Three weeks? That’s the amount of time my father used to be away at sea, back when he was captaining the Fisheries Patrol Vessel Tanu, back when there was a Department of Fisheries.
[Lost content: a black and white photo of my father in his twenties, sometime in the late 1950s.]
A lot can happen in three weeks, and indeed a lot has, but this week has been a little rough. A bit of over-indulgence on my part last Wednesday led to a loss in a full day and a half of productivity, making me wonder how people that regularly drink to excess get anything done? A recent study paid for by Britain’s Centre for Crime and Justice Studies underlines the danger of alcoholic excess.
I do fine with moderation inside of my own home, but I’m a sucker for peer pressure. Couple that with magical pints of beer that never seem to fully drain whenever I’m in the pub with someone else and I’ve got a recipe for disaster. The point here though is not to rail against the evils of over-consumption, though dire they may be, but to show the importance of diligent focus in production.
I lost my focus for a few hours in a bar, and I subsequently lost more than that as my body and brain recovered. It could have been diversion other than drinking, like losing myself in an online game or a sudden obsession with painting miniature figurines, but the point still stands: when I’m structuring my own production, and the whole responsibility for output rests on my shoulders, distractions and backslides like these do way more harm than good.
Despite this tragic turn of events, I have managed two major accomplishments this past workweek:
Other minor accomplishments include: spending several hours re-learning and practicing the fundamentals of 3D Studio Max 2011; watching Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai which led to listening to the entirety of the Wu-Tang Clan discography and deciding that RZA is a genius; and making a ton of progress in Super Meat Boy.
[Content lost: likely a Super Meat Boy image.]
Completing the novella came as a bit of a shock, as that marked the first time I’d ever completed a long-form piece of writing in my entire life. I wasn’t convinced it was over until I backed it up and put it away. Now it has a month to breathe as I labor at the NaNoWriMo challenge before I come back to edit out a second draft.
Moving into next week I’ll be going back to the basics with pencils and paper and laying out the level design for Project Zero One. I’m working on having a proper white-box (an undecorated but functional) version of the final level in the build by next Wednesday. Once that’s in place I’ll graduate the build to an official Alpha (feature complete) and start gathering feedback, and it will then become a process of refinement and tuning while I put together the formal visual and audio assets.
All told, this process has gone much faster than I anticipated and considering that I’ve been balancing my time between regular physical training, writing, and art production I’m rather pleased with the pace.
The previous two weeks I’ve left off with a video, but nothing spectacular has come across my stream via YouTube this week. Instead, I’ll direct you to Emily Carroll’s His Face All Red.
28 days later, and I’m still surviving! I would go further than that, and say that I’m kicking ass, but I don’t want to jinx it.
Oops.
After four weeks of production, Project Zero One has been given an official name and a half-official alpha release. It’s now known as Above and Below, and if you’re a donor you’ve now got access to Area 1 of the above in all it’s ugly, white-boxed glory.
Quick terminology lesson:
[Lost content: Above and Below alpha vision image.]
So, it’s a primitive version of what the final game might look and feel like. If you’ve donated at least 5 dollars to the drive for the Unity Professional license, you’ll have received your general mailing with the access code. I’ve already gotten several feedback forms in, and I can guarantee that no impressions will be ignored, and that if you have legitimate issues with the build, I will be addressing them in the weeks to come.
Above and Below will not go into the next phase of development until it meets my quality standards.
Let’s talk numbers real quick, and I’ll let you go. A lot of independents take pride in their transparency, and with good reason. Customers rarely see what goes into making the things they consume, they only get to enjoy the fruits of whatever labors. And rightly so—not everyone is interested in the process. But if you’re reading this, I think it’s safe to assume that you care on some level about how things are getting done. You’ve got access to the schedule, the design checklists, and (with a small donation) the prototype build.
Here’s a link to the budget. (All the links are long since defunct. –Ed.)
I have not drawn a salary since the end of September 1998. I spent the 5 years prior to that fateful date calculating, saving, and preparing for the life I’m living now. I have about a year before I need to get concerned about my financial situation.
This game design thing is my livelihood, and my only potential source of income now. I say this, and show off my figures, not to get sympathy, but so that you understand exactly how hungry I am for success.
Enough with the serious crap, here’s something to make you laugh and get you over this mid-week hump. See you in 7 days!
This is not the promised blog post about “How To Use Twitter”. I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever complete that one. Fortunately for me I only promised to write it and gave no specific deadlines.
What this is is a quick run-down on how I increase my data stream.
[Lost content: likely an RSS logo image.]
I use the term data stream to describe the aggregate collection of Tweets, Facebook updates, and blog postings that make up the news for me. I started using RSS blog following many years ago in lieu of traditional newspapers and televised news broadcasts because I was tired of being forced to accept whatever the papers or television told me was the truth.
That’s not to say that what comes into my stream is true, but at least I have a far broader choice in the information that pollutes it and I can cross-reference stuff on my own, sort of the ideal in a free information society.
With Google Reader, RSS following has become very easy. (I now recommend a self-hosted FreshRSS install –Ed.) It’s now possible to click those little RSS icons and then from that moment on receive indexed updates of whatever the person or persons you’ve subscribed to are blogging about.
Wait, wait I’m getting ahead of myself here. Twitter has added a whole new layer to the equation. In the past, when I first started filling my data stream, I sampled from the wellsprings of popular sources. In those days it would be well-established “famous” internet news sources. The thing was that these were only a few steps removed from the mainstream traditional news sources I was trying to shun!
Now with Twitter anyone can throw their two cents into the data stream and get it heard or noticed. It was much harder before because you had to go searching for these people. Now they’re getting re-Tweeted and cross-referenced and spammed all over the place if they’re adding anything of value to the global information sphere.
So, I’ll be watching my Twitter feed, and someone that’s already contributing to it will re-Tweet something of value that someone else has said. I’ll click that original person’s username and get taken to their Twitter page.
Now, if they’re clever and they’re actively contributing beyond 140-character blurbs in Twitter, they have blogs or homepages that contain further readings. This is always good, because a Tweet without a blog to back it up is just someone shouting crap in your face and running away. Blogs add substance.
Okay, back to the personal Twitter page. Next to the user’s carefully chosen profile picture, and under their carefully worded biography, there is a space for a web address. A “hot link”, if you will. When I find something of interest via Twitter and I get to this personal page, and there is no hot link, I grind my teeth a bit. This person is either too busy for a blog, or they only have the capacity to drop 140-character turds in my stream.
[Lost content: image, alt-text “Twitter Blog Link”.]
Often, though, there is a web address. And in the case of a lot of Tweeters, this will be a personal blog link, and I’ll say “huzzah!” because now I can get the skinny on who this person is and what they really believe, I don’t just have to dismiss them as a flash in the stream.
Here’s where the real tooth-grinding usually gets going, though. It’s surprising to me, too, because blogging and RSS technology has been around for some time now, and in my mind it’s necessary to have a way for people to get information without having to tediously click a blog link in a bookmarks menu. Furthermore, having to come back to a given site at regular intervals to see if there’s something new there gets old fast.
Here’s where Google Reader (or any other RSS extension that does the same thing) kills all. If subscribed, it will tell us when new posts have been made! Magic!
So, you’ll understand my frustration when I’ve come this far, and found someone of interest, only to find that they have no way for me to subscribe to their meticulously crafted blog. It’s not difficult. Go to Feedburner, get their little code, and stick it on your page. And that link there is not an affiliate program, a make Jack a few extra pennies with every click sort of deal. The service is free, and it enriches the world by allowing easier access to information.
To summarize, how I add stuff to my data stream:
I hope that’s helpful to you, and thanks for reading.
Oh, and P.S.: If you have an RSS icon, and it takes me to a page of garbled code rather than an easy subscription process, you’re doing it wrong. I might know what to do with that page of junk, but how many other potential readers have been lost because they barfed and closed the page? USE FEEDBURNER, GET MORE SUBS.
My initial plan upon graduation from Vancouver Film School’s Game Design program was to spend “as long as it took” to build a game of exceptional quality that would demonstrate my ability to design, develop, and produce.
After an important meeting this week with Shane Neville (check out his just-released first indie project, Ray Ardent, Science Ninja), and at the culmination of a long series of data I had been gathering in my web stream, I’ve concluded that this is not the best approach after all.
The most important thing that I can do as a starting independent game developer is deploy my first game. The moment the game is in the public it will begin to build my reputation. Without reputation, no one is going to pay attention or give up a single penny, save some close friends and family that believe in me. Even then, they’re only chipping in their support because they know me personally.
A published game is the first step towards personal contact with an audience wider than my Facebook page.
One thing I’ve found, working away on Project Zero One, is that I’ve managed to go from concept to a fully playable game in about a month. I know that my art skills are not the greatest, but that I possess enough ability to demonstrate the functionality of the game and polish it to a state beyond a mere prototype. My game is definitely a game, with a cohesive player progression, level gestalt, and conclusion. But who cares? No one knows it because practically no one has seen it.
My original plan had me working on Project Zero One until the end of February 2011. This was a fine starting point, as I’d underestimated my ability to produce and found myself running further and further ahead of schedule with each week of development. I’m now aware of many of my limitations, and I have a decent idea of how much work I can accomplish with the constraints I’m under.
[Lost content: an image of a schedule on fire.]
I must produce a working game in under two months. This is the new limit, the new mantra. The release deadline for Project Zero One has been moved to Wednesday, December 8th, 2010. I am working hard to have it publicly available before that date, and active development on this project will not continue beyond that point. I will then go into another 8-week cycle with Project Zero Two.
This process will continue until I start generating enough revenue to consider longer project cycles. I have a year until I need to consider income alternatives, so this will mean at most 6 shipped projects before I have to stop working on games full-time.
The first game will be freely available through this website, with an option to donate. I’ll evaluate subsequent projects based on their overall perceived quality. The current donation drive on IndieGoGo.com will continue until it runs out, so if you are thinking of posting a donation, please do it there until that campaign concludes.
That’s the current state of development, with some rather serious changes for the better. I hope you keep following the progress here, and as always, I thank you for reading, and for your support.
No amazing videos this week, but in case you weren’t aware of the new Girl Talk album, now you are.
In the interests of setting up a positive loop, this post is to directly address the bug reports and feedback that have been coming in since Project Zero One/Above and Below went public Alpha.
First, I thank every one of you for taking the time to follow this development process, play the game, and give your thoughts on this first attempt at game production. I’ve been knocked stupid by the amount of positive support I’ve received, and you’ve helped make my process that much better. Thank you.
Let me first clarify what Above and Below is exactly:
In addition to those bullet points I think it’s important to qualify this game by underlining the production process: it’s an 8-week push and is now in the ‘get it out the door’ stages. In the future when I have the luxury, I will be able to revisit this framework that I’ve built and put some higher-quality meat on its bones.
Okay! Here are some of the major issues that have been identified so far, in exciting Q&A form:
Q: Why does the player move so slowly on the ground/overall? I want it more HYPER HYPER!
A: I see you, core gamer, and I feel your pain. You’ve cut your teeth on Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario the Plumber, Super the Meat Boy, and a slew of third-person superhero open-world games. Above and Below is none of those. This is your grandparents’ platformer: slow, ponderous, and cantankerous. As of this writing the player is a white block, not unlike a Pong ball. Perhaps once the character art goes in and we can see its little feet moving, it will feel better? It will never be Mario.
Q: What is up with these unresponsive controls?
A: Much like Conan the Barbarian would use a broadsword to hew the necks of his enemies, so should you use an XBOX-compatible gamepad to fully appreciate this game. The movement controls are analog and respond on a 1:1 basis with the stick of a gamepad. The keyboard is a blunter instrument and programming the keys to respond in the same way as the gamepad is outside of the scope of this project. I may come back and tune this, or I may just pray that everyone in the world gets a gamepad. From day one the bulk of the iterative testing and development has been done with the ‘pad, with very broad-stroke changes done to the keyboard controls to make them functional. Yes, I understand that it is painful, but it is also possible to play on the keyboard with one hand and achieve the same scores as a pad-player can, with enough practice. Whether the player has enough patience to get to that stage is completely up to them.
Q: Why did I just fall through a platform and die?
A: The game engine, Unity 3D, recognizes collisions based on speed and the overall thickness of the contacting platforms. As the levels were designed with the main platforms being 3 units thick, if the player falls from a certain height they will continue to fall until they contact something thicker than 3. This certain height is a reasonable height, I feel, and now it seems that most deaths that result from this would have killed the player anyway. A bug, yes, but it doesn’t really mess up the way the game works too badly. In future projects, if this is critical to gameplay, the platforms will be thick enough to prevent these kinds of deaths.
Q: Why are the jump/speed boosts such pains in the ass to obtain and use?
A: When I laid out the levels initially, I thought adding things that improved the core gameplay (jumping and moving) would be logical, and I still feel that this is correct. However, I admit that the implementation has been less than perfect. The boosts are in places where the player has to jump to get them which, in my mind, made them appear optional. It turns out that if you dangle something above the player, they will inevitably see it as something they must have. There’s a valuable lesson in this. Also, questions of how long the boosts should last and exactly how they should function can be answered simply: I tried to make them useful for advanced players to get a minor edge when going for a fastest-time run. So once the player is good enough, these boosts will shave X seconds from their final time tally. They were never intended as something the player had to use to progress, and for beginners the game is significantly easier when they don’t pick them up. But they do. Again, and again, and again…
Q: Do you think that falling damage is even necessary?
A: Yes, I do. There is no falling damage on Easy difficulty, but you will die if you fall more than 30 units. So, there’s like a terminal velocity smoosh effect, but no penalty for minor mistakes. I’m using the risk of falling to your death as the main core level progression factor. The platform layouts are such that the higher in the game you go the greater the risk of falling. It’s no way near perfectly tuned, but it’s serviceable.
Q: What is this ball/pulsing cube/flattened capsule supposed to be? A: That’s a placeholder for a future 3D model that will (hopefully) better convey the function of the game object in question. I’m getting there. You’ve now got seagulls and flying skulls where before you had squashed capsules and spheres!
Q: Why do all your changes make the game easier?
A: Refer to the first answer, and then might I recommend Team Meat’s Super Meat Boy?
Q: Why do some treasures jump out of the coin box into places I can’t go, namely the depth axis?
A: There are a couple of game elements that remind the player that they are not in 2D space, but in 3D. The birds, for example. The odd rock or enemy that drifts out into Z-space. The treasures are another example of this, and one that facilitates gameplay a bit. See, there’s a method for collecting treasures that allows the player to get all of them. If in a rush, or triggering the chest prematurely, there’s a chance that some of the loot will jump out and be rendered pointless. That’s part of the gestalt. I could quite easily lock the treasures all onto the flat plane, but where’s the fun in that? Scrambling for coins that may end up under the vending machine is a part of the excitement of everyday life!
Those are some of the major ones I’ve gotten so far, and I am balancing production time now between addressing concerns and making the game all pretty-like. Again, I thank every one of you who’ve submitted their thoughts. Your input is helping me learn much faster than I could on my own, and in the long run will make the game so much better.
2010.11.01 – 2010.11.30