Category: Game Development

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Game Development Games Geek / Technical

I Knew Something Was Wrong With Wind Waker!

I love the Zelda series, like most people. I even liked Zelda II: The Adventures of Link, but it could be because I bought the game with my own money back when I was too young to get a job.

So when I played Wind Waker for the Gamecube, I was a bit put off. After all, I liked Ocarina of Time and expected that the Gamecube version would be very similar. And I’m not complaining about the graphics like a lot of people did when it was first revealed. In fact, I think they look great.

I’m complaining because things aren’t as obvious as I think they should be. Now, I’ve played the original, The Legend of Zelda for the NES, and I remember being confused as to where I was expected to go. I only knew about things because friends of mine had already been there. I played a significant portion of the game on my own, but the experience was kind of ruined for me. And the game never told you where to go really (or if it did, I was too young to understand it), so it was entirely possible to discover the entrance to Level 4 before finding Level 2. But I played through A Link to the Past for the SNES and Link’s Awakening for Game Boy and loved them. Ocarina of Time for the N64 was also an incredibly great experience for me. Everything flowed in these games. I never felt like something was missing or that I was fighting against the game’s programming.

So what happened with Wind Waker? Don’t get me wrong. I think it is fun to play…most of the time. Fighting is incredibly fun, and the puzzles are a staple in Zelda games. But as I go through the game, I periodically find parts of the game that do not seem well done or polished up.

For instance, after you manage to destroy the boulder and allow the spring to flow, you can swim across to the other side. What you see is the entrance to a cavern, but there is lava preventing you from going inside. I see that there are some Bomb Flowers, so I think that maybe I have to throw them at the statues. So I tried. I threw the bombs at the statues. I threw them into the walls. I threw them into the lava. I tried to throw them across the lava. Nothing. And after some time, I decided to give up and stop playing that day.

When I came back to it, I still struggled. Then I threw a bomb at a statue, and apparently it hit it just right, because then it fell over! I later found out that you were supposed to hit the bomb on top of the pot it is holding, but I had thrown it there before, or so I had thought. Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and Flower Bombs (losing hearts because you didn’t stand far enough away is proof), and yet these statues needed precision hits?

There were other inconsistencies and frustrations that I can’t remember at the moment, but the point is that I kept feeling like Wind Waker was not developed with the same care as previous games in the series. While some parts of it were really well done, other parts were sources of confusion and frustration. I still don’t understand the Flower Bomb precision thing.

And then I find that Shigeru Miyamoto admits it. Later parts of the game were being made while working against the clock, with features being approved without enthusiasm. I am kind of shocked because I would think that you would give a person such as Miyamoto as much time as he feels necessary to make the game great.

I still like Wind Waker, but it is pretty sad to find out that the game was made in a way that didn’t even please the creator.

Categories
Game Development Games Geek / Technical

Escapist Magazine

A friend of mine recently emailed me to ask if I had heard about The Escapist, the new weekly magazine about video games and gaming culture. I hadn’t, even though it was covered at some blogs and gaming news sites…and Slashdot, the productivity killer which I’ve successfully been able to avoid for some time. Apparently this magazine is not just a new competitor for PC Gamer or Electronic Gaming Monthly. From the first issue’s letter from the editor:

The Escapist is an ambitious magazine, written, edited and styled with a fresh approach to communicating with gamers. We are the complement to the current gaming journalistic efforts. While the others give you up-to-the-second news coverage, we give you broad looks at news over time, discussing trends and proffering glimpses into the future. While the others provide previews and reviews of the next big thing, we give you a taste of the Cinderella game that might just steal the spotlight, plus a look at why. And while others ask developers about their latest projects, we delve into the masterminds’ thoughts and histories to find out what makes them tick.

So it is meant to be a magazine for mature gamers who don’t want hype and juvenile humor to litter their gaming literature. It’s for people who want to read about game culture instead of just news on the latest titles.

First impressions: I like it.

The magazine is free online (there are syndication feeds available), and there is a high quality PDF version to let you print out the magazine yourself if you choose to do so. I think I would like to actually order a subscription through the mail, but they don’t seem to offer that option yet. Also, their website apparently doesn’t work too great with Firefox if you increase the font size, and IE doesn’t let you change it at all. They hard coded the text to match the images, so the small font size isn’t fun to read, and increasing it makes it difficult since it will cover or get covered by other elements on the page. They tried to copy the print magazine (which doesn’t really exist!) look and feel onto their website, and that just doesn’t work well. Luckily, XFree86 (I use Debian so I don’t have X.org yet) lets me zoom in on the screen, but it is a silly thing to require this workaround.

Still, the content is good. I may not agree with the opinion of everyone who writes for it. For example, I don’t think “gamer” refers only to people who play games exclusive to everything else, and I don’t think that definition is as commonly understood to be the case, as claimed by one author. I also don’t think that games should be considered “crack-like” and “addictive”, as the article on Greg Gorden described them. But it is refreshing to read an entire magazine that discusses the topics in a mature manner that I’ve generally found exclusive to blogs.

It’s also quite informative, as Max Steele’s article on mobile gaming in the 2nd issue shows. Being American and fairly isolated from international news in general, I didn’t know that the N-Gage had sold so well in the rest of the world, but Steele’s article touched on that platform while talking about the upcoming Mobile Platform Wars between Sony, Nintendo, and Nokia. Until then, I didn’t even know Nokia was involved! And the article also described who each company is targeting. I don’t know if Nintendo will end up the clear winner and I don’t know if I agree that Sony’s system will be disgarded as just more-of-the-same-but-smaller. I also don’t know if anyone likes reading an author talk about himself in the third person. But it was definitely a high quality article that made good arguments. A different article in the same issue focused on that video feature for the PSP while another complained about the loooooong load times for it, so there was plenty of depth and breadth to the magazine.

The Escapist is definitely staying in my RSS feeds, although I wish that the website version wouldn’t be so badly “ported” from the PDF. At the very least make the text larger. Ideally, the web version should be made for the web.

Categories
Game Development Games Marketing/Business

The Rising Cost of Making Games

With the newest game consoles arriving soon, there has been a lot of talk about the cost of making games. EA is insisting that next generation games will cost $30 million to develop. Outrageous! And then Will Wright comes along with Spore and describes a way to make huge games without spending money on creating your own content. I had covered Spore previously. Of course, not all games can be made in this way, and as I’ve read elsewhere, the use of HDTV by game consoles will mean that games will need better art. Blocky and polygonal models can’t hide behind low resolutions anymore. So the idea is that costs will rise for mainstream game development. I think it will be natural for most people to expect indie game development to follow in kind. Graphics on the par of Super NES won’t be good enough, and I don’t think it is good enough today either. Of course, I’m just guessing, so feel free to slap me down.

The Gamasutra interview with Epic’s Mark Rein on the topic of middleware solutions shows that Rein doesn’t think costs will rise that much. Since EA acquired Renderware, companies that compete with EA are looking to other middleware companies, so Epic’s tools have found a market. When asked about the rising costs of game development:

I guess one of the biggest things we’ve seen that’s bothered us lately is big companies like EA going and tossing out “it’s going to take $30 million to make a next-gen game” and we just don’t see that. I mean we’re making our next-gen games for 25-50% more than our previous generation games, and when we hear those kinds of numbers, we think that’s just bravado, that’s just them trying to scare their competitors out of the marketplace.

We don’t subscribe to that, we don’t think it has to be ridiculously expensive to make next-generation games, and we’ve done a lot of work – like our visual scripting system is a perfect example – in making our tools really optimized so that artists and designers can get the most out of the engine without having to involve a huge amount of programmer resources.

My favorite part was the last question. Apparently Activision and THQ have announced that their games will cost $10 more than before. Rein basically pointed out that the market will likely not allow games to cost that much more. He said there would be an increase in piracy and people revolting.

I think we spend enough money on games, and I just don’t think that’s reasonable. I think what you need to do is make better games, take your time, do them right, and sell more! I don’t think we’re ever going to have 20 million selling games, until we bring the cost of those games down, not up. I think the way to build the market is to decrease the cost of the games, not increase the cost of the games.

Make better games instead of making more expensive games? Who’d have thunk it?! B-) How does all of this talk relate to indie games? I think that making better games, taking your time, doing it right will allow you to sell more. Oh, and effective marketing to make sure that people know about your better and rightly made game in the first place.

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Game Development

Simple Game Project for August: Oracle’s Eye

I am going to use this post to describe a game design I’ve been working on for about a week. I’ve given this project the codename Oracle’s Eye. Just because, really.

Why a codename? After working on FuseGB for June’s Game in a Day, I realized that sometimes the game doesn’t end up the way you planned. The game in the end didn’t have anything to do with Fusion, so the name was weird. Unfortunately, my project folder and Subversion repository was already using the name, and I didn’t want to mess around with it. If I use a codename, however, I can change the name of the actual game and not worry about how it will affect my development environment. The real name only matters when I publish it.

Anyway, Oracle’s Eye won’t be anything special. I am purposely trying to design a small game that can be completed within a month. In fact, it may be that what I’ve come up with will have to be reduced in scope even further. I need more experience and shouldn’t stop just because the game might not be very original or fun. I can concentrate on innovation and fun when I know more about how to make a game.

Basically, I am thinking about making a game like The Adventures of Lolo and Boxxel. The player will have to move about the screen, pushing objects around, and trying to get a Ball into the exit. Some objects are moveable, some are destroyable, and others can be activated.

The main object will be a Ball. The Ball will sit until acted upon. Then it will continue until redirected or stopped by a wall. To make the Ball move, the player can “kick” it by walking into it. A Ball can also be shot out of a cannon if the player walks into it to activate it.

To maneuver the Ball, the player can manipulate different objects in the level.

Some basic objects I plan to have in the game:

  • PIPES can redirect balls (wow, does this look bad)
  • GRINDERS can split ball into multiple balls and shoot them in multiple directions
  • WALLS can act as angled banks to bounce balls
  • PITS will steal balls
  • ENEMIES will fire upon player along straight lines and can be destroyed by balls
  • WARPS will transport an object to another spot
  • ARROW blocks will force objects in one direction

I can already see that a number of these will not likely make it by the end of August, but having more ideas than can be used doesn’t hurt.

The player won’t be able to do more than walk around. No shooting or button presses are needed to do actions as everything will be based on contact. If the player touches an object, the object gets moved or turns on or gets activated or whatever. I’ll probably track input to reset the level and to pause the game, but otherwise the controls will just move the player in four directions.

For simplicity, the levels will be “rooms” that can fit entirely on the screen. Rooms will be made up of permanent walls, an exit, and various objects.

Obviously the above is a bit too general, so it would be quite a stretch to call it a design document. I think calling it a guideline should be accurate, though.

Categories
Game Development Games Marketing/Business Politics/Government

The ESRB Ratings System

Since the “Hot Coffee” scandal is in the news, and enough people are talking about it, including developers, I’ll just add my own thoughts so that more than enough are talking about it.

If you haven’t heard about “Hot Coffee”, essentially Rockstar, the developer behind the Grand Theft Auto series of games, is getting itself and the general game industry in a lot of trouble. The already controversial GTA: San Andreas apparently has a sex mini game buried on the CD. You can’t actually play the mini game normally. As far as I can tell based on the media that I’ve read so far, you have to get a patch that someone else made that unlocks access to the content. To top it all off, Rockstar’s statements ranged from quite confusing to downright lying about it.

GTA:SA is already rated M for mature by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. The ESRB provided its own ratings system, and this system is getting a lot of heat. While they providea description of the ratings, I’ll give a basic review of the main ratings:

  • E for Everyone: basically, safe for children
  • E 10+ for Everyone 10+: children 10 or older can handle it
  • T for Teen: not safe for children, but teenagers should be mature enough to handle it
  • M for Mature: the key word, Mature, should indicate that it is not safe for people who are not mature; technically, not for people under the age of 17
  • AO for Adults Only: usually those words imply content the likes of which you will find on late night Cinemax

Now, the ESRB changed the rating from M to AO due to the unlockable content on the game. A new version of the game that prevents the mod will be released for the fourth quarter of the year with the original M rating. If stores wish to sell the current version, AO rating stickers will be provided to them. Of course, most retailers will pull the games from their shelves instead.

Of course, the damage has already been done. Senator Clinton is proposing a law similar to the laws proposed in Illinois. GTA:SA was already considered “bad enough” by certain people, but this “hidden pornography” has a number of groups and politicians up in arms. It’s basically a debate about protecting children, free speech, and the fact that the game wasn’t originally meant to be played by children in the first place. It’s rated M, so children shouldn’t be playing it.

Kotaku does a nice job describing the differences between the movie and video game rating systems, although I would like an actual answer to the question, “What is the purpose of the rating system?” because telling me that they are voluntary and who sponsors them isn’t telling me about the purpose.

Anyway, if we were to compare the ratings to the movie industries ratings, which are widely known, you could see they are pretty much line up nicely:

  • E == G
  • E10+ == PG
  • T == PG-13
  • M == R
  • AO == NC-17

Granted, there are slight differences, but if you understand one, you can understand the other without too much of a problem. At least, I would think so.

One complaint I’ve seen a lot about the game ratings system is that it is so similar to the movie rating system that they should just adopt it themselves. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any reason as to why the ESRB cannot do so. I imagine it might be a trademark thing, but I would like to believe that the MPAA wouldn’t charge an exorbitant amount of money just to allow another industry to use it, especially since the two have so many business connections.

Another complaint is that the difference between M and AO is negligible. I’ve seen many blogs and news articles comparing the two descriptions and concluding with, “WTF?!” Or, to clarify, they find that the difference is a bit contrived and shouldn’t exist.

Of course, in the movie industry, a movie that is rated R will play in most theaters and can make money, whereas a movie rated NC-17 wouldn’t. The sweet spot is PG-13 because now teens AND adults can pay to see it. So there is a huge incentive to get your movies a lower rating, and some people have taken issue with movies like Saving Private Ryan and Orgazmo getting ratings they shouldn’t deserve due to who made the movie.

Similarly, a game rated AO will not sell at most retailers, whereas M will. So some people believe that difference between the two ratings is artificially created to allow otherwise extreme content to sell in stores. In either case, children are not supposed to be playing these games, but they can more easily get access to a game rated M than one rated AO.

Just like they can more easily get access to R rated movies on DVD than those rated NC-17. In fact, this problem can happen more than the problem with children getting access to M rated video games. But I’m still waiting for the outrage and sensationalization on that issue.

Essentially, what’s the outrage here? That’s the question a lot of game players are asking. The games are already not supposed to be played by children, so changing the rating will not do anything but make someone who is 17 wait a year before they can play it. Big deal! Of course, historically video games were played by little children. How many of you adults have heard your mother complain that you shouldn’t play video games anymore? That you should “grow up” and act your age? There is a perception that video games are children’s toys still. They are not anymore, and people need to learn this fact. It doesn’t help when the only ones making noise in the media are the ones who insist on saying things like violent games are being “marketed to children” or that these games are “training kids to kill cops”. The implications to parents and others? Violent and sexually explicit games ARE being marketed to their children. Who is saying otherwise?

So what’s going to happen? Politicians are going to continue to make it clear that they are outraged about the situation, or at least clear to those who will vote in the next election. They’ll continue passing laws that won’t have any effect on actually protecting children since the parents will still be the ones who make the majority of the purchasing decisions. Jack Thompson will continue to create his own facts to scare parents. Parents will be confused when they see games that clearly state they shouldn’t be played by children while they hear the media insist that these games are being marketed to them.

In the end, no one will be able to trust anyone. But I believe that Rockstar basically gave the entire video game industry a nice, big black eye. Talking about the nuances of the issue doesn’t change the fact that parents, media, lawyers, and politicians have a perception about video games that is a bit different than it was before “Hot Coffee”. Changing that perception to reflect reality, where an adequate and clear ratings system already exists for parents to use, will be tough. It already was tough, but it is just made all the more tougher since Rockstar gave the opposing view more ammo, no matter how immaterial it would be to the actual issue.

I believe that “Hot Coffee” would have died out on its own. It is a poorly made mini game, and outside of the juvenile curiousity, no one would play it for long. But, the content is technically pornographic, and generally there are laws that restrict the sale of pornographic material to minors. As informed game players, we know that playing a copy of GTA:SA won’t let us play the mini game. We’d have to find and apply the patch to the game first. It’s not as if an unsuspecting child, who shouldn’t be playing the game anyway, can stumble upon the mini game in the course of normal play. Nevertheless, this information isn’t getting out there to the general public. The perception is basically along the lines of “Rockstar has released a game that rewards children for killing cops and glorifies violence. Now it turns out it also allows this child to simulate sexual encounters! This is an outrage!”

Nevermind that GTA actually punishes you for killing cops. Nevermind that children shouldn’t play this game in the first place. Nevermind that it is not possible to just “play sex” with a purchased copy of the game without going through the steps needed to download and apply the patch/mod. Nevermind that the ESRB couldn’t possibly have been able to rate the game based on this content. The point is that Rockstar, the ESRB, and by association the video game industry are perceived as the enemy of parents and moral values. Not to claim that Rockstar is completely to blame and that parents are allowed to be ignorant. Not at all. There are clearly people out there who have an incentive to be less than genuine about the facts, including politicians and game developers alike. Also, I believe that Rockstar should be able to make whatever games they want. This issue is not cut and dry, since they didn’t release the mini game as something playable in the first place and so probably shouldn’t have been required to disclose it.

But the content shouldn’t have been on the CD. While it is normal for developers to leave unfinished levels or other things in the build, this mini game is a bit much, I think. It wasn’t just some unfinished level or 3D model. The repurcussions from this incident and the reactions to it will likely extend farther than just legal issues for M or AO games made by mainstream developers.

Categories
Game Development

A Post on Writing Game Loops

Joost Ronkes Agerbeek wrote the first of what will hopefully be a series of game programming posts with Writing a Basic Game Engine. While it may not have a lot of meat to it, it is precisely the topic of the game loop that gets passed over a lot in game development tutorials and books. Usually, examples are either awkward or they are too specific to the example itself. Sometimes this loop is not discussed at all or in too general a manner to be useful. After all, the real game development is in input, graphics, sound, etc. It is a simple and basic article that I think fills a void for people learning to make games. I definitely see ways to improve on what I’ve done based on reading this post.

Categories
Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development

Writing Portable Code

I recently bought and received Write Portable Code by Brian Hook of Book of Hook fame. As I intend to make my games playable on multiple platforms, I need to learn how to not only write good software but also write good portable software. I believe that this book can be invaluable to that end.

And within the first few chapters, I’ve already learned about a new tool: Valgrind. It’s an open source suite of tools for debugging and profiling x86-Linux programs. Sweet! I’m definitely going to look into it.

Anyway, the book promises to be both practical and informative. Hopefully it won’t be like other books that are failures at both, and so far, I don’t believe it will.

Categories
Game Development Games Linux Game Development Marketing/Business

New Linux Gaming Link

Somewhere this past week I came across the Linux Gamer Guide Wiki.

I set this site up to help people be aware that there ARE linux gamers.. and gaming on a linux platform is a CHOICE!.. now… to add stuff.

I’ve been trying to get the site out more in the public..if you find any of these HOWTOs useful please give ’em a link 🙂

I didn’t post the link originally because the site was very new, but now it seems to be taking shape. I think it can be a great resource along with The Linux Game Tome and other sites.

Categories
Game Development Games Marketing/Business

Why Good Games Don’t Sell Well

This past weekend, I had a chance to play Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. My girlfriend’s cousin owned the game. I’ve been wanting to play this game for quite some time, and I finally did for a couple of hours. From the beginning, I could see why people loved this game. Just doing acrobatic moves without much effort was really cool.

I talked with my girlfriend’s cousin about how the game was a lot of fun and that I can’t believe no one bought it. He mentioned that his friends generally felt that the game looked like a “ripoff of Aladdin” and so they wouldn’t even give the game a try. Too bad for them…and unfortunately, too bad for the developers.

Over at Zen of Design, there is a post called Viewpoints on Why Great Games Don’t Sell. It cites a forum post on Idle Forums and a post by Scott Miller about the games Psychonauts and Ico. Both games are supposed to be amazing, and yet they had terrible sales.

While playing PoP:SoT, I did find that the jumping puzzles could have gotten frustrating. I wanted to fight off a group of opponents with flourish instead of jumping across pits at the right moment to avoid a buzz saw. On the other hand, running along walls and leaping from pillar to pillar was kind of fun in its own right. Apparently Ico and Psychonauts also had jumping puzzles.

Scott Miller provides a few of his own reasons for why a good game can fail, but I think part of the problem was the lack of marketing. I saw an ad in PC Gamer about Psychonauts. It didn’t immediately appeal to me and I still can’t tell you what the game is about. The review, on the other hand, made it sound kind of cool. I guess I didn’t read it very thoroughly though. And Ico was mentioned many times in the “Difficult Questions About Videogames” book, but I still don’t know anything about it. Of course, I don’t have a PS2, so I wouldn’t have played it anyway.

I suppose Miller could be right about the “kid’s game” idea. After all, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within was made darker and sexier than SoT, and it sold a lot better. But perception is a marketing problem. Obviously, Psychonauts looks childish, but I’m sure marketing could have figured out a way to convey the game itself rather than the idea that it is just a kid’s game.

Now, blaming it all on marketing is a cop-out, and I don’t believe it was the sole problem with these games. But I’m sure more could have been done to prevent this problem. Play testing is important. Are you telling me that no focus groups are arranged to figure out first impressions on games as well? “Based just on this ad, what can you tell me about the game? How do you think it would play? Would you buy it?” Tailor your ads based on the feedback you receive here.

Also, do something about the jumping puzzles and similarly tedious gameplay mechanics. It could be that no one really enjoys them. SoT at least made them interesting and fun for the few hours I got to play.

Categories
Game Development Personal Development

Ten Minute Method

Months ago, I found that I was very productive. I would knock things off of all sorts of lists and get so much accomplished it was scary.

For a month or two, I’ve been coasting. I started tracking my lists again, and I’ve seen an immediate improvement. But for larger projects, I find they will stay on my lists for a long time.

While it is an old post, The Ten-Minute Method at the not-often-updated NinjaBee Dance blog is exactly what I needed. It is basically a variation on an idea that I’ve read elsewhere: time boxing.

The Ten Minute Method is this:

Work on the project every day, even if it’s only for 10 minutes. Every single day, no matter what, but you only need to commit to 10 minutes. You can always find 10 minutes, right? Maybe just before you go to bed, or just before you plunk down in front of the television.

The actual work you do can be anything. If you’re working on art, just sketch something. Clean something up. Go looking for reference. If you’re programming, just look through code for a while. Read some documentation. Comment old modules. Make lists of things to do later. Easy stuff, right?

Sure, it’s easy! I think it is sometimes easier to make an excuse than to do real work. “I can’t write code. I’m not at my desk, and I don’t have an hour to dedicate.” “I don’t have the time to write up a prototype.” “Blah blah time blah blah resources blah blah.”

Again, I’ve heard of time boxing before. I’ve even found it useful. But I can sometimes forget useful tools and have to be reminded. I just have to find a way to make sure I remember this technique. 10 minutes a day isn’t too much to ask, and I know I can dedicate it. I just have to remember to do so.