Posted by Steven
Fri, 10th Jun 2011
Hello, Bonjour, Guten Tag, Ciao, Hola!
What’s popping people!!!?!?
Friday again, roll on the weekend!
Just a quick little update for you all, this week we have been finalising everything Cubixx related. The last piece of the puzzle was translations and boy are translations ever tough to implement…. Words not fitting in their boxes, really long German words causing no end of bugs, loads of foreign language characters to include - it really has thrown up a host of coding issues. But the good news is that it’s all done now – at least I hope it is!”
Some funny things did come out of the translations though for example; did you know that a “Homer” in French is a “Protecteur” or a “Line Chaser” in German is a “Verfolger”!? Or perhaps the fact that “lame sauce” in French is “craint du boudin”, which then translates back into English as “fears the pudding”! “Or another office favourite that “Speed Machine” in German is “Dr. Speedo”!!” ROFLCOPTER…
So what’s left for us to do in Cubixx HD…. Well, we are now on the final internal QA push before a potential submission! Exciting huh? All being well, hopefully we will be in a position to submit within the next couple of weeks!
Anyway back to the bespoke selection of Cubixx challenges for me this afternoon! And I’ll leave you with my favouritist screen shot of the moment to whet your appetite a little further:
The Black Hole, Le trou noir, Das schwarze Loc, Il buco nero, El agujero negro!
Peace out,
Steven
xx
Posted by Steven
Fri, 3rd Jun 2011
Why hello again my lovelies,
Hope you didn’t miss me too much last week! I must say that I did cry a little inside knowing I wouldn’t be able to provide you with a Cubixx HD update, but sometimes duty calls!
As you are all probably aware from last week’s blog, my colleague Al and I took Cubixx HD out on the road to some of the country’s biggest video games magazines! Exciting stuff!!!
The story begins in Bishops Stortford where both Al and I live. We then hit the road to Bath for our first day’s visit. 3 or so hours later, we arrive in Bath and head straight for the Future Publishing office. We arrive in reception only to be told we are in the wrong office! I begin to panic, but fortunately the other office is only 5 minutes walk down the road, phew!
So, off we walk to the correct office only to be hit with a huge downpour of rain! So then we turn up to the right office this time, albeit a slight bit soggy! Here we met with Gamesmaster, Official PlayStation Magazine UK and PSM3. We gave them a quick run through of the game then let them join in for a little bit of 4 player action! I think (and hope) they really enjoyed it! Official PlayStation Magazine UK is running a review in July’s issue, so make sure you pick yourself up a copy!
After this we moved on to our next location, which was Bournemouth. So, off we headed to the local Travelodge, only to realise that Al had booked us into a double room; romantic, but not really appropriate. Fortunately they changed us into a Twin room!
We had an evening to kill, so we headed for a walk down by the sea. It was a lovely afternoon! The sun was shining, the beach was clean and the atmosphere was very relaxing.
Yes, Steven is that much bigger than Al.
We continued our walk down the beach to an arcade, where I gave Al a good thrashing on Outrun 2; I was undefeated !!! (Edit: it was a bit closer than that! – Al) Then we headed for some dinner.
It was the best dinner I have had in ages and ironically, being a vegetarian, it was from a Steak House!! This was definitely my personal highlight of the trip! Look at that bad boy!! Tempura-fried vegetables, halloumi, bread, corn, beans, chips and 2 sauces!
Vegetarian Platter for 1? Yes please!
A couple of pints later we decided to call it bed time and headed in for an early night, ready for the next day’s meeting. This is where we met Imagine Publishing magazines games TM, Play and Retrogamer. Again, the meeting went really well and everyone seemed really positive about it! Play magazine also interviewed Al and I, so I’ll be sure to let you know when that gets printed! Again, very exciting!
After the meeting we embarked on the long journey home, safe in the knowledge that Cubixx HD should hopefully get the coverage it deserves!!
Remember to keep an eye on the blog, especially to get updates on the Cubixx HD release date and magazine release updates!
Steven.
xx
Posted by Daren
Fri, 27th May 2011
Hi Everyone,
Well as Steven is out on the road this week demoing Cubixx HD to OPM, Games TM, Retro Gamer, Play, PSM3 and many more, I thought that I would bring you up to date on the other titles that we at LJ are doing our damndest to finish before the summer.
As was announced a while back we managed to secure the license for the massively popular Fighting Fantasy range of books. We, the Laughing Jackal elves, have been beavering away making Fighting Fantasy self contained on the PSP. It is surprising how complex a game can be when all you have is a pen and paper to jot down all your numbers and encounters. Still, most of the problems have been cured and the game has come along in leaps and bounds over the last couple of weeks. Along with a variety of enhancements to the gaming system, the main hurdle for us was adding 3D coding to the game. This allows us to have the camera moving around the gaming table, flipping the pages of the book, dice rolling and even a luck stone that rolls around the alchemy wheel. More on this next week…
Also, as if we weren’t busy enough, we have just finished yet another PSN minis title (well, it’s in submission at FQA) and it’s called “OMG-Z!” This is a chain reaction game where you must set off gore-soaked death chains amongst hundreds of zombies. It’s you and a rifle, and five flavours of zombie between the undead and global armageddon. The game is made up of a massive 80 branching levels, 70 upgradable items, a whopping 324 medals and 3 very different endings. We will get some exclusive images together very soon so that you can have a sneaky peak at what it’s all about.
Sorry for the brevity of this weekly report from the LJ offices but things are moving at such a pace it’s difficult to keep up with everything that’s going on :-)
Daren
