Author: Matthew VanDevander

An award-winning graphic designer, an independent game developer, a self-published novelist, a movie and video game critic, and everyday artist. Matthew VanDevander lives in the great state of Tennessee and is on a never-ending quest for the deeper meaning of life.

dunceCast Episode 2 – Electric Boogaloo

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Were you crying out for more dunceCast after last weeks episode? Then your wish is my C:\COMMAND! Didn’t want more dunceCast? Please, make it stop? Well, TOO BAD! For we have returned with a bigger harder podcast this week to once again violate your earholes with. At least try to enjoy it.

P.S. Thanks to the technological wonders of variable bit rate encoding, today’s longer podcast comes in at a filesize which is smaller and more convenient to carry for today’s already well-encumbered American citizen. (No offense if you’re not American, we’re all fat-asses here.)

Direct Download (mp3 31.91MB 1:25:27)

Subscribe via: FeedBurner, iTunes

By listening to this episode of the dunceCast, you agree to hear about all of the following:

Pineapple Pizza. Frog Fractions. More disgusting bacon facts. The “what else?” conspiracy. Eating women can be a bad thing. What the fuck can we learn from animals? Mice tears edition. 15 year old skeleton. James Bond in a Prius. U R A BUS. The Huffington Post is racist. Sonic on wheels. Stupid identity thieves. Man shoots skunk girl. Creepy virgin shots. (if that’s down). Apple rant. Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America (featuring James Earl Jones and Louie Anderson). The Price is Right still exists and has a website. Video Game Music QUIZ SHOW!!! Uncle Buck SUCKS ASS!!!

This week’s music:

Intro: El Scorcho by Weezer

Outro: The Gates of Rock N’ Roll by VAST

And some video game music you can look up on your own…

dunceCast Episode 1 – The Beginning of Something Terrible

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Hello everybody! I know you’re all wanting updates about the development of Duet, and that’s why you follow this blog. But I would like to give everyone a special gift! My brother and I have started recording a podcast, and you can listen to the inaugural episode here!

Direct Download (mp3 49.9MB 53:30)

Subscribe via: FeedBurner, iTunes

In this episode of the dunceCast, you will learn about all of the following:

bacon facts. the dangers of arbitrarily large dildos. women eating chicken. failure to deal. vampires in brooklyn. creepy ukrainian barbie women. web streaming accidents.

This week’s music:

Intro: Dub Stream by Medicine Drum

Outro: Great Round Burn by Kaki King

Adventures in Shader-ville

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

g++ triangle.cpp ... -lglew32 -lopengl32
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x7): undefined reference to `__imp____glewDeleteProgram'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x27): undefined reference to `__imp____glewUseProgram'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x69): undefined reference to `__imp____glewEnableVertexAttribArray'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x90): undefined reference to `__imp____glewVertexAttribPointer'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0xc7): undefined reference to `__imp____glewDisableVertexAttribArray'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0xff): undefined reference to `__imp____glewCreateShader'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x11d): undefined reference to `__imp____glewShaderSource'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x131): undefined reference to `__imp____glewCompileShader'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x143): undefined reference to `__imp____glewGetShaderiv'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x18b): undefined reference to `__imp____glewCreateShader'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x1a9): undefined reference to `__imp____glewShaderSource'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x1bd): undefined reference to `__imp____glewCompileShader'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x1cf): undefined reference to `__imp____glewGetShaderiv'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x217): undefined reference to `__imp____glewCreateProgram'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x225): undefined reference to `__imp____glewAttachShader'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x23d): undefined reference to `__imp____glewAttachShader'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x255): undefined reference to `__imp____glewLinkProgram'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x26a): undefined reference to `__imp____glewGetProgramiv'
/tmp/cc2DLE4T.o:triangle.cpp:(.text+0x2ba): undefined reference to `__imp____glewGetAttribLocation'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Does that look like anything to you? Yeah. Me neither. In honor of that fact, this article is intended to be understandable enough to be interesting and readable for even an inexperienced non-programmer type. However, it will also provide some very useful information which may save from grief someone else who is attempting the same thing as I just have. Therefore, I will try to provide as many useful links as possible.

Continue reading “Adventures in Shader-ville” →

Duet is submitted to IndieCade

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

I would like to announce that Duet is officially entered into the 2012 IndieCade festival. IndieCade is a great celebration of independently developed games which has been growing in popularity over the past few years. Since they actively encourage work-in-progress submissions. I decided that Duet would be a good fit.

Wish us luck, and we hope to be back with something new and exciting to show everyone. Things are putting along at a gentle pace. Erik and I are working in our spare time, so it’s a bit of slow going.

Honesty

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

As an independent developer, I tend to pride myself on my ability to remain open about the development of my projects, but sometimes it is hard to admit the truth. Either because I blame myself and feel lazy, or because I just don’t want to disappoint anyone. The realities of game development can be a lot less clear cut and pretty as some of the final results. There is honestly no medium that is harder to produce a complete work in.

I submitted Duet to the Independent Games Festival late last year. I was unfortunately not named among the excellent finalists. However, it did bring me some surprising attention, including an article on IndieGames.com. All this excitement from the outside has made it painfully apparent how slow my progress is. I haven’t even touched the code for the game in probably 3 months or so. So I feel that I should be honest with everyone about what I have been doing with the project: Nothing, at the moment.

Am I giving up on Duet? Definitely not. I believe that it is the most important game that I have worked on in my life. However, there are some difficulties which have arisen in the development which have made working on the project tiresome. Tiffany, Duet’s artist, was my fiancé at the time of her entry into the team. Now we are separated, and that makes collaboration difficult to impossible, due to the emotions involved. It is probably never advisable to build a work relationship atop a personal one.

I am doing a ground-up reimplementation of the gameplay from the original Game Maker prototype to my custom C++ and OpenGL engine. The port was envisioned as a way to achieve a more complex and modern art direction than what is possible in Game Maker. Therefore, I find it hard to be motivated when I do not have an artist working with me. I have been putting the project on hold until I could work things out with Tiffany. Now it seems clear that that is not going to happen, so I need to find another artist who is right for the job.

As you all know, life is expensive and game development is equally so. Games take a long time to develop, and progress can be slow enough when you work on it full time. Part-time progress may be enough to get Duet done, but even still, I lack the funds to pay an artist a competitive salary. So really the best I can offer anyone is a share of the final profits, after all the bills are paid of course.

Anyway, all of these factors have conspired to put Duet in a very tenuous position in it’s development. Progress is not happening, but I will inform you all as soon as I have anything new to show.

If you think you are what I’m looking for and are interested in helping make Duet look more like it plays, then you can drop me a line here, @mvandevander on twitter or on the Facebook page for the game. Please have examples of your work.

Duet Gameplay Overview

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

There is now a brief gameplay overview of Duet on YouTube.

Check it out!

Keep in mind, the footage is from an incomplete prototype version, and has pretty much zero artwork. This essentially a less spoilery version of the pitch I submitted to IndieFund earlier this year. It also should be the first footage that you will have seen of the game, period. So that’s pretty cool, right?

psst…There may or may not be some media coverage of Duet soon. Keep your eyes peeled.

Absolutely Nothing

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander


Those who know me, know that I often deride the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series as a exploitation of veterans. The game seems to offer an unrealisticly positive representation of modern warzones, twisting something terrible into something fun. The game appears as Halo, only skinned to look like real war. Replace the SMG with an AK-47, the Warthog with a Humvee, Space Marine with a real Marine. Also, if you know me, you know that I, until this writing, have never played the Modern Warfare series.
Continue reading “Absolutely Nothing” →