I, Evan Balster [Jellyf15h], began developing games around the turn of the millenium (2000 for you city folks) with Game Maker 4.1, then maintained by Mark Overmars, a professor of Game Design in the Netherlands, who created it originally. I was about 10, and thus didn't do anything terribly interesting with it in the next few years, though it was my hobby.
Later on, in November 2006, I gained some interest in online communities. I had done a few things tentatively under the name "drdemention" before then, but upon joining GMclans [then at the peak of its popularity] I used the pseudonym "Jellyfish", after the website I owned at the time, www.jellyfishinacan.com. [which was an obscure reference to a joke at my school] Well, having been a GML [Game Maker Language] programmer for six years [in which time I made some neat stuff like complex platform engines and a 3D game base] I quickly became known as one of the better coders in the community.
I joined a Clan [GMclans is based around the idea of forming teams] named Dark Logic, which planned to create an incredibly complicated tactics RPG known as "planetside". I was to be lead programmer. However, the project failed miserably after about two and a half months due to a combination of factors involving lack of activity, poor planning, a game design we could never hope to fulfill, and an overstuffed team with redundant roles. Tekno was a member of Dark Logic for perhaps the last third of its existence. Another fellow, OVRKLLR, was also a member, though not an active one. He did, however, make an original track or two and link to his portfolio of previous works.
After DL's collapse, I remained active in the community for some time developing things independently, and participated in a second clan, Cross Orbit, which also failed. It's worthy to note that in the history of GMClans only three team projects have ever succeeded, whereas perhaps 30-40 have failed. As summer 2007 neared, however, a change was on the horizon...
Beau Blyth [teknogames] grew up under the stewardship of two parents both in Artistic careers. He himself is an artist, as well as a musician. [He plays guitar.] When he was in Middle School he was a prolific flash animator on Newgrounds. He has around 69 videos and games there from that time. However, he eventually grew frustrated with Flash's limitations as they pertained to Game Development. [lag and a difficult programming language, ActionScript]
One day he googled "game maker" and found the tool. He worked with it for some time and became a rather skilled game developer [he's made some fun ones, check the games page] as well as a good pixel artist. He eventually joined GMclans where he gained renown as one of its top artists. He joined Dark Logic at one point. Later on, I would ask him to join me for the project that marked the founding of the team.
The success of a Game Maker user, Cactus, in a game development competition hosted by Shmup-Dev caused a lot of enthusiasm among users of the program, which has since been gaining more and more awareness in the independent gaming community. His entry, Clean Asia, was featured in magazines and enjoyed much publicity on the web. The next competition, "options 2k7", thusly drew many people from the Game Maker communities.
I, Jellyfish, heard about this competition at GMclans and stated my intention to participate. Browsing through shmup-dev, I learned that the competition allowed developers to recruit artists and musicians in teams of up to three. Neither are strong points for me, so I jumped on the opportunity. The first people I asked were old acquaintances from Dark Logic. So, I set out to formulate a team. I asked Tekno if he would join, [which he did] and then contacted OvrKllr about doing the music. He also accepted. And thus was born Plaid Notion.
On a sidenote, the name "plaid notion" originated as a joke by Tekno. He made a fake concert poster, advertising "The Plaid Notion" and its upcoming performance. The poster, placed in a public area, evidently stayed around for another month afterward, to his amusement. Find it here.
We planned out our entry, wAive, taking it from a simple, rather bland Game Maker mockup to a progressively more engaging game. Tekno made hand-drawn graphics, Kllr composed several wonderful tracks [many of which were never featured publicly] and I did the programming. The competition, which began June 1, 2007, spanned three months to October 1. Progress went from slow to fast during that time, culminating in what was supposed to be an all-nighter making additional game levels. Unfortunately, an unexpected interruption kept me from being able to work and the game was released with only one level. Find it here. It placed 7th of 20 entries. Not bad, but begging the question of what could have been. Ah well.
A week or two passed. The team lacked motivation to continue working on wAive [Which I'll assume responsibility for] and in the meantime I had been learning C++ in a college course taken out of High School. For a fresh project, we decided we'd work on a minimalistically simple game in C++, a platformer. Some concept art was done and the female heroine was concieved. OvrKllr composed an initial track, and I crafted a base engine. As work continued we expanded the scope until the design had transformed from a simple autoscrolling shooter to a story-driven action sidescroller with focus on exploration. The final product was, and is slated to be something huge.
Our methods worked well for us. Tekno created a style and numerous, painstakingly hand-pixelled graphics for the game. I expanded the engine constantly, extremely happy with the flexibility C++ and SDL provided. Thus far things had gone smoothly. OvrKllr composed five original songs for Lapratan, committing to put effort into stronger, more diverse melodic elements for the project's music.
On July 10, 2008, Lapratan released its first demo.
However, the project stagnated after I entered college, due in large part to a lack of time. Contact with OvrKllr was lost and little progress was made on the game. We abandoned the project briefly, designing another project, before beginning to lament all the ideas we'd thrown away. So we opted to remake Lapratan. Better, stronger, and less constrained than ever before. This first version has become known as 'Lapratan V1'. The demo remains available.
The overhauled project is going to have a new graphic style, a revised storyline, and a completely new code base, save for a few things ported over from its predecessor.
Current status: Side projects!
With the loss of OvrKllr from the team, Tekno's brother, Austin Blyth, will be stepping in as project musician.
At GDC 2010, Plaid Notion gained a new member--David Nazario, sound designer extraordinare. But then he got a job at Insomniac and had to leave. :(
