ThatBreweryGame.com is Stabilizing
Posted by Robc in Game Design, Games by Robc, thatBreweryGame.com on January 6th, 2012
ThatBreweryGame.com has been in development for well over a year now which is quite a bit longer than originally planned. The game is stabilizing at least at the brew kit and garage brewery levels. I am once again reopening the servers to full public access and I have also reopened the registration server for new players. In addition to the usual bug squashing my attention will now be focused on the micro-brewery and higher level gameplay.
Although to many of you the game may feel simple compared to other games on the internet, rest assured that the feature set is quite significant for a lone wolf developer. This one game has the framework of an entire social networking site including chat, forums, friends list, achievements, collections, statistics tracking, image uploading, etc. All of these features are of my own design and can now be improved upon and more easily incorporated into future games.
Although I might say that I am a lone wolf, I am of course never completely alone since I have a very dedicated volunteer testing team as well as contract artists and other helpers to whom I am in debt. The support of my family, friends, and development team keeps me afloat even on the worst days (like those days when the bug list seems to double and triple in size overnight).
One of my goals was to keep ThatBreweryGame.com accesible in as many modern browsers as possible without any download requirement whatsever, that is you don’t have to have flash player or other plugins (except perhaps for sound in browsers other than MSIE). Learning to create and manage these features myself will prove invaluable in future development efforts. And while I may in future incorporate some of the more common plug-ins and code packages (for other games), I am quite sure that I will never regret that I will always have the ability to fall back and build these algorithms myself from only the most basic language components.
2011 Exterior Remodel
Posted by Robc in Family Stuff, Robc on December 28th, 2011
Suzanne and I have been saving our pennies for decades to fix up our old house. Over the years we have done major repairs to the drainage, the roof, the septic system, the water system and well, etc. I rebuilt the collapsing decks… my brother Pd helped with all new screens and garage doors. We added a pellet stove and propane to the house. These were all necessary just to make the house function at a minimum.
But this… this is different. We finally took the first steps toward making the house really really look nice. We replaced all of the exterior siding, windows and doors. We took a tiny front and rear deck and connected them to make a nice wrap around deck. The siding is made of concrete to lessen the fire danger and to make sure it lasts until we die (which we hope will be a very looong time from now!), the new deck is of composite material also… much lower maintenance and looks nice!
We now have fancy LED exterior flood lights that light the place up like an airport runway and all for less power than a single flood lamp from the old days… we fixed attic ventilation problems. I also bought Suzanne a garden window for the kitchen, something that she has wished for for over 20 years. And more… and even more… but enough about that, pictures tell the story better. Enjoy! Now we just gotta figure out how to pay for it all! Lol.
Click on the pictures to see them better (click on them again-twice for full size). Its so weird, the house seriously feels like it is brand new now… even though the interior still needs a huge amount of TLC itself. The windows make it soooo quiet. I mean, it is always quiet up here in the foothills but now we can’t even hear the birds! (so we go out on the deck to hear them 
) …and the insulation value of the new windows, doors and siding have warmed the place up considerably. This is good in our cold winters and we expect equal cooling effect in the hot summers. Its still a very small house but it has served us well and we have never needed anything more and are certain that we never will.
Anyway, enough of all that. Cheers. Robc.
Brewery Game Online Store Open!
Posted by Robc in Games by Robc, thatBreweryGame.com on December 6th, 2011
ThatBreweryGame.com online store is open just in time for the holidays (barely). I know its a little presumptious selling shirts when the game isn’t finished yet… but still it would be bad of me to open right after Christmas, now wouldn’t it?
t-shirts are available in men’s small, medium, large and x-tra large . The manufacturer describes them as a heavyweight pre-shrunk t-shirt made from 5.5 oz 100% heavyweight cotton. It also has double-needle stitched bottom and hems for extra durability.
I will ship anywhere in the United States and eventually to other countries after I get the shipping rates overseas figured out. Right now I don’t have any provisions to rush ship items for Christmas but if you talk real nice to me on the bug reports page then perhaps I can make that happen also!
If you haven’t checked out the game lately then you should go there now… you can help us test all the new stuff just by going to the news page and following the directions to re-join the action!
Cheers
-Robc
Major Upgrade on thatBreweryGame.com!
Posted by Robc in Robc, thatBreweryGame.com on October 15th, 2011
ThatBreweryGame.com is down for maintenance and a major upgrade. Excitement is building as we are getting very close to a new release.
Click on the adjacent screen shot to see our new recipe management page. And our ingredient list has grown to 150 ingredients!!
We now have everything from cool mountain spring water to Agave and chili pepper flavoring additives available so you can create the perfect, or perhaps most unusual brew. There is also 27 types of malt, 35 types of hops, 12 types of yeast and plenty of room for us to add more. Check out our previous news posts for a discussion of the other upgrades that are underway including a new online store and the implementation of multiple fermentation tanks to speed up the brewing process.
The best news of all is that all of the major components of this upgrade are now complete and working on our development server, buggy… yup, still very buggy, but fully functional! Most of the minor gui and code fixes are also complete including an all new fermentation page (to go with the multiple ferment tanks) that shows your brew quality improve as fermentation and conditioning progress and your increasing alcohol content on a new hydrometer.
We have been pushing hard to try and finish up before the end of October, I can’t promise yet that we will make that date but we are really trying hard. Some of you who were very active during the previous beta releases may be getting a preliminary email soon to see if you are interested in helping us do some initial testing before the big announcement and game release. If you want to be sure to get on that list then leave us a note here.
Cheers
-Robc
ThatBreweryGame at the Belltower Brewfest
Posted by Robc in Games by Robc, thatBreweryGame.com on June 11th, 2011
We are gearing up for the first big promotional event for thatBreweryGame.com at the eleventh annual Placerville Belltower Brewfest on June 25. If you live in the Northern California area and want to check it out then get your tickets fast as the event always sells out early. This year 3000 or more people are expected to take over the closed streets of downtown Placerville to partake in the consumption of microbrews from 35+ different breweries. Tickets are only $30 in advance and its all you can drink for 3 hours after that plus music from live bands and more!
ThatBreweryGame will have a prominent place at the festival just about a hundred feet away from the tower and will have t-shirts, bumper stickers, and more for sale and for free to promote the beta test of the new game. We will also have two large screen monitors set up in a tent for both live demonstrations and to allow hands on play right there on the street!
More and more players are logging in to ThatBreweryGame.com every day and providing a valuable service to identify bugs and other problem areas in the game. I hope you can join them and liven up the in-game pub by presenting your own favorite brews for everyone to enjoy!
Here’s the list of Breweries participating in the brewfest:
- Alaskan Brewing Co.
- Anderson Valley
- Big Sky
- Black Diamond
- Blue Frog Brewing
- Blue Moon Brewing, Leinenkugels
- Buckbean
- Eel River
- Firestone
- Fox Barrel Hard Cider
- Gold Hill Brewery
- Gordon Biersch
- Grand Teton
- Hoppy Brewing Co.
- Jack Russell Brewing
- Lagunitas Brewing Co.
- Lockdown Brewing
- Lost Coast
- MAD River
- Mammoth Brewing
- Mendocino Brewing
- Mt. Tallac Brewing Co.
- Napa Smith
- Old Hangtown Beer works
- Placerville Brewing Co.
- Pyramid Brewing
- River City Brewing
- Rogue
- Rubicon
- Samuel Adams
- Santa Cruz Ale Works
- Sierra Nevada Brewing
- Spaten & Franziskaner
- Sudwerk
- Trumer, Bridgeport
- Widmer
Here’s a look at the t-shirts that we will be selling to promote the game.
Hope you can make it!
-Robc
thatBreweryGame.com Beta Test Running Smoothly (mostly)
Posted by Robc in Game Design, Game Testing, Games by Robc, thatBreweryGame.com on June 3rd, 2011
Initial marketing for the beta test began last week and early results are very encouraging. Our visitors definitely seem to ‘get it’ and the website is starting to heat up with new players jumping right in and brewing up batches of beer for sale. Every visitor helps me to identify bugs and efficiency problems that I work feverishly into the night to fix up. Still, we need more! Tell your friends… The website needs to be put under a bit more stress and the social aspects of the site simply won’t fire up unless we have a lot of people playing at the same time.
Suzanne and I will be going to the Davis Beer Fest this Saturday in Northern California and we’ll be passing out business cards and flyers to the local brewers. I have also secured a booth at the Placerville Brew Fest later in June and I plan a big show to demonstrate the game live to 3000+ visitors and let them take the wheel for a bit themselves. New t-shirts have been designed and will go on sale at the event and soon afterward be available for sale online. The front of the t-shirt shows the website splash page image and the back has the image you see at the top of this article. I’ll post a pic of the shirt in a future entry.
It is exciting to have a new game in the throes of ‘going live’ despite the occasional… “Oh ___, what happened there?” moments. Inevitably an occasional brand new player manages to uncover some rotten little bug in the code and I see their pain in the error logs. There are many thousands of lines of programming code that went into this bugger and I simply can’t prevent problems and conflicts from cropping up and giving the players an occasional bad experience. Nevertheless, I try to tackle each one as I become aware of it and hope that players will be forgiving. As always, your feedback is critically important to me… so thanks beta testers!
-Robc
What a cool sister… you go girl!
Posted by Robc in Family Stuff, Robc on May 26th, 2011
I have one of the coolest sisters… ever! She is a bunch of years older than I am, no matter, and what does she do for retirement? Joins the Peace Corps! And… is now travelling to Armenia to make their lives better…. very cool. Check out her new blog:
thatBreweryGame Beta Version 3 Released!
Posted by Robc in Games by Robc, thatBreweryGame.com on April 28th, 2011
The latest open beta version of thatBreweryGame.com includes a complete revamp of the beer brewing process. Players now create their brewing recipe and grain bill before firing up the equipment using a brand new drag and drop interface. Also the graphics for each step of the brewing process have been greatly improved and the stability of the overall system is much better. If a player is disconnected while brewing the game can recover and restart the process either exactly where the disconnect occured or slightly earlier in the process. Players may still take a quality hit for the disconnect because of lost time but no longer will the entire batch be ruined.
Also included in this patch is the advance purchasing sytem. Brewers can now pre-order their barley and hops and have them shipped directly from the farm fields and at greatly reduced prices! Lastly, the beer store now automatically updates itself after each beer purchased which should reduce the number of ’sold out’ messages received by players. And while we fixed or eliminated a great number of bugs in this patch, we are publishing with the knowledge that there is a whole new crop of bugs to be identified and squashed. Thanks for your help in getting the game cleaned up!
-Robc.
IndieGameTools gets a facelift and a new partner!
Posted by Robc in IndieGameTools.com, Robc, Web Page Design on April 15th, 2011
After a long overdue facelift the IndieGameTools.com website is inching ever closer to that elusive Web 2.0 look that everyone tells me I must find. Its embarrasing to say the least to even admit that I don’t know ‘exactly’ what it means to be at Web 2.0, but there you have it. Asking others what it means only results in a cacophony of responses none of which get me closer. Anyway, enough about that… suffice it to say that the website is better now, if you haven’t been there in a while then check it out.
The inspiration for the new look came because I have forged a partnership with Studio One Networks to provide news and relevant content to several of my existing websites. For IndiegameTools they provide their Digital Innovation Gazette web portal which supplies up to date news, information, and articles about game development. This is an aspect of game development that I have always just left to others rather than try to capture it on the tools site and it left some visitors with a sense that something was missing. With Studio One doing the heavy lifting on this aspect of the website, I can stay focused on just identifying the best tools for new game developers. Seems like a good match so far and the website is much better as a result. Stay tuned because in the near future I will be announcing similar arrangements for several of my PicktheBest websites to help bring them into the modern age as well!
Another aspect of the facelift to the tools website is to show the highest rank game engines and other tools directly on the home page, I think this too will go a long way to making the site better and more useful to first time visitors.
Robc
Games By Robc Website Renewed!
Posted by Robc in Game Design, Games by Robc, Web Page Design on March 10th, 2011
People have often told me that my websites just look old and out of date… I always seemed to gravitate toward yesterday’s model when it came to their look and feel. Well today, I have finally broken that mould! Take a look at the all new http://gamesbyrobc.com/ website! It is modelled after the most popular game portals out there… and perhaps when I have thousands of games to feature it will rival them all in activity. Nevertheless, I have finally properly showcased all of the fun websites that I have built over the years and I am also listing those free online games that I have tried recently and found to be fun… why not? They are not really competition to me, not yet anyway, and if the fun factor of my own site increases and I can drive traffic their way. Then we all win!
I quietly released the thatBreweryGame.com this month also. But it has been down for maintenance a lot unfortunately as I uncovered and have had to deal with more than a fair share of nasty bugs in the code, nevertheless, I think it is coming clean here now and I should pull the under construction signs down soon! Stay with me ya’ll!
-Robc