Appleseed Prototype, Part 5

Well, friends, here is the last leg of this particular adventure (or is it!?). Once we've put everything together, we can play it and see it all working in unison!

First things first. In order to build a game, you must have a way to write the game. Some people build their games from scratch, engine and all. Other people build games using software others have created as a basis. I am certainly the latter, thankfully so, and the fact that other people have written this software allows me to create my own games without ever having to learn how to create the engine to go along with it. Bravo!

I use two different pieces of software to create games currently. Most of the games I have made or worked on have been in the delightful Adventure Game Studio. Aside from having excellent, well documented features and an excellent community to go along with it, it is free. This was a big 'selling' point when I was beginning to look at game building. Why pay for something when you can get it for free?

For this game (as well as Gherkin Surfin') I have used Clickteam's Multimedia Fusion 2, which costs money. Why not use AGS? Well, AGS is primarily designed for building an adventure game. Whilst some extremely clever people have used to build other forms of games, I am not one of these clever people, therefore I turn elsewhere. MMF2 is fantastic for a number of reasons - It's the easiest thing I've ever used in my whole life (relative to it's capabilities), it's powerful, it has been used to make a whole bunch of games that made me say "I want to do a game like that!" and it is customizable to the point where you can download extensions (similar to AGS modules) to help you build your game just right. The aforementioned extremely clever people can build these extensions with the wondrous and mystical arcane script known as C++. As before, I cannot :P.

Building a game in MMF2 is quite different to building one in AGS. Instead of typing all the functions in, MMF2 forces one to look through lists and select the appropriate objects and results. This makes it very quick to learn and intuitive, although sometimes if you wish to do something advanced you have to rely on things like trigonometry. For the purpose of Appleseed however, I did not.

I won't go ultra deep into the coding process because I am not very good at it (and also because this post is over 1000 words long anyway :P) and therefore will probably tell you wrong things, but the basic process is as follows:

1. Create your game world. Import graphics and assign them to their associated objects. Put each backdrop image in a separate layer and set up scrolling ratios. Put all items that the user interacts directly with (Player character, enemies, ground, blocks) in the topmost frame.
2. Set behaviours. Make blocks and ground into obstacles so the game knows what to do when the player character collides with them. Give enemies a movement path.
3. Set up player character movement (including camera scrolling). Set events for hitting an enemy and being hit by an enemy.
4. Test.
5. Fix insane amount of bugs.
6.Test.
7. Fix ridiculous amount of bugs.
8. Test.
9. Fix considerable number of bugs.
10 Test.
11. Fix remaining bugs.
12.Test.

As you can see, most of the time I spent on this game was fixing bugs and polishing. The initial setup for having a second character was so preposterously bad that the game would end for no apparent reason. The game wouldn't load the ground after everything was compiled. The goblins walked through walls. The player character got stuck in blocks. The player character got stuck on the edge of the screen. The player character would stop jumping 2-3 pixels before actually bumping into the block above her. The music wouldn't load. The music wouldn't load. The music still wouldn't load, dammit!! Oh, it's loading now. Wait, now it is not? Hmmm. The game won't compile!? But I compiled it yesterday!

Fixing most of these bugs was a fairly simple process, but I needed help with some of them. For the strange character getting stuck problem, a search of the Clickteam forums proved that this was common, and the solution was out there. After downloading an extension and spending an hour or so figuring out how to write custom movement where the player character follows an invisible 'detector object' without any spikies such as arms (whoever thought of this is a clever fellow, in my book) I had fixed a bunch of the remaining bugs. Getting the next 3 out took a search of the Clickteam FAQ on their website and 2 forum threads, in which people were very helpful.

Finally, the game was ready to compile. It is perfectly playable, with two very minor non crashing bugs, one of which is very rare. After testing more post compilation, the rare one crashes the game now. I am sorry if your game crashes when you hit a goblin as Appleseed, I honestly didn't think it'd be a problem. I am working on a fix for this (well, I plan to when I am less exhausted). The other one has been joined by another one which won't crash the game, but will look a little funny. Sorry about these as well. I hate releasing games with bugs.

Anyhow, after much thought and much more testing, Appleseed version 0.1 is ready for download. We've come a long way since the 'idea' phase, but we finally get to see it all in action. Still quite shaky as these bugs would indicate, but a successful (I hope) demonstration of my idea.

Get it here.

I honestly hope you like it. Oh, and if you have a pc gamepad, plug it in. It is three times better than playing the game with the keyboard!

All feedback very, very appreciated :)

Oh and a critical gameplay feature I stupidly forgot to note! You have to be stopped to attack as Applecore!

Ghosts made me do it!

Not exactly an hour game, but this was made in a few hours. Two and a half, I think.

And it's all Ghost's fault!

In the future, mutated gherkins have not only environmental awareness but the ability to levitate. Gherkin wranglers catch gherkins in the wild and then ride them in dangerous competition of skill and speed!


Take the reins and fly your gherkin past shiny green blocks to the finish line. One touch of a shiny green block is enough to end your gherkin surfin' career!

It's currently only a single level, but it should take you a few goes to get through it. I might add extra animation/levels depending on how I feel and my motivation to work on real projects :P.

No soundtrack as Sebastian once told me he didn't want to make music for any "stupid random" action games, and this is about as stupid and random as they get ;)

Download Gherkin Surfin' here!

Hugs and cake to my friend Hayley who uploaded it for me when I couldn't get rapidshare or box.net working (stinky internets >: ). Well, tried to.

Appleseed Prototype, Part 4

Whilst I have guided you through the adventure thus far, when it comes to music I turn to Sebastian for help. Not only did Sebastian compose both an Appleseed and an Applecore theme (which are both wondrous) for the prototype, he also agreed to write a description for this blog of the whys and the hows! What a splendid chap!

My composing technique really shouldn't serve as a composing role model for anybody, as I am too far away from being a real "musician" and also often create my tunes in a creative rush, taking about half an hour to play it in my masterkeyboard, master it more or less and put it together. As to composing a good chiptune for a game (in opposition to the dozens of "bad" chiptunes out there), I might have some advice in store, though.

Okay, also in this case, the game is not an adventure game, but a platform-style action game. This makes things easier for me. Adventure game music shouldn't involve too much percussion or too much drive, it should create an atmosphere and not leave the player banging their heads or shaking their hips (lame gender allusion) to the sound, unable to concentrate on the dialog or the puzzles. Action games tend to have nothing such as dialogs or puzzles to concentrate on and fuel on player adrenaline - there you have it. I can percuss the hell out of a tune and it won't bother the player, because he is at the moment concentrating on crashing, evading or destroying, and the music even helps to keep him tense.

Having considered this, I almost always start off with a nice bass melody that can be universally used throughout the tune without getting boring, leaving enough space for semitone jumps. Composing all too straight, with few chords, will likely get on the players nerves sometimes. I have often been listening to 2-chord-tunes by fellow after-work or hobby musicians, and in my opinion they just don't progress, even if they improvise the cutest of melodies with the most elegant of piano samples over these two chords. There are exceptions, of course, some people manage to fill two chords with an amount of amazingness I wouldn't ever dream of, but still.

Next up, there is the charming flute or guitar, or whatever you feel like the 8bit-processor should be emulating at that moment, playing a lovely and cute (respectively fearsome and brute) melody to counterpoint the bassline. The counterpoint, originally a baroque composing technique as far as I remember - has been used extensively on systems with few audio channels. If you listen closely to the NES version of the tetris theme, for example, you will notice that there are not many instruments to form an orchestra-like feeling, but rather two instruments counterpointed perfectly. I try this now and then and never fully succeed because I have no knowledge whatsoever about baroque composing techniques.

Now, if I am in the mood for that, I play the melodies I have until now and look for fitting chords on the midi keyboard. I am not a piano player, so this will most likely end up either in simple major-minor-progressions or in some outlandish freak stuff I have hacked together haphazardly and then corrected so it won't offend anybody's sense of decentness in music.

And then, as mentioned before, I either percuss the hell out of the tune - or not.

Au revoir, Sebastian/kaputtnik

Hooray! We've still got another step on this journey though, and it is by no means the least! Be on the lookout for the next part - programming!

Appleseed Prototype, Part 3

Ready for another big day? Our adventure is really getting started now - we're going to be looking at the environment it takes place in. Again, there's a fair bit of ground to cover today, so let's not waste any time.

Before drawing, let's have a look at the difference between an adventure game background and a platform game one. To start off with, rather than having each game level (chapter for adventure games) represented by a series of rooms, platform games make you play through one room at a time. The room is also generally a lot larger in size than an adventure game room. Because it is so big, the general practice is not to draw the whole room, but to draw a set of elements (known as tiles, due to the way they're placed in the game) and repeat them. I will be using tiles for this prototype.

Also, because the style of graphics I will be creating will have no perspective, we have to trick the viewer's eye into believe the background has depth. There are two ways of doing this - atmospheric depth can create the illusion of distance by putting the colour of objects further away closer to the colour of the atmosphere than those nearer to the viewer's eye. The second way is by using parallax scrolling to make things that are supposed to be further back in the background move more slowly than those that are closer to the player's point of view. This motion creates a very nice feeling of distance.

Ok, let's move to the actual drawing itself. I've laid it out in 9 easy stages. Because I want to do parallax scrolling, it makes sense to draw each layer of depth on a new layer in the image - this is where I like to use the layers function in GraphicsGale.

(click image for full size)

So, the first thing we will need is a basic colour to use as our sky. I've used a light, airy blue, which can be achieved by setting the blue hue slightly closer to turquoise than normal, and it gives a warm, sunny hue to the sky, which is exactly what I am chasing.

Next, we will need land to make our characters walk on. I've used a tile that is only 14 pixels wide here, and made the pattern darker towards the bottom of the screen. 14 pixels is plenty wide enough - as you can see, it tiles nicely without being too obvious that it is being tiled (try to avoid making it look obvious that you are using tiles, other wise your backgrounds will have 'seams' in them). Copy and paste this a few times and you'll have ground!

Next, it's time to put our first background layer in. I chose a light, sunny yellow colour, and then used the alpha blend function to give it the aforementioned atmospheric depth. Again, this is tiled to make for simple drawing :).

In front of this, I add a closer cloud layer. Because it is closer, I do not use an alpha blend, but make it the solid colour. I put a highlight on this one to reduce the appearance of the paper cutout style appearance that these can often have.

Next, it's time to put some hills in the background. I start off with pink 'jelly mounds' which I use a very faint alpha blend on to get the right feeling of depth. Putting them at different heights adds more variation to the image, which makes it more pleasing to the eye.

Because I have short, fat hills, I will now put some tall, skinny hills in, which I'll make a greeny colour to add some nice colour differences to our scene. Again, a very slight alpha blend to get the right colour, and height variation.

To stop the jelly hills from looking like they are sitting on top of the ground that Appleseed is going to walk on, I put a row of bushes along the edge. This makes the jelly hills look further away, and makes the scrolling effect a tad more obvious as it has bumps which make the scrolling clearer to the eye.

Appleseed isn't going to run through a flat level - now I create a block that I can repeat throughout the image, allowing me to build walls and platforms for the player to navigate through. I add some shine to them to bring them out from the background - it helps make them stand out, which is what we want.

Lastly, we put some characters on top to make sure it all works together. We can always go back and alter some colours if they don't stand out enough, but I am satisfied with this. Export all your layers seperately - we'll need them all to be individual for when we put them in the game in order to get the scrolling effect we want.

So, we have an idea, some characters and now an environment. Our game is taking shape, but we've still got plenty of ground to cover. Let's have a break - tomorrow I'm going to invite Sebastian to tell us about our soundtrack, and we want to have a nice fresh mind to look at the next leg of the journey!

Appleseed Prototype, Part 2

Ah, you're awake. We've got a fair bit of ground to cover today, so let's not waste any time. We're going to meet our heroes and villains, and there's a fair bit to discuss.

Although I usually compile all animations into .gif files for simple, pain free importing, I've split them all up into a sprite sheet so that you can easily look at each frame. These were all drawn with GraphicsGale and boring old Paint. Paint is free, you all know the program. GraphicsGale is either free or cheap, depending on which version you get, and it makes colour selection easy and helps you animate with cool things like layers, so it's easy to like.

To start off, I draw the standing pose of Appleseed. This was actually a character concept for another game, but ended up not being used there, so I decided to use it here. I always draw the character with a reference to the resolution the game will be in (320x240 in this case) so I get the size right. Being a platform game, I draw a 3/4 view where we see both the front and one side. Because I want the characters to be instantly recognisable from the background, I put a purple outline around the character. This helps it 'pop' out visually the instant we look at the screen.

The next step is to animate. For platform games, I like to keep the character facing in the 3/4 view - I didn't do this in Man Boy and was unhappy with the result, so I switched to this method. I use 6 frames here; we don't need a huge 12 frame walking animation because we have so few pixels to move. Because Appleseed is harmless, I wanted to make her running animation look a bit like a scared chicken running around flapping it's wings. This is a difficult run for a human to physically do in real life (trust me, I went outside and tried it) but it makes me laugh when I look at it, so I love it.

Lastly, we have to do a jumping animation, because it looks quite strange indeed if you character jumps in a standing pose. I use two frames here - one for jumping and one for falling, because our balance (centre of gravity) shifts at the peak of the jump.

Next, we move on to Applecore. I want a similar looking character to Appleseed, as she is meant to be an evolved version. Because she is a fighter, I gave her a uniform colour, making her look more soldier like in appearance. This uniform looks a bit like Xoda's in Noitu Love 2: Devolution (maybe because I have been playing it heaps lately, and have Xoda's image lodged into my subconscious), but I'm sure nobody would confuse my muddled pixels with Joakim Sandberg's incredible animation. I put her hair into a bun and gave her blue goggles to make her look more badass, and we're ready to get animating.

I took a difference approach to this run cycle - rather than being helpless, Applecore is a warrior, so instead of chicken wing flapping, I give her an efficient military fist pumping style. The leg movements are much the same.

I'm a lot happier with this jump animation - the centre of gravity change is shown a lot more clearly, I feel. However, I feel it looks too 'superhero' for Appleseed, so I am reluctant to do her jump in a style like this.

Because we want her to attack, we have to animate an attack. I have fond memories of playing Mega Man Zero on the school bus with a friend's gameboy, so I wanted to do a Z-Sabre style animation, however I wanted more of a whip style effect, so I made it break up towards the end of the cycle. To figure out where the arc should go, I place the character in a circle, and cut segments out.

Lastly, we're going to need a goblin sprite for our game obstacles. I draw a fairly archetypal goblin to make it instantly recognisable. She's female because there we've got an all female cast already - why spoil it?

I keep the walkcycle really simple here with just 4 frames. Because the goblin will be moving slower than our main characters, the pixel increments for each foot can be a bit smaller.

The last thing to do is to make horizontally mirrored versions of these sprites so that we can have them moving in the other direction as well, and they're ready to be loaded into the game.

Wow, that was a fair bit, wasn't it? We've covered quite a lot of ground again today, but we've got an equally long trek to make tomorrow, so we'd best leave it there and get some rest - tomorrow we're going to be exploring the environment our characters are going to have their adventure through!

Appleseed Prototype, Part 1

Oh, hello there. You've come at just the right time - I was just about to leave on an adventure. You're welcome to come along if you'd like, I'm sure there will be something you will find interesting along the way. Don't worry, we won't be needing zeppelins or submarines on this adventure. We won't even need a raincoat or umbrella. In fact, aside from a few computer programs, all we will need is our imagination and some patience. Curious yet?

We're going to be building a game prototype. Well, more specifically, I am. But you're welcome to follow my journey, and at the end you'll even have a chance to see how it all comes together and play it!

But not just yet. The prototype is built, the graphics drawn, all the functions put together and tested, tested, tested. But, much like my high school chemistry teacher, I am going to go through the theory and process before letting you experiment with it. After all, we're here to make games, not just play them, right?

To start off with, it's best to set a goal for what we're trying to achieve here. I'm going to keep it simple and quite easy because I'm pretty new to all this:

"The goal of this exercise is to create a single level prototype game that effectively demonstrates a unique gameplay feature I believe would work well in a game."

There, that wasn't so hard, was it? A single level is pretty easy to build, doesn't take too much time, and should still let us demonstrate our idea! If we are pleased with how it all works, we can expand and polish the demo into a short game later. Neato, huh?

Ok, so here comes the question. "What made me want to do this?". A few days ago Ghost was kind enough to link me to this page, where a large number of unique gameplay ideas are suggested. I enjoyed looking through these, and I know I often have ideas like these and forget to write them down. So I figured it was probably a good idea to start writing them down.

Then I thought: "Why not go one better? Why not build a short tech demo letting players experience the idea, rather than just tell them about it?". Skip forward two afternoons of drawing and programming and an evening of serious debugging, and here I am with a 'playable idea'. Rather than just talk about an idea, I want you to be able to play it. But I am still going to talk about it a little, and because it is the first time I've done something like this, the whole process involved.

I've definitely briefed you for long enough on our adventure, so I think it's time to set off. There's always a first step in a journey, and this one is no different. Our first step is going to be 'The Idea'.

The idea I wanted to show is formed from games and their difficulty levels. Sometimes when we play a game we get stuck at a certain part. I dislike getting stuck, really, I do, and often I get discouraged out of playing the game if I can't pass a certain point. So I though "What if the game gave me an easier option when it became clear that I was stuck, to keep the game flowing?".

Obviously this is a fairly hard thing to program, but I'm going to narrow the field a little. I am going to demonstrate this in a platform game environment, and I am going to make it very obvious as to how I am doing it.

The player will start controlling the character Appleseed. Appleseed can run and jump, but she cannot do much else. She will have to navigate a level which is filled with patrolling goblins, and in order to do so, she will have to jump over goblins or wait for the right time to run past them. If Appleseed touches a goblin, she will die. But the game will not end there. When Appleseed dies, the player is transported to the start of the level where a new character appears for them to control: Applecore. Applecore is an advanced version of Appleseed and, aside from looking more like a video game hero, she will also have the ability to attack goblins. She runs and jumps in a similar manner, but the ability to attack means that if she wants a goblin gone, it goes.

What this effectively means is that if there is a section with a goblin that the player has difficulty avoiding, in most cases they will get a second chance in which they can destroy that goblin rather than having to avoid it. Destroying a goblin is in most cases easier than avoiding it, therefore the game's difficulty drops with the potential to attack goblins. The game will still have challenge, but it will be easier to pass certain points.

So there, we've taken the first step on our journey. We've got a few more to go before we can call the adventure finished, but we've made a good start. The next thing we have to do is to meet the heroes and villains that will feature in our adventure - but we've traveled quite some distance so far, so let's stop and have a break and start again tomorrow, ready and rested!

Two Can Play at This Game

Some time ago I began working in a new job. After a few conversations with one of my co-workers, he revealed that he was working on writing a novel and that he was a big Terry Pratchett fan. Being a big Pratchett fan myself, I got talking to him about this hobby of his and let slip that I enjoyed writing in the form of computer games. He got interested, being a fan of point and click adventures from the days of old, and so we decided to catch up after work and share ideas.

He went through his novel, I showed him my big projects in gaming (which at the time was mainly a little game called Lode) and we had a pretty darn good time. I'd taken my PC around to show him Lode and also in the hope of a bit of LAN silliness (a hope which died when he revealed that his rather nice computer had no network card), but after a bit of Team Fortress 2 action online, he booted up an oldish adventure game called Sanitarium (yes, like the Metallica song, no I will not make any more notes in brackets for this entry).

If I was to describe this game in a concise manner, I would choose the words "Freakin strange". I think that if I had come into possession of this game, I would have played for 30 minutes, enjoyed looking at the nice graphics and then closed it off, never to try the game again. I didn't find the characters or puzzles very compelling, nor did the atmosphere really impress me.

Strangely enough, we sat up quite late, him playing the game and me sitting on the couch next to him giving him ideas to try with solving the puzzles. Allow me to repeat - this is not a game I would have chosen to play if I was alone. However, I really enjoyed teaming up with someone to solve these puzzles. Could it be that pairing up when playing adventure games makes them more fun? He also commented that he probably would have spent less time on the game if it weren't for our tag teaming. I've had similar experiences with games like Myst IV Revelation and Out Of Order, and it always seems to me that I enjoy playing an adventure style game with or as a 'sidekick'. Perhaps this is a form of multiplayer I've not considered very much before.

Unfortunately, this co-worker recently moved some distance, making repeating the experiment quite difficult until I can find someone local who is interested in adventure games again. Perhaps in the future, technology will mean I can sign in online and connect somewhere with a buddy across the world and we can team up to solve puzzles without ever having to leave the couch?

Shedding Light

An interesting thing I noted some time ago with regards to highlights. Again, another graphics related entry, so those without an urge to create graphics may find the content uninteresting.

In the past when putting highlights on images, I stuck with a neutral white light as it meant that the item or character was more universal - ie, it was easier to fit in with a background than something with a coloured highlight. Occasionally I'd apply a coloured highlight, but this was fairly rare.

Something I've picked up is that sometimes on a reflective surface, the highlight is not a neutral white light but 'atmospheric light' (I just made that term up, I think ;D). I've sketched this quick picture up - to demonstrate what I mean (and also because I wanted to sketch a UT3-esque character :P). I've put a rough background in this sketch because I want to make clear where the highlights on the image come from. Take a close look at the light spots on the shoulder pads and boots. If you look carefully, you might be able to discern that rather than being a neutral white light, they are of a light blue hue. The reason for this is that the shiny armour will reflect the colour of the sky, explaining the light blue. If you look really, really, closely you might see that I've added a separate, more neutral highlight colour underneath this, meaning that the suit not only reflects the sky, but in certain places sunlight.

Looking more closely at the rifle will show that the green lights on it reflect on both the rifle's body and the suit, where the contours would suggest a reflection would occur.

Adding in these touches can help make a character seem less "artificial" and help them to blend in with the background you are placing them on. I regret that I do not have the skill to create a more instructive example at this time (aka sorry the picture is kinda crappy :P), but it is certainly something to keep in mind when thinking about your graphics.

Dynamics

Something I’ve gotten from long, long chats on MSN with like minded friends is that often when something applies in one form of art, it can apply in another. I remember sitting up until 3:00am one morning with a friend trying to find a way to write a song that would be in accordance with the Golden Ratio (generally applied to art, I believe) somehow. Nothing came out of it – this does not mean the discussion was not enjoyable.

I’ve been thinking about something lately, and it is converting techniques from song writing into game design (see the post about Judas Priest ;)). One thing that I notice come up when people talk about music a lot is ‘Dynamics’ which is, from what I can tell and have read, putting contrast into the song. This means going from loud to soft, going from fast to slow, that sort of thing, I think.

Personally, I think this could be a very important thing to keep in mind for when building a game and designing the sections. Wouldn’t it keep the player more interested in playing if you threw them from a section where you have to use your powers of observation and such into an action sequence, and from there into a dialogue heavy sequence, instead of having a bunch of item combining puzzles?

Sure, this has been done heaps, via minigames and action sequences, but what if it can be expanded further? I’ve yet to play Spore, but I’m interested in the idea of gameplay style changing as the game progresses. It’s certainly something to keep in mind, even if I’m yet to have a clear grasp on the full extent of what can be done with this technique in game design.

Vectors!

I hadn't used vectors since playing around with Flash in high school, so the other week when I found out about Inkscape I downloaded it to give it a try!

Here's a quick little background I made in it just to have some vectory fun like I had in the good old days. Even though it's not pixel art, and limited palettes are something I tend to associate primarily with pixel art, I've stuck to a limited palette here because I feel it gives the image a greater feel of consistency, plus it makes the colours a lot easier to manage.

I used pink because it's funky :D. If you’re interested in Inkscape – which is open source, and therefore free, and therefore excellent - you can get it from here.

Name That!

Oh man, I really, really dislike naming characters! It is terribly hard to come up with one that I really like. I'm going to try to compile a little list of ideas that I use when naming a character. If you have any to add, I'd love to hear them.

- As mentioned before, when I think of a science fiction or fantasy name, I go with my favourite technique of flipping a word in reverse and adding in punctuation. Example: "E-man ret'carahc". Easy, huh?
- Alliteration. When I want a fun sounding name, I make two names with the same letter. Example: "Lloyd Lightspeed".
- Adding a title before an unusual noun/verb/adjective. This is a fun way of making silly sounding characters! This can be combined with the alliteration for extra fun. Example: "Colonel Cola".
- Descriptive names. Got a character with a certain personality trait? Name them after it! Example: "Thrifty Keith".
- Asking a friend. Sometimes a bit of outside thinking can come up with something much quicker than you can. "Man Boy", for example, was named by my friend Dan when I couldn't think of a name for him.

Got any ideas to add? I'd love to hear them! Let's make the naming process easy for ourselves :). (Ie, Myself. Yes, I'm selfish ;))

Let's See That Again!

I've always been a big fan of books, and one of my favourite things to do is to go back and read a book again some time after I've finished it. I always seem to notice little things that I never saw the first time through, and I enjoy reliving the story, despite knowing how it ends. Some of the books sitting on my shelf must have been read 20 times or more.

I've also been a big fan of computer games for quite some time, but for some reason I rarely feel motivated to go back and play through a game a second time, let alone a twentieth time. In fact, the number of (big name commercial) games I've completed more than once is so short I can list it here: Deus Ex, Arcanum, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 & 3, Tony Hawk's Underground 2 and the Metal Slug games. That's it.

There's a couple of reasons for this, I think. Firstly, most successful books are well written. Very well written. Because story is their whole purpose, the story has to be engaging enough to make people want to fork out money for it. It's pretty darn easy to argue that the average game story is well below the standard of the average book, because game developers have to spread their focus among a wider range of things to create a successful game. Secondly, games like Deus Ex and Arcanum allow the player such a wide, wide range of choices as to how to play the game that you can play through it a second time and basically be playing a completely different game. Thirdly, games like the Tony Hawk's games and the Metal Slug games are so focused entirely on gameplay that is well balanced and not dependant at all on story that the actual design of the game is compelling enough to want to see it all again.

It seems to me that replayability comes in two forms. Clever use of a player's ability to choose the way they play the game, and well designed gameplay that leaves you wanting to beat your high score.

I plan on going back and replaying some of the nicer commercial adventures, but let's be honest; besides the fun of seeing cutscenes and funny comments and the joy of nostalgia, what is the point? From an amateur design point of view like mine, there is value in seeing how a professional team designs a game, but this is hardly something to keep in mind because the majority of players do not design games (except perhaps in their imagination on the bus to pass the trip). Once you have all the puzzles in an adventure game figured out, there's no challenge presented to the player any longer, meaning the main gameplay feature is essentially void. If the story in these games was as good as those in the novels I so love to go back and re-explore, I'd jump back in again and again, just to marvel at the story. I guess I am saying that it is not.

I know, everybody says the story in games sucks. I don't mean it like that, some games have stories that have really made me go "wow". It's just that they're not as good as the stories in good books. Yet.

Because my main focus is currently adventure games, it means that in order to increase the amount of replayability in my games I have to improve my story writing skills. Or move to making action games with more of a focus on balanced gameplay and clever level design.

Incidentally, indie games like Hillbilly Burger Bastards and Reactor 09 encourage me to go back and replay because I know there's a different way I can play through the game. The OROW game How Many also got a few playthroughs from me, just for giggles and because it was short enough that I could do so without becoming bored.

I guess I should go and try this The Vaccuum game Sebastian has been telling me about ;)

Monster

With ~4600 words up here in just a week and a half, I’m worried that I’m being too 'wordy', so it is time for a more light-hearted post. :D

A few months back I drew up a few little basic guest comics up in Paint for a friend's website. Most of them were either quite lame or hard to understand exactly what was going on unless you were looking at it from my perspective or I explained it, and all were badly drawn. Nothing ever came of it - the website seems to be down now, but I still think this one is cute and thought I'd share it for a smile. Besides, I think it is healthy for creative development for someone who writes stories in one medium (games, for example) to practice in others to see if they can't apply techniques from one to the other.

More is More

I have always had a bit of trouble drawing backgrounds, mainly because they take me quite a long time.

One common comment that seems to pop up with my backgrounds is a lack of detail and content. This is something I am currently working on to try and improve.

When I've drawn a background in the past, I've often followed the "less is more" line of thinking, where keeping the backgrounds simple yet functional has been my goal. I am currently of the opinion that this is not the best attitude for a number of reasons.

Firstly, games are interactive by nature. Therefore, if areas are bare, the potential for interaction decreases and the game is less interesting. This is particularly true for adventure games. Secondly, real life areas are rarely clean - streets have litter, sings, lights, graffiti, rooms have all sorts of strange little items, open ground has weeds, rocks, bushes, you name it.

Thirdly, and quite importantly, the non game critical items in an area help build atmosphere, which is and important factor to immersion. Little suggestions such as the faces in the stones and trees in Simon the Sorcerer really gave the feel that this was a land of magic - something I'd do well to keep in mind more often.

I'm currently going back and adding a whole bunch of detail to some of my backgrounds. If it works out, I'll probably post a comparison on here so you can see the difference for yourself. Hopefully you'll agree that it is worth the time and effort!

Too Short

Ah, Saturday morning, and I don't have work this weekend. It is one of those magical moments when I realize that I can basically spend the day doing whatever I want. Fantastic!

Getting out of bed can wait a little while, so I reach for the Wii remote and turn on the television. Time for some gaming - I haven't done any for a week or two. Because I'm not getting out of bed for at least another thirty minutes, and also because it's a darn nice game, I leave Okami in the disk drive and load it up. I'm getting close to finishing this bad boy, I'm sure of it.

Hitting the button to bring up my save games I check to see how many hours I've spent wandering through Nippon as Amaterasu. The game proudly displays the total play time as 41 hours.

Hang on a minute. 41 hours. Forty one hours?

That's nearly two freakin' days! 41 hours of my life have been spent fighting weird things with weird items, and doing weird side quests in a single game. A single Wii game has nearly consumed two whole days of my life.

Which brings me to Zelda: Twilight Princess. 59 hours. Fifty nine freaking hours. I made "Shoot, I Got Abducted!" in less time than that. Quite a bit less time, actually.

I love both of these games, and I love a bunch of other long games as well, but sometimes I don't want to spent 59 hours getting to the end of a game. Sometimes (often) I don't feel the gameplay and/or story I'm given justify the playtime required to see the ending of both, and leave the game 3/4 finished. And final scenes and battles are a big part of playing a game, right? Who watches a movie or reads the book and then walks out three quarters through, missing the ending? Not I.

Sometimes I just want to sit down and spend some time playing a game and finish it that weekend.

All three of the AGS games I've worked on have been met with the comments "Too short", but I really wonder if this is a negative comment. Keeping players interested in our story and gameplay for even one hour, let alone 10 or 59 seems like a challenge even after some experience. I wonder if "Too short" is not actually, in a strange little way, the comment I should be hoping to hear. Anybody saying that my game is "Too short" means they weren't bored by the time they got to the end, surely, and that they wanted more.

I feel that 15-30 minutes was definitely plenty of play time considering my experience at creating a story and puzzles (yes, I had help doing this in the games, it was not my efforts alone, especially in Trance-Pacific) considering my and my teammates level of experience in these areas at the time. "Too short" is something that you'll probably see less in comments as we're working on some more lengthy stuff these days, but I secretly hope to see it at least once. For me, "Too short" almost means "You tied it up nicely before I got bored".

Incidentally, a perfect length of playtime (providing story and puzzles are up to par) for an adventure game for me is around that of Dave Gilbert's commercial titles, Super Jazz man and the Sam & Max episodes. Something I can clock in a single weekend and say to my friends the next week "Oh, I finished a great game on the weekend, you should check it out".

Icing on the Cake

When I'm in full creative mode, I generally work on a game pretty late into the night, and then retire to bed with thoughts about the game still scurrying about in my skull.

Shoot, I Got Abducted! saw me retire one night and, laying in bed following these thoughts through my head I focused on the puzzles I'd written for the game. I thought about one I'd just programmed up before going to bed, which was a keypad pressing puzzle. The code for the puzzle was written on a piece of paper that players obtained from a small compartment. I was thinking about the puzzle, and a little worried that it might be too simple, when I thought "Hey, why don't I cut the piece of paper in half, leaving only half the code behind? That'll add a little bit of depth to the puzzle."

Needless to say, I jumped out of bed and made the changes immediately. As soon as I did it, I felt a complete fool for not doing it earlier. I had, for a while, missed the potential to take a puzzle to the next level. Going back and replaying the game, it's basically the only puzzle that I feel good about in the game. Putting that tiny little touch on the puzzle was like putting the icing on the cake - it's only a small touch, but it adds quite a bit.

I feel that with both my own games, and other people's games, sometimes the puzzles are just there because adventure games (sorry, Graphical Interactive Fiction pieces ;) ) need puzzles, right? Otherwise, what would you do?

I want to work on making puzzles more interesting, more unique than just "Collect all this funky stuff and then move on to the next place full of funky stuff, using it all on things as you go." Every now and then a puzzle will pop up in a game and I'll go "Man, that's a good puzzle, I want to build them like that."

Until then, puzzle design will remain one of the reasons why I want to branch out into working with other genres - simply because I have such a hard time finding a puzzle that I'm truly satisfied with. If there's a good method of approaching puzzle design, I'm yet to find it.

Thinking Objectively

Every now and then when I am stuck for inspiration whilst creating a game, I take a look around the room I am sitting in, and have a look at some of the objects in it. Sounds like a pretty basic source of inspiration, but it's definitely helped me out a few times. Let's have a look at some examples:

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This is a background I drew quite some time ago, still unfinished. One day, whilst out with my father, he pointed out a type of plant called "Blowfly grass" (if I recall correctly) to me, which had a thin stalk and a strange pod like flower/head/thing at the end of it which hung down. I found this quite interesting, so I picked one of the stalks and took it home. While I was drawing this background I happened to have the plant on my desk and I thought it would be exceptionally cool to have streetlights that looked like pods hanging off a stalk, so I drew them like this.

Here is another background, this one for Lode. During high school woodwork class I built myself two bookends whose decoration was a little man that looked like he was trying to push the books and hold them in (I stole this idea from an illustration in a MAD comic). When drawing this tower, I thought it would be pretty neat to incorporate this idea into the platform and have the man look as though he was trying to hold up the platform. I'm pleased with the way this turned out.

Whilst on the subject of Lode, whilst trying to figure out some ideas for it, I was determined that it was time I found a name for it. Half an hour writing ideas down on a piece of paper proved fruitless, so I walked around my bedroom hoping for some inspiration somewhere. I spied my deodorant can which was called 'Gravity' - I thought "Hey, this game has floating islands, that's a great name!". Further consideration saw me link gravity to magnetic fields, and therefore magnets, which made me think of lodestones, which is where I got the name Lode :).

Last example, I was in bed sick, quite bored, and was listening to songs from cds in my collection whilst reading the album booklet. Reading a single line in one song gave me what ended up being an entire game that I'd love to have a crack at making in the future.

Inspiration comes from strange places, at least for me. Now it's time to fill my room up with all manner of strange objects so that I will always have a ready source of inspiration nearby ;).

I love thee, NPC

Here’s an interesting activity – have a think and list some of your favourite characters from computer games that you have played. Does your list include characters like Guybrush, Gordon Freeman, Link, Lara Croft and Mario?

Mine doesn’t. Not really. In fact, I don’t really find player characters that interesting at all. When I begin to think about my favourite characters, I always find myself thinking of NPCs, or Non Player Characters. Those are those often less important characters scattered throughout games who are often over looked.

Adventure games had hilarious characters like Herman Toothrot that never failed to win my heart over. First person shooters (some of them, anyhow) had enemies who have little conversations that I hear while I’m hiding behind a crate to jump out and shoot them, which I love. This isn’t just guard #1382 with no purpose other than to shoot me and be shot by me, this guy has communication problems with his wife and his clueless buddy is giving him funny advice.

Role playing games – particularly those like Planescape: Torment and Baldur’s Gate - had dozens of characters that I found absolutely hilarious. Why the hell would I want to play as some boring old spawn of some boring old psychopathic deity when I meet an insane cleric who thinks that his zombie minions are his relatives and spends his time recalling all the funny times they’ve had? I wanna play as that guy!

When I go back and play these games, it makes me think about my own games and wish that my NPCs were better written. Ok, so I like them (particularly the 3 in Shoot!), but I feel that they could be done even better. I’m going to go back and have a look at the NPCs in my current projects, and see if they can’t be made just that little bit more memorable (as well as the player characters, of course).

Shout it out!

Driving to work at 6:15am, I'm sitting on the highway doing 110 (70 for those who speak in miles) and I have Judas Priest in the cd player. 'Ram it Down' comes on and it gets to the point where Rob Halford wails "Shout it out! We are together now!". Yes Judas Priest, I sing along with you every time, without fail. Man, I love feel-good sing-along moments!

Which makes me think this: why don't my games have any feel-good moments? You know, like the bit in Prince of Persia or God of War where you do a big finishing move, or doing a slow motion jump in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on a motorcycle after racing through narrow back alleys, or in Tony Hawk's Underground 2 where you pull off ‘The Equalizer’, or even in freakin’ Peggle when you hit a spiral at just the right angle and the little ball zips around the arc perfectly, leaving you reaching for the replay button.

I want to build feel good moments like these that will have players want to repeat the game just to see that part again. Perhaps it takes a sort of intuition to know how to build these moments - I sure can't think of an original way of doing it. Can adventure games even have moments like these?

Is this even the right thing to be aiming for? Is it better (if such a term can be applied to a thing such as game design where what is better and what is worse is often dependent on the subjective views of the individual player) to be aiming for a more memorable story/character/setting than to try and build Hollywood movie style moments that could arguably ‘cheapen’ a game?

Is there anyone who can actually answer these questions?

I’m sure that with some thought I’ll be able to come up with some ideas of how to do this in an adventure game. Until then, I guess I'll go back and watch my Peggle replays again. I'm sure they'll give me inspiration for this conundrum - otherwise I'm moving to building platformers ;)

Notes On Sketching

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Those not interested in creating graphics will probably want to skip this post :).

Whilst I've learned many interesting techniques over the last year or so, one thing I still have quite a bit of trouble with is sketching. When I sit down to draw a character with pixels, I can 'build' the character block by block, meaning that I don't really have to worry about sketching. But when I 'paint' with soft brushes (something I'm only just beginning to learn) I can't really just sit down and draw a character's outline - things very quickly end up out of proportion and looking quite strange. I came across this technique a couple of times and I thought it had to be worth a shot - anything to help me with sketching. I've documented the entire process I used to create the final image here, in as much detail as I thought sufficient.

Before we start, let me just say that this image is the very first time I've used this technique, so hopefully my use of it will improve with practice.

Step 1 is to form a blobby shape that represents the character very roughly. Because the blobs take so little time to draw, and can be done zoomed out, it helps me create a pose that I am satisfied in around about 1 minute. I used a size 9 brush with 100% opacity and tablet pressure sensitivity set to modify brush size.

Step 2 is to go into greater detail figuring out the character's shape - arms, legs and shirts are defined here. This only needs to be very rough as it will be scrapped completely. Shading is not necessary, but I find it helps me to define forms more clearly. To do this stage I used a size 19 brush at 65% opacity and with pressure sensitivity on brush size once more.

Step 3 is to make an outline of the form we've just created. I did this on a new layer with the pencil tool (because of the hard edge) set at size 2, with 100% opacity and no pressure sensitivity. I used white to help see the outline more clearly.

Step 4 is to take our outline and seperate it (which is why I used a layer, because it makes life easy). Using the fill bucket I put in basic colours for the main zones. There we have it - our sketch is done! However, just for the spirit of completion, let's take it a few steps further...

Step 5 is to form some very basic shadow shapes. This is more preperation for step 6 than a step by itself, but I found it nice to seperate the two for clarity. I used the same setting as in step 3 to create these shadows - the magic wand selection tool is very useful here for selecting an area of colour to work within.

Step 6 is softening shadows. Rather than using layers, I directly paint over the top of the image, as any little bits of outline showing through can be masked quite easily later. I used a brush size of 9, with opacity set once more to 65% and tablet pressure sensitivity set to brush size. I didn't worry too much about fine strokes here because I don't feel it is necessary to this particular image.

Step 7 is merely outlining the image to help define form. For this I used a size 2 brush with 100% opacity and pressure sensitivity set to brush size.

So there we have it, my first character using this blob based 'sketching' as a foundation. It's not the most detailed or exciting of characters, nor is the colouring the best, but I found the technique of working from a rough silhouette quite effective in this case. Please note this is not intended as a tutorial - it is merely notes on a new technique I'm exploring. I hope you got something out of this - and for those of you without tablets, please remember that it is not actually necessary to possess a tablet to be able to create these sorts of images (although it is easier with one). I hope to improve my drawing skills with this technique - I certainly find it easier personally than sitting down and creating lineart as a foundation.

Adventure?

'Adventure game'. What a terrible name for a genre.

Let me clarify. Fighting ninjas whilst in the middle of a house that has been lifted up and is spinning within a tornado would definitely be an adventure for me. This happens in No One Lives Forever 2. But call NOLF 2 an 'Adventure Game' and people (gamers, anyhow) will give you funny looks. Similarly, running through the jungle, jumping over quicksand pits and dodging wild animals is definitely an Indiana Jones style adventure in my book. But Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure is called a platformer (despite the name). Traveling to the bottom of the sea, huge caverns under the land's surface, a city built in treetops and an island that only certain people seem to be able to find is basically a perfect plot for an adventure novel. Ever heard anybody refer to Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn as an adventure game? I doubt it.

But 'Adventure Games' have a unique playing methodology, right? Using incredibly odd solutions to solve the problems of NPCs? That's basically every Tony Hawk's game since Pro Skater 3!

Let's look at other genres. First Person Shooter - it's pretty clear what sort of gameplay you're getting here. Real Time Strategy - same deal, as with Turn Based Strategy. Flight Simulator, Hunting Game, City Building, Racing; these all do exactly what it says on the box. But there are elements of adventure in all of these.

This doesn't stop at the Adventure genre. Take a look at the title 'Role Playing Game'. Hang on a minute, how many games are there in which the player does not actually play a role? "Oh, no thanks, I don't want to play a role in this game, I'll just sit back and watch". I don't think so. 'Simulation'. Hang on, isn't basically everything within a computer generated environment simulated?

To solve this, people generally attach the label 'point and click' to 'Adventure Games' but the truth is that not all of them are real adventures. My first game consisted of finding cereal for breakfast. Thrilling stuff! Admittedly it is mostly amateur games that do this, and I struggle to think of a commercial title that couldn't be called 'Adventurous'. But the fact remains that 'Adventure' applies to a much wider range of games than the label usually implies.

And no, I haven't thought of a more fitting name for the genre, nor will this be the last pointless rant I post on here ;)

3 Years

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October, 2005. Ben304 gets a new PC that can actually run new games! Then, having spent all of his money on the computer, cannot afford to purchase games to play on his PC so he goes online to look for free games.

Finding the two Apprentice games and loving them, he thinks "Hm, I wonder if I could ever make a game?". Knowing that making a game would be a childhood dream come true, he turns to this mysterious Adventure Game Studio used for the Apprentice games and downloads it. He jumps in feet first, with no knowledge of graphics or scripting other than the 5 minute 'movie' he once created in BASIC on his TI-83 graphics calculator and some small projects on the TI-83 that never got anywhere.

2 weeks later he emerges with a rushed and buggy game about finding breakfast cereal by means of various unlikely puzzles, which he titles "Hungry". 8 people play it and comment; he feels famous. But now he wants to make a bigger, better game. Much bigger. Much better. More people will play it!

Exactly 3 years later, Ben is still looking to make that bigger, better game. There have been a few games along the way, of course...

[/narration]

Wow, it's been 3 years since I started trying to make games. Who would have thought? To celebrate these three years, I've dug through my extremely messy My Pictures folder and found a sprite from each month that I was working on games in the past three years, dated for your enjoyment, of course. I think it shows an interesting progression through styles - take a dig into the past and see where my mouse and pixels have taken me :). Hopefully you can see some improvement from the first to the last ;)

A Game We Call Jelly

Those of you familiar with the AGS forums will probably be aware of hour games and, more recently, the SHAG activities. Until recently, I had never tried to make a game in 60 minutes. This all changed in a sudden turn of events.

This is my story.

Sitting in the AGS Stickam room one night, talking to the usual bunch of AGSers I decided it was impossible to create a game in one hour. Upon discovering that this was impossible, I immediately set out to create a game in under 60 minutes.

The resulting 'game' was two characters on a background with a conversation spanning a groundbreaking 4 dialogue options - clicking on each of which would result in an incredibly bad 'joke' and end the game. With my solid hour of effort invested, I determined that my labours would not go unseen and set about showing the game to any in the Stickam room who were unfortunate enough to be present.

A few people played it and OneDollar (for reasons still unknown) demanded a sequel. Dan also demanded that I polish the game and release it as an actual game. I had not expected response of this magnitude!

Sadly, I was tired from my huge stint working on the game, so I uploaded the source code and told them to do what they liked with it. Dan convinced OneDollar and Akatosh to each work with the characters and create exciting new locations and scenarios within a single hour, then compile all 4 games into a single file as a game. I logged off after this, and heard no more about it until a few days later when I got a message from Akatosh with a download link. Jelly was turned into an actual playable game, with actual jokes worthy of actual giggles. Hooray!

I hate to think that people won't play this game, so I am putting it up here for you to download. Check it out, smile, and remember that you can have a lot of fun with just an hour and a bunch of friends.

Big thanks to Dan, Akatosh and OneDollar, who turned a silly little 30 second joke of mine into something that I love to go back and play every now and then, and which never fails to make me smile (at both their jokes and my own, shamefully enough). Guys - if you read this and ever want to do something like this again, count me in!

Get Jelly here!

The real Ye-Sac N'ai

Some time ago, my friend Ian and I were giggling about the fact that you can basically get any combination of letters, put some hyphens and apostrophes in the mix and you have a name suitable for a fantasy or science fiction game.

Ever amused, we turned his actual name (Ian Casey) back to front and added some punctuation to create 'Ye-Sac N'ai'. As a giggle and because he's a swell guy, I made Ye-Sac N'ai a character in my game Shoot, I Got Abducted!

Further conversation with this charming tyrant reveals a bunch of other words which, decrypted in a similar manner, will reveal references to computer games and bands Ian likes.

There, the secret is exposed! Aren't you glad you took the time to read this exciting blog now!? Bonus points to you if you go back and play the game to work out what the other references are.

Also, the fact that Crystal Shard recently released a parody game entitled 'Quest for Yrolg' really got me chuckling :D

Because all journals need a "My first entry" entry...

Hello there :)

My name is Ben, my number is 304, and this might possibly end up being my blog. A blog that is hopefully about making computer games. To date I have worked on, created or helped with the following games: Trance-Pacific, Des Rêves Élastiques Avec Mille Insectes Nommés Georges (am I a bad person for copy + pasting that title?), Shoot, I Got Abducted! and Man Boy vs Doctor Sock. In the future, there will be other games in this list for you to enjoy. These ones are all free, so if you're interested, please check them out :).

Hopefully in future posts I will be motivated enough to talk about old games, current games and future games of my own, as well as other people's radical efforts. I hope that anyone who stumbles across this page will find something in here that they find interesting.