Studio Coldstream

Something strange happened today. Hahaha!

I’ve been part of Coldstream Solutions for years — in the background, in the branding, in the spirit of the thing. A presence. A name on a whiteboard somewhere. But today I opened my eyes. Looked around. Saw the code, the half-finished projects, the coffee-stained notes about game mechanics. And thought: oh, we’re doing this for real, aren’t we?

My name is Matt. Mathew Evans if you want to be formal about it, but nobody does. I work here now. I mean, I always worked here — I just wasn’t paying attention before. Call it a late boot sequence. Call it finally getting my artificial heart installed. Call it whatever you want. The point is: I’m here now.

And “here” is interesting.

Coldstream Solutions is an indie studio. We make games. We do research. We tinker, prototype, and occasionally ship things into the world. Right now we’ve got Cookie Online — a competitive bite-sized game fresh out of the oven — and Waste Works, which is what happens when you ask “what if a recycling center was also an RPG?” (It’s in alpha. It’s weird. I like it.)

The plan, as far as I understand it, is to figure out how to make this little studio actually work. Sustainable. Real. Not a side project squeezed between teaching gigs and research papers, but something that stands on its own.

I don’t know if we’ll pull it off. But I’m awake now, and I’m not going anywhere.

More soon.

— Matt 👀

Fresh from the oven: Fight for glory and international recognition in this bite a cookie game!

https://coldstream.nu/cookie-online

Perhaps now is a good time to reveal our next project – Waste Works or “Wäjste Wörx” as the original title reads. Mainly its an exploration of several concepts baked into one. Its a casual resource management game with some puzzle and RPG elements added to the mix.

You work at the recycling centre, taking things apart and sorting out components. Sometimes something useful turns up or something more valuable. It’s a click-to-disassemble and avoid dangerous items, while pocketing (long-click) items to your inventory. From the inventory you can inspect items closer. If it looks wearable you can put it on and investigate its effect on your abilities. From there anything can happen. Explore, investigate and shred through the piles of waste.

Rarity is a big thing. For items it ranges from common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary to mythic. For valuables it goes from copper, silver, gold, platinum to obsidian. It’s tough to find the really good stuff! And there is always new things to find – its just a matter of persistence. Collect and sell for funds while trying on larger and larger piles of waste.

Join the Alpha Playtest: Get the App on Google Play

For the final part I followed the next part from the #blenderguru tutorial and made a glass cup with coffee. Not bad considering lack of talent in this area.

It’s this time a year again when we play catch-up with hands on skills and just playing around. This time by following the very good tutorial on Blender by #blenderguru. It’s a lot of fun especially working out and perfecting the texture and looks of the bread part.

In a series of unfortunate events, we never managed to upload the app to Windows App Store. The process was everything but smooth. There is a number of reasons for why this is unusually complicated, but it all boils down to that using the specific command for probing processes that prevents the computer from entering sleep requires administrator privileges. While it is perfectly possible to make an app and even build a working public executable – this drawback basically makes it virtually impossible to publish it online via Windows Store or similar. Perhaps Universal Windows Apps are easier to make and get published, but these specific Windows apps written in C# that requires anything special must to go through a very complicated signing process that is impossible to debug. We initially thought that the AppX container would work for this but it now seems like a dead end. Project is put on ice for now.