We travelling to Gamex on Wednesday October 30th, we started the day with taking the early boat. The boat departs at 7 o’clock in the morning. As usual when I’m taking the early boat I hardly get any sleep at all, so it was very fun to be really tired all that day, not really… I didn’t want to miss the boat so that was one way of doing that I suppose. Smarter thing to do was to actually go to bed a lot earlier.

Gamex was fun however, the first day we set everything up. The next day people started coming and at first we needed to ask people to play our game, I suppose that’s a bad thing with fly or die, it doesn’t look that interesting when you are looking at the start screen, in fact it looks rather dull. We also got some feedback from when we showed the game on Tekniska museet (technical museum) in Stockholm which was that the left and right triggers would be easier to use. So in the evening I sat down and fixed just that, I also tried to make a simple AI, but I didn’t have time to do that much, so I ended up making them go almost just straight up and just crash into the ceiling instead. I also fixed the start button, because a lot of people had problems with bumping into their button to start the game.

Because it got late, I didn’t have time to fix the bug where the start button was on repeatedly, so later on Friday I fixed that bug as well. I also added the AI that somewhat works. It’s a very simple and very random AI that isn’t intelligent at all. However when something happens on the screen instead of the characters just standing still it is far more interesting than the characters just laying on the bottom of the screen doing nothing. I also fixed so that when the “AI” hits one of the start buttons it gets deactivated right away. The way the code works it is difficult to just disable it completely so it was easier just to automatically disable the button.

I almost forgot, Anders had made some new graphics for the military level and also for the start menu which I implemented. Military level I fixed on Thursday if I recall correctly and the starting screen on Friday if my memory serves. Anyway there were a lot of last minute changes during Gamex. Personally I don’t like to do these things so fast, without proper testing, however it was necessary and it worked fairly well. We had one crash on Saturday I believe it was, but other than that no major problems. I did fix more than this also, but it’s stuff that isn’t visible, it’s more for later when we want to fix the game so that you can play in a different resolution.

Gamex itself

I did have some time to walk around, I did see some interesting stuff. I tested Forza on the Xbox One, although I’m not going to get an Xbox One at release, I’m impressed with how the new force feedback on the trigger button works. It felt like the ABS on a car, except on the triggers. What I wasn’t so impressed with was the loading time, it was really slow. Took me almost longer to load the game than play one round of it.

The good thing though, is that I got some swag from Microsoft, my wife will be happy about that as she’s working with Microsoft these days and I know that she’s a Microsoft fan. She’s really impressed with the new Surface 2 products, which also was displayed in Gamex. I on the other hand is not as impressed. Windows 8 still wasn’t that intuitive, I hadn’t used it until I tried it on Gamex and the menus we accidentally stumbled upon. I think it really shows that Microsoft is trying their hardest to be different without thinking of how do we make this an easy experience for the user. If I were to make an OS I would try to think “how would I do this and make it easy for the user?”, Microsoft doesn’t seem to have that mindset. I get that they want to make the desktop OS similar to the tablet / mobile OS, so that the experience is the same. I get what they are trying to do, I just don’t get why they have made the decisions they have made. The best way I can describe it is to make a car as they are now. Then a year later you make the same car but you switch the ignition to a different spot, you change the clutch, gas and brakes around. You make the steering wheel where the gear is and you put the gear where the steering wheel is. Basically what I’m saying is that people that for the most part use windows know where stuff are, if you change too much around you confuse the users. That’s precisely what Microsoft has done with Windows 8, and users need to unlearn what they knew and re-learn how to use something. People will always adapt, that’s not the problem, but build upon what people know how to use… Anyway this was about Gamex not windows crappy 8, so I’ll end that here.

I also got to play little Warlock for the first time. I honestly can see why it won the best execution award in SGa, it’s a very well thought out game, it’s simple, yet it has layers of stuff it can add to the surface. I can’t say enough good things about it. I was very impressed with that game.

I got to look at the new Alienware computers, they look awesome, but honestly it’s difficult to tell how good they were, they were only displayed and showed the latest BF4. That said I looked at BF4, and wasn’t very impressed. Looked just like BF3. Other than that it wasn’t much really to report, I spoke to a lot of people, some we met at SGA, others I met at Gamex and showed all the games that Uppsala was showing off. I really hope the school can make a connection with the Danish company that is an event planner and can show the different games off in Denmark, but we’ll see.

There were so many impressions from Gamex that it is hard to put everything down just in a short blog post, but if I have the chance to go to Gamex next year, I’m going to go for that, and I can recommend everyone that is interested in games and gaming to go there. It was really a great experience, of course it did help to have “VIP” tickets and to be able to show our game. We had so many people coming back and say that Fly or Die was the best thing they played on Gamex, and we had several people that came back again and again. There was also a couple of people who some days almost lived in our booth which was kinda cool

Another thing, I met someone that I thought I recognized on the hotel, it was a father and his son. I saw they were going to the skybar, so I commented that the skybar was nice. The son then points and says “is it him?”. The father sighs and says, “yes, it’s one of those behind Fly or Die”. I had several memory sticks with the game on it, so of course I had to give them a copy of Fly or Die!. For me that was very special and fun, it makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something good. Although I know that we will never be rich or even earn anything on Fly or Die, it was nice that the game had such an impact on someone. It doesn’t sound all that special, but it was, at least for me.