Locked Door Puzzle

I've just finished a new game called Critical Bypass. It's a remake of one of the many terrible games in the unlicensed NES cart Action 52. There's a project currently running on TIGSource called Action 52 Owns which is an attempt to get experienced developers to remake all of these awful games into really fun and playable remakes.

The project has not been without its arguments and drama but I've stayed out of all that and focused on making my game. Fundamentally I really like this project and hope it reaches a successful conclusion because it would be great to have a compilation of 52 great games from a huge range of talented developers each bringing their own style and ideas.

A poor workman...

So by the time I joined the project there wasn't many games to pick from. It was really a choice of which of the bland generic shooters could I make the most interesting game from.

I took Critical Bypass which in its original form was an eyesore of an experience. Circular ship flies along a dreadful looking moonscape following a road while shooting at colour blobs and blocks. I played it for a little while and there was almost nothing redeeming about it.

The next generation

I decided that I wanted to do something really different with the game. There's so many similar shoot 'em ups on Action 52 that I figured a lot of the other developers will be making straight shoot 'em ups with their own interesting mechanics. So I decided to turn the game into a 3D rail shooter akin to Rez or Panzer Dragoon. This also fits into my continuing exploration of what I can do with Unity.

However I really wanted to maintain a lot of the original spirit of the game so the player initially controls a UFO looking ship and the enemies were meant to resemble blobs and blocks. The first level also involved following a road along a gray moon-like surface.

I made the content with a combination of Sketchup for mechanical looking objects and Sculptris for the more biological enemies. I got a friend of mine to do some character portrait art for the cutscenes. Also during the polishing phase I threw out some of my ship models and replaced them with royalty free models I found online

Hmmmmmmm...

The game was supposed to be take me about 2 weeks to make but instead took around 4 and was pretty much the main thing I worked on during that period. My recent successes with Unity had led me to underestimate how complicated a rail shooter was going to be. The more I worked on it the more problems I was encountering and the more problems with my design I was finding.

I had some big problems that were ultimately unresolvable without starting it again. Using a Unity terrain on the first level caused huge performance problems for some people, and my not paying attention to keeping the different levels at a consistent world scale meant special effects such as explosions didn't really work right on the middle two levels.

I also now appreciate why Rez and Panzer Dragoon take place in big open spaces rather than tight canyons. To make it properly fun you need to have the enemies on screen for a long time and not just sweeping in and out as I had done.

Ultimately I'm not massively happy with the game. It could probably use more polish and work, and some sections starting over again but I think getting the game to a state where I'd be happy with it could take another whole month of development time. So right now I'm cutting my losses and have been balancing and tweaking what I have to make it as playable as possible.

So I've been up to a lot of things of late, I've made a few short games, learned how 3D works, traveled to San Francisco and had to make a very hard decision over the future of what I'm doing. So let me get started.

Closed Journal

The bad news as many already know is that I have had to shelve Journal indefinitely. The artist I was working on the game with has had to admit she doesn't have time to work on the project anymore. As the project was based on a story idea by her and to me the game is so emotionally linked to her, I couldn't consider bringing in another artist to replace her. So despite the huge amount of work that went into this and how far along the project was I've now stopped all work on it. I would love to tell the Journal story one day, and maybe with time I'll feel different about it all. Right now though I am unwilling to do anything more with it.

Missed Flights

I made a last minute decision to fly out to San Francisco and attend the Game Developer Conference. This was a great decision, in the many years since I last went to a GDC event it seems the indie community has become much more accepted is now a very well represented aspect of game development. I attended some really interesting panels, met a hell of a lot of great people including some personal heroes, I did a lot of quality drinking and even attended a 2 hour game jam in the lobby of the Hilton. Will definitely be going back again next year. Only downer was that I messed up my flight dates and missed my return flight and had drop a rather large chunk of money to get home.

Two Days in Cambridge

I took part in my first Ludum Dare competition. A bunch of us gathered to take part in the competition at the bistro in Cambridge that is becoming our regular indie hang out. Since I've made so many simple 2D gamemaker titles for short jams lately I wanted to use all the extra time to challenge myself. So I decided to make something 3D using a combination of SketchUp and Unity.

Once I found the theme was islands I felt inspired by Myst and wanted to make something that captured the exploration aspects of the game but without all the frustrating puzzles. So I went with the idea of telling a story through the environment as the player explored, specifically a story about a couple that were never meant to be together. So each island in the game would represent a dream of a time in their relationship.

You can download the game on the site now, and while it's certainly a bit rough around the edges in a lot of places, and I had to rely on a bit more text than I'd have preferred I'm actually kind of proud of the game. More so than most of the stuff I make.

John Keats

Next up I made a game for the second game's pageant competition over at www.thegamescollective.org, this time the theme was a concept called "negative capability" which I interpreted to mean creativity thriving with the realisation that you can't solve and understand everything in the world. I decided to make another 3D game with the Unity/SketchUp combo, and try to polish it a bit more this time. Also as I typically always resort to storytelling I decided to see if I can pull off this theme using more game-like mechanics. Again you can download it here on the site.

What do I do now?

So with these short projects out of the way and Journal now dead in the water I need to decide what I'm doing next. I've been speaking with some of my artistic friends to look who's interested in working with me because let's face it, my art sucks. And I've now got three potential projects with three different kinds of artists:

• One girl I know does really stunning painted style CG art, that while not appropriate for a lot of game types would work really with some kind of interactive visual novel done in Ren'Py. So I'm currently drafting out a story for that.
• I know a rather talented 3D artist who typically works in creating photo-realistic shots for TV adverts who's looking to do some work in games. So as this fits with my new found love for Unity, I'm planning a small pilot project to try out with him before we move on to do something more substantial in 3D.
• I contacted the artist for the white chamber, and while sadly he's busy with a very exciting project I probably can't talk about here, he did recommend a friend of his who also looks very talented. If she's up for it I'd like to do a commercial 2D project to replace Journal. There's a lot to say about that so I'll explain more detail in a future post.

So right now my plan is to pursue all three of these projects, especially as the first two are much smaller in scope, and for the third I'm hoping to reuse a lot of the engine tech I made for Journal.