Getting eaten

Getting eaten. #SpacedOutTheGame #screenshotsaturday pic.twitter.com/bxLtsIAGWH
— Jarom Madsen (@Jarom_Madsen) March 29, 2015

The Nitty Gritty - Fun Before Beauty

I made a mistake once upon a time into thinking that I should start a game by making all the art assets for it first before writing a single line of code. I was wrong.

So I "finished" the Demo 0.1 sorta kinda almost not really. By "finished" I mean that I'm done working on it, not so much that it's what I hoped it would have been. The reason for this is what I'm calling a lack of real vision. I went into it with the workflow of 1) Assign yourself a manageable task. 2) Make all the artwork you'll need for it. 3) Implement it into code. My mentality was that making something that looks good will inspire you and push you to complete it. The problem with this as you might suspect is there is a huge blaring possibility that you don't end up with anything... fun... which is kinda the point of the game.

How does this happen? Couldn't you just keep reworking the programming and change the artwork as you go until it's fun? Well, yes... but kiss your road map goodbye because there is no way that you'll be making any of your mile markers if you have to keep taking breaks to make new art then re-implementing that into your code then it not fitting right and then reworking it and then getting frustrated and wanting to quite because it doesn't look like it's going anywhere. I'm not saying that you can really avoid doing this completely... it's called the polishing phase of development and it can take AGES! But frankly, you shouldn't be polishing at all until you've got your product fully fleshed out in terms of game play. The reason the frustration comes in and starts nipping at your coattails is because you don't have fun game play backing your artwork up. If you have a fun game but cruddy artwork... it's ok... because GAMES DON'T NEED TO LOOK GOOD TO FULFILL THEIR PURPOSE!!!!!

That's what makes us Indies. That's what makes us the ones that "get it". We're not ever going to be able to match AAA teams in terms of quantity of artistic content but where we can compete with them is in the mechanics. AAA teams often spend the least amount of time here because to them, mechanics don't sell games. Trailers sell games. Paid off journalists sell games. Really flashy this and that sell games. So they'll make another run of the mill shooter game with really fresh new graphics. Now I'm not one of the haters that can't see any value in this because heck, I love art in any way, shape, and form and AAA devs make some gnarly stuff. But while they're making a museum for people to walk around in wondering where the laser tag is they were promised, we'll be the ones with the actual equipment to give them their laser blasting action.

Now I'm not saying that you should feel forbidden to do any artwork whatsoever because that'd be silly. Some mechanics require you to know beforehand what something will look like in order for it to work at all. If that's the case though I'd say do the absolute minimum. If you have a game like Prince of Persia where it's based on the animations to decide how far you move, instead of deciding that you then need the final animations before moving forward, think about the distance you need to travel for each step and code that in instead using super crummy stick figures if you need them. If you have awesome ideas for how something should look, AWESOME! Draw some sketches, flesh it all out if you want, it's incredibly useful to keep your mind thinking about the final product... just don't put it into your actual game. Keep it looking as dirt cheap as possible until it's 100% beatable, then go from there.

This advice goes for those who hire artists as well. There's nothing more frustrating for a freelance artist then having that annoying developer that makes them create all this kick-awesome art that nobody ever gets to see because you change your mind about what your game is in the end. That's money out of your pocket anyway, paying for stuff that doesn't make any return profit, it's just bad business. Now if you have money to burn and you really just can't stand to look at the same stupid sprites anymore then it's cool, I get it, don't feel judged by me. Sometimes it becomes incredibly hard to see the end product with nothing but blocks to work with. But realize that that's what you're paying for. It's not the final product and make sure your artist knows that too. The bottom line here is that you should never get so attached to visuals that it hurts the gameplay in any perceivable way.

Alright, enough lecturing and more updating on Spaced Out. This week I've filled over 10 pages of notes on what will actually make Spaced Out fun and exciting. I dug deep and uncovered the reason I originally thought this concept was fun and instead of building on it I cut away it's extremities, got out the excavating tools and brushed away the dirt to reveal the details of where the excitement originated from. And I'm just going to say that it's going to be fricken awesome. Like so awesome that I'm getting things to work already that make me so giddy I can hardly keep still.

TL;DR? Going forward... you're not going to see a ton of artwork to reel you in, so I probably won't get a ton of newcomers and that's fine by me. But if I do hook you, and I'm pretty sure I'll have a good chance of doing so, just wait, because when the artwork comes in it'll blow your gobber-smacking mind!

Edit (5/27/15): I've changed my mind again and decided that ultimately the reason that a game will fail is if you don't finish the designing process before you decide to engage on a project. In the case of Demo 0.1 I did quite a bit of pre-production work but at no point did I ask myself whether there would be any fun involved in the final product. Certainly the art itself would be fun and playing around in it like a sandbox wouldn't be bad but that's not my kind of game. Since the original posting, I've spent much more time working on making Spaced Out fun mechanic wise and story wise. I'm also not working on Spaced Out for the time being although it's still something I hope to incorporate into my future series if at all possible. If not, I'll probably still make it as a standalone someday if I stay in the game industry for long enough to get that many games out. Either way, I love this game, it means a lot to me and I will never fully abandon all hope that it will eventually come to fruition.

Water Planet Sneak Peek

#screenshotsaturday #SpacedOutTheGame: Water Planet pic.twitter.com/muUipMyHtR

— Jarom Madsen (@Jarom_Madsen) March 22, 2015

Online Multiplayer is now a thing!

Yes you heard me right. I've been doing quite a bit of redesigning, coupled with research on multiplayer to write the new article on my main blog: Why Multiplayer Matters - Different Ways to Multiplayer. I've decided that I need to set the standard from game one, incorporating simple but engaging multiplayer mechanics. I believe in multiplayer in all of it's many forms and so I'm going to do my best to prove it's capabilities, pushing boundaries where I can.

Here's a couple new features that you'll see in the final product:

-Online Co-op Mode
  Just like the local co-op mode but with the wonderful benefit of being online supported.

-Online Race Mode
  Once you've completed the game through once, you'll be able to go head to head with another player/team of players to see who can reach the end of the game first.

-Cross Platform MP Support on mobile (Android/IOS)
  With another new feature I'll show off soon now being included in the game, there's no reason I can't also port the game to mobile.

As a disclaimer, this could all go kaput as I gather more perspective on what it'll take to make these happen but I want you to know that I'm going to give it my gosh darn best shot. Because I BELIEEEEVE!!!

Beyond the Demo: Spaced Out Scope and the Removal of the Release Date

So yeah, I know I missed last week's update, and I'm sure you wonderful early adopters you are wondering whether or not the demo is finished.

In short... yes?

I have all the art assets complete and the demo kind of exists and is kind of playable. But the whole point of the demo was to be a foundation from which to build off of, and it's not that yet. So I'm in the current process of cleaning my code cuz it's all over the place right now. It was probably a mistake to dive back into developing with a major project like this to get me back in the right mind set. And that brings us to today's topic of scope.

Honestly Spaced Out isn't the most technical thing I've ever programmed but what makes Spaced Out special to me is what it represents and the journey I have to take to accomplish it. It's meant to get me out the door. It's very content based once the initial engine is built which is what I want it to be. Right now the demo I've constructed contains a lot of the main mechanics but doesn't represent what the final product is supposed to encapsulate.

So is the demo finished? No. However I'm going to try and clean up what I've got right now and get that to you in the next week or so for those that want it but the public demo is not done in terms of representation. We'll call this demo "Demo 0.1". I can't stress to you enough how little it will be in terms of gameplay when compared to what "Demo 0.2" will look like.

Demo 0.2 is going to require much more work and will come later than I jotted down earlier in the schedule so expect some pretty major changes in regards to that.

Finally, there is one other thing to address and that is, release date. I wanted to aim for this December and I'm not going to say it won't make that mile marker yet but I wouldn't be surprised if I decide to take the date off the shelf for a bit until it becomes more clear how long this is actually going to take me. I'll be doing some major reevaluating in the next few weeks and really digging into what Spaced Out is actually going to be in it's nitty gritty details because up til now it's been a lot of glossed over ideas and very little critical thinking.

Another reason for the lifting of the release date is because of the lack of demand for this. If there is no demand for me to have this thing out there yet, then I don't know why I'm deciding to kill myself over it unnecessarily. Along the way if it looks like I'm making really good time or I have a solid idea of when it will be finished then I will reestablish when I will plan on releasing it. I also hate the idea of not having something tangible when I'm waiting for a game to come out so I can at least tell you that I'd be very very surprised if it didn't come out before 2017.

And the final reason I can give you for why I'm relaxing on the release date is because I want to start making money... like tomorrow. That'd be good. So I will be working on side projects alongside Spaced Out that I'll be releasing with profit in mind. Again, if demand really kicks in for Spaced Out, we'll talk about kickstarter and getting funded for me to put the other projects aside and devoting all my time to getting you Spaced Out ASAP.

Okay, that's it for this week. See ya next Tuesday!