Stamp A Spot

Hey, Haven’t posted here in years! Thought I would do a quick update. After working on Microsoft Flight and partylistdj.com I got caught up creating some cool stuff for Redbird Flight Simulations. Long story short, I help develop a scoring system for their large simulators that graded flight maneuvers as you performed them. Such as Takeoff, Landing and Steep Turns. We presented a their Migration Conference in Austin Texas and it was a huge hit. So huge we had investors knocking at our door. Unfortunately at this time I became severely ill from a long term immune disorder so I had to drop out. There was also some disagreement in the direction they wanted to make us go. But from what I can see Redbird is still using this technology in their latest sims.

Anyways I am now working on a new project again entitled http://stampaspot.com/ Basically you create a Stamp Book of all the awesome places you have been. People can see where you have left stamps and interact with you, such as add you as a friend or add a comment. Feel free to check it out if you time.

Taking a break for Flight Simulator and I need your help!

So, I am taking a break from Flight Simulator at the moment and doing something completely different! You might not know this, but I worked for Microsoft Flight for 2 years. I was one of two/ three game designers of the project and my job was to build missions. Most of the custom missions in the game were built by me. We used the in house mission editor and Lua Scripting to do some real cool things! Anyways, as most of you probably know, the game went down the sh*t hole August of 2012. Which is a shame because there was some powerful technology in that game. It had a lot of potential, and if only 3rd parties could get a hold of it – uggg. So for a change of pace, I decided to focus on web development, as I’ve had some ideas in my mind!

http://www.PartyListDJ.com . Yes, that is the name of the site I am working on. What is it? And what does it do? Well, let me explain. When I got to thinking, I wanted to work on a project that has a huge audience. Why a large audience? First of all, I think that was the main problem with Microsoft Flight. The target market – “gamers” (don’t ask me why we decided to target gamers as I will never come to fully understand that decision either???) was not enough to support the game. Also, to play Microsoft flight, you needed a PC, plus good hardware, plus Games For Windows Live plus an internet connection to find it and download it. Not only that, you had to get the whole installation process with DLC downloads and product keys and what now. That cuts out a whole lot of people! People with mac’s, mobile devises, old computers and people who don’t have fast internet. I hope that someday, Microsoft Flight Simulator will have a comeback, and decide to target the audience who actually wants to simulate real aviation. I believe it is in the realm of possibilities, but at the moment, I must stay busy with something!

So what platform has the largest audience in the world? The internet of course!  Then I thought, what are the most popular things on the internet? YouTube, and Facebook! Why not combine their goodness? PartyListDj.com is a site designed to connect you and all your friends to the largest video database in the world – YouTube. There have been a couple situations where I am at a party/ event and we all start playing music videos for music. That’s when it came to me, why is there not an app for this? Where we can just find each other music all in one place? So after I got laid off from Microsoft, and took a long vacation…I perused the idea!

The facebook app is built using asp.net, C#, html 5 and javascript! It was an interesting ride developing this site, but it was good practice before I try and find a job in the industry doing this.

Now this is where I need your help. I am in the beginning phases of building a fan base. My target market is probably younger people, and I know not a lot of simulator fans are young and not into music so much, but I need help spreading the name!  If you could please try it out and post your feedback here that would be wonderful!

And please like the facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/PartyListDjCommunity

You can go to the website and try it here: http://partylistdj.com/

Thanks for your time and appreciate your help! I hope something arises in the future for Flight Simulator as that passion for simulation will always be in my blood.

Hummm, what could the next mission for Vertical Flight Productions be?

Blue Angels Challenge Released!

The final Blue Angels Challenge is released! A lot of work went into improving the AI and scoring system. You can dowload it at VerticalFlightProductions.com. Watch a preview of the mission here:

Blue Angels Challenge Beta is ready to be tested!

Welcome to VerticalFlightProductions.com! If you’ve been following me then you know I’ve had this project in mind for a long time and now I finally have something to show! I sorta took a long break, dissapeared from the scene, but recently decided I needed to release some of the goodness I have stored on my hard drive! So this past month I threw together a quick mission with many of the same elements I had in my original project. But this time I kept in MUCH MUCH more simplified! The idea works great and it’s pretty fun to play as well!

This mission involves you flying in formation with the Blue Angels around NAF El Centro California. To play you have to register at VerticalFlightProductions.com, download the zip file. Install the mission and scenery and start the BlueAngelsChallenge.exe and let the fun begin!

The mission is a beta version meaning there will prob be some bugs discovered. So I invite you all to download the mission and test it out. It’s free… and not to mention one of the coolest experience you’ll ever have in FSX!

Microsoft Flight!

If you haven’t seen by now then get your head back in the game! http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/

 

 

Sneek peek at what the score interface will look like.

I’ve done more redesigning and re-mission building yet again…. I had to do this because the game was getting overly complicated and needed simplifying. All and all this compact version of the mission works fairly well and can’t wait to see reactions when people begin playing!

 

I also worked on getting PayPal hooked up and writing to our purchasing databases! It now verifies if each free sky production user has paid for the product and is kept in our records.  It’s all working great…I am just waiting to get a mission out before I go live with the system.

 

Here is a sneak peak at what the new scoring interface should look like:

 

Im back on the horse! yeahaa!

Alright, things have finally subtle down considerably. I finally moved into my new apartment and school has ended! So this means I have a ton of free time and not many distractions, plus about everyone I know seems to be leaving for Christmas break! My motivation for this project has spiked back up so I will be back to work full time working on the project throughout December! On top of that I am looking to hire a web programmer to help implement some new features! I might also have some part time workers help me as well! Stay posted!

-Joey Sipos
Free Sky Productions Developer

Project on hold for a little while…

Ok, life has been kind of hectic at the moment, plus i’ve run into a some fairly large technical problems that need ironed out. Not only that I need to concentrate on my school work at the moment. This does not mean I’m no longer working on it, just can’t work on it as much as I have been at the moment. I posted a status update over on the FreeSkyProductions forums…

 

PROJECT STATUS UPDATE: I (main representative of Free Sky Productions) must inform you the current project is on hold right now. I have come to realize the amount of work required to get a company off the ground is just too much for me to handle at the moment. I’ve also run into a few technical issues that are really holding the project back as well (the reason for the beta not being released to the testers yet) – these are slowly getting worked out and I think they can be fixed. My personal life has also been very busy, I jumped back in school, taking three classes and this is dampening free time as well.

 

Continue reading over on the FreeSkyProduction forums: http://freeskyprod.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2&p=2#p2

What are some of the specifics? What is this F-18 training mission all about? Can you give us some details or screen shots? What do you do during the game?

First of all, the project is nearing a testable state. I will be ready to release a beta version in about two weeks from now (the week of October 12th). If you’re interested in beta testing the early version of this mission please email me at joeysipos@hotmail.com, leave a comment below this post, or message me. This is a very complicated mission and will need to be vigorously tested. I am going to estimate the beta (or I should call it alpha version) testing will last for a couple weeks. I will then work on patching the bugs then release another or perhaps two other test versions before I look into releasing the final version. I need a couple people with vast knowledge of FSX, a love for the Blue Angels and formation flying and a desire to help create one of the best FSX experiences ever released!

 

I’m not going to discussed any of the specifics about the actual content of the product yet. This is in part because I know for a fact it’s going to change before release. I’ve been working on this mission for a good 5 months and have changed the overall concept of the mission about 10 times! Yea, it’s kind of driving me nuts! I could have seriously released 10 different missions by now – each with different content, with all the work I’ve done so far. Id say 9/10th of the work I have done on this has been thrown in the garbage with 1/10 of it in the actual game right now! But this is what has to happen if one wants an actual good enjoyable game to play.

 

This has been a challenge, really testing my creative abilities on game design. Believe it or not the first concept of this mission did not involve the Blue Angels at all. The original idea was to create an F-18 training guide mission since the f-18 had no manual or anything. It did not involve using simconnect but only the default FSX mission system. Slowly the idea progressed to grading the user with c# programming and simconnect, then perhaps throw in some formation flying, and finally – why not create a mission for the famous Blue Angels! Which I always wanted to do in the back of my mind but thought it would be near impossible to do with the FSX mission system! If you ever watched the blue angels perform they do some crazy maneuvers, they have to be at certain points at certain times, they have to fly in formation, and much more. The ultimate question was how to I create a system to judge, perform and get a basic flight sim user to fly these maneuvers. This is what I have been working on and tweaking for the last couple months and it’s finally starting to look like this might work! I still got plenty of tweaking and reworking to do. This is why I am going to hold off on the feature set until I get a solid version of the program working – until it’s on pare with my standards, and my users standards!

 

Please, if you’re interested in testing; drop me a message telling me about yourself and why you would like to help test this mission.  Thank you!