We’ve essentially covered this topic without spelling it out as I’m about to. After Jim’s very lovely powerpoint article, I got to thinking about the ill fated Hydris and it’s sequels and came to the conclusion that it’s all the fault of bloody ambition! It has genuinely killed many, many projects. I attributed the death of untitled “Space Horror” to the dreaded 60% in an earlier article, though in retrospect it never even got that far, it never got beyond concept art and a few 3D models. The ambition had utterly creamed that project before it had a chance. At the time, our greatest achievement was a slideshow, but Johnny Ambition had visions of Resident Evil bettering gaming! How was this going to be made? I’ve no idea, but Hydris was definitely worth jilting for it.

One of the few images from Untitled Space Horror

It’s a relative of the same beast that climbs lamp posts shouting “sequel!”, the ambition either outgrows the current project or guts it before it reaches the starting blocks. The Space Horror game is a good example of this. Our untitled survival horror game (set in space, if you hadn’t guessed) began with a prison riot… there it is, the first two words, the first two dominos falling in a very short line of domino shaped dreams, killing the game to bits.

I think this is definitely something that comes with experience. During the dark days of the even darker basic, I remember countless forum posts from people saying, “I’m making a massive multiplayer online game”… no you’re not, you’ve got an idea for something and probably some mad computer skills, but that is still a little unrealistic. Don’t stop thinking about it though! Ambition is a great, great thing, if you have an idea for something mental and completely unachievable, write it the hell down! The more you understand what you’re capable of achieving in any given time frame, the more your original grand idea will evolve to fit and become workable. Zip n’ West for example is still evolving years after it was first conceived.

I like to try and offer some sort of solution to these things, Dome is a good case study. Again the ambition monster was out in force with that one and the game ended with a stand off between Race and a massive Dragon in some sort of cathedral, I believe it was. At about a tenth of the way through, with a deadline rapidly approaching, the painful decision was made to chop the epic in two and finish it at the half-way stage boss. I think it’s human nature to always want what could have been. For me, it was like finding out the original planned ending to Jurassic park 2 and wanting to know what the film would have been like had they never left the damn island!! I too wonder how awesome Dome would have been, had it ended like we planned. At the same time I know if we’d have tried that, the project would never have been finished and so it’s all the better for cutting it in half.

Be ambitious, be damned ambitious! But be preprepared to scale that ambition down to a manageable size and maybe whip a non-alcoholic beverage or 2 in after that 9th pint… yeah as if! (the ambition thing still stands though).

However, this time, I’m afraid I will lose the fight despite my best efforts. The beast that is the subject of this article is one of my least favourite things and my feelings will flow throughout the next few paragraphs. For that reason I strongly advise anyone of a nervous disposition to use your back button and find a less aggressive article for your reading pleasure. Thank you.

Theories! I hate the (insert your own expletives here) things! The amount of times I’ve had to stop coding to listen to someone’s (yes, that’s you John) brand new idea that’s going to require you to re-do the whole engine just to find out that it didn’t work after all. They’re just stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!!! What a waste of time. Yes, they sound sensible first time out, yes, it’s all plausible and like it might well work when you first hear it, but invariably they don’t.

The time when they usually first rear their ugly heads is when you’ve been busily working your way through coding each and every feature required by your latest creation, only to find yourself stuck on one particular thing. It’s usually nothing major, just a little snag that’s going to slow you down a bit, but because you’ve got a headache and haven’t slept for a while, you try airing your concerns out loud. It’s not that you’re after reply as such, the question “How the bloody hell am I going to do this?”, is usually more rhetorical than anything, but once you’ve said it, it’s out there and you can’t take it back. Whoever’s sat nearby realises you’ve got a problem and they want to help you get through it in order to get the game back on track. They’ve got the best of intentions, this is true, but the problem is that they haven’t got much of a grasp on how you’ve done everything up to that point and as a result, they don’t realise how much they are asking of you when they say, “Why don’t you do it like this…?”.

Suddenly your brain is clouded. Maybe everything you’ve done up to this point has been in vain, maybe it’s all been one massive mistake from start to finish. What were you thinking?! You’ll have to start over, but you can’t, you’ll just have to dive in and try and ressurrect the poor creature. So, you start coding whilst half listening to the latest theory that’s going to solve the problem and then the cloud lifts and you realise all too quickly that it’s bollocks. It’s never going to work, you’ve just reworked half your code for nothing and you’re now pretty much lost, with code that’s half of one thing and half of another. You’re even more tired and your head is burning. Panic sets in just in time for you to hear the immortal words, “Ooh, I’ve had another idea, how about this?!”.

Once coding has begun on a particular feature, it should not be interrupted by anyone’s latest theory, no matter how wonderful it seems to be at first glance. Mark my words, it will only lead to misery, headaches and alcoholism. The worst offender of our back catalogue occurred during the development of Zip n’ West in Flash MX. Some features had more theories than I’d had hours sleep the night before, some went well in to double figures. At home I have folders full of scraps of paper with titles along the lines of “Collision theory #27″. I’m not sure we ever did come up with one that worked as well as we’d have liked.

It wasn’t all bad though, in amongst the hundreds of theories were some elements that would become invaluable and when viewed with a clear head could have directed us towards a very well made game, but unfortunately something else got in our way. That’s for another article though. For now, just heed my words, theories should be resigned to the time prior to coding, once you’ve started try and stick to your own tried and tested techniques.

There you go, I feel much better now.

Out there in the ever growing, ever changing, ever more mental internet there are so many things. Some of which are brilliant, brilliant games. Most, if not all of which, you will never have heard of. This isn’t surprising, as there are quite possibly more web pages than there are ants in the world these days, so it’s all a little cluttered. Creating yourself a web page with your super-awesome game on and hoping people will find it is a bit like flicking a bogey on the London Gherkin and not only expecting all window cleaners from here to Australia to hear about it, but come over and give it a damn good cleaning as well. It’s very unlikely.

So how does one promote their creation? Well, start by making that website I damned in the previous paragraph. True it’s not going to attract the masses on it’s own, but you need a place for said masses to descend on. Game development forums are the place to start. Sign up to some as you are developing the game. If you start spamming forums with messages about your finished game straight away, you are likely to be ignored no matter how mind blowing it is. If you join these forums earlier on, you can get feed back and generate a fair bit of hype as your game gets nearer to completion. This is all well and good, but why are you actually going to complete your game? Because you are entering it into an indie game development competition, that’s why.

Game development competitions are great for wannabe game devs, not only do they give you that must have deadline, but they also bring more publicity than you could hope for. There is also the bonus that people have to play your game in order to judge it. The down side to this is there will be criticism, but the knowledge that so many people have been engaged and drawn into your game to play it should be gratifying enough to offset any bad press. Grow from it and try to fix the bugs ready for version 2, which will be so much easier than version 1 ever was. You now have fans, drive, promotion and that pesky deadline is no longer an issue. See, easy!

Indie developer competitions

IGF: http://www.igf.com/
IndieCade: http://www.indiecade.com/
Indie Game Challenge: http://www.indiegamechallenge.com/home/
2beegames: http://www.zoogamesinc.com/splash/splash.php
Intel: http://software.intel.com/en-us/cont…0/contests.php

The humble deadline has plagued everyone since sliced bread (at the very least), although I have a feeling it stretches back much further than that. It’s a fun-sucking, vampire koala that constantly hugs your head, nagging and keeping you awake at nights. However, everybody loves a hug, regardless of how much you hate the person doing it. I put it to you that deadlines are one of the best inventions since whatever was around before sliced bread. If sliced bread had a deadline, it would have been sliced way before it was eventually sliced, and that’s the point!

Something I think all of us at Psync have discovered recently (by that I mean the past 2+ years) is that game development takes bloody ages! We’re into our 3rd year of development of a game that started out as a simple, 2D, flash game. Had this game been a university project, with an all important deadline, it would have been finished in 6 months (and would probably still be a simple, 2D, flash game). There always has to be some sort of compromise if you’re going to meet a deadline, unless you have the time keeping / project managing skills of a… ruddy good time keeper / project manager. Personally, I find making compromises is the most difficult part of keeping to a deadline. The continuous creative flow of ideas, sequels and different game ideas is hard to ignore, that’s what V2.0’s are for. For this reason, I find self inflicted deadlines a waste of time, unless you have the will power of… a ruddy will powered type of bloke, you’ve got no chance.

There is a very elegant dual purpose solution, that doesn’t just dive over the self inflicted deadline obstacle, but destroys another indie game barrier at the same time. However, as this is “multi-parter season” here on psyncinteractive.com, you can read the solution to this next week, in the exciting conclusion titled:

The dreaded ‘Promotion’

I know, shortest article ever… but, I can’t use up 2 ideas in one article now can I? See you next week Psynconaughts!

There are so many things that can draw creative (and not so creative) types to developing interactive media. Myself, being a Digital Designer, I have much love for both graphics and interaction. I’m also big on storyline, cinematography and music (I can’t help being an omnipotent creative force now can I?). The various programmers I’ve come across in the wild have all said it’s the technical challenge that draws them to it. Outside (and on occasion inside) Psync I very rarely agree with any opinion a programmer in the workplace attempts to give me. We do however, always agree on one thing, ‘The Dreaded 60%’.

So you’ve had an idea, it’s an outstanding idea! You can picture the levels, gorgeous visuals and the ingenious game mechanics that will make your creation stand out from the crowd! People all over the world will not be able to put this puppy down, well not until the sequel! I already have an epic plot the likes of which Spielberg couldn’t begin to realize. Next, hundreds of hours dedicated to producing rich, glorious graphics and finally a bit of code to make the whole thing tick. Brilliant! I’ve got my first level, with a character and menus galore. It’s taken months, but has been so worth it! We’re over half way, some would say about “60%”. Now just to tidy up the mess that is the code, iron out a swarm of bugs, complete 254 animations and build a few dozen levels.

It’s at this point a strange yet not surprising thing happens, you lose all interest in the project. Faced with the sheer uncompromising slog of churning out level after level, animation after animation and line after never ending line of code, it’s just too much for anyone isn’t it? Besides, people would only make comparisons between it and several other finished games, so there really is no point continuing down this plagiarism paved road to disappointment.

I’m tying this to games development but it’s true of all creative endeavours, whether they be comics, animations, films, stories or anything that requires a dose of imagination. The 60% stage of any project is the moment the challenge has ended. Foundations for the grand plan have been laid and now the grand plan is too grand for such a creative chap to complete. Now the creative chap has another idea, a much more manageable plan. More manageable that is, until the foundations have been put in place and it’s once again, just too damned big. So, the cycle continues. I raise my hands and both legs to admit that I have fallen foul of this on more occasions than I can genuinely remember.

I feel I should try to offer some sort of advice to avoiding this dreaded thing. So far I have only two proven techniques, one is to not to try this stuff solo (but that’s another article) or base your final year university project around it (although this will lead to 42 hour marathons when the deadline is near). Next time I try such a thing, instead of starting the foundations of the project and being creative as I go along, I’m going to lay the foundations first. There will inevitably be tweaks and new ideas, BUT if I can plan the project out from start to finish, design basic blueprints for everything in the game and still not have given up, the boring stuff will have been done. I will know how much work is required and can concentrate on the visuals. This is very untested however and won’t work for everyone, but I’d like to think it will work for me, I’ll let you know when I find out.

Please leave any comments, ideas or tips below, we need to solve this problem!

Sequels! Has any word ever brought such terror into the heart of a games developer? How many projects have fallen foul when the future looked so, so rosy before someone had to go and utter the fateful phase, “Ooh, I’ve had a great idea for a sequel”? It always spells disaster. People’s minds are no longer focused, all they can think about is this new incredible concept that some muppet (dear friend) has just come up with to revolutionise gaming. Why continue with this sad, old, out dated thing that was bright, shiny and brilliant just moments ago?

Well, maybe it’s a personal gripe, maybe there are other companies out there who regularly discuss sequels without any negative effects at all… but not at Psync, oh no. The classic example that immediately springs to mind is our dear old friend Hydris. It was where it all began, our first foray into the industry. Yes, I’ll grant you, technically we knew very little and weren’t capable of making anything that was going to be saleable, but we knew enough to make something we could play, even if it was essentially a PowerPoint presentation (we all have to start somewhere). Why wasn’t it finished? Sequels!! That’s why! The bloody things were like wildfires springing up every time we thought we might be able to finish one. How many versions did we go through? I’ve honestly no idea, but it must have been in double figures.

The Original Hydris model in all it’s poorly rendered glory.

You start off with a clear idea of what you’ll be using and what the game play will be like. You know you have to keep it simple so you can finish it. Then someone discovers a new program that can model backgrounds and render images a million times better than what you’re using and, as one, you all wish you’d known about it when you started. The thing is though, you didn’t, for whatever reason and it’s too late to start again. So what do you do? You can’t just ignore this wondrous new device and pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s far too late for that. You’ve all seen the test shots. You can’t get them out of your brain. Imprinted on your eye lids are the high resolution beauties that make the current version look like it was made in the 80’s.

Hydris V2 went through a number of updates after the hub world model was first created.
Hydris V7 was the last before someone had another “good idea”.

“How about a sequel?”, someone eventually says and then that’s it. It’s all over. A matter of weeks later, you’ve abandoned the existing version to work on the new oh, so much better game. It’s been discussed and everyone’s agreed that it’ll be much easier this time and the end product will be amazing. It’ll be the last version because you’ve seen the samples and they are perfection, there’s no way they could ever be bettered. Ten versions later and it might not have been such a good move after all.

The last / latest iteration of Hydris is Hydris Cell.
Quite simply we lost count of versions so moved on to subtitles.

In the end we opted for the “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” solution, so every game we’ll make now, will be a sequel.

Be wary my friends! The sequel is out there and it wants you to fail!!