Apparently I’ve had a draft post saved here since July 6th, which thinking back sounds about right as the last time I would have been able to even think of anything to talk about. With work getting close to finished now, I finally had a weekend to spend at home and work on my own stuff a bit. I actually deleted the original post since it’s a bit outdated now, but some of what I was excited to talk about back then is still relevant now. Basically I feel like someone hit pause on the rest of my life outside of work and finally a few months later decided to hit play again…
My goal right now is to make a very small, fully playable platformer requiring a minimal amount of asset production and focused primarily on gameplay and atmosphere. The first and probably the most crucial step is to nail down the level creation pipeline, starting with the level editor. In the past, I’ve put together a few tile based level editors for platformers, but I always felt like I spent more time working on the editor rather than on the levels themselves. So this time around I came up with a brilliant solution: Photoshop. Being able to physically draw out my levels in a tool I’m already comfortable with allows me to rapidly iterate through the design process. Plus, the added benefit of not having to worry about proprietary file formats for level data saves me a ton of time early on. Using simple color coding and a bit of logic, I’m able to come up with this:
The system I’ve created is room based, building levels in realtime from a 26×26 map. The size is arbitrary, I can conceivably build any size room I want, using any base tile size I need. I still have a few special case layouts I need to account for but right now all the contours are working properly.
The second and possibly more interesting part goes back to my goal for minimal asset production. Again, in terms of speed it makes no sense for me to spend a ton of time right now trying to make good looking, flexible art assets when there’s still so many other fronts that need to be addressed. So obviously the quickest solution would be to just make everything cubes and call it a day. Unfortunately, doing this would cause me a bunch of other problems down the road so (and this goes back to my original July post) I decided I had to come up with a more efficient system for my tiles.
One of the problems with Blitz (and possibly other engines, I’m not sure) is that a large chunk of overall performance comes down to surface count. Simply put, if I load 50 cubes into a scene, Blitz treats them as 50 separate objects, even if they share the same texture and underlying mesh. This leads to massive slowdown and performance issues, obviously. So the solution and to some extent, a rite of passage for anyone who’s ever worked with this engine before, is creating your own single-surface system. Back in July, I finally created my own to speed up my particle fx, so I decided to build on top of that and port it over for tile creation. Admittedly, getting the system running was a bit of work and is still rough around the edges, but the advantage of having the entire level as one surface gives me a huge amount of flexibility going forward.
The important thing is that I have a solid system in place to start designing the game around. My next step is to hopefully begin prototyping enemies and weapons. That will give me a little more insight into how I should design my rooms and provide a reality check as to whether or not my world scale is correct for the game I want to make.
One of my favorite games growing up was Defender on the 2600. Defender was one of those games that completely owned me whenever I played it at the arcade, because the controls and difficulty were so different. The Atari version was simplified for their controller which made the gameplay a lot more natural and intuitive. Instead of thrusting and turning with additional buttons, it was mapped directly to the joystick, making the game really accessible (and easy) for 7 year-olds like myself.
Visually, the game barely resembled the arcade game but to be honest, I actually prefer the 2600 version. Despite the game blinking like crazy, having the city down at the bottom made you feel like you were actually defending something, as opposed to the arcade version’s endless jagged hills. Plus the score font is sci-fi awesome.
I’ve been thinking about Defender (and even playing it a bit lately, hence the screenshot) and trying to remember what made the game so fun for me when I was a kid. I think the main appeal was the game’s sense of speed and the ability to button mash. To be honest, I’m having trouble remembering another 2600 game I had that featured button mashing at all. I love the fact that it’s not a side-scrolling rail shooter, giving you the chance to alter your approach and speed heading into each setup. The difficulty ramps up in a nice way, letting you get your bearings a bit before turning into an all-out, frenetic shooter. Plus, the sense of urgency to intercept the ships abducting your humanoids and ultimately flying them down to safety added some real tension to the gameplay, tying back into the importance of visually having the city down at the bottom.
I’ve been spinning my wheels a bit lately trying to nail down the controls for my latest prototype. Everything is ready to move forward but I can’t help tweaking gameplay ever so slightly on an almost nightly basis. I think the point I left off at last night will be sufficient to move forward, but I’m worried that once I build out a true gray box first level and start scripting enemy AI, I’m going to get stuck in the mud again, endlessly reworking the control design. Because so many of my games never really proceed past this point, I lack the perspective of knowing whether this is time better spent on other aspects, or if it’s crucial to nail this down early. My instinct says, ‘gameplay must be fun, first and foremost’ but my experience as a developer tells me that eventually future level design will probably break whatever I’ve decided upon so far.
So that’s what I’m wrestling with right now, really no different than anything else I’ve encountered at this point. It’s still all about managing my time and being efficient with the little energy I have left when I get home from work. Probably not a good time to be working on my unfinished game backlog I suppose…
I think this E3 is either the 4th or 5th one I’ve been to, honestly I can’t remember anymore. Going in, I knew that this one would feel different since something I actually worked on was being shown, but I guess I underestimated to what extent that ultimately would be. I don’t want to digress into a long winded diatribe about how guarded the show felt or how it seemed as if there was more to see in the press conferences than what was actually playable on the floor… I don’t want to mention that at all. I just want to say that, on a whole, things have changed.
Anyway, here’s a few games that stuck out to me:
Dark Void
I was most hyped about this game, knowing it’s coming from the folks who made Crimson Skies. Game looks fun, but I’m a bit worried about it feeling repetitive in its setups.
Lost Planet 2
Looks awesome in personas expected, should be a lot of fun.
Fat Princess, PixelJunk Shooter, Zombie Apocalypse
These 3 PSN games were really fun. Fat Princess feels like TF2-light, but you can tell there’s a ton of strategy to be had there. I played PixelJunk Shooter and Zombie Apocalypse co-op and both were a blast. Compared to what came out on XBLA last summer, it looks like PSN has the better games on the horizon. Hope these 3 come out soon, even tho I don’t have a PS3…
Jumpgate Evolution
Didn’t get to play this, but looked really good from what I saw. I feel like I’ve been waiting for this game forever now :)
Crackdown 2
Wasn’t on the floor, but I’m ecstatic this is being made!
What I took away most from this show was, at least for me, ‘fun’ is still king. There’s a lot of ‘great looking games’ and ‘cool games’ but the ones that resonated most with me, were the ones you could feel yourself smiling the entire time you were playing. I think for my own games, that’s the experience I’ve always wanted to capture most. Above anything else, I want people to play my games because they are fun. If they get some sort of deeper meaning or experience out of them, then that’s great too, but ultimately, it’s the joy I’m after.
Holy crap, it’s been almost a year since I last blogged! Maybe I’m just swept up in pre-E3 excitement, maybe I’m just punch drunk from watching the entire Ubisoft press conference, maybe I’m procrastinating about working on my game… regardless, I decided it’s time to dust off the old blog and start writing again. Like 5 minutes ago. So let’s do this!
First off, uh the last year, right. I’ve been busy. Busy making games, but for a living now. Seriously, it takes up all my time, so much that I haven’t any of my indie stuff in over a year now. Yes, I’m going to pretend like that is the reason for my mountain of unfinished prototypes and keep on writing. The important thing to know is that over the last year I’ve kept up the good fight and actually become even better and making said prototypes. Prototypes that ultimately go nowhere after a week or three, but playable nonetheless. I’ve leaked a few out to friends and have always received positive feedback, but for one reason or another, nothing has really stuck. Same old story I suppose, but at this point in my life and career, I just kind of roll with it. If nothing else, it’s more practice for when I actually get my stuff together.
And that leads us back to here, my once defunct blog. I’ll try, once again, to keep this thing updated. Post a bit about my development struggles and maybe a tad about games in general, both big and small. So for now, enjoy this little tease and my awesome default Wordpress template.
So, it’s been awhile now. I recently started a new job which has been keeping me very, very busy, but in a good way. Well, in a great way actually. Nevertheless, things will remain pretty slow here at least for another month or so. However, with a new TIGSource compo looming on the horizon, I may be able to set aside a few late hours here and there and try to put together a new game. Unfortunately, the last one really never progressed much beyond the few screens I posted. It’s still a really solid concept, however, the controls kinda bug me and probably are what’s keeping me from returning to it. Well, that and the whole zero time thing :) The compos are a good way to stay focused and motivated during busy times, so it’s something I’m looking forward to for the rest of the busy summer. Towards the end of the year, work will ease up to some extent and I’ll probably have more mental energy to jump on to the some of the larger projects I’ve either started or been prototyping over the last 12 months or so.
Anyway, keep your eyes peeled to the RSS feed in the meantime and hopefully I’ll have something to show soon enough. Also, I closed comments on my ERH post, the signal to noise ratio from our spamming friends was just getting out of hand.
Friggin crickets around these parts. Instant Crickets even.
So the deadline for the latest TIGSource Compo has come and gone and my entry never really got off the ground. About 2 weeks in, I realized there was no way in the world I could finish it on time while juggling other projects so I decided to put it on the slow track and make it a longer term schedule. For all the raving I did about making a schedule and sticking to it with ERH, none of that could be said for this project. I realized yesterday I hadn’t even figured out my checklist and that was a month after I came up with the idea. Granted, this game is a bit more technically complex then ERH so a lot of my time was spent trying to figure out a workable system for procedurally generated levels. Regardless, having a framework timeline in place is crucial, so it’s the thing I’m working on right now. Well, right after this post…
I promised to start posting screens more often, so here’s some work in progress from about 2 weeks ago:
Image 1
Image 2
A lot has changed since then but that’s basically the look I’m going for. I’ve fixed some of the alignment problems for the 3D tiles and made a few tweaks but there’s plenty to get working stil. One thing I didn’t do with ERH that I’m going to have to do with this game is release an Alpha version for playtest. I’m not 100% confident in the control scheme so far so I want to hear what other people think. My goal is to have something resembling a Beta by the end of this month, so the Alpha version needs to happen relatively soon. I have to keep reminding myself to keep this game small and the scope limited for the time being, otherwise my imagination starts spiraling out of control and nothing ever gets finished.
So this post yesterday by Mark Sibly has the Blitz community all excited, and rightfully so. The promise of a modern 3D engine with the same mixture of ease/power that exists in the current B3D engine is a dream that a lot of us have had for awhile now. There’s a couple megaposts in the forums now, with people going back and forth about wishlists and whatnot. Immediately, all I cared about was built in support for things like shadows, reflection, shaders, etc. However, the more I’ve thought about it, there’s def some additional non-graphical upgrades that would be incredibly substantial. Cross-platform compatibility would be tremendous for the community, as right now we’re unable to publish for anything except Windows. Being able to export to Linux would be significant for me personally, as I’ve had a few conversations with people lately about building games for proprietary hardware.
Going back to the visual side of things, obviously an upgraded graphical engine is what’s going to bring in the customers so I assume the majority of the focus will be in this area. The big one for me is shadows. I’ve lamented about this in the past, most recently with ERH. To be able to add a light (either hardware of software) to a scene and define it’s shadow casting properties in a single line of code would make my life easier in so many ways I can’t even begin to try and express here. I have maybe 20 or so mockups for games I’ve done in an 3DS Max that never make it to the coding stage because the shadowing system would be impossible in the current engine.
Interoperability between B3D and standard shader languages would be another huge upgrade for me as well. Things like reflection, refraction, and other common things I use everyday in 3D animation would finally be made accessible for my games. The key here is the built-in support, knowing that I won’t have to code one-offs and hackjobs to get someone else’s hack maybe working in my game.
The promise of an end of the year availability sounds exciting but is most likely wishful thinking. Nevertheless, it’s encouraging to know that work is being done on my engine of choice and thus the necessity of having to learn a new language very soon is significantly less now. Looking forward to more news on the matter.
Looks like the next TIGSource competition has been announced, this time it’s for procedurally generated games. I’m really excited about the theme, as I think it would be perfect for a shooter idea I’ve had for awhile but honestly time is going to be a major concern. With ERH, I put some stuff on hold and while I was able to catch up to some extent, it puts an incredible strain on my workload to toss another project on the burner.
Without going into the psychological reasons why, one of my ultimate hatreds and frustrations in games stem from gameplay that heavily requires extensive memorized or predictable routines to be performed. I can tolerate it of course, but the old school gamer in me still craves pure, twitch action. The appeal of procedural content to me is creating a game experience that forces a player to always be on their toes. With most games, no matter how hard a section may get, you can always break down the fourth wall and remember that a game designer somewhere created this challenge with a specific solution in mind. Conversely, I would love to provide an experience where a player can go into a battle and honestly not know whether or not they can survive the challenge. There’s something to be said about fighting valiantly against inescapable odds and not backing down against certain death, something that doesn’t really exist in modern games today. If nothing else, I would want to create a game that provided that exact opportunity, while wrapping the player in pure, unhinged action.
Nothing much to report, as I mentioned before I’m still trying to make up for lost time on other pressing matters right now. I’m hoping in about a week I’ll have something significant to report, as I’ve been tossing around a few ideas and working on some prototypes in my very limited spare time.
Over the weekend my daughter was kinda acting up and it was really hot outside, so I was looking for things to do to calm her down. I remembered in the past that she really dug watching me play the NES so I hooked it back up (not sure how it got unhooked…) and fired up a few games. She sat transfixed with Zelda but then she started rummaging through the carts (she plays with them like blocks) and picking stuff for me to play in increments of 1-5 minutes. I had to rush through some of my better titles until she finally settled on something she really liked: Karate Champ. If you’ve never had the distinct displeasure of playing this little gem, I wholeheartedly encourage you to continue down whatever path you’ve chosen in life that has kept you away from its existence. I don’t like to rail too much on games, knowing first hand how difficult they are to make. Especially with older titles, the hardware and technology restrictions were incredible and it’s a miracle that people were able to create some of the greatest games under such adverse conditions. However, very little of that applies to Karate Champ. There’s plenty of crappy games out there, but it’s torture being forced to settle on such a lackluster port when so many classic games are just within arm’s reach. However, The Taskmaster would have nothing of it, as my daughter made it clear that Karate Champ was the game to be played that afternoon.
Point.
