Design by Ashley Dumonchelle, Textures by Justin Messner, Model by Liem Nguyen.

BUT we’d like to save a lot of what we’re doing so that we can present it to you in one big WHAP! of awesome.

In the meantime though, we have some new concept art for you: (chez Katie de Sousa)

…and some Skype meeting antics here.

Enjoy!

Talkin’ about Kyle Pulver, yo.

If you haven’t heard of the Humble Indie Bundle yet, (how is that possible?) then you should definitely check it out. Pay anything you want for 6 awesome indie games, including Aquaria – and part of your contribution will go to the EFF and Child’s Play charities as well. The site also features real-time stats, and a couple secrets…

Also: check out the responses to last week’s post about “Self-Management” – there are some interesting thoughts:

Previously…

The idea of setting your own pace and being in charge of your own schedule might sound pretty good. And in many ways, it is. If you’re running your own game project, you get to choose what the priorities are, when you get up and when you go to bed, how many hours per day you should spend working on various tasks – etc.

However, by deciding to go down this path your responsibilities begin to increase exponentially. If you were working for a large company with several layers of managers, the managers would be the one keeping track of where the project is supposed to be. You’d only have to worry about your block of work; the rest of the project would be taken care of.

When you’re running your own project though, its success or failure is ultimately resting entirely on your shoulders. So it’s not as if you’re “more free” in the sense that you can just take whole days off to be lazy – in fact, your workload is going to be much larger…

Read On

In my case, I find it hard to not work. If I get blocked from working for too long, I go a little bit crazy. On the other hand, thinking about the sheer amount of responsibility and effort that will be required to finish the game I’m working on is also enough to drive one a little bit mad!

Having an innate desire to work is usually a good thing, but it can also backfire in undesirable ways. It often leads me to stay up as late as humanly possible, for example. While this can sometimes be a good thing, allowing me to continue working on something really cool until it’s done, it can also result in a very odd, sleep-deprived mental state.

Being overtired is similar to being a bit drunk. To be honest, it’s actually pretty fun. Sometimes I do my best work while in this batty frame of mind. But a few things are required to make it work properly.

When overtired, I usually can’t remember anything that happened longer than 30 seconds ago, so I have to keep a notebook around to keep track of what I’ve been doing. (and what I should be doing) I also find it’s important to keep a bottle of water handy, as well as a pair of headphones with really epic music blaring. It also helps me to be hungry while working, for some reason. (?)

What about you? How do you manage managing yourself? Or if you work for a company, how do you find your managers? Do they annoy the crap out of you, or do you appreciate that they keep you on track?

Previously…

One of the unfortunate side-effects of running your own little game development team is that you have to pay everyone. Not that that in-and-of itself is a big deal, but there is a lot of paperwork and procedure that goes along with it.

In our case, we have a bit more of a headache because we’re using “government funding”.

What Funding?
The fund in question is called MIDMF… the “Manitoba Interactive Digital Media Fund”. It has three sections: prototyping, development and marketing. We’ve been in the prototype stage.

Read On!

How Does it Work?
It’s a “matching funds” program – that means that the government matches what your company invests in the game. So if you’re planning on investing $10k in a prototype, the government would give you $10k.

What Does it Take to Apply?
Quite a large pile of paper work… our final application ended up being about 70 pages.

How do you Pay it Back?
You only have to pay it back if the game you’re working on gets released. If the game is released and makes money, you pay back the amount (say $10k) over a period of time via a percentage cut, to be negotiated between you and the government.

What are the Qualifications?
Half or more of your “key” staff must be residents of Manitoba.

What are the Limits?
I believe the limit for the government’s portion was $20k for prototyping, $50k for development. (not sure about “marketing”)

That’s not a TON of Money in Game Development Terms…?
The old overall budget figure I’ve heard for an XBLA game was about $250k, a far cry from MIDMF’s ~$75k. However, for smaller, indie teams, the government’s matching funds proved to be quite helpful.

Sounds Pretty Decent! Where Do I Sign Up?
Unfortunately you can’t, because it has been canceled.

Aww…
Yeah, it kinda sucks. Manitoba still has a tax credit. (I’ve heard there are some potential issues with it, but I don’t know the details)

It felt like our province was a little bit ahead of some of the others with MIDMF, now it feels like we’re taking a huge step backwards.

But: we have a lot of good people working to improve the industry here, so I’m hoping that in the future we’ll see the creation of a new fund that goes even further in supporting the local game development scene.

That’s all the business I’ve got for you today. Thinking of dollar signs and numbers makes my brain hurt.

Previously…

… from way back in the day, when we were playing around with building little physics demos a modified version of the Aquaria engine. (and thinking of calling ourselves “Bit-Blot North”) After many trials and tribulations, the game is alive and evolving in Unity.

Usually when you start something, it’s all smiles and hope. It’s thinking “this will be the best ___ ever!” You’re not worried about how it’ll all come together exactly, you’re just excited and giddy – ready to jump in and give it everything you’ve got.

But life can be a dick, especially where creative motivations are concerned. Working on a big (i.e. multi-year) project can be very difficult at times. Even if you’re working on something you care very much about, and you want to make it the best thing it can be – some days you have to dig really deep into your soul to find the motivation to carry on. It’s not just sunshine and giggles and then a game pops out!

If you want to finish something that’s larger in scope, you have to muster up a great deal of tenacity on a regular basis. There are times when you’ll feel like throwing in the towel – or just throwing up. It’ll start to seem like taking that position as janitor at the local McDonald’s may not be such a bad idea after all…

But in the end, you love your baby too much to just give up. You find a way to ride out the bad times and discover that you still love your project – but in a whole new way. You break down the parts that don’t work, and rebuild them better than they were initially (and naively) planned to be.

Hopefully.

Next week I’d like to talk a bit about one of the “least fun” elements of commercial game development – BUSINESS.

Previously…

Full Article

This talk relates to Marian in a couple ways: First there are a couple examples that reference experiences developing Marian, and secondly the entire development process of Marian is inspired by ideas of “storytelling” and holistic design.

This talk is actually a slimmed down version of one I gave back in September at Austin GDC. Originally this version was going to be just as long, but whoever organizes things over in GDC land ended up turning my slot into a 3-way talk with Adam Saltsman and Andy Schatz. Originally going to be an hour, it was cut to half an hour, then we were told it was going to be bumped up to 45 minutes at the last minute… When we finally delivered the talk, expecting it to be a 45 minute slot, we only ended up with about 35 minutes – unfortunately losing the end of our talk.

We were each going to wrap up our respective sections with a final message, and I think it’s a shame that we didn’t get the opportunity to do so… I’d like to post a rough paraphrasing of my coda here:

“Games are a vast, unexplored space – and this means not a single one of us knows all the right answers on design.
Find your own voice, explore your own creative process.
If it happens to be completely different than mine or Adam’s or Andy’s… or anyone else’s – that’s awesome. Experiencing vivid and diverse points of view is a beautiful thing.
I look forward to seeing what you all come up with!”

I’m really grateful to be in a position where I have the freedom to work on the projects that I want to – using the methods that I find most valuable. I also can’t wait til all you folks get to play the results! (hint: it’ll be quite a while yet)

Previously…

Back in the day when Derek and I were working on Aquaria (circa 2006), widescreen monitors weren’t a big deal. Everything was 4:3, and we designed the game accordingly. However, by the time the game was released in late 2007, 16:10 and 16:9 had caught on in a big way. We ended up releasing a major patch of the game that added full widescreen support – and it was a lot of work. Beyond the code changes, we had to create new artwork to extend the edges of certain scenes, edit all the levels so that the game wouldn’t spoil anything major, etc.

Designing with multiple aspect ratios in mind from the start is a little bit tedious, but it definitely saves a lot of heartache down the road.

Previously…

We’re only going to show you one of the most basic ideas that we’ve prototyped as an example right now, because we don’t want to give away any of the exciting stuff just yet. This doesn’t even scratch the surface. (in fact, this particular piece is a bit misleading, as “Marian” is not a traditional platforming game)

Once I get a sketch like this and we’ve talked about it a bit, I’ll get it up and running in Unity with some boxes to block it out. If there are reusable components, I’ll build them as prefabs. (in this case, platforms that fly in) Then all the work done for the small test level can be reused in larger areas!

Previously…