Indie Development: Self Made vs. Store Bought vs. Originality + a few updates on projects

In Zombie Sleepover, we recently hit a major road block, all our assets are store bought and we do not have an artist to change the textures or models but as the bought assets are nice and popular, a lot of developers are using them. It is fine for small things but if the sample levels from the content creators are used in games unaltered, they go a bit too far.

There is a huge package for medieval caves, dungeons and castles on the asset store and we found at least three games on steam and on other platforms with the same assets, even with whole level segments copied from the samples provided. I do not own the games, so I do not know if the content creators are credited enough and I do not know what the right way to credit store bought assets is frankly, shall I list all the packages I bought or not? Do I do that only if I do no alterations on the assets?

Store bought assets are fine for prototyping and if you are able to change them to make them fit your game better but using them unaltered in the end project seems kinda cheap but we were thinking of doing the same thing just because we do not have the artistic skills required to make out own 3d art or the textures like in those packages. As that stands, do we have a problem and need to hire an artist or is it ok to use those assets and make the game we want with generic assets but with our game play and level ideas? Will our game be less original as a result? Is it possible for a programmer and a sound designer to make a game on their own without going the "artistic minimalist route" or do crappy pixel art (not that all pixel art is bad, there are some really good pixel artists out there)?

Due to negative feedback on Zombie Sleepover and the amount of games with the same assets, we are changing the concept for the game to be something different (more on that later, as soon as we are done with the redesign). That will result in a change in our projected timeline, meaning the game has to redesigned a lot and we do not know how long that will take.

In the meantime, I am working on a few things in Dork Tales and hopefully get back to streaming on a more regular basis and keep it up this time (hopefully)

Still Alive and Kicking (or Shooting Zombies!)

Well, it has been a while (three month or so) but I have been trying to get my life back on track and Dork Tales is still on hiatus and the procedural terrain minecraft thingy is as well. Since Windborne basically stopped production I moved on to another game for my free time and it is another sandbox building game (who would have guessed, lol, like those too much) called Creativerse. Creativerse is a bit more like minecraft visually but not mechanically and I have about 400 hours sunk there since the end of August...

All that doesn't sound very productive and more like wasting time but it is not really because through the community of those two games I met someone who also wants to start out in game design and he has skills that I do not have and that are needed for indie development like an art and marketing background. We were playing a lot of coop and streamed that on his channel and we joked about starting our own company to make games. One day, he contacted me and introduced me to an old colleague of his who was willing to fund our first steps...

As we all played Skyrim and sandbox games, we want to make our our own mix of the two at some point but to start out with that would be a guaranteed failure! We have to start simpler and a lot smaller, so Loki, my coop buddy, came up with the idea to make a zombie fps. I am not a big fan of zombies in any kind of media but he convinced me and we started out working on a few level concepts and I started to write a simple shooter controller in Unity. With some assets bought from the store, we will be able to get a few levels set up in a short time and shoot some zombies. (Really like the asset store for Unity!)

Those are the little buggers!

They are cartoony and cute but can be quite deadly in masses as well:

The game is about shooting them and collecting coins to upgrade your weapons to shoot more of them... more or less ;P

The first part is nearly finished for testing, have to do the menu works next and do the weapon upgrades later. The plan is to have a working prototype (or vertical slice) up and running to test out between us and a few selected testers and with the feedback improve the game and then go on to Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight to get more eyes on it and a bit more funding to compensate us for the work done so far and finance the rest of development.

Development shot: Unity 4.6 with new UI system and a glimpse into one of the levels. 

How many level we want to have is not 100% clear yet but we are confident to produce quality levels in a short time frame to add a variety of different setups without going the procedural generated route .This approach gives us more control over the look and feels of every aspect of every level to include Easter eggs and different ways to finish a levels.

The types of levels we have planned at the moment are mazes, wave setups and boss arenas. There will be no open world and no crafting apart from upgrading weapons via coins. Coins can only be obtained in-game by killing zombies or collecting them in rooms, no option to buy them for real money in a store or stuff like that.

The game will be single player for Windows PC with the option to port it over to Mac and Linux. Multiplayer is not planned but could be an expansion later on with maps specifically designed for that. We aim for Steam as a platfom to get a lot of people to be able to see the game but will also publish it elsewhere like Desura or DRM free on Humble or GOG (long term goals, lol)

Dork Tales - Redesign in Progress

After a long hiatus, I started to redesign the existing levels of Dork Tales and get a better idea of the project's scope. Most levels have to be redone because the scale in the prototype was off. The reason for the scale differences were models from different sources and not enough focus on consistency.

The flow of the levels is not changed but there are a few more sketches for their layout that I brought over from my tablet and paper sources.

I did some blockouts for the start room and now I have to do some wall modelling and build up a few modular pieces that I can use in different parts of the world. The main look is sandstone that was smoothed out and has inlays and door frames carved into it. There should be no seams between wall pieces that have to be covered up by columns. All wall pieces are one sided so the the camera has no problem looking through them. For columns and other large objects that could block the player's view of his character, I might have to write a shader that makes them temporarily transparent.

The cat fish is being resized, rigged and optimized by my little brother who did some work modding Skyrim. He will also build me a base mesh for humanoid characters that can be used for character generation ingame and for most npcs though a plugin for Unity.

The UI is still based off Unity's old scripted GUI system and will be updated as soon as the new visual system is released.

Plans are that I will try to finish the redesign of the first two levels around next weekend (around the 8th) and after that move on to the next levels that are designed yet (as shown above).

Rare Signs of Life and Forays into Live Broadcasting

I am still alive and working on two little projects of my own. One of them is Dork Tales which is on hiatus at the moment because I prioritized another project.

The mysterious other project is a mix between Minecraft and a gathering focused real time strategy game. The terrain is procedural generated and at the moment still Minecraft blocky looking but I will try to understand the marching cube algorithm and use it for better terrain in the future. The rts part is not battle oriented but more focused on gathering resources and building bases. The whole concept is a bit rough at the moment but I will write up a game design document at a later stage and will work through that.

On another note, I am playing a lot of Windborne lately. Windborne is a "social sandbox game" by Hidden Path Entertainment, a Seattle based developer, where the player can manipulate the terrain and build whatever he or she likes. Another aspect is the interaction with npcs in the game but since it is still in active development and I am playing an alpha version of the game, the only interaction so far is exchanging crafted items for more crafting recipes. I like the game because it is like a better looking Minecraft without the survival aspects like hunger and monsters but with the exploration and gathering of resources needed for building. The developer are quite active in communicating with the community and taking suggestions on upcoming features. They even have a regular live stream where they show the game and sometimes play with the community.

The exposure to media like Youtube and Twitch has pushed me buy a new microphone (because the one I had was not working right) and I started streaming some game play of Windborne of my own on Twitch.tv/Apolyon6k. It is quite an interesting feeling talking to yourself on a mic in order to get your thoughts "on the air". Kinda like writing a blog for myself (;P) but with a chance of communication with an international audience with more exposure.

Hearing my recorded voice is really strange because I sound so different from my "inner voice", the voice I hear when speaking.

I am thinking about making more videos of games I have on my Steam library but never played before. Another thought I had was making a game development tutorial for YouTube, where I go over many aspects of the development process and maybe even make a full game from concept to gold status.

New Year, Indie Life and Unemployment

Wow, 2014 already...

The time flies by so fast.

Happy new year to everybody who might read this ;)

My work on "Dork Tales" is on kind of a hiatus at the moment because I am not good at motivating myself to work without clear goals and "pressure", meaning people depending on me or other factors that motivates me form the outside. I tried to find ways to keep me motivated but working at home with too many distractions (like YouTube and my Steam backlog) prevented me from really working much on the game at all. The indie life seems not really made for me after all. I have no problem working with other people in teams but apparently not on my own...

After getting my certificate in Game Programming in November, I'm still looking for a job in the games industry and live on unemployment money for the time being.

QTEs, Story and Dialogue Disconnect

Quick time events (QTEs) are sequences in games where the player has to click a button at a specific time to initiate an action. They started surfacing some years ago and there was an outcry against them and developers seemingly stopped using them for a time in PC games.

Then there was a developer which had the good idea to resurrect the point and click adventure genre on the global market, TellTale. They remade Sam and Max, made some (passable) Monkey Island games and a Back to the Future game series but then they made a terrible QTE ridden Jurassic Park game. The later was a huge flop but then they brought us The Walking Dead...

The Walking Dead is a really good story driven game where the player is glued to the screen because it the story is fantastic and you really feel part of it. But! The flip side to that is players the do not like frantic game play are somewhat pushed away because of timers in dialogues and QTEs. There is a part in the second episode that stopped me from playing because of a QTE that I could not complete...

They just brought out a new series called The Wolf Among Us. They used the same engine like in The Walking Dead which so far worked out OK. There is only one episode out by now.

There is a scene in The Wolf Among Us that made me furious and that reminded me of some gripes I had with Mass Effect and that is something I call "Dialogue Disconnect". What I mean by that is a short answer in a dialogue that can be interpreted in different ways and does not match the voice over at all. In Mass Effect there was time to read the short answers, choose one that might be what you want to say and then the voice over says something completely different. In The Wolf Among Us there are longer lines but shorter time to read because of timed dialogues. I had to replay a scene several times because dialogue options have story consequences and if you picked the wrong answer the later game might be changed in a way you not intended.

I understand the move by TellTale to appeal to a broader audience but I really do not like QTEs and I kind of hate the timed dialogues. I really loved the Sam and Max games and liked both the Monkey Island and Back to the Future episodes but I have a problem with the new engine because I am either to slow for it or am not playing with a controller. It is kind of sad that TellTale which I saw as a shining star on the adventure game world. Fortunately there are still developers that make more classic point and click adventure games.

Student Project V: Adventure Toolkit - Sample Game "finished"

The sample game for my adventure toolkit is finished to the point that was set with my tutor. There are two levels and some "loading scenes" around them. It is a classic point and click adventure game with five actions (walk, talk, pick up, use and look at), seven items that can be picked up and three more items that can be gained by combining items. It is called "Dork Tales".

I ended up modeling three different characters, the cat fish mentioned earlier, a frog in a fisherman's coat and hat as well as the main character, a normal human that looks a bit too much like me...

Frog with umbrella (front)

Frog with umbrella (side)

Frog with umbrella (perspective)

Cat Fish with textures (front)

Cat Fish with textures (perspective)

Cat Fish with Textures (side)

Main Char (front)

Main Char (perspective)

Main Char (side)

All models are still somewhat low poly and have simple textures but that is sufficient for the sample game.

Here are some ingame screen shots:

finished level in Editor (without any ui and old shader for the crystals)

That is the latest version (ingame screen shot with ui)

The resolution is 16 to 9 because the camera pans in the first level and in widescreen it was easier to navigate.

The game is not finished at all, it is just the introduction to a bigger game I will try to continue in my free time but inside the scope of the student project it is finished and will be graded as part of the whole project. The play time so far is about five to ten minutes depending on reading speed and puzzle solving skills. The puzzles are quite simple item combinations with some word play involved like binding two ribbons to a bow (tie) and combining that with an arrow sign results in bow and arrow...

I had more word play planned for the game but realized that most of it would involve an extended understanding of the english language which was not present with most of my testers, so I will add more later on and try to integrate other kinds of puzzle elements to balance the word play. The main character is a pen-and-paper role playing gamer but that is something that is not that dominant by now. I will also have to change that because it is his story and apart from a dice bag and some comment on interacting with it and the environment there is no mention of rpg at all, no cliches or no innuendo at all...

Student Project V: Adventure Toolkit - Progress on Sample Game

As the project processes, I have to work in different disciplines and one of them is 3D modelling in 3D Studio Max. I wanted to use freelancers for these parts but could not find people who had the time to help me out, so I have to do the character models on my own.

One of the models I work on is an obstacle in the early game which is a mix between a lion fish and a cat with the head more cat like. It lives in an underground pond and threatens to eat everything that comes near.

There is still a lot of work to be done on it, like the unwrap, the texturing and eventually the rigging (which I might skip for a time) but I am happy with it so far...

Have some renders:

As for the rest of the game, the mechanics are all finished if not polished and the first room is nearly complete, there are some environment models missing that a friend is still working on and when I get them, I will post some screen-shots of the level.

Student Project V: Adventure Toolkit - Progress and more

I made some progress with my Adventure Toolkit Unity3D add-on (ATK). The dialogue editor is feature complete and working as intended. I changed the look a bit and tried to integrate it more into Unity, I also changed the drawing code for the connection lines so that it displays the ids of parent and child nodes and omits lines that are going from the output of a node to the input of another node that is located left of the starting node. That change improved the visibility a lot and the added ids make the connections more readable.Another added feature is the comment on every dialogue line that can be used to describe emotions and other nodes needed for voice acting or other important notes for every single line.

more visibility by omitting some connection lines and better information on the links by added parents and child ids

The item editor is the next part of ATK that will be worked on and I intent to finish a first version by the end of the week. The item editor will include adding new items and combining items to other items. Unlike the dialogue lines, every item will be saved as a single file that can be opened in the editor and dragged into the scene for placement. There will be two different kinds of items, one that only exists as part of the UI and another that can be placed as mentioned. The second kind will get a mesh component and additional code for handling the pick-up process. There will be a base class that represents all the data needed for the item including an icon for visualisation. Compound items do not need a scene representation so the first kind will only be the base class.

The ingame UI will include a small inventory grid at the lower right of the screen where about ten items can be shown. If there are more items in the inventory, a scrollbar will be visible to scroll up and down through the whole inventory. On the left part of the lower screen there will be action icons for the available interaction types the game will have. There will be the classics like "walk", "talk", "pick up", "give", "look at / examine" and "use". If I include "push" and "pull" depends on the artists I get for my sample game (animations and characters). I will focus on Unity GUI but maybe add NGUI later on. My intention is that the user can use his own UI solution for conversations, inventory and ingame UI but there will be examples and a manual on how to integrate the parts into the mentioned UI solutions and ideas on integration into others.

On other news, the praxis test is finished and handed in. Since the last three weeks were consumed by it, progress on ATK is a bit slow and I am a bit behind my schedule, so I have to do some additional work on the weekend to make up for the lost time. But now, I have a prototype for a level editor that I can use as a basis for a "shippable" CookieX editor.

Student Project V: Adventure Tool Kit - Introduction, progress and more

It is the fifth semester and my last at the Games Academy and this time around I have not found enough other students to work on my idea (a point & click adventure in Unity) and the other projects were not what I wanted to do in my last semester. Apart from group projects we can also do solo projects in which we have a tutor who will supervise the challenge we set for ourselves.

So I really wanted to develop my own point & click adventure and now I am doing that alone. Unfortunately, without much outside help I am not capable to get my ideas in a game, so I decided to build a tool kit with which I might be able to make my ideas reality later on. The first part of the Adventure Tool Kit (ATK) is a dialogue editor with nodes for every line in the conversation.

My work started about three weeks ago and my first working prototype is ready:

Complex dialogue with multiple "hubs", I used the first dialogue of "Magic of Innocence" as an example node network.

Even though it might look ready yet, there are a lot of kinks I have to iron out before calling it "finished". As you can see in the screen shot complex networks with hubs can get kind of confusing to follow so far. There are some features missing that might be important but for that I have to meet with my tutor and show him the process and get his feedback.

The next part will be an item editor and after that I will implement a control system for mouse and touch interaction. The end goal will be a small game prototype were I used my tool kit for content creation.

If the tool kit works as I want it to I might even considering selling it on the Unity Asset Store. If I will provide it as a whole package or a set of components, is not clear yet.

Some artists I worked with have said that they might provide me with some art assets that I can use for my prototype, so it might not end up as crappy as I thought ;P