Work Done Last Week

Some progress on the new levels. More improvements on the gameplay, fixing a few bugs. I’ve also added a few improvements to the renderer, to make things a bit easier when capturing

The artist has designed a cool new theme for the company site. Now it’s matter of getting the rest of the structure in place so I can roll it out. We also think we have a good potential name for the game. We’ve starting to get some of our marketing plans into place.

Of course, we won’t let that overshadow progress on the game. First and foremost is getting the demo done.

Work Planned This Week

Still lots to do to get the gameplay demo ready. New levels, testing, polish. More tweaks to the gameplay and iteration.

Again, a bit more website work, but that’s all after-hours.

Related posts:

1. Dev Diary 32: The Month Ahead
2. Dev Diary 46: Twitter
3. Dev Diary 22: Road to the Demo

Work Done Last Week

All the new gameplay stuff is in, and we’ve started testing some new behaviors. There are still issues to iron out, but we’re getting a sense of what works and what doesn’t and how to improve it. We’ll be tweaking things a lot moving forward.

I made a little progress on the event system. There are some interesting challenges in making it flexible and exposing all the possibilities to the editor while still making it usable. I keep going back to the design board. I’ve got what seems to be a good solution planned out, but I need to make sure I have all the base covered.

I also did some miscellaneous administrative tasks that have to get done. Nothing exciting. Also no movement on the renderer side sadly.

Work Planned This Week

We’re gearing up towards another gameplay demo to try out on people. We’ve got IGF looming around the corner, and we’re also eager to get a demo ready show to publishers. Right now, our target for the end of the month is to get a bunch of good levels together which show a good mix of gameplay. We’ll put that in front of people and test the hell out of it.

I’m working on levels this week for the most part, with bits here and there on the code side. There’s also some web work being done, but that shouldn’t take up too much time.

Related posts:

1. Dev Diary 41: Artist Found
2. Dev Diary 52: Short Update
3. Dev Diary 31: Small Update

Who’s Tucker Max? He’s a writer and blogger who chronicles his drunken adventures and mishaps with incredible wit and humor. On a bet, Max put up a website 7 years ago to share his stories with his friends and the wider public. In the process he’s built up a fan base in the millions. He’s actually not just a writer, but a NY Times Best Selling Author (for the last three years).

Now he’s about to release a movie based on his stories (NSFW trailer here), penned by him and best-friend Nils Parker. And he’s currently touring – premiering the movie to students across the US in order to build up the buzz. His style of humor nay be brash, rude and offensive, but it’s also hilarious and honest. It won’t appeal to everyone, and I’m not trying to convince anyone. What I want to highlight is why this man inspires me: he lives life by his own rules, and refuses to bow down to preconceived notions of how things “should be done”.

He says what what he wants, and does what he believes. He refuses to sacrifice his artistic integrity nor the ownership of his art in order to achieve his goals. This is not anymore evident than in the path he took to get his movie done. He turned down multiple studio offers so he could retain creative control. He turned down upfront money in the belief that if he created a good piece of art, he would reap much bigger rewards. This, and the rest of the development process for the movie (from writing, pitching, casting and shooting to marketing, touring and the upcoming release) has all been meticulously documented on his entertaining production blog. It’s a unique and unrivaled look into the process.

More than anything, this one piece encompasses why he inspires me: how the changing internet-driven world is creating immense opportunities for art creators to take control of their future.

Max has also taught me the value of hard work. While his book and movie success may now look easy, it’s been anything but. He has offered an unrivaled behind the scenes look ever since his site went up. His regular participation on his forums has provided fans with a front row view on  his trials and tribulations over the years. I got to see all the failures and setbacks, the mistakes and the corrections, the analysis of what went wrong and why, the predictions and the payoffs. I saw all the hard work that is necessary to reach his level of success.

I could stop there, but it would be a shame to overlook how he has used his writing successes to help nurture and launch the careers of other writers. His company, Rudius Media, now supports a dozen independent and unique writers. Rudius Media seek out artists with an interesting story to tell, help them hone their craft and build an audience. Check out Philalawyer and his book deal. Or Love on Wheelz. Or The Bunny Blog. Or Ben Corman. Or ShrinkTalk.

It doesn’t take a leap to see what he will do if his movie is successful (and I predict it will be). He can then help artists in the movie medium the same way he has done for writers. He will be in a position to help them achieve the same sort of success, while helping them retain creative and financial control of their art.

I know all this comes across as hero worship, but I don’t care. I’m a big fan. I love his work. Mostly, I admire his honesty and how he pursues his goals without ever sacrificing his vision.

I used to fancy myself a writer. I gave up on that a while back, and have focused instead on where my talents lie: game development. I’m still learning every day, but I have used the lessons imparted to continually improve my skills. One of the quotes posted above my desk is from Tucker:

“Only failures think that natural ability is what separates them from success”.

Whenever I doubt my abilities to succeed, I look to those to refocus myself. I know I have some talents. Maybe not much but enough. I know that if I put in the work necessary to be great, I can achieve something tangible.

Related posts:

1. Dev Diary 53: Inspirations, Part 2
2. Milestone 3 and 4: The Demo
3. One Week In

Work Done Last Week

Some good work done this week.

The level editor received a few tweaks to make it easier to distinguish between overlaying tiles.

We also made significant progress on the gameplay side. The last missing core gameplay element is almost in place. It’s just not working right yet due to a multitude of bugs.

On Thursday, I met with CorePlay, another Munich indie dev. They are actually one of the bigger studios in Munich (with 12 employees), and have really nice digs right across from a massive beer garden. Check out the preview of their upcoming XBLA game: Ion Assault. The game is very visually intensive and is worth seeing on an HD display (check out the 720p video if you can).

Work Planned This Week

First, I’ll deal with all the lingering bugs in the new gameplay code. The goal is to get that polished and checked in so we can finally play with all the different elements.

I will also continue to improve on the event management system (this will be an on-going project).

Finally, once the gameplay elements are out of the way, I hope to turn my attention to a couple renderer improvements.

Related posts:

1. Dev Diary 31: Small Update
2. Dev Diary 43: Vacation Ahead
3. Quick Update

What’s up with Germany?

Germany is not exactly the most entrepreneur-friendly country. If I was geographically unrestrained, I would pick the US to startup. Germany suffers from high taxes, and high entry barriers, making it prohibitive to small entrepreneurs. This is a shame because Germany also has a very talented and highly educated work force, and Munich in particular appears to be a technology and media hub.

Why is the situation so challenging for small developers? I’m not exactly sure. I do see efforts to improve things, offer business services and funding, but the tide moves too slowly, and the country is still largely geared to protect and serve the interests of larger, classical established businesses.

So why create a start up in Germany? Well, it’s mainly a consequence of a personal situation, but originally, I wanted to set up an online company and figured I could operate out of anywhere.  That changed once I decided to focus on a console title. The company needs to be registered in Germany (in the place I currently live) in order to get access to development hardware. I could not operate a company out of the US and expect to keep the hardware here without breaking all sorts of binding agreements.

Limiting Liability

In US and UK, one can set up a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC in the US, Limited in the UK) in a few hours with a couple hundred bucks. In Germany, setting up a limited liability company (known as a GmbH) takes two to four weeks, roughly costs 1000+ Euros and requires 25,000 Euros in assets deposited into the company. As a one-man operation trying to minimize costs and risks, I am unable to pour 25,000 Euros into the company. The GmbH is simply not option for me until I either sign a publishing deal, or find a lot of funding.

Because of the prohibitive cost of setting up a GmbH, a surprising number of German entrepreneurs register a UK Limited company. EU laws require that the German governments treat this corporate form with the same legal rights and protection as its own GmbH. A Limited is required to keep an address in the UK (easily provided by a variety of service companies) and manage tax fillings there as well. Aside from that, it operates the same way as a GmbH, paying taxes on income and profit here in Germany.

Due to EU legal requirements and the competition offered by the Limited, the German government introduced a new legal form casually referred to as a mini-GmbH. This corporate form was targeted at small entrepreneurs (like myself) and introduced a more stream-lined and cheaper registration process (which still takes a few weeks and costs a 1,000 Euros). More importantly, it requires a minimum investment capital of only 1 Euro. Unfortunately, instead of truly creating a fresh, modern legal form, the government only managed to produce a bastardized version of the GmbH. The mini-GmbH is still unknown to a lot of big companies and is apparently even less respected than the UK Limited. Good job Germany.

So with all these options, what did I go with? Well, since none of those forms appeal to me, and each of them require more administrative costs than I’m willing to spend until I have to. So I’ve stuck with another form available here: a fully liable one-man company. It’s the equivalent of a single-proprietorship LLC in the US without any of the liability protections. I’m pretty much fully exposed. This isn’t much of a concern until I am signing contracts. In those situations I can either limit my liability in the contract or through liability insurance. Regardless, when I reach that stage, I will convert my company to a full GmbH. Until then, I am focused on producing a demo.

Feel free to post any questions you may have, and I’ll answer them as best I can. In the unlikely event this topic proves popular, I may even do a follow-up post!

Work Done Last Week

I’ve completely reworked my contact management system, stripping dependencies from the avatar. It’s now been able to support all areas of the game. I’ve begun the work on the event manager layer above it. I’ve also looked at upgrading box2d to the latest version. The boys over there have been working on some major improvements to their contact system (which my system is built on top), but I am concerned with spending too much time trying to upgrade to their bleeding edge; they’re not due for an official release for a few months.

I continue to add refine certain elements to the gameplay, but again the work in this area is not moving as quickly as I would like it to. With the new contact stuff in place, it should pick up.

Thursday I spent the afternoon in meetings. I got the opportunity to meet some local Munich developers, including the indie startup Reality Twist. I also had another productive business meeting, and I hope to have more information on that very soon.

Work Planned This Week

I’m continuing to focus on the event management system, and some more improvements to the editor (exposing the components).

There’s one major core gameplay feature missing, and my goal is to have it in place this week so we can go back to building some new test levels.

Related posts:

1. Dev Diary 26: Six Months Later
2. Dev Diary 50: Dyson Beta
3. Dev Diary 43: Vacation Ahead

Dyson is an ambient real-time strategy game with abstract visuals developed by Alex May and Rudolf Kremers. It is due to be released in early October, bug squashing permitting. Go help them hit that target.

Work Done Last Week

I spent a lot of time on administrative issues as expected. This took up most of my days and my mental energy. The side effect is that I didn’t make much progress on the game.

Code-wise, I made a few small improvements here and there, but nothing major. Some texture improvements, some tweaks to the gameplay. I’m itching to get back to it.

Work Planned This Week

Most of my focus this week will be on the gameplay and editor. I’m improving some core systems, like contact managing and filtering, and the exposure of components to in the editor. Up to now, my contact handling has been specifically geared for the player’s avatar, and it was awkward to extend that to all objects.

I’m rewriting a cleaner, global interface. After that, I will add some higher level logic to register various components and trigger appropriate events. This will lay the base for a robust event manager, which will in turn allow me to add more platformer elements (such as “when this button is hit by a solid object, open the door over there”).

I am dying to start showing off something. I’ve been delaying things for so long, and I know some of my readers must be getting bored and/or frustrated. I apologize for the repeated delays. I am doing my best to get the game ready to start showing off some of the work done.

I’ve got a little bit more to handle on the business side this week, but this won’t take up much of my focus. I’m looking forward to some real progress.

Related posts:

1. Milestone 3 Review
2. Dev Diary 51: Doing Business in Germany
3. Dev Diary 52: Short Update

Sunday night, while I was happily working away, my laptop crapped out. Like, completely crapped out. The graphics card just went berserk, the display become corrupt, then the whole thing locked up. It’s a one year old laptop, so such failure this early in its life should come as a surprise. Unfortunately it does not.

Last year, 2 days after I received my laptop, I came across this distressing post on Dell’s blog. My laptop (the M1330) was one of the affected systems. I spent a few days fretting over this issue, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. It had already been 21 days since my laptop had been ordered (so I couldn’t return it), and there was a chance it wouldn’t fail after all. And frankly, it’s a lovely piece of machinery (epic nVidia failure aside). I decided to not worry about the problem until it affected me.

Well, it’s here now, and it couldn’t have come at the worse time. I had a business meeting today, and I needed my laptop to demo some work. Luckily, the people I met with were cool; they let me setup on their machines, and everything went well. Still, the epic failure in quality control by nVidia is ridiculous. The entire production line for that generation of laptop chips suffers from the same flaw. I’ve seen class action suits happen for a less.

I will withhold judgment on Dell until I see how they handle my laptop.

Work Done Last Week

The checkpoint system is now working, which is kinda cool. All dynamic objects are saved out and reset correctly, with no trace of any memory leaks. Some of the more complex logic (like cycling through multiple checkpoints) is not yet complete, but the core system is in place, and we will continue to improve on it.

I tracked down a few bugs in the camera system and the editor which had been adversely affecting the artist’s work.

I also wrapped up my 4-week contract on Friday, so my focus is now fully back on the game

Work Planned This Week

Gameplay improvements and more test levels.

I’m traveling to the UK on Wednesday for a wedding, to see old friends and to work my connections. I was gonna take my laptop with me, but, well, it’s as useful as a brick right now.

Related posts:

1. Dev Diary 47: Minor Update
2. Dev Diary 5: Delayed Holiday
3. Dev Diary 4: Working Environment

Work Done Last Week

Work slowed down during the week, but I got a few solid coding sessions in on the week-end. I mostly focused my energy on the checkpoint system. It is not complete yet, but I’m nearly there.

I spent some time fixing up a few bugs and minor annoyances in the editor, and I continued to make further improvements to the camera. We are trying to find a sensible tracking system which would let us avoid having to set up manual camera shots in the editor (and me having to add support for this). The key issue is to make sure the player always knows where he has to go. We don’t want ever want to player to have to take blind jumps or leaps of faith. I can’t stand when other games do that. It seems lazy to me. I want the player’s to be able to solve the problems using information available to them on-screen, not take a 50/50 shot that may force them to restart the level.

Work Planned This Week

I will pretty much continue on the same tasks as last week: on the checkpoint system, the gameplay change, and prototyping some new levels.

Related posts:

1. Dev Diary 46: Twitter
2. Dev Diary 42: Teamwork
3. Dev Diary 36: The Road to PAX – Part 1

On a more practical level, it is a great tool for marketing, raising product awareness, and interacting directly with your customers, fans or people with shared interests. And I’m still only scratching the surface. It’s another channel for developers (indie or not) to easily and effectively interact with their fan base. It’s another form of permissive marketing. I plan to make good use of it.

Work Done Last Week

I added another gameplay action. We changed how some of the basic actions affect your “health”. Basically, each major action will cost the player a certain amount of resources. This leads to a much more structured approach to the gameplay, and we can now build carefully balanced puzzles.

I fixed that terribly annoying bug (after hours of searching). At least I know that the majority of my simulation code is solid. I also did some more minor gameplay tweaks, but nothing major. We’re experimenting with user-controlled camera zoom.

After a couple weeks of investigation, I’ve decided to hold off on the Joomla stuff for the new site, and just use Wordpress (like the current site). I’m familiar with Wordpress, and I was going to integrate it with Joomla anyways. The integration looks like a pain in the ass. Plus, how complex is my site really going to be. I don’t know why I tend to complicate my life sometimes. If Wordpress is good enough for a company like Doublesix, it will be fine for us. It’s served me well up to now.

Work Planned This Week

We are adding a checkpoint system to the game/editor. We need this for a couple reasons. The game itself is going to require some trial and error on the part of the user. Whichever way we break down the levels, they will still be a set of puzzles. Rather than force the player to restart the level each time he fails, we want a mechanism that allows the player to quickly undo his last set of actions and re-attempt the challenge. We don’t want the trial-and-error to be frustrating. Now, we’re not going to have a complex time-rewinding system like Braid or Prince of Persia, but we will put in place a system to quickly jump back through different saved states with (hopefully) no loading.

We will also benefit from this system when setting up levels. It is inconvenient to have to traverse the entire level each time we want to test a small change in a section.

Following from the above gameplay change, we’ve now settled on a few basic actions for the game, and we only have one of those still left to implement: picking up and carrying objects. If the checkpoint work doesn’t run too long, we will get started on this last core action this week. Once that’s in place, we can begin to really start building the first levels of the game.

Related posts:

1. Dev Diary 34: Crunch Time?
2. Dev Diary 47: Minor Update
3. Dev Diary 33: Keeping it Simple

The idea of core scenarios is to create unique and isolated elements of fun gameplay. An example of this would be using your super jump to get over a wall you would not be able to clear using your normal jump ability. Or picking up an object and throwing it a target.

So, one of the processes for creating a good levels is to try out many different scenario types.  You then filter out the bad ones, and iterate on the good ones and create a few more. Eventually, you will end up with a key set of unique fun scenarios. Once you have that, it’s easy to mix and match different scenarios to create a wide variety of levels. Most games are built on that concept. Mario, for example combines running, jumping, hitting blocks, avoiding enemies and stomping enemies as core ideas, and they build incredibly rich and fun levels around these concepts.

So that’s what we’re currently focusing on. Trying out different scenario ideas and keeping the ones that work.

On another note, I found out that we didn’t get into PAX 10. I didn’t receive an email from them, but I managed to work it out when the list was announced and our game wasn’t in there. I’m expecting to find out about IndieCade soon.

Work Done Last Week

Some more gameplay improvements, particular in the shooting and jumping abilities.

Undo/Redo functionality for creation and deleting of objects: On the first “undo support” pass a few weeks back, I only added support for transforms and scale, as I knew the creation/deletion was a bit trickier. It took a bit of time, but I came out with a better codebase then when I started, fixing a bunch of bugs in the process, and cleaning up a lot of code. The major hold up was how to integrate it with the component system. That’s done now, and I’m happy with the result. Adding support for new components will continue to be very easy.

Improvements to the editor, and how we save the state of different objects: We have some very dynamic elements, and it is a pain to make changes to the level without upsetting the setup of these dynamic elements. So I have split apart how the different aspects of the scene are saved. It is now easy to store and remember the state of active objects, and to edit passive scenery without destroying the rest of your work.

More work on the new site, mainly familiarizing myself with Joomla. Nothing shockingly new to report.

Work Planned This Week

More gameplay experiments, more scenarios, and more testing. Pretty much iterating on these three points all week.

Oh and I’ve been trying to track down a really annoying memory leak in the physics simulation. I’m already 3 days (well, evenings) into trying to track this bug down. It looks like an epic bug already. And it’s in the most complex part of my code, the core of the simulation. Fun times ahead.

Related posts:

1. Dev Diary 52: Short Update
2. Dev Diary 44: Paying The Bills
3. Dev Diary 28: Simplicity in Design