My long awaited Bastion OST arrived this morning. One of my favorite OSTs this year, right up there with Portal 2. You know it’s good when just listening to the music makes you feel like you’re playing the game again. Thank you Darren Korb for being the talented beast of a composer that you are.
I’ve been trying to keep busy for the past two weeks, getting Project JAP ready for Kickstarter, so I haven’t posted on the site much during that time. But after what transpired only a few hours ago, I just had to put work on hold and write this post.
I woke up at around 12 noon as usual, and went ahead with my everyday routine of eating lunch while watching my shows. I checked my emails, composed replies in my head and jotted down some ideas I had for the game as well.
I was revving up to start working on the game, when I checked my Twitter to some distressing news – Steve Jobs has died. Ever since the former CEO stepped down from his role, it has been pointing out how everybody spoke of him as if he was dead, so naturally at first I thought the news was a play on that. However, as I continued to scroll down through my feed, goosebumps started to form and I quickly logged into the Apple website. I was greeted with the following image:
My reaction was rational to begin with. I knew he was terribly sick, and it was really just about time. But as I typed down words on my Twitter to acknowledge the passing of this man, my eyes started to well up with tears, and next thing I know those tears were slowly trickling down my cheeks.
I stared at the image for a few straight minutes, then I just had to take a shower as if to wash the sadness away.
I have never met Steve Jobs, nor do I hold any direct or even indirect connection to him. In fact, Steve Jobs only entered my radar when I first hear his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford; pretty late considering that Jobs has been in headlines for decades. Like many, what made a lasting impression on me was his last words in that speech – “Stay hungry. Stay foolish”.
Those words resonated with me with such intensity that I have kept those words in my prayers every Sunday at church, for the last 5 years. It was ritualistic. I couldn’t start my week without speaking those words. No matter how much I doubted myself, no matter how hopeless I drudged through life at that moment, those words always comforted me and always rang true. “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
The funny this is that those words didn’t come from Steve Jobs himself. Jobs simply lifted them from some magazine he read back in the 70′s. But rather than discrediting his genius, I think this fact only affirms it.
I have never really considered Steve Jobs a genius like Einstein or Mozart. His genius was not that he was ahead of the times, rather his genius was that he was of the times. He had this uncanny instinct to know what people wanted, what people needed and what people could understand, not tomorrow, but now. People criticize Apple for over simplifying things, and I agree with them to a certain extent, but if we just take a moment to step back we’ll see that that’s exactly why Apple is so successful. They don’t try to complicate things and shove so many products and so many choices in our faces. Much like Steve Jobs they give us what we need, when we need it, and man did I need that Stanford speech back then.
I have heard so many horror stories about Steve Jobs that paint this picture of him as this monster perfectionist that doesn’t like following rules and rebels against the status quo. The way I see Jobs though is that he’s a man of great integrity. He knows what is correct and fights for it, no matter the adversity and even if there’s an easy way out. This quality shines through in everything he does, and the products his company produces. Mind you, integrity does not mean perfect, but when you have that much integrity you constantly want to improve and constantly strive to be perfect. I think nobody will argue that Apple has ever really disappointed in its products for the past few years. Sure there have been a lot of complaints, some misses here and there, but it really is so easy to point out the flaws when you’re working with product that is close to impecable.
I’m 29 right now, and that’s the age around which Jobs and Woz created the Macintosh. It’s kind of poetic that I’m starting my journey into indie game development at this age, or perhaps I’m just forcing a connection. Forcing or not, I guarantee that I’m not where I am right now by accident. A lot of it has to do with what one man’s life has taught me. He was by no means perfect, but because he constantly strived to be, he became pretty damn close. I can only hope that I conduct my life with as much integrity and determination as he did. My only regret is that I couldn’t tell him these words myself:
From the very bottom of my heart, thank you Steve.
Another video update for Project JAP those interested.
In this video, I show the new Deck Builder interface, some new UI elements on the play screen and to top it all off, a menu to switch between the two aforementioned screens.
Most everything about the video is still largely a WIP, so treat what you see as a proof of concept for now. I want to make sure I can get stuff actually functioning before even attempting to finalize anything.
Before I forget, credit goes to Darren Korb for the music I used at the beginning. The piece is called “Spike in a Rail” and it’s one of the tracks in the awesome Bastion OST.
Enjoy the video.
As perhaps some of you know, a few months ago I quit my job in order to pursue what is, in my opinion, the holy grail of any would-be video game designer, artist and programmer – releasing my very own independent video game.
Perhaps in the hope to dissuade me from doing something I might regret, people told me that I really had a talent for advertising and have a bright career ahead of me in it. Their praise fell on deaf ears however as I pushed through with my plans. Nobody has been on my case ever since I left my day job, but I realize that deep inside of them this move of mine makes little to no sense.
Some people are born to do something. They have a natural talent that allows them to do what they do. Some on the other hand are just naturally hard working. These people tend to grown into what they are doing and be the best at it. In my case, talent nor diligence seems to come first. Perhaps it’s the gamer in me that seeks a very controlled and understandable experience, because the first thing I consider when doing something is whether or not that something makes sense to me or not. Talent and hard work then come after this rationalization.
What exactly do I mean by this? Well, how about I start off answering that question by showing you this.
What you’re looking at is a limited edition Shadow’s of the Damned OST signed by none other than Akira Yamaoka himself. (Yamaoka-san being most famous for his work on the Silent Hill games.)
To give you a quick backgrounder, Grasshopper Manufacture, developer of Shadow’s of the Damned, offered a limited run of 1,000 copies of the game’s OST, the first 300 of which would be signed by the game’s composer. I caught the news a little late, and got one of the last 100 pieces. With nothing to lose, I sent a little note to the developer asking if they can have my copy signed anyway.
I didn’t beg or anything. In fact, I said nothing fancy. Here’s the complete quote: “I know I missed out on the first 300 order, but if it as at all possible to have my copy signed by Yamaoka-san, I would be very very grateful. Cheers for the amazing work!” (I think it was the extra “very” that made an impression.)
I really didn’t expect anything when I finally got the CD this morning, but lo and behold, I got a signed copy. Of course, later on I would discover that Grasshopper announced that all international orders of the OST would be signed anyway, but that’s really missing the point I’m trying to make.
My point comes in two parts, the first of which is that the video game industry is full of extremely talented people, professionals with skill sets that blow my mind everytime I think about it. Games, in my opinion, are the most complex form of media out there. Crafting them takes the skills of an artist, a writer, a programmer, and a composer/sound designer at the very least. More ambitious projects would have a director involved, an editor, a producer, a tester, etc. etc. Despite the host of skills needed to make a single game, we hear people making games in groups of two or even individually all the time.Yet these people, with so much talent that they can have 5 jobs in another industry without breaking a sweat – this is the second part of my point – are the most grounded and humble people I can think of. Mixing extreme talent with humility is a very potent combination. You think these people are good now? Wait another few months and see how much better they get.
Granted, there are of course douchebag developers out there, but like all industries, even the video game industry isn’t perfect. But I will say that you’ll be surprised by how easily you can reach out to professionals, even famous professionals in the video game industry in particular, because they do stay very grounded and stay very true to their roots. The Shadows of the Damned OST is proof of this.
I’m a huge Jason Mraz fan, a huge George Lucas fan, but I’ll be breaking a hip trying to run after an autographed copy of anything from those two. Of course these people are way more famous than most people in the gaming industry could ever hope to be, but that’s exactly what I love about the industry. The environment itself allows professionals to grow without it going to their heads. These people are in the business not because of anything else other than because it’s what they love doing. It’s an industry run by the passion of very talented people who aren’t looking for a big pay day. The video game industry is run by people who would sign 700 more copies of an OST simply because they were humble enough to be touched by regular fans like me who really wanted to show their support for their product.
Call me a fanboy or whatever, but I would want nothing more than to be part of that culture, part of a lifestyle fueled by things we love and encourages us to be honest to ourselves and others.
So to those who ask me why I need to be in the video game industry, I say to you, “Why wouldn’t I? It just makes sense.”
This post is dedicated to the passionate people in the video game industry, with special mention to Grasshopper Manufacture and the man himself Akira Yamaoka.
To make up for a missed post yesterday, I decided to have the post today in video form and show you guys the prototype for Project JAP.
Before anything else though, I’d like to thank Becky for her amazing Nintendo fanart which I used as stand-ins for the cards in the game. (Hope she doesn’t mind me using them temporarily). Check out more of her work at http://demiurgic.tumblr.com/ and http://beyx.deviantart.com/.
With that, let’s get on with the video.
It’s day four on the new game, and MAN time flies when you’re programming.
As you can tell from the headline, I’ve nicknamed this game Project JAP for now. Saying the actual title might give away too much and spoil things, so let’s reserve that for a later time.
Got more done today than the game allows me to brag about. Mostly it’s been cleaning things up, streamlining things here and there and getting rid of hardcoded stuff. Also updated a lot of my methods to make them more utile. Example, I had a method to draw the initial hands previously, now I simply have a method to draw a card, which is then looped several times depending on how many cards need to be drawn. Little things like that that don’t really show in the game, but will mean less headaches for me moving forward.
The game is definitely more functional now, but with significantly less lines of code from what I can see, so that’s a good thing.
Not much changed in terms of the graphics, but I am playing around with the layout to make it more intuitive for the player, and I’ve partially populated the card Sprites with its different attributes, all done procedurally of course.
Granted, there are numbers everywhere and it all looks very complicated. But, everything will make sense eventually.
Tomorrow, I hope to make the game look more presentable and maybe borrow some Magic Cards just to spruce things up a bit and make it a little more exciting to work on the game. Motivation is very important after all.
So the headline for this post is actually out of context, but do forgive me as it’s already 3am in the morning and my brain is floaty from all the programming. While we’re on the topic, programming = wildly addictive when you know what you’re doing. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but if you’re a puzzle game nut like I am, especially the Professor Layton type, programming is that but 100x more fun, not to mention gratifying. Long story short, seeing your game functioning is immensely satisfying.
Anyway, back to topic. Essentially what I wanted to convey in the headline is that the third day of developing this new game is done, and it was very productive. Everything I set out to do today was essentially accomplished, and what I have in my iPhone is a working prototype of my game. Forgive my French but I’m FU***** AMAZING! Not to brag or anything, but this is pretty sweet. Coming from sloth-like progress with Pressed for Time to ending up completing my prototype for the new game in less than half the time I allotted for it (I said I’d give it a shot for a week) that’s pretty crazy.
Crazier still is that fact that after play testing the game a little bit, it’s actually much deeper a game than I originally anticipated. Deep, mind you, is not the same as saying complicated. Trust me, the mechanics of the game cannot be any simpler, but the things that could happen per round is simple mind boggling. To think that I’ve only created 6 basic cards to player around with. Imagine what adding a few hundred would do.
Before I get too ahead of myself, I will need to improve the interface of the game such that I don’t need to read what’s happening through the console. Sure, I have the mana pool and life counters in place, but I want to be able to play test the game properly solely on my device. So I’ll be reviewing my more complicated code tomorrow, and add more in-screen functionality starting tomorrow.
Ok, looks like Pressed For Time needs to wait for now. This more mindless “grid” of a game seems more suited as a first endeavor in game development for the likes of me. Thanks for all your support guys! Cheers!
PS
No screens today as I didn’t update any graphics. I’ll work on that too tomorrow.
As promised, I did get some basic UI and functionality done for the game. Here’s the screen:
Recognize the stand-in graphics? Yup, Little Mac from Punch Out – the Wii version to be more specific. Just wanted some graphics included lest it look too boring.
So what functionalities are there exactly?
So it’s been an interesting first day of development for the new game. I started off learning something completely new, and that was working with external XML data in cocos2D. I figured that since this game is going to be a card game, it would be great if I could edit the library of cards I have externally. Not sure how useful this will be in the future, but it just seemed like a natural thing to learn this early on, instead of having to fit the feature in on a later date
Ray Wenderlich has an excellent tutorial on the topic, and I basically did that once, then went ahead and modified the code to fit my needs. It was pretty straightforward for the most part, but my break from coding certainly showed. Had to pause more than a few times to figure out why certain things weren’t working as I intended them to. Also didn’t help that my internet suddenly cut off in the middle of work, and I was having provisioning problems on my iPhone. For those who don’t understand that, I basically couldn’t play my game on my iPhone. I needed to log into the iOS Provisioning Portal of Apple to create and download a new provisioning profile before I could actually test anything but the damn internet suddenly decided to take a vacation. So that robbed me of about 2 hours of work time. I thought about playing Diablo to burn the time, but Diablo 2 in Hell difficulty is not fun right now. Ugh.
Anyway, pretty good progress in my opinion. I’ve been able to load the XML data and use them in the game. Been able to separate the Player’s Hand and Deck from each other, and I also added a graveyard as well. Here’s a little screen shot of the console to show my progress.
Just pay attention to the parts that start with “Hand” and “Deck”, those are the important bits. So just code for now. Not that exciting of course, but pretty good progress for the first day really. If I keep this up for the week, I’ll have a playable prototype that will be infinitely more playable than Pressed for Time was even after a couple of months of development. That’s the great thing about card games, the basic mechanics are quite easy to program, but as I add more features and more cards, and especially online multiplayer, that’s when things become much more difficult. But I’ll cross those bridges when I reach them.
Right now, next steps would be to have UI for the cards, then have a computer AI to fight against and all that. Should be a pretty fun week.
James Cameron was very open when talking about the history of Avatar. He had written the script of the movie over a decade before the film even started shooting. According to Wikipedia, “Filming was supposed to take place after the completion of Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic, for a planned release in 1999,[13] but according to Cameron, the necessary technology was not yet available to achieve his vision of the film.”
I sort of find myself in the same situation with Pressed for Time. I was writing some monologue/dialogue for the game today, and I noticed that I’ve been rewriting the same lines over and over again. It’s definitely getting closer to what I want, but the progress just seems so slow, same with the art as you saw. I guess the problem really isn’t the game, but perhaps my lack of skill and experience.
Let me explain further. Pressed for Time started as a “just go for it” game project. I had some fun ideas, and I decided to pursue them. It was the simplest game in my catalogue of game ideas then, so I was confident that I could deliver on it. That was the first week of June. It’s the first week of September now, and the game has gotten much more complicated, not mechanically, but narratively. The vision I have for the game is something akin to Heavy Rain, Portal, Half-Life and the like. Games that transcended their mechanics with amazing characters and story.
Games are not known for their narrative, and Pressed for Time has the potential to be one of the better ones in that respect. However, much like Cameron, I’m feeling that the time isn’t quite right yet. But unlike Cameron, it’s not because technology needs to catch up with my game’s vision, it’s more like I need to mature more as a developer if I truly want to realize what Pressed for Time can be.
Pressed for Time is no longer the simple game it was a few months ago. It has a life of its own. I’ve injected it with so much of myself in the process of developing it, that I’m frightened of doing a mediocre job of realizing it. I’d never forgive myself if I release this game and it’s not perfect. The mechanics might be very simple, but the narrative demands a master’s touch and I’m no master.
Don’t get me wrong, Pressed for Time continues development, however I’ve decided to develop a “simpler” game in parallel just so that when I reach a wall with one game, I have another one to fall back and work on.
So the plan is to work on this other game I have in mind for the next week, exclusively and see how that works out. If there’s not much progress, then I go back to Pressed for Time full time. If progress is acceptable, then I work on both in parallel. If progress is really good though (like a prototype by the end of the week) then I’ll be prioritizing this other game, and promote Pressed for Time to my my list of dream game projects.
Interestingly enough, I did conduct an informal survey over Twitter earlier, asking people whether first time indie developers should make games heavy on narrative or mechanics. I guess it wasn’t surprising to find that mechanics came up on top in the end. As @gl33mer elegantly put it, “don’t forget it’s a game”.
More thanks to the following for their invaluable insights: @azamsharp, @shauninman, @javii, @MattRix, @gl33mer, DIYGamer and @DannyTRS. I’d urge you to follow these fine people.
Cheers everyone! Let more adventures begin!