Tip #2:  Choke Point: Traffic Control Pirate Style

 In some cases there are maps with areas that are open, contract down to one hex, and open up again.  This is a choke point that you can use to cut off or bottle up enemies. 

This means IF the enemy is foolish enough to sail into there, you can then bottle up the enemy into a small section they cannot get out of, and cost them either time or resources.  Now if the team has no resources yet, they will not drop a crate when you sink them.  So killing them is a waste of time if you win or loose.   But usually players (and in this case AI) tend to go into little coves like this looking for crates, so odds are good you will at least get a resource crate dropped for your effort.

 

Also wasting the other enemies times is sometimes a good move.  Especially if you are trying to stall by winning with the clock (say you need 5 towns to win, but only have 3, and the enemy teams has 2.  You can always wait for the time to run out and win by score).

 

Now sometimes you might see a situation with two sea hexes making up the entrance to the town.  By attacking this town (picture below) you can tell it would be easy for someone to come in behind me, and pinch me between the town and the enemy ship (both firing at me, and myself firing back but splitting my fire between them).  That is often a loosing battle.

So instead, I helped out my partner (Pegleg Pete) by placing a Whirlpool Curse right behind him.   So now Ol’ Double Patch with his superior three cannon ship won’t run up to Pegleg and his measly one cannon ship, and sink him and take the town with little resistance.  (Notice Salem has no health at this point, and even Pegleg can take them).   Ol’d Double Patch will have to wait for the whirlpool to go away before fighting Pegleg.  By that time, Pegleg should have captured the town and will be able to repair and fire back at his leisure. 

 

 

Tip #1:  Blocking the weak town with a whirlpool

 

As you might guess capturing towns is pretty important (since it is how you win).  But what may not be immediately obvious is there are ways to block the town (especially in multiplayer) so enemies cannot attack those ports and retake the town.

 

[Generally you want to keep towns because while in port they repair your ship (healing) and if you are interrupted while re-capturing a town you could loose your town to a superior or lucky enemy.  So, for the sake of argument, let’s assume your trying to keep your town.]  

 

The key to blocking is to either have a team mate available by your side at all times, or have the Whirlpool Curse card ready.  The easiest method is to simply have two ships in port blocking the town from being attacked.  Neither ships move, both are being repaired while in port next to the town.  All is good. 

 

But what if you are alone?  Let’s just say your “pirate teammate” is busy on the other side of the map. You have almost no health left on your town, and the enemy is coming.

 

It is a lot easier to block an enemy attack with a whirlpool curse card.  You get curse cards randomly by sinking frigates, and your odds of getting a whirlpool is only about 1 in 6.  So you will have to sink several ships to get one.  But you might consider the Whirlpool curse a very important tactical card, and worth finding and saving for special moments like capturing or defending towns.

 

In this picture you can see that the town has almost no health at all left.  (I was attacked, and barely fought off the enemy).  The next cannon shot by any ship (enemy pirate ship, neutral frigate) will drop this town back to the uncaptured state, and then I would have to recapture it. 

 

So, when you see the enemy coming place the whirlpool next to you in the only other open space available for someone to dock into port. 

Keep in mind it doesn’t last a long time, but hopefully if the enemy does sail into it they will only get 1 or two shots at your town before being flushed away, and randomly relocated on the map away from your town.  Your town will also slowly regenerate health, so if you can simply delay them by a few seconds you might regain some of that needed health bar.

 

Lastly, this situation shows a town with only 1 cannon defending.  It might be argued by some that this is a waste of a good Curse Card defening a 1 canon town with no health bar.  Well, they could be right.  If you let them shoot the town once, and you recapture quickly with the Whirlpool preventing any interruption by the enemy, then the town will return with 1/2 health (which is way better than waiting for it to regenerate back from zero).  

The problem remains, if that town is critical to what you need to win (you have 5 towns you need to win, and that is number 4), then holding onto it may be better than giving it up.  No single tactic will always work, so you have to think about the goals in play (how many towns the other team has, who is in the lead, how much time is left.)  Age of Booty may be easy to learn, but the result of any tactic like this one depends on the situation and a tiny bit of luck.

Fellow buccaneers,

The reviews of Age of Booty are starting to come in, and this one tickled our funny bone.  Sure, many reviews will be coming out today like Pirates at Happy Hour.  But we have to give "Check yourHUD" bonus points for taking the time to translate their review into Pirate Speak. ("translate" link near the top of the page after the jump).

http://checkyourhud.com/age-of-booty-docks-in-your-port-steals-your-rum/

Ya' see, it be difficult to find good pirate speak out there.  And these chums have shown they not only can review games faster than a greased cannon ball, but they can write!  Literate pirates?!  Yarrrr!!!

It's the gift of gab, the pugilism of prose, us linguistically challenged scoundrels crave.  Ah, good stuff chaps. See you on the high seas!

As for the rest of you wondering about what it might be like living on the seas, sacking towns, and firing cannons for the sheer fun of it.  Don't lolly gag around waiting for more reviews or sassy banter from me!  The XBLA version is now available!   And the PC Beta is just beggin' for your flavor of trouble. 

 

So aside from changing my avatar picture to something more suitable, the game Age of Booty is launching on XBLA today, while the PSN version and the PC beta continue to sail towards completion. 

Over the next few days i will be dishing out some tips and tricks for Age of Booty.  Mostly straight forward strategy and tactics to help you become a better player.  Feel free to offer up your own ideas as well.

And to our PC Beta community, we have been very pleased with your help.  Many issues have been identified, and we think we are learning about most of the obscure issues, and will have another build to address the last few system configurations fairly soon.   Since some of you have experienced problems that are difficult to identify and resolve, please take the time to not only enter the bug into our bug database , but feel free to message me using your unity message/mail system.  I'd be happy to discuss specific problems if they persist. 

Post bugs here (and include DXdiag.txt and/or screenshots):

http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions/ageofbooty/bugsubmit.aspx

Laslty, we have started to see some positive press coverage.  Things are looking good for Age of Booty, so feel free to tell your friends and get ready to pick up a copy.

I had planned on announcing more new stuff, but i just found out we are waiting a few days before we post about the ... coolness coming next ... so stay tuned for the next info break. 

Thanks all, and keep gaming!

 

Hey folks,

So i got an email from a student studying the game industry.  He asked some fun questions, it got me thinking, and so i decided to post them to my blog.  Jarrod Pyper is a Digital Animation and Game Design program student at Ferris State University.  He got an assignment to "try and contact some people already in the industry to find a little more information about how things work and how others got their start."

 

Well, if this can help you get an A, i'm happy to help. 

-Name?

 

Tim Innes.  Often use the alias/gamertag/GamespyID: Jackel0pe

-What is your current role at Capcom? 

 

At Capcom, here in San Mateo, I work as an Associate Producer.  That’s my title, but my role is essentially a producer’s role.  It’s complicated to go into exactly what we do, and I don’t have time to write a book (or thesis) because my day is very fast paced and requires constant vigilance.  But let me indicate few core responsibilities:

1. Producers help coordinate issues and processes between all parties on a particular project.  They help facilitate and disseminate information, goals, and dates. 
2. You work as a leader in setting goals and expectations, negotiate priorities, and check up on progress between various teams. 
3. There are legal contracts, game design processes, marketing coordination’s, and business roles that require oversight or assistance.  Always need to know the situation.
4. Constantly manage the responsibilities between the business, technology, and art aspects of game development. 
5. Risk management and assessment.  Everything must have a plan A, B, and sometimes even C, D, E,… etc..
6. You take responsibility for most everything seen and unforeseen.  It is your responsibility to understand what can go wrong, and the right way to handle things (technically, and human relations wise).

 

That’s a quick list.  By no means definitive.

 

-How did you get your start in the Industry and how long have you been here?

 

I've been at Capcom for a year now. 

I started in games very early as a kid trying to play and program games on an Atari 800 computer (circa 1981-2?).  I even went to Atari Camp one summer.

I was also a huge fanatic D&D gamer (table top 1^st edition Dungeons and Dragons).  I branched out to other RPG games, and kept playing with computers my entire life.  I build cheesy 286 PC’s out of junk retired and sold for cheap.  And I continued to run D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and Cyberpunk games for friends, and game convention attendees, at local hobby conventions since 1985.  It’s pretty safe to say (conservative estimate) I have run (as Dungeon Master or Referee/Keeper) many hundred games sessions in my life, logging no less than 10,000 hours on RPG games and playing probably 3 times that.   

Around 1991-92 I started working as a writer/contributor to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth Role Playing game systems, and eventually co-authored some books with several very smart partners.  That was an important break.  I made very little money, but got published internationally in a well loved RPG license.

I finally got my start working on video games at Pixar Animation Studios in 1996 when Toy Story games were being made in house.  Initially all I did was lecture on interactivity design to the Pixar Interactive Group (PIGs) regarding other competitive products, and QA Test the Pixar games on PC and Macintosh. 

After that it was all QA Tester jobs until I got a few breaks doing design and coordination work on various projects, at many different companies.  But that was a difficult jump and required lots of extra effort.  I also had to work for free at one point, and had my .com start-up experience which also hardened my skill set.

I worked my way through the industry from the ground up as a paper and pencil creative writer and aspiring designer, to then QA for video games, to designer/coordinator roles, to finally higher level positions involving project management, controlling teams and budgets.  Depending on how you count my time, you could say I started in the industry back around 1982.  But I didn’t get a pay check until 1994-5 for the MERP books.  But, again, I didn’t get a paycheck for working on video games until 1996.  Regardless, it has been a real challenge staying in the industry the entire time.  

So no short answer; I probably have between 12 and 27 years experience, depending on how you do the math.

-What kind of education did you have when you began working with games?

 

I didn’t get my BA in Film (SFSU) until 1995.  I got a film degree because they didn’t have degrees in Dungeon Mastering (hehe).  I had always planned on getting an MBA after my undergrad degree, so I immediately went on to get my Masters in Business Administration (SSU 2003). 

            Incidentally, probably the most traumatic, challenging, and proud moment of my career was when (during the summer of 2003) I managed to organize my own wedding, get married, graduate with my MBA, and ship Savage: The Battle for Newerth, all within 5 months of each other.  To say I was sleep deprived and stressed out is an understatement.  But everything turned out great, including the game.   http://www.igf.com/2004finalistswinners.html

 

-What steps did you have in coming to the job you hold now?  (Previous gigs)

 

Pure luck.  I had given up on head hunters, and it appeared the local industry was drying up, so I was working a temporary QA job at 2K Marin/Visual Concepts (after some personal family problems I encountered took me out of the market). Someone looked me up on www.LinkedIn.com, called me, and the rest is history.

-What sort of skills do I need to show to be considered qualified for a job in game design?

 

• Demonstrate skills in level design and/or systems design
• Programming or 3d modeling skills
• Strong writing skills
• Understanding limitations of various platforms, technologies
• Understand how to build a fun experience in constraints (time, budget, team/manpower limitations).
• Super creative, but not living in a fantasy mindset.  Whatever you create on paper you must be able to translate to reality.

-Is there anything in particular that I should produce to demonstrate I am qualified?  (like design docs?)

 

Game design docs are good practice, but not the end all.  Best would be to design levels other people can play (Age of Booty Map Editor?  mod’s anyone?) or help contribute to existing systems (AI, User Interface) to improve them.  If you can create anything from scratch, and show someone the end result, you are miles ahead of wanna-be designers who write in the abstract only. 

To wrap this up, i'd like to give you and everyone else out there similar advice i got from some smart people (including David Webb Peoples one foggy evening when we were chatting in the parking lot at SFSU outside the cinema dept.)   David told me "your still young, and have a lot you can still do. Just do it, and remember to enjoy your life."  

Ok, so i admit, i can't remember it word for word.  But i have heard many times from people you have to make $millions$, or you have to do X or Y, or you will fail.  I have managed to enjoy life, and that is important.  There will be times for sacrifice (missing TV shows), but if you follow your passions you should do well.

The other advice i always give (which was given to me many times) is "Do what you love, and love what you do." 

I have officially hit my fortune cookie quota.  Good luck; I'm out for now.