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[Benjamin Rivers]

Hi everyone:

I've been here for a bit, but I haven't been posting much lately. I figured I should properly introduce myself and be, you know, polite.

I'm Benjamin Rivers, Toronto-based web consultant, teacher, illustrator, etc. I draw comics such as SNOW, and whenever I can do so, I pretend to be a game designer/artist. I'm a member of the Hand Eye Society here in Toronto and I was also Art Director and contributing illustrator at The Gamer's Quarter magazine.

My last game was The Ascent (thread here, website here). I'm working on a new game entitled Drunken Rampage (teaser site here), but I need a programmer for this. (If you're interested, check out my posting about this and give me a shout.)

I'm very much interested in games that push story and context as main elements of their experience (Judith is a good example). I love how fantastically talented the indie scene is (Star Guard, etc.), and I think there's still a lot of room for neat, new ideas. Hopefully I can contribute to this along with all of you.

[Kaatridge]

Hi! I've been lurking on the forums and main page for quite some time now, and I finally decided to register.

I'm Jace, and I like games, and also love indie games a whole bunch, I still find it awesome that a one or a few people can make a game that is as fun as a game made by fifty people.

I'll try and post and contribute now instead of watching from the bushes!

[wademcgillis]

I found out about this site a joined today. I like making games. And I like the following smiley:

[nikki]

Hello there


Since this is my 100th post , i'll properly introduce myself now .

My name is nikki koole, i'm dutch and 29 years old.
I've studied fine art, so i've been getting my hands dirty in paint, clay and raw metal.
I started programming during my study and choose to almost stop making physical things altogether. Now i only program.

Once in a while I teach at my former art-school (animation/generative art)
And sometimes i get paid to make a website or animation


I am not specifically making games, (not yet anyway)
At this time i am writing tools, applications and other technical fun.
My greater goal is combine scuplture and computer code, to make artsy computer installations. (with beamers).

Ive got a devlog on this forum here

and some screenshots :

The last two days i've been writing a generative roof part, to combine with a house designer. I also have written the first documentation/manual.

I'd love to find people that would want to beta-test , give feedback , and more.

[dsilvers]

Mandatory introduction!

I am Dan from Lantana Games. I recently graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a BFA in Interactive Design and Game Development. I've tinkered with game design my entire life and finally launched my first (and second) game last year, The Longest Night, an experimental piece about running a homeless shelter, and Zombie Slaughter Tour 2009, my one obligatory zombie game with a rhythm twist.



I am currently living in Boston, MA trying to get a startup going with my team. You can check out our website at http://www.lantanagames.com

In terms of my inspiration, it has to go to the Apogee games of yore, specifically Hocus Pocus, Raptor: Call of the Shadows, and Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy.





Some of my other favorites include Lode Runner: The Legend Returns, TIE Fighter, Freelancer, and Jazz Jackrabbit 2. My favorite indie games are AAAAAaaaaAAAA: A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, Aquaria, Audiosurf, Braid, Cave Story, and Machinarium, just off the top of my head.

And finally, I am excited to join the TIG community!

Carry on.

[The Ivy]

Hey dsilvers, welcome!

I definitely agree with your choice of old Apogee games; they don't get nearly enough mention these days.

[dsilvers]

I know, and such a shame too because they were so good. Where would we indie developers be without Apogee's model for distribution? Shareware FTW!

Also, not enough comparisons can be drawn between The Dopefish and Green Man imagery.

[westquote]

Hello everyone.  I'm Tim Ambrogi from Final Form Games (http://www.finalformgames.com/), one of the few (but proud!) Philadelphia game development studios.  We've got three people, and we all wear a lot of hats.  I've actually been lurking around since the middle of last year, after meeting a number of you in person at GDC 2009.  In the excitement surrounding this year's IGF nominees, I decided to step up and participate a little more!   All of this is to say:

Hello!  Pleased to meet you!  I'm looking forward to my future time here with you all. 

I'm on twitter (@westquote), and love hearing about other indies' doings on there.  Also, I post on the company blog from time to time, generally about really random things.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were people on this forum that took some small pleasure in reading about them.  Also, as it seems to be tradition to post pictures from your games, here's one of ours:

As an introduction to my game dev experience: I'm very interested in programming and design of games, and have been working in the industry since I graduated from college in 2004.  I've worked in engine dev, tools, and gameplay, releasing games on the PC, Mac, Linux, iPhone, Nintendo DS, PSP, and Wii.  I really enjoy game programming a lot, and am always up to talk shop with like-minded people.

Cheers,
--Tim A.

[dsilvers]

Hiya Tim! Always great to meet a fellow indie programmer.

[Archidox]

Hi everyone. My name is Didier Colin and I am a 29 years old computer science researcher with a passion for game design. I am very pleased to become a member of the TIGsource community.

I started making games when I was a student, with some friends of mine with whom I created the Loaded Studio collective. In 2001, we created a first satyrical gryzor-like title named "Blip blop : balls of steel", which was distributed as a freeware. Two years later, we created our second game : "Storm Angel", a classical shoot with minimalist plot.

Since then, I involved myself in modding and slowly moved away from the gaming scene to work on my PhD.

At this time, I am moving back to my old passion, working on a new project with my fellow companions from loaded studio. I am also trying my hand on the unity software and started a tower defense project on which I work alone, learning many things. You can see my dev blog here : http://www.archidox.com/

As far as my inspirations go, my gaming experience has started with the NES and continued with pc games. I don't have a genre of predilection even though I am particularly fond of rpgs. I keep great memories of titles like Daggerfall and its successor Morrowind, zelda III, phantasy star II, FF7, Planescape Torment.

I had the privilege of meeting my wife through the elder scroll modding community, a few years ago. Since then I am convinced that following your passion leads to everything. So here I am !

[Zachary Lewis]

My name is Zachary Lewis, and I've been making games since QBasic. I'm currently employed as a UI Engineer (using Flash and Scaleform with Unreal Engine 3), and in whatever free time I get, I'm at home working on games!

I've finished about three games to the point of sharing with others, but I've got about fifty "concept" pieces that I somehow never get around to finishing.

I hope to meet some people here to encourage me to get my ass in gear and churn out some (game related) product, as well as people who can help me hone my craft. I mainly use AS3 to write my software; although, recently I've been tinkering with XNA and I kinda' like it. The idea that maybe, one day, my game will be played on an XBOX360 somehow makes it more interesting.

Here is a panda.

[Jonathan]

My name is Jon.  I'm a long time programmer/project manager with a passion for music and all things artistic.  I spent several years working at EA, before getting fed up and leaving to work with some friends on a smaller project.  I'm enjoying my new found freedom, and looking forward to getting reacquainted with the indie community. 

[nikki]

Hello Jon, Zachary, Didier, Tim and dsilvers
nice to meet you

[iamwhosiam]

Hey, how's it goin'?


(I have a better mug now)

My name's Anthony Romano. I made that sticky situation game that was on the indiegames blog back in like august if anyone here played it. It was the pinnicle of the thunderware success! (so far)

My brother Nick(who should be intro'ing himself soon) and I enjoy making games. It's been the only REAL passion in our lives since birth(besides burritos and coffee). We got turned on to the indie scene when world of goo came out, and have been following all the blogs and piecing whos whos together ever since.

As for who I am, I grew up on the super nintendo and I played a LOT of starfox, and an old game called smart ball.


o and music, anything from    Dio's career. or Iron Maiden early and later, and anything in that genre



here's a list of games that were in some way important to me, it's kinda long:

-currently playing: osmos ( currently trying to defeat that dang ferax!!!)(just as I am in the process of writing this I beat him, yay me!!!)

- half-life

- blueberry garden ( in my opinion this is the bare bones of how to make a video game, stripped down without any fluff and with a cool fish tank thing going on. One of my favorite all times. )

- elysian fields ( an old qbasic game, that definitely isn't the "greatest game of all time" but I just enjoy it for some reason, you can probably still find it on the web. it was freeware  and definitely indie)

- star fox 64 ( played it over and over and over... )

- morrowind ( ...and over and over and over and...where was I? Oh, Morrowind, yeah, love that game. )

- star craft

- sim ant ( also in RL I enjoy ant farms )

- pokemon red ( not ashamed to say it. ) ... ( ok alittle ashamed )

- evergrace ( the game itself sucked ass, but the atmosphere was so creepy! )


that's all I can think of right now, there's probably one i'm missing that was really important to me and defined how a matured as a human being, but I can't think of any more..



I love coding. I started in qbasic, I made a little clone of the chocobo adventure that comes with the pc version of final fantasy 8 in it. I also made a companion program for it that would load 2 peoples chocobos and fight them together. This was all in ascii using smiley faces for chocobos. I also did the first 2d version of a 3d game were working on now.

I then discovered blitz3d and tinkered around with it for a couple of years, never really did anything of any use with it.

i'm now in c#, using xna. Thats all I have to say about that.

Our website is thunderware.blogspot.com and I'm excited to make some new friends!

tony out.

[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

People of Earth,

I'm Matt "Ooghijmiqtxxa" Regan from InsaneRoot, a very small (2 people!) indie studio based in San Francisco, California. To make money, I work as the lead environment artist @ Unknown Worlds Entertainment working on Natural Selection 2.

In my spare time, I'm working on my iPhone puzzle game, Volatile (http://volatile.insaneroot.com) and making sock puppets.

Keeping with the tradition of the thread, here are two screen shot from our current game, Volatile:



If you'd like to know more about Volatile, InsaneRoot or want to talk about the weather, feel free to add me on Twitter @insaneroot. Looking forward to seeing everyones work and getting drunk at the next GDC. 

[Caitlin]

Hi there. I'm Caitlin, and I have been lurking on these forums for a VERY long time (kind of an embarrassingly long time), toying with the idea of making an account, and I've finally decided that I might be ready to actually contribute to the discussions. Big day for me.

I moved to Tempe, AZ this summer with my GDC bff after finishing up at our respective universities (I moved from Illinois, she moved from New York) so we could start making games together, and start making games together we have. Unfortunately, I am on my very elderly laptop which has no screenshots of said games, but hopefully when I'm on my big girl computer later, I will update this post with something flashy and pretty. (Or I will forget to ever update this with anything flashy OR pretty. I will let you, the reader, guess which one is more likely.)

My gaming history isn't the typical "I have been holding a controller since age 3." I wasn't allowed to have any gaming system except for a Gameboy until I was 18 and out of my parent's house*, and didn't have a computer until I was 15 (I'm 22 now). As such, a lot of my influences stem from other forms of entertainment, and portable games. For instance, I've never been someone who values super realistic graphics, because I got by for so many years with the green and gray screen of my beloved giant brick of a Gameboy. The past few years, I've been working on educating myself further on the classics, and I've gotten very used to the horrified shouts of, "You haven't played [insert whatever game you feel is most important to have experienced]?!?! You INGRATE!" I'm working on it, ok?



This is my roommate/development partner and I (she's on the left, I'm on the right). We have affectionately dubbed ourselves "C++ Productions" because both of our names start with C, but that is not our real, legal name yet. Still working on it.

*I always hesitate to say that because it makes my parents sound like they might be crazy. They are wonderful and rational and just felt that I spent enough time with my "lil geebers" as I called it that I really didn't need any other gaming system.

PS- Matt, I liked your Conan reference.

[ChevyRay]

Hey all new folks, welcome to TIG And westquote, your game looks incredibly detailed, I think I remember wanting to play this after seeing it somewhere else.

[dsilvers]

Hey to everyone I haven't said hey to!

And Caitlin, don't forget to screen capture and show us your awesome games!

[ThemsAllTook]

Hello all! I've been lurking on this forum for a while, but it's about time I posted something... My name is Alex Diener. I've been developing small freeware games for Mac OS X for quite some time now, but I wasn't aware of the vibrant indie community until more recently. I attended GDC 2009 and went to the Independent Games Summit, and everything changed. I felt a genuine sense of belonging there that I've never felt anywhere else. It was amazing. I'm really looking forward to it this year!

Here's a small collection of screenshots from some of my games:



Water Tower is a 2D platformer where you're racing against a rising water level to get to the top of each level. It's a fast-paced action game with some puzzle elements.



Infiltration is a 3D space shooter with vectory graphics. It was my first serious collaboration with another developer, and was written in 3 weeks total for a vector-graphics-themed game competition.



memset 0x801 is a computer themed take on Miner 2049er. The goal in each level is to walk over every tile, without hitting any enemies or falling too far. This is by far my most polished game - it was originally done for a competition themed around recreating classic games, but I spent another 4 months on the project afterward to complete it properly, and I'm proud of the result.

Currently, I'm working on a cross-platform game framework that will allow me to develop new games more effectively. I want to get away from writing software that only runs on the Mac, so that Windows and Linux users can play too. I also have a sequel to Water Tower in the design phase, and I'm hoping to put something together for the Gamma IV contest.

I'm really excited to become a part of this community, and look forward to getting to know all of you!

[dsilvers]

Welcome to the forums, Alex!