2004 and Sumea

It?s usually a quiet time around these parts during the holiday season, so I thought I would write a few words about Sumea Launchpad, and reflect on a few big things that happened last year in regards to the website, and local game development.

2004 has easily been Sumea?s biggest year yet, with the number of daily visitors to Sumea growing double this period last year. Support grew for the Sumea Modeller Challenge, with Bullant sponsoring a fantastic WACOM INTUOS II 6x8" (USB) tablet for the winner of the Modeller Challenge #5, and Hyperfocal Skies (a high resolution sky panorama set worth $179 US) was sponsored by Hyperfocal Design. Discreet provided some great merchandise for third place, but they surprised everyone by offering a licensed copy of the new 3DS Max 7 for the next challenge!! A big thanks also must go to all the local creative directors and lead artists that helped out in judging the challenge!

2004, however, started off with a bit of a headache. A group of people in Brazil were able to exploit the server that Sumea was hosted on. They wrote over a few web pages (namely the index.htm file to brag about themselves), and attempted to create a rudimentary uploader to possibly cause some further damage. Fortunately, that didn?t work. I wasn?t too happy about our webhost, as it came after numerous server down times, and denial of service attacks. When the server was compromised, I wasn?t too surprised. When you?re able to see and browse around all the websites and files that were hosted on the server simply by ftp?ing in and viewing the parent directory, you knew security wasn?t quite ?solid?. :/

Our local webhost had no answers, so the only real solution was to find another place for Sumea to reside. Thankfully, the continued sponsorship from Krome Studios allowed us to pay for a new hosting plan in America. The move meant a bit of work and adjustments, fixing components that didn?t work, and applying new components to help things run more smoothly. I don?t think I?ve had anyone emailing me about how to upload images anymore for a long time now! :)

On a personal note, I think that?s what I?ll remember about Sumea in 2004. The amount of work updating, fixing, and maintaining this site was quite a workload at times. Seperating the content and visual layout for every page on the entire website with CSS (and getting rid of a LOT of tables), including a lot of new functionality like visitor comments for everything (news, votes, articles, potfolio, member profiles), the RSS and newsfeed, the Education section, Sumea paintchat, developer memberships so they can update their own profiles and news, independent game developer support, calendar and events announcements, adjusting how articles are handled, and a tonne of optimisations and fixes that you most likely won?t even notice as a visitor. There are a few things left to fix, but I?m on it, ok :)

I?m proud to say that Sumea had a hand in helping out with Free Play, Nextwave?s independent game developers conference that happened in May 2004 at Melbourne. It was a very memorable event, and I was delighted to have met a few of our forum regulars, along with some developers over a beer or two. The huge turnout showed that a lot of people are interested in game development in its many forms and were extremely glad that such a conference was easily accessible and affordable to them. I?m sure many people were inspired and took away a lot from the many talks and workshops offered. Free Play was a lot of hard work by the organisers at Nextwave, and here?s hoping that something can be done in 2005, perhaps with help from the Brisbane and Melbourne chapters of the IGDA as well!

What?s a year without incidences? You could say my short commentary on Half Life 2 and our lack of an R rating caused a bit of a ruckus. The news item spread like a firestorm, and was posted about, linked to, and discussed on nearly every major and non major gaming website out there. Issues about censorship in Australia and Valves distribution channel were debated for a brief moment, and it was good to see further discussion happening on the topic. There were repercussions from that news item though, with me having to talk to the marketing director of Vivendi Universal (Australia) on some of the problems that that news item created for them and the Australian Office of Film & Literature Classification (OFLC). Doh!

It?s also been quite a sad year as well, with some of our regulars moving on to other industries and avenues that don?t include game development. You know who you are, best wishes on which ever path you take in the future!

I know this is becoming quite long winded, so I?ll just summerise on other things that have been cool! Sumea Pixel Town, Sumea being linked from the ABC Culture website and both the Melbourne and Brisbane chapters of the IGDA, Sumea?s excellent jobs section, Sumea?s excellent events calendar, Sumea members breaking 450 people ? the largest listing of creatives and programmers down under.

I was going to spend a few paragraphs on the happenings in the industry, but I think I will summarise that too. Some of the big news this year include Blue Tongue?s acqisition by THQ Studios. A big year for Krome Studios with the release of King Arthur and Ty2: Bush Rescue, Irrational Games with Tribes: Vengeance, Atari Melborune House with Transformers. Some great achievements in mobile game development at Wicked Witch, creating the first MMORPG on wireless mobile. 2004 will be noted for the emergence of the independent game developer, given a voice through Free Play, and the Melbourne and Brisbane chapters of the IGDA. Quality of Life became a new concern near the end of 2004, but there may be a change in the future. Here?s hoping anyway!

A big thanks again to Krome Studios for their continued sponsorship of Sumea Launchpad, and also to our new sponsors, Kalescent Studios ? your generosity means that Sumea can stay up for another year. I really do put in a lot of time on this site, and it?s always great not having to worry about paying for hosting and keeping the site up. And a big thank you to all our members who?ve uploaded some fantastic work for us over the months, and our forum regulars who contribute with helpful advice and discussion as well. You guys help make the site what it is too!

Anyway, I hope you?ve all had a Merry Christmas, fantastic New Year celebrations, and are enjoying some sort of a break :) 2005 is going to be an interesting year, and as Outback Jack would say to every girl he doesn't vote off, I am hoping you will continue this journey with me. :)

p.s yes, the Sumea Developer Awards 2004 will be starting VERY soon :)