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Lori is up in Oakland playing “grandma,” which leaves Corey alone on camera. Don’t worry, Lori’s voice will be with us through Discord.

So this will be the “Crazy Corey Cole Comedy Conference” stream. Ask me anything, and I’ll talk about my pre-Sierra career, Castle of Dr. Brain, and similar topics. We’ll also have our usual games and contests.

If you aren’t already on the Discord, please join us. We have lots of great fans and friends talking about everything from Hero-U and Quest for Glory to other games, exciting world and gaming news, to philosophy.

Here’s a link that will be good for the next week: https://discord.gg/eFN8vKdk

I should also mention our Patreon, where I share thoughts, information, and art old and new. With all of the Hero-U sales revenue and some of our savings going into making Summer Daze at Hero-U, Patreon is our main source of personal income. This is also my soapbox, so many of the posts are available without a subscription. https://www.patreon.com/coreyloricole to join us.

Roberta just released her book! She has been working on it for almost a decade and is excited to finally have others read it.

http://www.robertasbook.com

About the book …
This is an account of the ordeals of the Irish people during the Great Famine of mid-19th century, although she added a twist: Though it’s written as an historical novel, she decided to portray her actual ancestors as the primary protagonists in this emotionally-charged story. Thus, the principal characters were actual people, the historical facts are true, and the story of their lives during this terrible time was as real as possible by means of research, fact and document gathering, personal interviews, and intensive travel to Ireland. Where that knowledge wasn’t possible she inserted her forebears into the historical situations surrounding them so that her readers could learn and understand what they — along with so many others — experienced through that tumultuous time. And why so many Irish chose to leave their lovely emerald isle.

Ken and Roberta appear on this podcast to talk about her book.
https://www.cggpodcast.com/e/ken-and-roberta-williams/

Live Stream This Saturday

Our next livestream is this Saturday at 2 pm to 4 pm PDT. That’s 2100 UTC if I have my time arithmetic correct. You’ll find the stream at https://www.twitch.tv/transolargames. The theme this time is “Out Like A Lamb,” referring to the saying that, “March comes in like a lion, but goes out like a lamb,” and to the Hero Ewe school mascot. Afterwards, we’ll take it on the lam.

Why is a sheep the mascot for Hero-U? It started with one of us making a joke about the Hero Ewe, and Eriq Chang drawing a number of whimsical sheep images for the first Rogue to Redemption Kickstarter in 2012. Since that game is entirely indoors, or in underground caves, there is no sheep in game. With Summer Daze at Hero-U, we decided it was time to bring the Hero Ewe into the game plot.

That’s pretty much how our game designs go. People keep telling us that games should be carefully planned out from the beginning. That’s probably a good approach for meeting schedules and budgets, but we think it detracts from creativity. We prefer a chaotic process that has room for whimsy and team contributions.

Fully Fulfilled

I’ve started to hear from international Yearbook backers that their Yearbooks have arrived. Yay! Thanks to JP Selwood and Eric Varnes for the images and original layout, Chris Fong for wrangling backer photos and text, Steve Coupe for finalizing the layout, many backers for proofreading and corrections, and Simply Yearbooks for the printing and distribution.

With that, both Kickstarters (2012 and 2015) are fulfilled. That eight year journey is finally complete; I naively thought we could do it in two years, back when we started.

The Hero-U journey continues. We’ve just posted the first Alpha test version of Summer Daze at Hero-U: Tilly’s Tale. Lori and I are working with developer Philip to bring full voice acting to the game, and with JP and Al on the backer credits movies. We also have an accompanying “flippy book,” cloth map, and more.

JP and Al have completed the principal art for the second Summer Daze story, Ifeyo’s Adventure, but the game still has a long way to go in writing, music, and other audio.

Our other projects are currently on hold until we make more progress with Summer Daze. These could include some selection of Puzzleworthy, Hero-U: Wizards Way, Consulting Magicians, and other cool ideas in various stages of imagination and design. Alas, we haven’t found a magic box that will take a game directly from ideas to production.

Help! We Need Somebody…

Not just anybody.

But before I get into that… our next Livestream is this Saturday at 2 pm PST. That will be on https://www.twitch.tv/transolargames as usual. The theme is “Winter Daze at Hero-U,” which might have something to do with the fact that we’re finalizing Summer Daze at Hero-U: Tilly’s Tale in the middle of Winter. Given the warm weather we’ve been having in San Diego, that actually makes a kind of sense. 🙂

Here’s a Bird of Paradise – no, I’m afraid you can’t tap it for one mana of any color – from an upcoming patron-only post (https://www.patreon.com/coreyloricole) of Lori’s best photos from 2020. Springtime is coming!

Hiring a Developer

We’ve been working with one part-time programmer and “full stack developer” for most of the Summer Daze project.  It’s been a hard day’s night (for the last seven years), and they have moved on, so we are looking for a replacement. Responsibilities include:

• Maintaining the Hero-U code base –
• Rogue to Redemption patches and support for our Nintendo Switch developer
• Fixing issues with Summer Daze at Hero-U, adding audio
• Preparing for testing and later release
• Helping us create future projects such as Puzzleworthy and new Hero-U games
• Contributing to features and design of upcoming games
• Maintaining our website, including integrating with a shopping cart for direct ordering
• Helping us run Alpha and Beta tests, triaging and merging reports, fixing issues

Qualifications

You’ll need some or all of these knowledge sets and experience:

• Working with Unity, Mecanim, and the Unity editor – essential!
• Knowledge of C#, JSON, and Inkle (can learn the latter on the job)
• Understanding tropes of adventure games and RPG’s
• Ability to work well with other team members – design, art, audio

This is a paid position, but we can’t compete with large corporate salaries. It could last anywhere from six months to multiple years.

Time requirement will likely be 20-40 hours a week (not quite Eight Days A Week). We have some flexibility on this.

If you’re interested, please contact me at support (at) hero-u (dot) net. (Trying to avoid some bot attacks.) If you know someone else who is qualified and interested, please have them contact us directly.