News

12-05-08: Here's a link to the latest build:

Click Here To Download

Enjoy.

11-28-08:  Just a few things to let you guys in on:

• We've got one final update to the game coming in just about two more weeks.  It will include more bug fixes, hopefully have depth blur on by default, and some fun bonus games we've had to create for another class.  Very exciting!
  
• If you're coming here from the IGF website, then awesome.  BTW, our team name is Hard Code, not hardcore.  We write difficult code, not make inappropriate movies.
• A new website it coming!!  We're working on moving away from google pages, as well as updating a lot of really old content we have up now.  There will be a lot more screenshots and videos, links to the project member's websites, as well as a forum for you to give us your thoughts.  Personally, it's really scaring sending off a game into the void of the unknown, especially since this is our first real experience delivering a project to so many different machine configurations.  We want to know about how the game is running for you, if you had fun or what.  Looking forward to talking to you!
  

-Tom

11 - 23 - 08: The penultimate version of Froggle is finally out.  You can dowload it by going to the download section, or just clicking here:

Download Froggle

11 - 10 - 08:  A lot has happened since the last update.  We've submitted Froggle to the Independent Games Festival Main Competition and this Saturday we will submit it to their Student Showcase, as well.  A new build should be up on this site this weekend (or at least, a link to one).  Another event worth noting is that we were semi-finalists in the Indie Game Showcase Student Category (http://www.indiegameshowcase.com/index.php?file=contest_msg).  Hopefully more accolades will come in the following months, eh?

 Distinti saluti,                                                                                                                   Gualtiero

5 - 23 - 08:   Hi everyone!  I'm Tom of Team HardCode, serving as the technical director for Froggle.  Also part designer, producer, and business manager - really all of us on the team fill in the roles wherever we're needed, so the titles don't mean so much as the quality of our work that we each can contribute.  Obviously the best part of this experience for me has been the opportunity to wear so many hats and add everything I can to see a project like this grow.  It's been intense work getting this project from the HL2 mod it was a year ago to the PAX submission we just turned in, and we are all (suprisingly) still driven to take it to an even higher level for IGF.

Well, it surely has been an interesting month since we've started our Summer sprints.  We've had the honor of playtesting our game with several industry professionals, including Robin Walker from Valve and Jamie Fristom from Torpex.  Our instructors have also been bringing in coworkers from their day job at Microsoft, so Froggle has been getting a lot of hands on it you could say.  Generally playtesting is great at showing just how much off target you are from thinking your game is good, but using developers at play testers is something different.  It's amazing how much this kind of feedback helps, not with just making a polish game that will get us jobs (cross your fingers), but also with how to approach problems as professional developers.  It's not like they sat us down and said "this is how the magic happens".  It has been more educational just seeing how they approach problems - from comparing our player issues to similar ones with Team Fortress 2 or Spider-Man 2, to giving us valuable insight into a players mind that you can only get after years of doing this kind of stuff.

We know we will be facing some serious competition at these contests and that there's a lot of work still to be done to even have a chance at success.  While winning is of course a dream come true (several dreams), just the ride to the door has been a blast.  Making friends who are or will soon be in the industry, learning what we're capable of as developers, seeing the opportunities of the future.... these are the reasons why we doing this and why DigiPen has been the right choice.

Ja mata.

Tom

4 - 18 - 08:   Hello, my name is Gualtiero and I am the designer for our student game, Froggle.  First of all, I’d like to apologize for the current lack of interactivity and content on this website.  Hopefully that will change soon. Then again, I said that for all the websites I managed growing up…and most of them never received more than two or three updates throughout their entire lifetime.  I apologize to all the fans of “Walty’s Amazing Gallery of Optical Illusions”.

Within a month we should have a link to download our game from the school’s website and you can all try it out for yourselves.  For now, I suppose this site is pretty worthless for the non-student/staff viewers out there.  Regardless, I plan on having this page be the definite harbor for all your Froggle needs; latest releases, new media, interviews with the team members, etc.

On a final note, I am -- strangely enough -- officially initiating this blog on the last day of our game as a DigiPen Junior project; today we presented the pseudo-final version of our game to an audience of fellow students, proud teachers and extremely bored girlfriends.  Although we only had five minutes to show off it off, I believe we did a fine job of getting the idea across of what Froggle is all about.  Hopefully this website will do the same.

Distinti saluti,

Gualtiero