The game was supposed to be a sort of first-person puzzle game where you’re a programmer in a highly augmented reality world who accidentally introduced a viral bug which starts to glitch that world more and more. You have to explore the environment and using your “debugging tools” to study specific glitches and figure out what’s wrong. Over time you realize what the symptoms are, which leads to an “ah-ha” moment where you realize what you did followed by a climax last-minute bug fixing. I’d love to come back to the idea at some point, especially since we didn’t get very far with the glitches. Evan did have an idea to use the raw memory data from the program itself to glitch things out, which I thought was great.

As I mentioned earlier, Plaidgadget is a 2D vector-based engine. Despite that, we decided we were going to try out a pseudo-3D, old school FPS style like Doom or Wolfenstein. He was able to take his figure animation system to load in an object drawn from multiple angles, so we could have the object rotate as you walked around it, along with an edit mode for placing objects in a level. For the 3D look, he places figures on the screen and scales them manually, which in some ways is more interesting to me than a fully 3D space.

2D vs. 3D

Quick side note: I’m not sure what it is about polygonal 3D (although I certainly have theories!), but many times polygonal 3D graphics just doesn’t seem to have as much character as 2D graphics (it appears I’m not alone in my opinion). An irritation has been rattling around inside my head for the last couple years…concept art looks better than the final end product of a videogame. Concept art is usually just so much more inspiring and full of wonder, and that bothers me. One of my goals in life is to be successful enough that I can lead a “videogame art direction think tank” that has the sole job of learning how to translate the awesomeness of concept art into videogames. I already have a big long list of things for this hypothetical team to do. Maybe someday…

Pushing Against Self-Imposed Boundaries

So anyway, I think a big part of the distinct feel we had comes from trying to hack pseudo-3D into a 2D engine. Despite the fact that I’ve read about this before, actually doing it made me realize first-hand that you can come up with some interesting things when you intentionally give yourself stricter boundaries and then push against them. By taking Plaidgadget, an engine intentionally limited in scope, and trying to see what creative things we can do within those limitations, we ended up with something interesting.

It was a rewarding enough experience that I’ll be thinking about how I can do it again in the future.

Background

Before I explain in more detail, you should know I’m increasingly becoming a “get things done” kind of guy, which is manifested by my avid support of the Unity game development tool due to its ability to get something up and running quickly.  Naturally I want to use it for every game jam, and this one was no different.

While brainstorming ideas over pizza, my friend Evan Balster of Plaid Notion (Infinite Blank, Sense of Wonder Night finalist and Kickstarter fundee) and I came up with an interesting game idea based on a mutual affection for glitch art and decided to team up for the game jam. I convinced him to use Unity, but due to some apparent bug in Windows 64 bit, it simply would not install on his machine after at least an hour of effort. In the end, we decided to use his own engine Plaidgadget, and I had to face one of my biggest game jam fears: spending the first 8+ hours setting up the dev environment. I thought we were doomed, but I guess God had other plans…

Evan as game engine

If you’ve ever met Evan, it won’t take you long to realize that he’s a character. He’s very eccentric, which would likely turn off some, but he seemed to me to have a certain innocence and lovable genuine-ness. This feeling was recently confirmed when he offered to help me in a way that only a true friend would.

It didn’t take me long to realize how much of his own character was present in Plaidgadget. If anyone could ever call a game engine “charming in its quirkiness,” I think you would say that about this.

Plaidgadget is a strictly 2D vector-based game engine – designed with a specific goal to not be a generic do-everything engine. It even has some of its own art tools, including a “figure editor” where you can draw vector shapes and even skin them to bones with simple IK. The workflow is pretty unique, designed with the help of Plaid Notion partner Beau Blyth (Action Fist, Fish Face, Uberleben) and includes a transform tool based on concentric circular areas for pivot, move, rotate/scale, and rotate. It even lets you animate with forward and backward keys and primitive previous-frame onion skinning through showing the outlines, but has no real visual interface for keyframes.

At first glance, the figure editor seems ghetto and very limited, but eventually I came to realize that those limitations really helped me to focus. It actually changed the way I thought about creating, which is what all of my favorite tools do. By using this tool, I understood more and more how providing a large number of options to perform some task can sometimes slow you down by making you value specific techniques more highly than you should, causing you to spend too much time trying to determine the best course of action. I thought it was funny how much I valued Unity’s “get things done” ability yet missed how it can also sometimes work against that by offering so many choices and by trying to do everything. I was beginning to form a dogma.

Because Evan had a vision for a specific engine that could do one thing well and really put himself (and Beau) into it, Plaidgadget is essentially following the same mentality as many indie games. As a result, it’s both interesting and inspiring to use. Here was this tool that, despite some flaws, still allowed me to focus precisely because it was limited.

Game development philosophy repentance

This realization was liberating in a sense because it freed me from a sort of judgmental mindset about game dev tools. It lifted what was becoming an evil burden off my shoulders. And by the grace of God, that led to a sort of creative breakthrough toward the end of the weekend. This freedom inspired me to design a character and animate a simple walk cycle “traditionally,” i.e. with no skeleton, in about the course of an hour. It was a pretty big accomplishment for me considering I did no planning or sketching at all beforehand and since I don’t consider myself very good at drawing. I essentially sketched a character animation the way one sketches a thumbnail, and it gave me a whole new level of confidence.

I often read about people who say “I can’t believe what I was able to accomplish,” but don’t really experience it myself very much. This was one of those experiences, and I’m not sure if it would have happened had things gone the way I wanted them to. I still love Unity, but I feel like a changed man with an appreciation for what I now consider “indie tools” that have a singular vision and try to take one interesting idea and run with it the way indie games do.

In Part 2, I talk about our game more specifically and how it was impacted by different tools.

The Importance of Game Engine Authorship, Part 2

Oh that’s cute! You put it all in one file.

Yea real cute. Anyway, I guess my hope is that amateur coders or designers/artists will use it as some sort of stepping stone on the way to demystifying how this whole learning process works. The physics in Hundreds are apparently incredibly simple [as far as physics are concerned] but for me they were a huge challenge to understand. Even now looking at them, I don’t understand what’s going on anymore.

Sometimes it’s tough out here in the wild west but I’ll continue to share as much as I can in hopes that it will help others on their journey through the untamed lands of programming. So, here’s the ugly ass source from Baby Greg’s First Game!

If you put this into a Flash compiler you might be able to run it, but there are a few assets [menu items, intros and etc.] that it’ll probably want.

Here’s a link to a plain text file containing all the code if you don’t want to suffer through copy and pasting: HundredsSourceCode.txt. It’s a little under 1000 lines.

Also, I will say that I’m most proud of the way I figured out how to do the stopwatch [levelTime()]. It was a problem I wasn’t really looking forward to, but when I started trying to find a solution I found it more interesting that I thought I would of. It was really rewarding when I finally thought through it completely and solved it once and for all. :)

package src
{
	package src
{
	import flash.display.*;
	import flash.events.*;
	import flash.geom.*;
	import flash.text.*;
	import flash.media.*;
	import flash.net.*;
	import flash.utils.getTimer;
	import flash.net.SharedObject;

	import SWFStats.*;

	public class BPop extends Sprite
	{

		//GAME OBJECTS
		private var color:uint = 0xCCCCCC;
		private var circle:MovieClip;
		private var circleBlur:Shape;
		private var circlePack:Array = [];
		private var colorPack:Array = [];
		private var velocityPack:Array = [];
		private var blurPack:Array = [];

		private var velocity:Point;
		private var mouseDist:Point;
		private var crossDist:Point;
		private var killDist:Point;
		private var bounceDist:Point;
		private var circleDist:Point;

		private var mouseOffStage:Boolean = false;

		private var GROW_RATE:Number = 5;
		private var START_SIZE:Number = 10;
		private var START_RADIUS:Number = 42;
		private var SPEED:Number = 7;
		private var STEP:Number = 3;
		private var colored:Boolean = false;
		private var touched:Boolean = false;
		private var circleShrunk:Boolean = false;
		private var blurCount:Number = 0;

		//HUD ELEMENTS
		private var circleSize:TextField;
		private var circleFormat:TextFormat;
		private var thePause:Boolean = false;
		private var uiPause:Boolean = false;
		private var counter:Number = 0;
		private var circleDeath:MovieClip;
		private var crossDistKill:Point;
		private var bounceKill:Boolean = false;

		private var minCounter:Number = 30;

		//SOUND
		private var circleHit:Sound;
		private var circleKill:Sound;

		//MENU
		private var bg:Shape;
		private var bgHack:Shape;
		private var level:Number = 3;
		private var levelAdjust:Number = 2;
		private var levelStop:Boolean = false;
		private var gameOver:Boolean = false;
		private var gameWin:Boolean = false;
		private var uiGameOver:MovieClip;
		private var uiGameWin:MovieClip;
		private var uiGameLock:MovieClip;
		private var uiTitleScreen:MovieClip;
		private var uiScore:MovieClip;
		private var score:Number = 0;

		private var gameStarted:Boolean = false;
		private var siteLocked:Boolean = true;

		private var timeFormat:TextFormat;
		private var scoreFormat:TextFormat;
		private var levelFormat:TextFormat;

		private var days:Number = 0;
		private var daysString:String = "";
		private var hours:Number = 0;
		private var hoursString:String = "";
		private var minutes:Number = 0;
		private var minutesString:String = "";
		private var seconds:Number = 0;
		private var secondsString:String = "";
		private var mSeconds:Number = 0;
		private var mSecondsString:String = "";

		private var levelStartTime:Number = 0;
		private var levelEndTime:Number = 0;

		private var virginHack:Boolean = true;

		private var iconCircle:SimpleButton;
		private var iconPack:Array = [];

		//SAVING
		private var sharedObj:SharedObject;
		private var saveData:Object;
		private var maxLevels:Number = 1;

		public function BPop():void
		{
			//LOAD SWF STATS
			SWFStats.Log.View(513, "6feb47a0-aa7c-4b86-b7b0-72c0261a7fd6", root.loaderInfo.loaderURL);

			blurPack = new Array();

			//LOAD SOUNDS
			circleHit = new sfx_circleHit();
			circleKill = new sfx_circleKill();

			addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, tick);
			stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, shiftPress);
			stage.addEventListener(Event.MOUSE_LEAVE, offStage);
			stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, onStage);

			loadLocalData();
			titleScreen();
			stage.focus = stage;

			function tick(e:Event):void
			{
				physics();
				collisionCheck();
				uiLogic();
			}
		}

		private function offStage(e:Event):void
		{
			mouseOffStage = true;
		}

		private function onStage(e:Event):void
		{
			mouseOffStage = false;
		}

		private function shiftPress(e:KeyboardEvent):void
		{
			if (bg != null && e.keyCode == 32) //SPACEBAR RESTART
			{
				runRestart();
			}
		}

		private function runRestart():void
		{
			if(iconCircle != null)
			{
				stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, iconClick);
			}

			if(gameOver == true)
			{
				removeChild(bg);
				removeChild(uiScore);
				removeChild(uiGameOver);

				if(iconCircle != null)
				{
					for(var i = 0; i < iconPack.length; i++)
					{
						removeChild(iconPack[i]);
					}
				}

				iconPack = new Array();
			}

			if(gameWin == true)
			{

				removeChild(bg);
				removeChild(uiScore);
				removeChild(uiGameWin);

				if(iconCircle != null)
				{
					for(var p = 0; p  999)
			{
				seconds++;
				mSeconds -= 1000
			}
			if(mSeconds  59)
			{
				minutes++;
				seconds -= 60;
			}
			if(seconds  59)
			{
				hours++;
				minutes -= 60;
			}
			if(minutes  23)
			{
				days++;
				hours -= 24;
			}
			if(hours <= 9)
			{
				hoursString = hoursString.concat("0");
			}
			hoursString = hoursString.concat(hours); //HOURS

			if(days < 9)
			{
				daysString = daysString.concat("0");
			}
				else
				{
					daysString = daysString.concat(days);
				}

			return daysString + ":" + hoursString + ":" + minutesString + ":" + secondsString + ":" + mSecondsString;
		}

		private function levelSelect():void
		{
			for(var i = 0; i = 0 && i = 10 && i = 20 && i = 30 && i = 40 && i = 50 && i = 60 && i = 70 && i = 80 && i = 90 && i < 100)
				{
					iconCircle.x = 456 + ((i - 90) * 32);
					iconCircle.y = 325;
				}
			}
		}

		private function populate():void
		{
			uiScore = new ui_score();
			addChild(uiScore);

			levelFormat = new TextFormat();
			levelFormat.letterSpacing = -16;

			uiScore.txt_level.defaultTextFormat = levelFormat;
			uiScore.txt_level.setTextFormat(levelFormat);

			trace("score added");
			trace("level =" + (level - 2));

			uiScore.txt_level.text = level - 2;			

			if(levelStop == false)
			{
				for(var i = 1; i < level + levelAdjust; i++)
				{
					circles(Math.random()*(stage.stageWidth - (START_RADIUS * 2)) + START_RADIUS, Math.random()*(stage.stageHeight - (START_RADIUS * 2)) + START_RADIUS, START_RADIUS);

					velocity = new Point(Math.random() * SPEED, Math.random() * SPEED);
					velocityPack.push(velocity);

					if(i == ((level + levelAdjust) - 1))
					{
						levelStop = true;
						trace("done");
					}
				}
			}

			for(var p = 0; p  circlePack[p].x + circlePack[p].width/2 && mouseX  circlePack[p].y + circlePack[p].height/2 && mouseY < circlePack[p].y - circlePack[p].height/2)
				   {
						circlePack[p].y += circlePack[p].height;
				   }
				}
			}

			//START A FRESH STOPWATCH
			levelStartTime = getTimer();

			days = 0;
			daysString = "";
			hours = 0;
			hoursString = "";
			minutes = 0;
			minutesString = "";
			seconds = 0;
			secondsString = "";
			mSeconds = 0;
			mSecondsString = "";
		}

		private function physics():void
		{
			if(thePause == false)
			{
				for(var t = 0; t < STEP; t++)
				{
					for(var i = 0; i < circlePack.length; i++)
					{
						circlePack[i].x += velocityPack[i].x / STEP; //SPEED VECTORS DIVIDED BY STEP ITERATIONS (t)
						circlePack[i].y += velocityPack[i].y / STEP;

						for(var p = i + 1; p < circlePack.length; p++) //CIRCLE TO CIRCLE BOUNCE
						{
							crossDist = new Point(circlePack[p].x - circlePack[i].x, circlePack[p].y - circlePack[i].y);

							if(crossDist.length - (circlePack[i].width/2 + circlePack[p].width/2) <= 0)
							{
								if(circlePack[i].circleColored == false || circlePack[p].circleColored == false)
								{
									bounceKill = true;

									crossDist.normalize((circlePack[i].width/2) + (circlePack[p].width/2));

									var centerPoint = new Point(circlePack[i].x + (crossDist.x / 2), circlePack[i].y + (crossDist.y / 2));

									var circlePoint_p:Point = new Point(centerPoint.x + (crossDist.x / 2), centerPoint.y + (crossDist.y / 2));
									var circlePoint_i:Point = new Point(centerPoint.x - (crossDist.x / 2), centerPoint.y - (crossDist.y / 2));

									circlePack[p].x = circlePoint_p.x;
									circlePack[p].y = circlePoint_p.y;
									circlePack[i].x = circlePoint_i.x;
									circlePack[i].y = circlePoint_i.y;

									//BOUNCE
									crossDist.normalize(1);

									var dotProdVelocity_p:Number = (crossDist.x * velocityPack[p].x) + (crossDist.y * velocityPack[p].y);
									var wallNormalProduct_p:Point = new Point((dotProdVelocity_p * crossDist.x) * 2, (dotProdVelocity_p * crossDist.y) * 2);
									var newVelocity_p:Point = new Point(velocityPack[p].x - wallNormalProduct_p.x, velocityPack[p].y - wallNormalProduct_p.y);

									var dotProdVelocity_i:Number = (crossDist.x * velocityPack[i].x) + (crossDist.y * velocityPack[i].y);
									var wallNormalProduct_i:Point = new Point((dotProdVelocity_i * crossDist.x) * 2, (dotProdVelocity_i * crossDist.y) * 2);
									var newVelocity_i:Point = new Point(velocityPack[i].x - wallNormalProduct_i.x, velocityPack[i].y - wallNormalProduct_i.y);

									var dotProd:Number = (velocityPack[i].x * velocityPack[p].x) + (velocityPack[i].y * velocityPack[p].y);

									if(dotProd = stage.stageWidth)
					{
						velocityPack[i].x = -velocityPack[i].x;

						if(circlePack[i].x + circlePack[i].width/2 > stage.stageWidth) //JITTER CHECK
						{
							circlePack[i].x = (stage.stageWidth - 1) - (circlePack[i].width/2);
						}
					}
					//LEFT BOUND BOUNCE
					if(circlePack[i].x - circlePack[i].width/2 <= 0)
					{
						velocityPack[i].x = -velocityPack[i].x;

						if(circlePack[i].x - circlePack[i].width/2 < 0) //JITTER CHECK
						{
							circlePack[i].x = ((circlePack[i].width/2) + 1);
						}
					}
					//BOTTOM BOUND BOUNCE
					if(circlePack[i].y = stage.stageHeight) //JITTER CHECK
						{
							velocityPack[i].y = -velocityPack[i].y;

							if(circlePack[i].y + circlePack[i].height/2 > stage.stageHeight) //CAN'T GROW PAST SCREEN HEIGHT
							{
								circlePack[i].y = (stage.stageHeight - 1) - (circlePack[i].height/2);
							}
						}
					}
						else
						{
							velocityPack[i].y = 0;
						}
					//TOP BOUND BOUNCE
					if(circlePack[i].y < stage.stageHeight)
					{
						if(circlePack[i].y - circlePack[i].height/2 <= 0)
						{
							velocityPack[i].y = -velocityPack[i].y;

							if(circlePack[i].y - circlePack[i].height/2 < 0) //JITTER CHECK
							{
								circlePack[i].y = ((circlePack[i].height/2) + 1);
							}
						}
					}
						else
						{
							velocityPack[i].y = 0;
						}
					}
				}
			}
				else
				{
					if (bg == null && uiPause == false)
					{
						levelKill();
					}
				}
		}

		private function collisionCheck():void
		{
			if(thePause == false)
			{
				for(var i = 0; i < circlePack.length; i++)
				{
					mouseDist = new Point(circlePack[i].x - mouseX, circlePack[i].y - mouseY);

					if (mouseDist.length <= circlePack[i].width/2 && mouseOffStage == false)
					{
						circlePack[i].circleColored = true;

						circleHit.play();

						if(circlePack[i].height <= stage.stageHeight)
						{
							circlePack[i].width += GROW_RATE;
							circlePack[i].height += GROW_RATE;

							//CIRCLE SPECIFIC SIZE TEXT
							circlePack[i].circleSize.text = (parseInt(circlePack[i].circleSize.text) + 1).toString();

							//COLOR SWITCH
							circlePack[i].graphics.clear();
							circlePack[i].graphics.beginFill(0xff0000, 1);
							circlePack[i].graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, START_SIZE);
							circlePack[i].graphics.endFill();

							score++;
						}
					}
						else
						{
							circlePack[i].circleColored = false;
						}

					if(circlePack[i].circleColored == false)
					{
						circlePack[i].graphics.clear();
						circlePack[i].graphics.beginFill(colorPack[i], 1);
						circlePack[i].graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, START_SIZE);
						circlePack[i].graphics.endFill();
					}
				}
			}
				else
				{
					return;
				}
		}

		private function levelWin():void
		{
			if(gameWin == false)
			{
				trace("win counter: " + counter);
				if(counter <= 30)
				{
					for(var i = 0; i < circlePack.length; i++)
					{
						circlePack[i].graphics.clear();
						circlePack[i].graphics.beginFill(0xDEDEDE, minCounter/30);
						circlePack[i].graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, START_SIZE);
						circlePack[i].graphics.endFill();

						uiScore.alpha = minCounter/30;
					}
				}
					else
					{
						trace("draw me the sky!");
						gameWin = true;
						uiPause = false;
						thePause = false;
						minCounter = 30;
						counter = 0;
					}

				minCounter--;
				counter++;
			}
		}

		private function levelKill():void
		{
			if(gameOver == false)
			{
				trace("lose counter: " + counter);

				if(counter == 1)
				{
					for(var i = 0; i  1 && counter  99 && bg == null)
					{
						trace("win game")
						levelEndTime = getTimer();
						uiPause = true;
						thePause = true;

						if(level - 2 < saveData.maxLevels)
						{
							trace("not added to levels");
						}
							else
							{
								saveData.maxLevels++;
								Log.LevelCounterMetric("Max Level", maxLevels);
							}

						updateSave();
					}

					if(gameOver == true && bg == null)
					{
						//Log.LevelCounterMetric("Max Level", maxLevels);

						bg = new Shape();
						bg.graphics.clear();
						bg.graphics.beginFill(0xFF0000, 1);
						bg.graphics.drawRect(0, 0, stage.stageWidth, stage.stageHeight);
						bg.graphics.endFill();
						addChild(bg);

						stage.focus = stage;

						uiGameOver = new ui_gameOver();

						levelFormat = new TextFormat();
						levelFormat.letterSpacing = -9;
						scoreFormat = new TextFormat();
						scoreFormat.letterSpacing = -4;
						timeFormat = new TextFormat();
						timeFormat.letterSpacing = -4;

						uiGameOver.txt_level.defaultTextFormat = levelFormat;
						uiGameOver.txt_level.setTextFormat(levelFormat);
						uiGameOver.txt_score.defaultTextFormat = scoreFormat;
						uiGameOver.txt_score.setTextFormat(scoreFormat);
						uiGameOver.txt_time.defaultTextFormat = timeFormat;
						uiGameOver.txt_time.setTextFormat(timeFormat);

						addChild(uiGameOver);

						uiGameOver.txt_level.text = level - 2; //LEVEL
						uiGameOver.txt_score.text = score; //SCORE
						uiGameOver.txt_time.text = levelTime(); //TIME

						levelSelect();

						for(var i = 0; i < circlePack.length; i++)
						{
							removeChild(circlePack[i]);
						}

						circlePack = new Array();
					}

					if(gameWin == true && bg == null)
					{
						//Log.LevelCounterMetric("Max Level", maxLevels);

						bg = new Shape();
						bg.graphics.clear();
						bg.graphics.beginFill(0xFFFFFF, 1);
						bg.graphics.drawRect(0, 0, stage.stageWidth, stage.stageHeight);
						bg.graphics.endFill();
						addChild(bg);

						stage.focus = stage;

						uiGameWin = new ui_gameWin();

						levelFormat = new TextFormat();
						levelFormat.letterSpacing = -9;
						timeFormat = new TextFormat();
						timeFormat.letterSpacing = -4;

						uiGameWin.txt_level.defaultTextFormat = levelFormat;
						uiGameWin.txt_level.setTextFormat(levelFormat);
						uiGameWin.txt_time.defaultTextFormat = timeFormat;
						uiGameWin.txt_time.setTextFormat(timeFormat);

						addChild(uiGameWin);

						//NEXT BUTTON
						uiGameWin.btn_next.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, nextClick);
						uiGameWin.btn_next.useHandCursor = true;

						uiGameWin.txt_level.text = level - 2; //LEVEL
						uiGameWin.txt_time.text = levelTime(); //TIME

						for(var p = 0; p < circlePack.length; p++)
						{
							removeChild(circlePack[p]);
						}

						level++;

						circlePack = new Array();
					}
				}
			}
				else
				{
					levelWin();
				}
		}

		private function titleScreen():void
		{
			bg = new Shape();
			bg.graphics.clear();
			bg.graphics.beginFill(0xFF0000, 1);
			bg.graphics.drawRect(0, 0, stage.stageWidth, stage.stageHeight);
			bg.graphics.endFill();
			addChild(bg);

			stage.focus = stage;

			uiTitleScreen = new ui_titleScreen();
			uiTitleScreen.btn_intro.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, introClick);
			uiTitleScreen.btn_start.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, startClick);
			uiTitleScreen.btn_start.useHandCursor = true;

			addChild(uiTitleScreen);

			circlePack = new Array();
			trace("ADDDDDDDD");
		}
	}
}

In case you missed the link to the plain text file, here it is: HundredsSourceCode.txt

It wasn’t long until I found the famous Sloperama post on ideas. But I didn’t believe it, and I don’t think a lot of new developers do either. But it is true. Sort of…

While Tom has good reason to write something like this intended for game dev tenderfoots, I think this nugget of advice can have a decent negative effect on what more experienced developers decide to work on, or even prototype.

So my post is directed towards developers with a few polished games under their belt. To stay with the Boy Scout ranking system, these developers would be First Class or Star. Not necessarily Eagle Scouts [Miyamoto?], but know how to tie a square-knot no problem. They’re comfortable with the execution of the game idea, working on usability, play-testing and have a general understanding of good and bad design. I’m not saying there’s some sort of ceiling on any of these, but I think there’s a point you reach where you feel like you’re “in your cockpit” [Stolen from Mike] when you’re making whatever it is that you’re making.

I think the reason Tom Sloper wrote that article, and so many other veterans follow with the same advice for designers starting out, is due to the fact that many a first timer looking to promote their game solely based on the idea of it is often touting an idea that doesn’t excite people experienced in game development. That’s not all that surprising, though if you’ve made a few games. Or even one.

I’m not excited by my Big Ideas that started me off on this path in the first place. In fact, a friend asked about “my first love” just last night and he seemed disappointed that I wasn’t excited anymore by the idea, like I had lost something along the way. But I’d argue the opposite, I’ve actually gained something and that’s the ability to understand my limits [temporary] as a developer at this point in time and what that means for the games I want to make.

In the beginning I would let ideas run wild with features, story and content. They were sprawling epics of games that would take decades to create with even a medium sized team, but I didn’t care. I was a teenager in love. Now though, an idea of that scope can’t even get me off the couch because it’s too big to understand really quickly. Not that a large idea can’t be great, but it certainly is much harder to test against and I have less experience with that. That’s just me, though.

As I grow as a developer I temper my taste for the game ideas that we come up with and I think more developers should take notice and give ourselves a little more credit as designers. Our latest game, due out in a week or so, is a product of really hashing out ideas based on an abstract concept and trusting our gut for that Eureka moment. I’m not saying it will be typical but the first time we tried doing the brainstorm-room thing, as more experienced developers, it worked. Though it seemed that throughout the process, the important thing was not to settle on good-enough. We had plenty of decent ideas that could have been decent games, but we weren’t excited about those.

For this session we settled on a word or phrase [parallax scrolling] and used it as a starting point to drive the brainstorm. Just about all of our games are centered around one mechanic that seeds teh rest of the game. If we hold true to that mechanic we feel like the mechanic itself will form into something cool and interesting. Anyway, “parallax” went to “speed”, into a discussion about speed and the feeling of going fast and how awesome that is, into talking about propulsion types and eventually into the final solution which was the Eureka moment. It was incredibly obvious to us both simultaneously that we realized it had to be prototyped immediately. I went into my room and created a mockup while Mike made a control-scheme prototype. And we had it.

A lot of my views on ideas now are driven by the experience, and while it may never happen again and I could be totally wrong, I feel like we need to trust ourselves as developers more often and put a little more faith into our ideas, even if they have burned us in the past with those terribly overblown growing-pain game projects that we all embarked on when wide eyed and green. Find a project that excites you in all areas that need exciting! Scope. Style. Gameplay. Innovation? You can have ‘em all, just hold out for the right one and bounce ideas off each other. It’s not like we have a checklist of things that make for a good or bad game project, it’s just what our tastes have become so we don’t need to check them against some sort of rote list or anything, we just kind of know.

I feel like that’s also one really important facet of settling in on an idea [as opposed to rapid prototyping multiple ideas]. Most often, those early game projects that I spent years translating into worthless design documents were solely from my brain, and that’s a problem! Our brains like to give themselves credit when they come up with something “new” so that colors the idea in a favorable light. If you have another brain around that can’t help but give you “big ups” for an idea it didn’t completely have, then you probably know you’re onto something.

Anyway, just wanted to ramble on that for a bit, something I’ve been thinking about while on some downtime. Also, you should know that there are many ways to generate ideas and prototypes. This is just what worked for us last time and we’ll probably try it again for the next game. I’m all for people coming up with personal ideas as a means of expression [I do that also] or shotgun prototypes or picking random ideas off a dartboard. Whatever works!

Play it right now for free!

I felt a great sense of accomplishment making this game on my own, though I know there is an oceans worth of improvement to be had still, it’s a big milestone for me so I thought I’d share the journey with you all in this post.

My whole career as a game developer has been spent on the visual side of things, which can sometimes be frustrating for me. In my formative years as a developer I often struggled with programmers on any number of levels. Getting something as basic as prototyping the first draft of player movement in the game was an extremely laborious task [we were using a game-maker like tool as well!].

Though, I’m not totally oblivious to coding. I code all my own websites [intuition, Mikengreg, this site...] but that’s more script than anything and when it comes to games I rarely touched more than a config file in plain text or XML scripts.

So a few years ago, during the days of Dinowaurs, I ventured out to try and learn a bit about coding games. At first I started using ActionScript 2.0 with the help of a book or two and I made some solid progress, but I never felt like I “got it”. I think I made some particle systems and a few other toys, but no games.

After awhile I bought a few books on ActionScript 3.0 and dove into the terrifying world of Object Oriented Programming [OOP]. It was a completely new way to set things up compared to 2.0 though it felt more organized. Like there was a more strict set of rules that I’d need to follow that might allow me to uncover the underlying structure of this “magical coding stuff” better.

For the next couple years, and up until just recently, I would find a free night or weekend and try certain things out. Most of the time it was a simple project to learn how input works with the keyboard. Other times it was a grandiose plan to overhaul my portfolio or create a “platforming garden” where I would be able to test and tweak platforming characters. These would always fail miserably because I was in way over my head, but they were wholly necessary to the learning process. After I failed or came up against a brick wall I would often stop studying/coding for months at a time. The frustration was immense and I didn’t really have a community to advise me during. That was fine though. I certainly had plenty to do with my other projects and the break was nice since I would get a little obsessive about figuring out a certain problem.

So this sort of on/off parabola continued until about a month or two ago. I was in a programming phase and I took to going back to the early chapters of the Moock book. I realized I didn’t truly understand the core concepts of many different devices in OOP and I needed to get back to basics. It was here that I learned how powerful functions actually can be and what arrays actually do. I continued to read and re-read these same chapters until I completely understood the building blocks of AS3.0 and it was then that I decided I could pull of an actual game.

Using only circles and frictionless physics I was able to make a full game that I’m pretty happy with. It’s not a game that is supposed to say anything in particular nor is it a game that I think is incredibly gripping or fun for me, but I feel like the concept is sound and the execution decent for my first game. There are many things I would like to alter if I had the powers of an expert coder [motion blur] but those simply won’t be happening for this game.

I hope some of you get a kick out of it and I’m considering posting the awful source here since it might be a good opportunity for some more experienced developers to give me some tips on how to better code something and so on. Though that could get overwhelming as the whole thing is a 100% mess; I’m sure. It’s all in one file! o_O

Oh! And post your highest level in the comments if you want. I don’t have high-scores or anything so this’ll have to do.

TIGJam Midwest is next weekend, June 4th-6th, 2010, at Foundry Coworking. If you’re interested, RSVP here at Eventbrite: http://tigjammidwest.eventbrite.com

Here’s the official info:

TIGJam Midwest is an indie game jam where creatives – programmers, hackers, designers, artists, or musicians – get together and make videogames in a weekend. For those who aren’t familiar with game jams, they’re similar to events like the 48 Hour Film Project or Startup Weekend. It’s called TIGJam because our group is part of the TIGSource community, which is a developer community for indie games.

Our game jams usually have a theme, and TIGJam Midwest’s theme this year is “proverbs,” proposed by Mark Doeden of 8monkey Labs.  Participants will form teams, choose a specific proverb from a culture of their choice, and develop a game based on it. There could be games based on Chinese Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Christian proverbs, or more obscure cultures or religions.

The local community is encouraged to attend the show & tell at Impromptu Studio at 3pm-8pm on Sunday, where they will experience the games and meet local game developers. These won’t be your usual space marine shooters; expect raw and barely-finished games that explore satirical, brand new, or meaningful territory.

A couple other exciting things are in the works.  Alec Holowka of Aquaria fame will be giving a keynote Friday at 7pm.  Venom is providing free energy drinks, there could be a visit from Senator Jack Hatch to express his support of creative endeavors like this, and there are rumors of drink specials next door at the Des Moines Social Club.  Finally, barring some catastrophy, there should be free catered food the whole weekend.  Expect one or two other exciting things to get finalized closer to the event.

All this free stuff is thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Iowa Department of Economic Development and the Technology Association of Iowa.  It’s exciting to think that these organizations are supporting a culture of game development here in Iowa!

Well, I made a hefty update today: 4 Player QUADRUPED CO-OP MODE!!!:

Click the image to see it a little larger.

More Laserback info to come down the road.

So I played an awesome game today, it’s called Specter Spelunker Shrinks. But when I got to the site I thought…
me

“Whoa, this is the same dude [NMcCoy] who did Wavespark?! Awesome!

I continued to believe that NMcCoy made this game and my idea of him as a developer was bolstered. I already loved Wavespark. So while that helped out my opinion of NMcCoy, I completely missed the fact that it was done by a different developer, Ken Grafals of Fall Damage Games. It’s quite easy, but the only difference is in the masthead [image at the top of a page]. See for yourself:

Did you catch the difference? ;)

But seriously, this is becoming more of an issue now that we have plenty of free, well designed solutions for putting out what we make. I actually recommend using a theme of some sort if you’re not of the visual persuasion, and even if you are since it’s a great starting place. All of the typography is pretty much going to be nice, clean and legible so you don’t need to fret over that, and the overall user experience is polished on most popular Wordpress [insert your CMS here] themes.

However, this kind of thing happens a lot [i see this theme everywhere], where we all use the same theme and then the confusion starts in. So if you’re dropping in a theme of your own, I would advise one change. It can take as little as one minute if you want. Change the colors! It’s a very simple fix. Head over to the style.css and search for the hex of whatever colors you’re using [use firebug as well]. Do a Find and Replace on the colors, swap them consistently like that, and there you go. You’re a completely different “company” that’s most likely not going to be confused with anyone else. It’s all you need, and it goes a long way.

Now that doesn’t mean picking colors is easy, in fact it can go horribly wrong. But be modest, stick with a strict palette and ask for some honest opinions and after an hour or so you’ll be on your way. In fact, in just one line, I did it with Fall Damage Games. By taking out the background image, and just leaving the background black, the whole site took on its own identity.

Just tweak the CSS a tad, you’ll be glad you did. It’s important.

EON is finished and out on Newgrounds! We ended up adding a level editor, and those crazy NG kids are cooking up some weird and fun stuff, I highly recommend checking it out. It’s very satisfying building a fun game, but it’s a whole new experience creating a tool and watching people use it in surprising ways, I may have to do more in that direction…

Anyway, go play it! And please rate highly :)

“Mom. Am I going to die?!”

It’s this sort of mindset that gets me paralyzed in a creative block. I’m staring at sketches, ideas and everything else I can think of but a feeling of deterministic dread drapes every new thought. It’s not the blank-page problem, or at least not usually with me. I’m creating new stuff, exploring new areas but none of it is working. It all sucks. It’s never going to work! AHHHHH!!! In this most recent case it was my work on the Mikengreg identity. After a long hiatus from the badge, I decided I hated it. This is nothing new, I was never 100% happy with it, but now the pressure is on and I was questioning the entire direction because I was no longer in the groove of working on Mikengreg stuff.

While I know the big idea of Mikengreg is “handmade games crafted with love and high-fives” I lost the scent on how that would actually be applied to the identity a long time ago. What does our website look like? What surface are we making these games on? Where’s the system?

That’s how I work, in systems. If I don’t have a system that I can turn to then I’m 100% lost. More on systems in the future. I’ll post about that when I do my big Mikengreg identity process post. Point being, I was lost.

Don’t let it stagnate

So the first contributing factor was that this was looming over my head during a couple of big projects. In my head I am thinking: “Mikengreg isn’t perfect, in fact every time I look at it, it sucks a little more.” With each day that I didn’t work toward making it work I saw more and more mistakes. This may seem like a good thing on the surface, but in reality it added to my crippling creative paralysis. In the same way putting off talking about a serious problem with a significant other only makes the fight worse, putting off facing up to the issues with the logo made it that much harder to address.

Do your best not to cut off projects midway through their development. If you have to split time between them, do at least a little work everyday on one or the other to avoid it stagnating.

Stick with the spark

Of course, the “don’t let it happen” variants are merely precautionary and aren’t too useful when you’re in the throes of a major creative block. On Monday I basically just planned and sketched all day. It wasn’t a bad thing, and certainly could have been worse [stare at a screen all day] but I was convinced that I had got it all wrong in the first place. The original line of thinking was to make a beer/food label/badge/seal logo for us that would communicate our personality. Last time I left off I was planning on hand-painting everything [website etc.] and toying with the idea of doing it in woodcut. I did some website concepts and all of them felt aimless and trite. So I went back to the drawing board and came up with modern stuff, corporate looking stuff, experimental type and etc. Some of it was ok, but it was all just as aimless as the website concepts. It wasn’t until I realized where I’d left off with the woodcuts that I just needed to iterate on that. I was letting my growing distaste for what I’d done tempt me to scrap it all, including the big idea.

That’s really the nugget of all of this. The Big Idea. Don’t lose sight of it. It’s what Mikengreg was founded on; it gets us excited and we believe in it. By investigating other avenues I wasn’t expanding the process, rather I was abandoning the only shred of a system that we had in the first place. It’s healthy to think outside the box but if you’re letting the block itself frustrate and control your creative decisions you may make some serious mistakes. Always keep an eye on the original idea when moving forward. That is your guide and it will never waiver [unless of course it was a bad idea in the first place].

Don’t move horizontally, drill down vertically

Part of the solution to dredging myself out of the block was to stop thinking in terms of iterating horizontally on a design problem. What I mean was that I was looking for solutions in alternate styles of typography, completely new identity systems [see above] rather than constraining the vision and thinking vertically about what wasn’t working with the original concept. I had this aimless website design, a few aimless pieces of art that I was arranging and various typefaces I was switching in and out. One image was hand-painted, the other a sketch, and then the logo badge you see on mikengreg.com. These disparate elements weren’t working and I wasn’t willing to think about why because I was so frustrated.

The real problem was that I had a website that was more graphical than the content it would be displaying. After immersing myself in a healthy amount of top-quality website designs from around the internet, it was clear that I was more concerned with the identity itself than the games we would make and showcase through the identity. The identity is the pasta [handmade and cooked to perfection] and the games are the sauce. Of course I don’t actually want to have the identity overshadow the games; I love our games, and I think they’re fucking awesome. So, I took a step back and reconsidered all my choices and decided that all this hand-painted stuff had to go. Also, the badge needs a good amount of simplification as well some woodcut treatments.

Now I had my system. Woodcuts and wood. It made total sense the whole time. Wooden surfaces chiseled by hand into works of art. All the elements were now in place with the system. Handmade = 1 color woodcut. Games = showcased in full color. Crafted with Love & High-Fives = Mikengreg [the humans]. Now surely there is a lot more to the system, but we’re good now. I’ve got the badge looking much better. Everything in its right place.

Though, none of this would have happened as quickly if I hand’t stuck with it. Fight through the pain as much as you don’t want to. It’s a much stranger problem when facing creative problems, but hopefully some of these things I went through will help you find your way through it.

I tell people this a lot but my Mom gave me a great piece of sinister logic when I was younger trying to learn simple division. I was on the bed cross-legged pounding my fists into the comforter because I couldn’t understand the problem. My mom, being the award-winning teacher she is, waited until I calmed enough to tell me:
Mom

Now Greg, you want to know something? That frustration you’re feeling… Well that’s how you know you’re just about to learn something new!

About 5 minutes later I figured it out and I’ve been doing long-division ever since!

For the past year, I’ve been working on my own interactive projects that don’t involve game mechanics, so it was very relieving to find out there are others out there wanting to do things that are like games, but not quite games. And when ToT invited developers to join them, I saw an opportunity to be part of a like-minded community.

If the essence of what I loved about The Dig wasn’t the puzzles, why have them? Why not have only the essence of what I loved?

I’m not 100% convinced that videogames proper are holding back the full potential for expression, but I have the same gut feeling as Tale of Tales that in many cases they are.

I suppose this comes from evidence that some of my favorite “games” lately have been things that actually have very minimal game elements to them. It took some dissection of Small Worlds, Today I Die, The Majesty of Colors, and others on the notgames forum in order to come to an official conclusion on that. But if I follow the trend forward, it could be possible that by having no elements at all, the experience would be even more expressive as a creator and enjoyable as a player.

An even larger amount of evidence comes when I stop to consider the unique elements of art forms (or media if you prefer), and how videogames don’t really offer anything truly unique.  This point is part of a very long-winded essay I have yet to publish, but the short story is that the “games” part of videogames isn’t unique to videogames, and the “video” part of videogames isn’t unique to videogames.

The “video” part I’m referring to – what I like to call a virtual, fictional interactive system – is what I love most about videogames. Basically it would be fictional media that fully utilizes the computer, including its input, computation, and output. Games would be a fine addition, but from my experience playing and creating them, they often create various forms of dissonance, especially when it comes to the more artistic/story-driven ones. A game system integrated with an artistic interactive experience usually feels duct-taped on top to me.

For example, the fact that I never finished The Dig because the puzzles were hard and I got tired of them really frustrates me. The puzzles are not why I loved The Dig, although they were interesting in their own right for a little while.  To me, it begs this question: If the essence of what I loved about The Dig wasn’t the puzzles, why have them? Why not have only the essence of what I loved?

Thus, my conclusion is that it’s well worth my time to answer this fundamental question of my experience with games by doing. I will create The Dig minus its puzzles, or more specific to the game I have in mind: Myst minus the puzzles.

EDIT: This sounds a little misleading. I sort of got “microwaved” with a vision - a specific story idea - almost a year ago at a game jam. Since then, I’ve come up with a game idea for it, and after explaining the idea to Ted Martens, he told me what I was describing was basically Myst but without the puzzles. I realized the connection to my frustrations with The Dig after the fact.

As a final note, one of my goals as a developer is to make games (and notgames) for a variety of people, including those that are intimidated by or apathetic about games. I found this information graphic to be great motivation toward my goal, pulled from the notgames manifesto:

Make love, notgames.

Greg just wrote about Why do we do what we do? and eloquently summed up the hard-to-define reason for why we at Intuition create art:

These are all things that fester inside me and I desperately want to expel them.  Not that they’re demons of any shape, but it’s this compulsion to create that drives me.

I really like how he put this because it can be difficult to put into words.  He makes it look easy.  The only other thing I can compare this to is something from Judeo-Christian culture – the psalm.  This compulsion is why I created MEHC.  It’s not the kind of game I like to play, but I just needed to make it somehow.

Alec Holowka was kind enough to respond to Greg’s post and suggested we check out his recent post Why Art?.  I was inspired enough by both of them that my comment to both of their posts turned into this.  Check them out if you haven’t yet.

In Response To “Why Art?”

I’m very comforted and honored to be amongst such final gentlemen who can present a rational argument.  Alec makes a good point that anger about discussing art often comes from fear or misunderstanding.  I especially like the video he posted – that says as much about his point as the words that follow it.  We’re just a part of the continuum, communicating something about humanity to each other through time.  And because we are unique, the message will be different for each person.  I like that attitude.

What I got from his argument about why games are art specifically seems to be that art gives him something about life to relate to, and because games also give him something to relate to, that makes them art.  I would go even further and say that art is created (it doesn’t just happen), communicates something human (a story/idea/emotion), and is otherwise “non-functional.”  By that, I mean that the thing in question has no function other than the act of communication itself (thus separating the word from design).  And because video games have these properties, they are art, too.

I was a little confused by the statement about art being subjective, though.  Did he mean that the experience of art is subjective?  Or the work of art itself is subjective?  There is a distinction to make here, and it partially forms the basis to my answer of “Why art?”.

I believe that art can be perceived in a subjective way.  But isn’t the work of art itself – the video game in this case – an object?  It is a collection of code and binary data running on a computer of some sort with input and output.  That makes it material, existing in reality, which is objective by definition.

Furthermore, because art “speaks to us,” that seems to make it objective, too.  Something is doing the speaking, and I think the thing that speaks doesn’t really change.  It is we who change and hear different things.

Therefore, I’d say that a more specific argument would state that the perception of art is subjective, based on each of our life experiences and unique brains, while the work itself is objective.  That can explain why we can look at a film several years later and see or learn something different.  The film itself remains unchanged, but our perception of it changes.  It communicates something about humanity in a different way than before, because we understand humanity in a different way than before.

I think this distinction is important because it suggests that a work of art is unchanging, yet communicates on a level higher than normal understanding.  The fact that we can return to an object and subjectively learn something new suggests that we can’t fully comprehend the work all at once.

To me, that gives art a magical quality (in the emotional sense).  That is one of the reasons why I think it’s important to call games art.

Saving the World

In the comments of Greg’s post, Alex and Greg were discussing saving the world with art.  The notion may seem impossible to some, but I’d argue that we are living proof that it can work.  Inspiring people through creation seems to be one of the simplest (though still very hard!) ways to change the world with art. Saving it is just a few steps away.

By making something of incredible quality that communicates to people and inspires them in a lasting way, you can inspire them to either change or to create themselves.  And them creating will often lead to change later.  Here’s a quote from Eva Zeisel to illustrate my point:

It’s very difficult to know exactly whether to live for an ideology or even to live for doing good.  But there cannot be anything wrong in making a pot, I’ll tell you.  When making a pot you can’t bring any evil into the world.

Just think about the games we’ve played that have inspired us to make games ourselves.  Those games have done good things because they have inspired us to create, and those acts of creation have changed us.  Those games have changed the world. Saving it is just a few steps away.

Edmund’s points are all very sound, but like any list, it’s easy to pick apart. But really what came out was a discussion about how each of us as developers approaches things from what sometimes is a vastly different angle. Stephen Lavelle [increpare] mentions how he takes issue with most of the points, and with good reason. Stephen makes games for very different reasons than Edmund. It got me thinking again about something I’ve been thinking about a lot since I was talked to Ben about creativity. We were chatting about his ongoing sideproject: Aztez and we got talking about collaborations and he mentioned how he sees most developers as one of two different types of creative people: Artists or Entertainers. That stuck with me and forced me to take it on and ask myself…
Me

Am I an Artist or an Entertainer?

Now there are a lot of problems with grouping someone in such a broad category. Certainly there is a vast spectrum there between those two values and the words Artist and Entertainer are insufficient especially in lieu of the “games as art” dead horse. Perhaps a better divide would be Artists who want to Express an Idea v. Artists who want to Express Emotion? I dunno…

Labeling things like that will only upset people but if you can get past it and ask yourself “which am I?” I think it provides an interesting insight into the “why” of creative expression. If nothing else, it’s a good starting point. So let me start…

Raymond Arnold

If you don’t care about quality and you don’t care about money or recognition, by what metric do you measure yourself at all?

Rob Fearon

Whilst I obviously can’t answer for Stephen, I can answer this for myself. Getting the idea out of my head and onto the screen is far more important a factor for me than anything else. If it turns out to be an idea with some merit (however one might choose to define that on a personal level), then ace. If it isn’t, at least it’s out of my head.

But crucially, I don’t measure myself on the body of my work and wouldn’t care to either. It doesn’t define me. There are far more important things in life to worry about, y’know?

Rob’s feelings on the question of “why” are pretty close to what I feel about making games. Or anything for that matter. Right now I have an idea for a visual poem I want to do. A comic strip that I want to start. An iPhone game that refuses to find a home. These are all things that fester inside me and I desperately want to expel them. Not that they’re demons of any shape, but it’s this compulsion to create that drives me. Showing it to other people is a nice side effect, it’s always nice to hear someone got something out of something I did, but it’s not the why. The why is much more selfish.

Raymond Arnold

the people who are most successful (both in terms of quality and recognition for that quality) tend to do most of [Edmund's] things.

Stephen Lavelle

Screw quality, screw recognition, screw success.

I understand what Stephen is saying here and I think his heart is in the right place and I definitely feel the frustration of forcing a “focus on success” type of attitude. Too often do we assume that everyone else in the world wants tons of money and fame. Though I do take issue with the bit about quality. If I have an idea for something and I can’t execute it like I see it in my head then it’s never as satisfying as creating something that I feel is 100% realized how I envisioned. Now, that doesn’t really exist, just like no circle is perfect, but there are things that I’ve done that I’m still proud of today and then there are many that I am not. I am highly critical of myself and if I weren’t I probably would have gotten bored of this a long time ago. It’s that unreachable goal of perfectly capturing and conveying an idea and transferring it from my head to the screen/page/canvas that also drives me [mad].

Exactly why I do what I do

I want to get more specific though, because this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. For me, the real reason I make video games boils down to a very specific, very discernible moment.

It’s “seeing it live”. It’s a feeling I clued in to over a decade ago doing Final Fantasy VII fan sites in PageMaker. I would type in some code, save the file and then load it up in the browser. I’d see the changes and it would work! It felt awesome and I was hooked. I had this thing [webpage] that I could endlessly modify and watch it work and show to others. It had this whole hairy underbelly that only I knew about and I would be pulling the levers and setting it up just right. Games are a lot like that. Animation; 3D modeling; they all have elements of alchemy that let you surprise yourself. There’s something very abstract about the process, much like Pollock probably experienced when he was playing with gravity and paint on a canvas. The work would surprise him and he’d respond and refine and respond and refine…

That’s why I make games, or why I do anything creative. I’m addicted to that. I enjoy drawing, but when I draw I usually find a way to play with my subconscious by laying down a doodle and then responding to it, or venturing into watercolor or inkwash and letting the water do its thing with the paper. In my early college years at Iowa I did a lot of symmetrical abstract work in Photoshop using the Liquify filter and hundreds of blend layers horizontally flipped to create something incredibly unexpected, yet recognizable. The moment just before turning on the blend mode to see what it would look like was that nugget of crack that I craved out of the whole process.

So in the end, it’s completely selfish. There was a time that I thought what I was doing would somehow make a difference in the world, or help people understand each other a bit better so that maybe the world would be a better place, but the last few years of my life have taken that view out of the idyllic and into the realistic. It’s impossible to save something that doesn’t want to be saved even if it needs it. I don’t think what I’m doing is bad, and I still do believe in what I’m doing is for the good, but it’s clear now that it’s much more for myself than it is for others. If others get something out of it, then that’s the icing.

Most individual years of my life have been pretty homogenous. Save an errant semester, my entire life up until a couple years ago has been calculated in years; Freshman Year of High School; Senior Year of College. While there are definitely a lot of up and downs within those years, nothing has been so completely sporadic as my 2009.

But like any year, it boils down to a handful of very important moments. Not all of them were instrumental, but in some way each defined a project or a period of time. I think this year was particularly unique because it was my first real year of being completely on my own. Kongregate was no longer funding Dinowaurs [although that stopped well before 2009 started] and everything was pretty much up to us. What game we were going to make and how that was going to pay the rent every month. We’re still learning, but we’re much better off now than we were and it’s thanks to this roller coaster we rode and the lessons it taught us.

Effing Hail

The year started off like 2008. Dinowaurs. To our surprise we were still working on it. What seemed like endless bug fixing and gameplay balance was still going on and would be until February when we would go gold. We were all more than burnt out and looking for a way out. So in late December I chatted up Jiggmin for a side project to skirt some of the monotony.
Jiggmin

do ya have any neat-o game ideas that you’ve been wanting to give a try?
I’d love to hear ‘em

Me

yea i do actually
i’ve been looking for a coder to collab with
and brainstorming
typing game
grid based film noir taxi game
your character is in the back seat and you’re typing out “go left!”
and stuff like that
to order the taxi driver
because you’re following some getaway car
so it’s on a big, simple grid
so the typing isn’t linear, you make choices based on if you type “hey dude! go left!”
a set of canned responses and all that
kind of like moves
this making any sense?

Jiggmin

type: use go go gadget wheels!
hehe

Me

haha totally
but the dialog would kind of create teh mood

Jiggmin

what happens when you catch the car?
explosion?

Me

haha
next level
or something simple
so there’s that
Taxi Typer
or whatever

So that was the start of The Great Red Herring Chase. Eventually we would make Effing Hail and three other games that we have yet to release, and probably never will.

The collaboration with Jacob was enormously important to how I would approach game development in the future. Without that experience of not only creating a hit like Effing Hail but also proving itself as a possible business model, I might not be here at all. That’s probably a little drastic, but I can’t imagine a life where that didn’t happen. Jacob came up with the Effing Hail idea [name and all] about midway through development on TGRHC and it immediately stuck. I got to work right away on it and we had something up and running in no time. We knew it was fun but we didn’t know it would be as successful as it was; on FGL and in the press. To this day, Effing Hail is far and away our most popular game and it accounts for about 75% of traffic on the intuition site.

After the whole deal was settled it sent a shockwave through the office. Everyone saw what happened with Effing Hail and got excited. The trouble was we were still in the throws of releasing Dinowaurs and it was as painful as ever. It didn’t necessarily help the situation that I was having more success in my side projects than we were seeing as a team.

Dinowaurs After-Party

I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure we were done with Dinowaurs in early February. There’s probably blog post somewhere floating about… Nonetheless the day was memorable, but not for the release and reception of the game, but what happened afterward. It was about 1AM and we decided to get Jimmy John’s and talk it over. We had finally tied up all the loose ends and now we could breathe a sigh of relief and look ahead to the future. But that’s not how it went at all. We all looked dead; we were tired, and not the sort that comes with accomplishing a huge task. It was more of a defeat and a hopelessness. Morale was at an all-time low.

The kind of atmosphere caused us to ask the tough questions.
Us

Why are we doing this?
Why are we making games?
What’s next?

This was an incredibly important moment for us and for me personally. We were all more or less hopeless and vulnerable so we answered these questions honestly and openly. Not that we wouldn’t have otherwise but this kind of “dire straights” situation made us take these questions as seriously as possible. Here we realized how serious it is to know the answer to these things. What is the dream? If you don’t know that, then you better figure it out or you’ll end up in a nightmare. You can quote that. ;)

It’s really easy to gloss over “Why do I make games?”. It’s uncomfortable to really answer it honestly and I’m convinced few people actually do. It exposes you as an artist and as an individual, but if you never confronted and shared my dream with others, I’m not sure I’d ever have the chance to achieve it. These are the questions that I return to when I feel like we’ve gone off track. It’s not a matter of necessarily keeping eachother on track, but moreso to understand where everyone is headed. Life is complex and ever-changing, so it’s important to check in as often as necessary.

So we sat there eating our subs silently mulling over these questions. We got it all out right there. Everything was on the table and we knew were we stood. For the first time in over a year we could look to the future with excitement. Soon we were talking of a new idea and riffing on building something great again, something brand new! This was the same kind of joy and giddiness that we signed on for in the first place.

GDC & Gray

Just before we headed off to GDC Mike and I brewed up a little prototype for a game that we would later name: Gray. Over the week of GDC we worked on it some, but in addition to Gray, GDC is always a milestone event for us. It marks another year of full-time game development, our dream and meeting new friends and reconnecting with old. Since we live in Iowa we don’t have much chance to hang out with our brethren but when we do it’s like we never missed a beat. Most importantly, probably, I met Colin Northway and Andy Moore there [Fantastic Contraption] which led to a collaboration between myself and Andy to create
Protonaut. We continue to keep in contact and are planning on starting work on a new game shortly.

Beyond that though, we came home fresh from GDC recharged ready to knock out the rest of the work on Gray. To this day, Gray is still the game I am most proud of. I feel like it delivers exactly what we set out to do with it. It’s the only game I’ve worked on where everything has been precisely placed. That’s mostly due to the scope of the game, but it’s also a part of the art direction and our increased comfort with the Flash platform.

The most important part of making Gray was the personal realization that these are the kinds of games I want to focus on. I’ve done a few personal installations, animations and interactive media experiments that were shown in student galleries but I never received much feedback about any of them. I was happy people got a chance to take a look, but it never felt like any of those punches connected. However, with Gray that was certainly a game that connected with a percentage of the audience and that connection was great to see that this is something that could actually work. While I love games as entertainment and will always be interested in making games like that, I decided after Gray that I would pursue more personal game development with all of my side projects.

Indiecade & Liferaft

Strangely enough, while Gray got us into IndieCade, it’s Liferaft that was the real story for us at the time. Mike and I had started work on Liferaft in mid March sporadically and then set our complete focus on it sometime in early May. We’d been going strong on it but the game continued to grow. From what was once a prototype of a grappling circle, we now had an overly-involved storyline with grandiose plans of unique environments, enthralling level design all to be completed by before the IGF deadline. And that was just the first episode!

In early October we headed to Culver City to what would set up the wake-up call of the year. IndieCade was so incredible and so inspirational that it completely bucked us off course on Liferaft, and with good reason. We were in over our heads and had no business thinking we could deliver. Now that we were in the middle of a Kickstarter drive we had responsibilities to our backers and the whole thing became a pressure cooker. Returning from the sunny and friend-filled life of California we came to some realizations about Liferaft and o did I regarding my own life.

There were two lessons here for me. One was the age-old, don’t let a project get too big. It’s a beginner mistake really, but it’s easy to let it get a hold of you and your game. Like so many mistakes in my life I can point to the Ira Glass on Storytelling snippet of advice. Basically, we weren’t ready to pull off the kind of game Mike and I want to make together… ultimately. We need to keep that at the front of our minds when we consider a new, riskier idea.

The second lesson from all this was the workaholic stuff. How not to live my life and what I can do to make sure that doesn’t happen again. This was a huge revelation for me and probably one that was had been waiting in the weeds for well over a year. I linked it earlier but here it is again: Hi I’m Greg Wohlwend and I’m a Workaholic. But like any breakdown, it doesn’t end there. My life got substantially better after realizing what I was doing to myself, but the real-world effects of cutting off Liferaft for the good of our sanity and livelihood soon came knocking.

$34.13 Thanksgiving

I’m not sure if it was 13 cents exactly but what the hell, it’s unlucky enough. I went on Thanksgiving break with that much money in my bank account. I didn’t really know what was going to happen, or where I’d have to go but I just kept working. I was continuing a collaboration with Tyler Glaiel called Tetraform, we were in the midst of a bidding war for EON and we were in talks with a friend for some contract work. Business wasn’t bad, in fact, by all accounts it was bustling.

Bustling or not though… That kind of money and uncertainty made me seriously question if this is going to work. Everyone around me thought it was time to give up and strongly advised I do so. Today, it’s still in question. At that point I realized that the only person that’s really going to believe in me is myself. It’s lonely, sad and probably a good bit destructive but from the outside looking in this is by no means a way to live. My income is well below the poverty line, I don’t have health insurance of any kind and I can’t afford much more than the basics. I have a deep seated urge to live in a big city where there are more people of my ilk, local shops and markets and etc. but I can’t afford to.

I kept hope though. I knew EON would come through and Tetraform would sell soon enough. It worked out, but it left a mark. It reminded me of the huge mistake that was Liferaft. Spending multiple pay-less months on a project that will most likely never see the light of day. It’s a folly I will never forget. For this to work we need to continue with what we know works and take small steps towards big rewards. We know how to make small games that can float us and then some. We’re making more on sponsorships with each game we make and we retain all ownership. More people are coming to us for contracts and collaborations than ever before. Things are looking up. But just one month ago they hit an all-time low in terms of where our business was. Luckily we worked through it and saw the upswing and had faith in it. We’re climbing now and I’m very excited for our future.

2010: A Mikengreg Odyssey

Mike and I are planning a new brand: Mikengreg. We’ve been working on it for over 4 months bit by bit and it’s starting to shape up. We’ll release it when it’s ready and we’re both really proud of it so far. For now, all I can tell you is that we’ll be combining our handmade beer [and possibly bread, pasta and other handmade food] with handmade games. Not sure how just yet, but it’s sure to be tasty!

Other than that, game-wise we’re working on a Gamma IV entry that Mike and I are really excited about as well finishing up EON with a level editor. We’re also kicking around a couple of game ideas that we’ve had for awhile now, one of which is multiplayer. We’re toying with releasing an X-BOX Indie Game and maybe something PC downloadable. Those are our big milestone targets right now. One thing is for certain though, we will continue with the 2-week game cycle to fund our riskier moves. Expect the same kind of little interesting and/or fun games that we’ve been churning out over the last year.

Also, I will be continuing work on Pterogative which I hope to have finished sometime before GDC. I took a break from it and recently found a coder to help me with out. :)

Happy New Year!

In gamer lingo, it’s a 3d, physics-y, psuedo-pixel-art cannon-shooting game with a strategic probability management element.  Based on tester feedback, it seems to be pretty addictive, too.  Here’s the “official” description:

As a producer for the Japanese game show Megabank Executive Humiliation Challenge (MEHC), the nation is counting on you to keep them entertained by humiliating the best of the best in Western banking executives. Balance money-making obstacles and hire better executives to make the most profit you can in one season. Don’t let your nation down!

It’s an experiment in many ways, including emotional, commercial, and production..al, but not so much in gameplay. It’s kind of weird to look back at your baby after you’ve given birth. Sometimes you didn’t see yourself making that kind of game, and I can say that about this game.  However, I’m happy with the work I’ve done.  It’s quite a fun game.  I’d also like to thank the Gratton brothers from the Napkin Sketch collective for doing the sound.

Even though I didn’t originally see myself making this kind of game, I think in some ways I needed to make it, at least to just express my frustration with my current feelings on the nation’s economy and moreso on capitalism in general. I’ve grown increasingly dissatisfied with it as a system lately.  And maybe I needed a break from taking game design so seriously, too.

I’m hoping to find a sponsor for it by the end of the year.  And it should end up on FGL in some form or another soon for auction.  The sponsorship space seems pretty barren when it comes to Unity games, so who knows what will happen…