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Rumour has it there may be a few more posts about to surface on Psyncinteractive.com… Though purely because I said that there will never be another post again!

As a child I had many hobbies, countless attempts to make boats out of Lego that didn’t sink, building dens and making films with my dad’s camcorder to name but a few. I think it’s fair to say I’ve always enjoyed the creative side of everything.

I was fascinated by all things interactive. Literally anything, Bamboozle on teletext was as good as it got! Until I got a second hand Commadore 16 then Rolf Harris’s animator, the amazing 2 frame animation application that took 20 odd minuets to load, was spectacular. I remember designing games for the Atari 2600 on sheets of lined paper with the intention of posting them off to Atari HQ because of course that’s how games get made. Eventually someone explained that I wasn’t going to get any response from such company and so the quest to make things interactive began.

The first attempt came in the form of a terribly spelt, barely legible adventure book, you remember those? “The lord of the frogs stands in front of you, you think to yourself how odd it is his breath smells of tic-tac’s.
To swing your massive fist at it’s minty face turn to page 17
To french the rubbery sod turn to page 8
To walk past it turn to page 11″, you know, those sort of books.
I never read any myself, they didn’t sound much cop and nor was mine, made absolutely no sense, though was full of dinosaurs! I don’t recommend any budding game designer try this, it’s not the most rewarding thing in the world…

The next low tech approach I remember trying was to invent new rules for old board games (these too featured mostly dinosaurs) which were a little more exciting, but still very much not worth the hassle! Eventually computers came along that had MS Paint and so some real designing could take place, kinda. Using techniques previously learnt from making bad book games it was obvious the way to make a real computer game would be to get rid of those silly pages and replace them with bitmaps. This time the games featured less dinosaurs and mostly kids that got bullied at school (amazingly non of whome were myself!). With a badly drawn nasty picture of one of the poor chaps and pixely text at the bottom of the picture the new inspiring game play went something like this:

“the lord of the nob-ends stands in front of you. You think to yourself how odd it is his breath smells of cat-balls.
To swing your massive fist at it’s pussy face open 2.BMP
To french the rubbery sod open GAY.BMP
To walk past it open 3.BMP”

True, it wasn’t the most innovative or mature content, but it was a nice introduction into the creative thinking necessary to make a computer game with no technical knowledge. There was also the slight disadvantage that you could only fit 4-5 bitmaps on a floppy disk, so not the most economical thing either.

When school eventually taught us about Microsoft Access, it was obvious the database driven wonder could be used for slightly less cruder gaming, which meant using real buttons to navigate (all of which were totally visible as there was no opacity control) and every time a sound played it had to open up in a separate window. It was a big load of rubbish, but it did have clip art which meant you could fit more than 4 pictures on a floppy disk! Eventually Power Point came along and Jim will take it from there.

This is all well and good and it turned out ok for me the lonely designer with no code skills, but had the events Jim described not happened, how could one go about making a game without a programmer?

Back in the day this was, to my knowledge, basically impossible. There are now a number of tools and even games for you to get creative with. Little Big Planet for example is a game I’d have loved to get my hands on back in the days of Rolf Harris’s animation studio. There are also a range of tools from the game makers that allow you with no knowledge of such things to put games together.

game making tools

2D and retro yoyo  game  maker
3D Game maker
3D First person Shooter creator

So, it is absolutely possible to go about this madness with only ideas and an ability to make pictures, but personally I have no interest in these any more. Once you’ve been lucky enough to find people that can program and you have put together a game from scratch, I guarantee you’ll never want to try and make a game using someone else’s tools. A game needs 2 half’s, one creative and one technical, but until you’ve been lucky enough to find someone to fill the other half you’ve no excuses to not be making cracking games!

That’s not the kind of destruction I’m talking about here though. I’m talking about the various game engines, and I use the term very loosely (as you’ll know doubt have seen in other articles), that have been unable to cope with the stresses we’ve placed on the poor souls and as they’ve failed, in turn our hopes and dreams have failed too. Oh yes, an awful lot of things have fallen to pieces just as they began to look like they could be our saviour.

The first time I can really recall this happening was during the first attempted development of Zip n’ West, when we were using Flash MX as a game engine. It all began so well, John was more than happy working out key frame animation and the like. I’d discovered that actionscript was essentially javascript and therefore very easy to code. There were also massive amounts of tutorials and forums that we could turn to if we ran into difficulties. I’d started producing a working prototype of the game and as time passed I coded more and more features to accompany the wonderful imagery that was coming my way from the other lads. We had a grand plan in place of how the game would play out from start to finish, that was admittedly probably far too grand for us to achieve at the time, but that was pretty standard so we weren’t worried about that at all.

During the development we found ourselves repeatedly asking the same question, “Why, if there are all these articles showing you how to do brilliant things in flash, hadn’t the people who wrote them made a game like we were instead of phaffing around on forums?”. Well, soon enough the answer became all too apparent. Whilst flash was wonderful at all the little features we wanted to use in our game, when you tried to put them all together it failed miserably.

Essentially flash was not designed to be used to create the kind of game that we wanted to. Our plan was quite simply far too grand for it. We’d pushed flash further than it should ever have been pushed at that time, and it had broken. It was the most productive we’d ever been at that point and although we’d learned a valuable lesson, it had been a painful way to do it. It left us with no choice but to abandon the game without really having anything to move on to, which was the first time we’d found ourselves in that situation.

My advice to you is the same advice that’s lead us to where we are now, there’s a reason people all over the world are out there making games the hard way, that reason is simple, because it’s the best way.

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.

Back in the day, when our combined knowledge of programming consisted of something done a long time ago on ZX Spectrum, the thing we were making the most of, was PowerPoint. We were big fans of Myst and Riven, which had come out for the Sega Saturn a year or two earlier. Now to most people, PowerPoint doesn’t exactly connect with the world of games development, unless you’re thinking of those high powered meetings where men in suits try to convince other men in t-shirts that making a game for their latest blockbuster movie is a really good idea…

However, fortunately for us, one young lad saw another use altogether. He realised that a PowerPoint presentation wasn’t a million miles away from a point and click adventure game, like Myst, and once he found out you could save a presentation as an exe… well, he was half way there. I mean, think about it, isn’t it obvious? Put some pictures in a slideshow with buttons for left and right and you can be walking around anywhere you like in no time. How long would it take someone to make something that could do that with any amount of programming knowledge? The fundamentals are already there for you.

Admittedly, we never actually finished a game using PowerPoint, we always moved on to something else before we really got going, but that’s not to say it couldn’t be done. I’d say that even now, it’s not only distinctly possible, but it wouldn’t be half bad either. Some of our versions included in-game video to show moving doors and the like, as well as audio. We’d even got as far as implementing a few puzzles to give the player something to think about.

What makes a game good isn’t all about the fancy effects you can put in anyway. A gripping storyline can draw you through anything, even if the surroundings are a bit low res and there’s no ‘jump’ button. Can’t exactly remember if we’d worked out a way to save your progress though, but then who needs that anyway? I’m pretty sure there would also have been issues with lag when there was a lot on screen and I’ve no idea how it would’ve coped when the levels got really big, but should you really be thinking that big when you’re using PowerPoint as game engine for goodness sake?

Yep, if we’d had the time and the inclination to finish development, we’d have had a PowerPoint based version of Hydris that would have worked, and we’d have been bloody happy with it too.

So, there you go, however ridiculous something might sound, it’s usually worth having a proper look at. You never know where it might lead…

In between looking for work and residence, the group set about planning for their next project. The obvious choice was to play it safe and make a sequel to the project that had given them such a sense of achievement, but the planned Dome XIV was unfortunately ill fated. Let’s face it, educational games are a bit boring when all’s said and done. The next thought was to return to good old Zip n’ West, but in an unforseen act of sanity, the group realised that it was probably too big a project for them at that time, so they decided to do something new.

The only thing they were sure of at this point, was that they wanted to create their next project using C++ and, preferably, DirectX. This proved to be something of a stumbling block, as despite their numerous degrees and awards, none of them could program in C++ (De ja vous anyone?). Fortunately, Jim knew a man who could…

Let’s look back a few years to 2003 when Jim was still studying at Coventry University. There’s a group of friends sitting in a pub that they refer to as ‘the library’, for reasons best known to them, who’ve recently formed a ’study group’ known as ‘The Pork Pie Club’, for reasons best known to no-one. Now, one of the group is someone we’ve met before, Jim, who at this point, as we’ve mentioned, still has a fairly large amount to learn about programming, but he is getting there. Fortunately there’s another lad sitting close by who’s far more adept at the aforementioned artform, known as Chris Siddall, or to the group as ’Little Chris’ or ‘Other Chris’ (all the good nicknames were apparently taken…).

Now, at this time Chris was, unfortunately, not a great Pool player and he most certainly could not hold his liquor, but what he could do, what he could do better than anyone else in the ‘Pork Pie Club’ and possibly better than anyone else at their University, was program. He’d been programming for years and could code in VB, Java, C, C++ and most likely many more besides. Clearly, him and Jim had a lot to offer each other. Many games of pool and even more pints of beer, plus one rather dubiously completed Java coursework, followed and not only were the two now friends, but ‘Chris’ had become known as ‘Sid’ (now that’s a much better nickname isn’t it?).

After introducing Sid to the rest of the team, some modest plans were made for the next project. It was a top down, 2D, flash style affair that could be completed very quickly and would be a stepping stone to the next, more modern and professional, game. Those more avid readers of this here website will know that, in typical Psync style, it didn’t quite work out that way…

…

Anyway, that brings us up to date. It’s 2010 and not only can Sid handle his drink a lot better and play a mighty fine game of pool, but we’ve also nearly finished our first attempt at a game since we grew into a five piece band. If all goes well ’BL!TZ: Requiem’ will be finished and released soon, then we can get on to the next stage of Psync Interactive, which will hopefully lead to that shelf in HMV before we’re too long in the tooth. Fingers crossed!

The year is now 2005 and the only one of the four who hasn’t left Coventry is Jim. He’s now in the final year of his degree course and has been given the daunting task of producing a fifteen thousand word dissertation alongside a completed project. He’s had a bit of a slow start to University life (zero programming knowledge, remember), but now he’s got the hang of it, he’s doing alright for himself. Viz, by this time, had already made his degree course look something akin to a play school lesson and walked away with not only a first class degree with honours, but also a couple of awards, just to rub it in. John had spent the intervening years blazing his way through his degree course and somehow still found time to have a crack at games development along the way. As for Richard? Well, he’d discovered that University wasn’t for him and had moved on to other things.

Now at this point, Jim’s in a bit of a pickle; that dissertation isn’t going to write itself. The only upside is, he’s been told it can be on anything he likes, so long as it’s in the realm of computing, and he can use anything (and I stress anything) at his disposal. In fact one particular lecturer, who shall remain anonymous, actually pointed out to a crowded lecture theatre that, “If your Dad works with a supercomputer, then use that supercomputer!”. Well, unfortunately for Jim, his Dad worked in a car factory and they definitely didn’t have any supercomputers there… but what he did have, now that they had all come back, was a budding games development company in his kitchen, so he decided to use that for his final project instead.

Now, this may on face value seem like a rather obvious and easy choice to make, but it’s worth pointing out that Psync had never actually produced a completed project, and putting your future in the hands of Psync Int. was a little bit risky to say the least. A meeting was quickly arranged and it was decided that, for better or worse, they were going to have a crack at it. Obviously, Jim would have to do the bulk of the work himself (it was his project after all), but the others agreed to help out where they could, without it getting to a stage where such help could be called ‘cheating’ (such a nasty word).

The idea was simple, they would produce a 2D educational game aimed at school children. Rather than including a complicated game engine, levels would essentially be made up of a series of on screen questions that the user would need to answer correctly in order to progress. True to the emerging style of this particular group of developers, the idea changed overnight to incorporate a fully 3D environment with real world physics, included at least one playable platform level, and was designed to be at least twice as big as anything they could feasibly achieve in the allowed time frame. Yes, that night, Dome XIII was born.

This was a new age for Psync Interactive, the machine began to wurr like never before. Over the next six months, productivity grew and grew to a point where sleep was sometimes forgone altogether. The most infamous of these occasions resulting in a mammoth 42 hour shift! An experience that would live long in the memories of those involved.

During the summer of 2006, the first deadline ever faced by Psync reared it’s ugly head and the project would be submitted. Did it work? Not exactly… a lack of sleep doesn’t really promote accuracy or quality assurance, but it wasn’t a million miles off. In fact, thanks to an early decision to half the amount of levels in the game, and a greater emphasis on FMV sequences, it was virtually on the money.

A few months later, the results were announced and Jim had bagged himself 85% on his dissertation. Coupled with some fine performances in the other six modules he completed that year, he’d managed to achieve a first class degree and the highest mark by a student on a computing course that year. It was Psync’s first completed computer game and it was a notable success.

This brings us to another key stage in the life of Psync Interactive, it’s time our heroes left the sanctuary of education and faced the big wide world alone, or perhaps not quite as alone as they thought they would…

See you for part three next week.

Back in 1994, four young fellows were adjusting to the life changing event that is “going to the big school”, but they needn’t have worried, it was simply another step towards finding out where their lives would lead. Four years earlier the first seeds of the creation of Psync Interactive had been sown, when John Thompson and Viral Sinroja (both who knew nothing of programming) were teamed up to devise a performance in a Drama lesson, without anyone realising the significance of the event. Onlookers of the momentous occasion simply laughed at the hilarity of two kids pretending to beat the hell out of each other in what would become known as “that slap-stick thing we do”.

Anyway, back to 1994. Jim McDonald, who also knew nothing of programming, met our two comedy heroes near the start of the year and before too long they were all good friends. Later that year, “That slap-stick thing-we-do” became “That slap-stick thing we-used-to-do” after a little in class demonstration resulted in them being sent out for apparently causing an affray (compulsory eye tests for teachers anyone?).

Onwards now to 1996, the setting is an English class and Jim is sitting next to another young fellow who happened to be Richard Holmes, the last of our four. A few brief comments later about the book, “The life and times of an Otter” (Just don’t ask), a friendship was born. The following years resulted in the four becoming close friends and the outcome was predominantly many, many games of worms, not the most productive, but none-the-less entertaining.

The next major event was in 1999, after their GCSE exams, when Holmes went to college, to hone his artistic talents, and the rest started sixth form to, among other things learn about I.T.. It was around this time that John’s creative talents, once shunned by a poor-sighted teacher, began to surge again. Fuelled by the teachings of the I.T. staff he decided to attempt a game set in the school and it’s surroundings, made in MS Paint and of all things MS Access (no, they can’t remember how either). One particular I.T. teacher had a profound effect on the group, most likely without realising it. Mr Steele taught them how to do some weird and wonderful things in MS PowerPoint (bear with me now).

This newfound knowledge, coupled with John mapping out the labyrinth that is Corel 3D, gave them the chance to make the first edition of Hydris, all still with a combined programming ability of zero. Thus, the four gathered in Jim’s kitchen in front of a Pentium (yes, just the one) machine and Psync Interactive was born as the first world of Hydris was constructed. The game was never completed (probably quite expectedly) and the same applied to the subsequent Hydris versions 2 to more than anyone can remember – not to mention several other games (some even had a bit of dodgy programming). There were positives, however, as their knowledge and abilities prospered with each new attempt.

Once college and sixth form were finished in 2001 it was time for them to depart to Universities all around the country. Holmes, to Wolverhampton, to study Art, furthering his artistic talents; John, to Coventry and later Stoke, to study Design, furthering his 3D and other graphical skills; Jim, to Coventry, to study Computing, in order to finally bring programming to the Psync Interactive machine, and Viz, to Hull, to study… Mathematics… well, he always loved the Math.

What happened next? Did they ever make a computer game? Did anyone ever learn to program?

All will be revealed this time next week…

So, how to begin? Well, the first stage is to identify a location. Try to think of somewhere with some character that will provide buildings and other architecture suited to your current projects, but also try to think about what you’re likely to require in the future. You’ll need somewhere that’s large enough to make finding accommodation a fairly easy and hopefully cheap process, but there’s always the camping option if needs be.

It’s also got to be somewhere that you can get to, or preferably, somewhere that you were going, or at least wanted to go anyway, but just needed a half decent excuse to get you moving. Another important consideration is the weather. It’s no good trying to take pictures on an overcast day, nevermind when it’s tipping it down. You won’t get anything usable that way. Late spring and the summer will certainly provide better lighting and longer days to aid your quest.

The final key point to remember when planning your excursion is that texture gathering is a truly daunting and exhausting task. Don’t leave yourself stranded in the middle of nowhere looking for an archaic piece of wall, however certain you are that it’s just what you need. Remember to always, and I must stress this point, ALWAYS be near a pub. If you can’t get some refreshment after all that effort and hard work… what’s the point?

So, either check yourself in to a nice B&B, hotel or the like, or pitch your tent in a nice spot, near your chosen ’suitable’ location during the more civilised months of the year. Then check your wallet’s in place and full enough to get you through the day. You’re now ready to pick up your camera and head in to the target zone. Study each and every surface in your eye line, not just the walls, get a good look at the floors and ceilings too. Any of them could offer the perfect texture for your next creation. Take close up shots and try not to worry too much about the onlookers wondering what the hell you’re doing taking a picture of a brick.

Now, sooner or later the heat and the pressure will start to get to you, you’ll find yourself drying out and becoming increasingly frustrated with tourists who are by now convinced that you’re barking mad. In short, it’s time for a break. See, I told you those pubs would come in handy didn’t I? This isn’t the end of your day though, oh no, there’s plenty of textures in a nice old public house and a couple of bevvies will surely increase your confidence and, as a result, production when you get back out there.

Once you’re happy that you’ve covered the vicinity and captured everything worthwhile, you can pat yourself on the back, start to relax and think about the evening. It’ll be getting dark soon anyway and you can’t take photos without good light, oh no. Thankfully, you’ll now have an in depth knowledge of the local drinking establishments and can plan your night accordingly. A couple of days texture gathering is usually enough for any man and you can return home safe in the knowledge that it’s been a job well done.

Oh, it’s a hard life this games making malarkey…