ was a grade of 79.5% (I hadn’t even written Hello World yet), and our game designer/writer hadn’t done much beside create some really fun AD&D campaigns. But we had what we thought were some great ideas for games and the intelligence and tenacity to bring them to life, so we started a game company.

We were all busy with the other aspects of our lives (work, study, gaming), and the combined time the 3 of us were able to dedicate to games development was probably the equivalent of 1/10 the weekly productivity of a seasoned programmer or artist. We had also learned that most saavy indie teams license an engine so that what little time they do have can be spent on their game, not on creating the basic foundation that all games need. So we began looking at engines to bring our ideas to life. We found GarageGames and over the course of time bought indie licenses for Torque, Torque Advanced, and Torque Game Builder.

We soon realized that the games we had initially conceived were the type of games that require AAA budgets/staff. Being impoverished and unexperienced like many indie developers, we had to think of a different game plan. We decided to try and build a few smaller games that we thought would be fun, but that we weren’t necessarily passionate about creating. We laid out a path that we thought would allow us to “snowball” our cash and experience from small games to the games we were passionate about creating.

But of course, the first “small” game we tried to create with the Torque Game Engine made us feel like babies trying to chew a jolly rancher. After about 6 months of slow progress, we ran into some hurdles that we realized we just weren’t going to be able to solve with our limited time, experience, and cash. We tried to rescope the project without the features causing these problems. But then the gameplay just didn’t seem as fun as we envisioned. So we decided to scrap the project and create an even smaller game with Torque Game Builder. Soon we had created a prototype for this game. But while the game was fun, we just weren’t confident that it would be a hit on the portals.

It was about this time that Jeff Tunnel began his blog, www.makeitbigingames.com. In one of his entries he talked about getting published on Xbox Live Arcade. He stated that he thought the average budget was around $300k and would probably climb rapidly. He also stated that he believed it was a meritocracy, and that the best games would be offered positions in the lineup.

Of course, we think we have some dang good ideas (doesn’t everyone?), but we began thinking about this $300k figure. To us that meant 6 $50k/year caliber employees working full time. We were more akin to 3 $25k/year caliber employees and we were working part time. Our efforts were probably worth $50-100k or so per year. We could continue as we were: pick a game with an appropriate scope, dedicate a few more hours a week to the project, and work for an estimated 2-6 years to bring it about. Or we could once again alter our strategy.

Being eager for success, we opted for the latter. We decided to take what we thought would be a brief pit stop of a couple months and turn our brand into an apparel line for gamers, after which we would return to game development. 10 months later, here we are. :p

A Design Process Rooted in Games
In keeping with our roots as a game company, our art pipeline is complex and convoluted. Seriously though, our art process is much more similar to a game studio than the typical apparel company. We created concept art of our characters. That concept art was used to create models in Maya. Those models were used to create all of the images on our site. Additionally, renders of the models were translated into the vector art we used to create our shirt designs.

The Benefits of Programming
Having cut my teeth on C++ and Torquescript, picking up PHP was a snap. We’ve been able to program some nice extras/mods into our website, including our referral program. We’re not done yet, but it’s nice to have the power to do whatever we want, instead of make do with whatever we are given.

Lastly, here are some shots of our first 2 designs:

It kills me that I am causing Lisa so much pain.  And as if the private pain weren’t bad enough, I’m causing her public embarassment.  She is so wonderful.  She has so many reasons to be cold and biting, but instead she is kind and loving.  Her sweetness and innocence make it so hard for me to be honest with her, and to drag that honesty out into the world in a way that gives her additional hurt.  So why do I do it?

Towards the end of my tenure as a church attendant, I was present in a testimony meeting that I have not forgotten.  In this meeting a 12-year-old girl stood up to share her feelings.  She said that she had been sad because all of the other young girls talked about how much God loved them.  She didn’t feel like God loved her.  She went to the Bishop to talk about her concerns.  The Bishop told her that God surely loved her, and that she should pray harder and look harder for signs of his love.  Some days later on a cloudy morning she was waiting to catch the school bus and she was feeling sad that she hadn’t received confirmation that God loved her. Just then, a ray of the sun broke through a hole in the clouds.  It was beautiful, and the young girl testified that she knew at that moment that God loved her.

I blog about religion for people like her, because they are like me.  Undoubtedly anytime anything good or beautiful happens in her life she will categorize it as God’s love.  Anytime anything unfortunate happens she will categorize it as a test, the devil, or just life.  If she lives out her life happily and never doubts her belief in God then that is fine.  But if she does start to doubt , I want her to know that she is not weak or stupid as her family and church leaders will try and make her feel.  She is not revising history if she decides to recategorize her happy experiences as part of life or nature.  And if I somehow become a God fearing person again, I want her to know the thought process that led me there.

I blog about polyamory for a similar reason.  When I began blogging I did not know what I would conclude.  I still don’t know exactly how things will turn out.  If I decide to fight my feelings for the rest of my life to make Lisa happy or for some other reason, I want people who feel like me to know why I decided to live that way and how it makes me feel.  If I decide to gratify my desires, I want people to have the same information and be able to see the results.

Lastly, I think I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t observe that airing these things out has similar value to a catholic attending confessional or a mormon talking to the bishop.  People who know me generally like me and think that I am a decent person (and I agree ).  I guess I don’t want people to think that I am a hypocrite because I don’t behave like a degenerate, but have thoughts they might consider degenerate.  To me there is no contradiction in my outward demeanor and my inward thoughts and feelings.  It’s a poor explanation, but it will have to do, I’m off to work!