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Mr. Bond - Developer

 

Hello there! My name is MrBond, and I am a developer. The meaning of this changes almost daily, but at its core, I am a very technically-focused member of the team. I've touched over a dozen languages, to varying degrees, but I know the most of C# and its many predecessors and spiritual ancestors.  I also manage all of the technical infrastructure that should be all-but-invisible to the public.

I've done a great deal of non-game-related programming, and a heavy dose of web development (which is also my day job); more relevantly, I've done some modification development for Unreal Tournament, which infused me with a lot of non-programming game dev skills, including some 2D artistry, 3D modeling, and level design. Those were the formative days for my interests, and looking back on them fills me with a great sense of accomplishment, as well as a hefty drive to improve my skills and apply them to loftier goals.

Now, with Zero Hour Productions accelerating on the "productions" front, there's more reason than ever to work hard, have fun, and above all, keep learning.

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Post-mortem: end-of-2017 marathon

Wed, 24 Jan 2018 14:17:20 -0600 by MrBond

Hello everybody,

2017 is behind us, and it will not be missed.  We took the opportunity to send off the year on a positive note with our end-of-2017 marathon, a 16-hour stream event benefitting One Gamer Fund. We handily exceeded our goal by 50%, raising $750 in total. Thank you to everyone that participated and watched!

As with our marathon for Extra Life 2017, what follows is my postmortem of the event. Beyond a few cursory "soft" topics, I will focus on the software tech side of things, as that is where a comfortable majority of my time was spent.

First, a word on the restrictions we faced. Despite having more time (three weeks versus two) to prepare, a lot was done in a hurry. Again, we pulled off a minor miracle; and again, this miracle was based more on hard work than luck. This event was further proof that we can pull together to perform as a team. Now, on to some specific points.

Timing

Restricting the total event time to 16 hours (versus the previous event's 24 hours) was an excellent change. Unless and until we can recruit more participants and / or volunteers, future events will likely not exceed 16 hours total time - long enough to be worthwhile, short enough to not be unhealthy for everyone involved. As none of us are true "early morning people" (I think), starting at a more...

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Tormod - Project Manager

 

Howdy! My name's Tormod, and I'm the Project Manager for Zero Hour Productions. Much has changed here over the years, but once things calm down for us, expect me to be doing quality assurance, planning, production, and possibly a bit of music composition for our games! My real life career and education has taken me from gaming and music as mere hobbies to doing things professionally - I currently serve as a systems administrator for a large insurance firm, but still hold music production and performance as an intimate hobby, hoping to get more into those as time move forth!

My gaming experience has largely centered around role-playing gaming, both on the screen and off. Final Fantasy, Fire Emblem, The Legend of Zelda, and other similar series have molded my interests around games that require a bit of cunning while being zany in their own ways. My desire in making games is to allow the players an opportunity to be mentally challenged, while having good fun in unique environments, completing profound and exciting objectives. I have an air of perfection about me, and I really hope to bring that to the table once we start pushing games out to the masses!

On our various podcasts/radio shows, I really enjoy talking shop and 'philosorambling' about various topics, mostly pertaining to game design, but sometimes offering critiques about media and creativity in general. I do tend to get fairly passionate about things, so be warned - I do use some adult language from time to time. That said, please feel free to contact me with the methods listed below!

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New house and marathon space coming in June!

Thu, 15 Mar 2018 15:52:28 -0500 by Tormod

Saxxon and I have been in the process of selling our home and building a house, and all is scheduled for completion at the end of June. Unfortunately, the closing date fell such that we'll need to be here during the latter half of SGDQ, but given it was such a fight to get this far, we don't feel terrible about the situation - and we'll still be attending the front half of the event!

Our first few marathons were either in our existing home's 'media room' (AKA "master bedroom" for everyone who toured the place while it was on the market) or the living room, and we needed a more appropriate space, especially now that we're planning larger events moving into the future. The first post-move event, at least for the time being, will be between 6-7 October on our wedding weekend: in lieu of a honeymoon and reception, we'll instead be hosting our largest charity games marathon yet, with guests from across the country!

The new marathon space will be in the finished basement of the new home, and is as large or larger than the media room we'd used at our existing place. This time, however, our equipment will be racked properly, and my grand vision includes projecting what goes out to stream onto the far wall of the room, rather than rely on our existing OLED and LED-backlit panels, the first of which actually needed replacing due to burn-in from static screen elements. We're hoping to avoid that problem, plus have a larger screen footprint this time around!

The...

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Boris - Developer

 

Hello there. My name is Boris, and I am a developer for Zero Hour Productions. I have a wife and three children.

I started getting into game development a few years after I was out of college, though I do not have much other development experience. I started my first development job in the Fall of 2015, but held a couple other of technical roles, such as systems administration and software quality assurance. I prefer to do my game development in C#, and I have been using Monogame to prototype some different ideas that I've had.

Development to me is much deeper than just writing code. I think it is an art that you can perfect over time. This is especially true once you actually get into the act of designing the game, infrastructure, and other technical aspects. Most of my blog posts will probably be along those lines. It's a long journey filled with a lot of learning, and I look forward to every minute of it.

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A Return to My Principles in 2019

Wed, 02 Jan 2019 20:25:13 -0600 by iamboris

There just seems to be something about the start of a new year. Obviously, it's more of a symbolic thing than anything. Life doesn't care whether it's the first or last day of the year. It is easy to see how you can look at it as a closing of one chapter and the opening of the next.

I believe I've mentioned this before, but I'm going to bring it up again. In general I have 4 foundational principles that I live by: hustle, discipline, teamwork, respect. I've decided I'm also going to add a 5th, curiosity. Starting with the blog post after this one, I'm going to spend some time talking about each of these principles at length. I'll give my opinions on why I think these things are important.

I first came across the original 4 when I was playing travel hockey in high school. My coach explained how these 4 guiding principles were key to succeeding in many aspects of life. I believe that when I adhere to these principles, my life moves in a positive direction. When I experience failures, I can probably point to one of these principles that I failed to follow. However, I try to use failure as a place to learn from. It is a temporary and natural occurrence. I examine the failure and try not to repeat it. I try to move on from it and not dwell on it.

I'll also try to apply these principles across many situations. I went to college at a liberal arts institution, so I was taught that many seemingly unrelated areas of interest can overlap. I can take principles...

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Legal Stuff

In every episode of Seeking Infinity and Insert Credit(s), we play only freely-available video game remixes.  We attribute artist and source during the show itself, with a link to a download or artist page as available in the show notes.  In cases where a download link is no longer available, we still list the artist and source of the music.

We do not own or claim to own trademarks, copyrights, whatever, on the above musical material. The discussion within and production of the show, however, is ours. On this content, and on anything within our blogs, we grant a Creative Commons license, as follows:

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

All other content, unless explicitly noted, is copyright by us, Zero Hour Productions; all rights reserved. Requests for a commercial license may be considered on a case-by-case basis.

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