Design Tour Series

Design Tour - Knytt Stories from David Rosen on Vimeo.

David rosen, developer of indie title Lugaru and its sequel Overgrowth has started a series of videos dicussing the design strengths of various indie games. The one above is from Nifflas' Knytt Stories which is an excellent exploration-based platformer that comes with its own level editor allowing for the creation of ones own levels and an easy way to load third-party levels.

The previous one he did was on the physics puzzler World of Goo which is available on the PC, Mac and Wiiware.

He sounds a bit like Stephen Hawking which I actually find kind of cool and funny at the same time, but he does a good analysis so have a look at the one embedded above and you can see the previous one here.

L4D - Seamless Tutorial

My girlfriend and I were just discussing how the introductory movie in Left 4 Dead felt like a tutorial of sorts. All of the boss zombies are introduced, you get to see all the moves that the characters can make (apart from the use of first aid kits I think), things that one should be careful of (DO NOT SHINE A LIGHT ON THE WITCH!) and the basic flow of the game.

So, it was really neat to go to Valve's Left 4 Dead site, while I was looking for images for a new banner and another L4D article, and find that they have a blog post up about the very same thing.

These guys are really geniuses. Check out the blog post here. It details the thinking behind the movie and the process they went through to make it happen. Along with early versions of the sequence. Good stuff.

Grim Fandango Design Document Released

I have been meaning to post about this but just didn't get around to it. The design document for Grim Fandango, one of the last great adventure games from LucasArts back when they were more than just a front for Star Wars related ephemera, was recently made available for free online by Tim Schafer, the lead designer.

I haven't been able to have alook at the document myself, which is supposed to be 72-pages long, but I think it is a must-read for any aspiring game designer, even if you are not interested in the adventure genre.

You can also visit Tim Schafer's website here and catch up on what he is currently working on and to see more of his great life lessons and observations of being a gamer dad like in this post and this one.

Mobile Phone Game Development

I realise that I haven't made that many game development-related posts in a while so here's one.

According to wikipedia there are about 3.3 billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world. Of course there are people with multiple subscriptions, just like in our wonderful country where people have up to four or five lines, but even if half of that figure is the real number of handsets in the world, that is still 1/6th of the world's population. That's a number that cannot be ignored. Now, of course, I am only advocating that we should start developing for a subset of that group. Mainly, the group that has iPhones, and the group that has and will have phones powered by the Google Android OS like the T-Mobile G1.

The sales of powerful, media savvy phones has risen tremendously in the last couple of years. Just recently the Apple iPhone overtook sales of RIMs blackberry with a total of 6.9 million phones sold this year and I am sure that that number will increase. The G1 also saw pre-sale figures of 1.5 million and definitely that figure will rise once the phone is released around the world. All this figure crunching means is that there is a huge market out there, and with the availability of easy-to-browse application stores for both the iPhone and Android OS, there is a huge opportunity for Nigerian developers to sell their wares to the world. 

But first we have to build them, and build them well.

When I first returned to the country in 2004, I spoke with a few people who were into software development about whether or not they would be interested in developing games for consoles or the PC. Without exception, all of them told me that even though they might be interested, that they didn't feel there was a big enough market for games in Nigeria for it to be worthwhile. I tried explaining to them that they didn't have to limit themselves to only Nigerian consumers, but most of them wouldn't listen. The ones who did just thought that they didn't have the skillsets and that no publisher or investor would be interested in financing such a venture.

Well, here I am now hoping that this should be a lot easier to get into.

The Android OS is java based and I believe that most Nigerian developers picked up java at some point, and the SDK and in fact the entire OS are available for download from the Android Homepage. There are also loads of tutorials with advice and techniques for building Android apps, and more pertinently, there are quite a few forums springing up for Android game development.

Making games for the iPhone is a bit more difficult, but the rewards are potentially a lot greater as the phone has a huge fan base at the moment and has success stories for games that can be used to sway potential investors. I believe you need to work on a Mac, and you have to program in Objective C which is developed by Apple and used on the Mac OS X. There are loads of tutorials on the net for learning it though, and from what I understand, if you know C, it is not much of a leap to learn it. Once you can overcome these hurdles you can then get to the hard work of making a game and ensuring that it sells. You can get Apple Macs in Lagos at very good prices from Superior Equipment and they offer a full bevy of services to go with that as they are an official Apple reseller.

Of course, this is not to say that once you choose your platform or even decide to code for both that your game will automatically be successful. A whole slew of challenges await you. Assuming you have a kickass game on your hands and there are no bugs at all, it will still have to find the audience. You have to remember that there are loads of people from all over the world jumping on these platforms, so it is important to be able to market your game effectively over the internet via gaming sites, and so on. There is also the problem of actually being from Nigeria which could make it difficult to collect payments and so on, but I am sure that all these things are surmountable. 

So, go out and make some games so that we can get on the map for something other than the usual. I would do it myself, but for now I am too busy working on PC games via Game Maker 7 and Inform 7 and writing comic books!

Helpful Links -

Android homepage

Android Notes - General resource for google android developers

iPhone Developer Site

Android Game Development Forum

Objective C Resource on Cult of iPhone

Guide to getting started in Android game development

Gamesalad video clip - Possible game creator for the iPhone

iPhone SDK development forum

A developers experiences publishing an iPhone game

Ars Technica article on the joys and pains of developing games for the iPhone

Tools for Game Design

I just started reading a really cool interview on Gamasutra where Brandon Sheffield talked to Hirokazu Yasuhara, one of the original game designers behind Sonic the Hedgehog. It started out quite ordinary and then as he revealed more and more of his design process I started to feel a kind of revelation. A lot of the things he says make complete sense in hindsight, but it is putting those things into words that is just amazing.

Really good interview and something to add to the game design toolkit.

Linkage

Okay, so it's been a couple of days. Got caught up with work and trying to sort out my IF game-in-progress. I think I need to set myself a deadline of some sort to at least have the first scenario done. I am also working on a post regarding a kind of manifesto of what kind of games I want to make under the 'some kill giants' moniker. I am also working on a review of Rescue the Beagles which is still on my hype banner.

In order to tide you all over until I am done with those, here are some interesting links from my RSS feeds and the web in general.

1. The Last Guy. This is an upcoming game for the PS3, and although I have no clue what the heck it is about and whether it is for the Playstation Network or a physical release, the teaser, and the name, has me hooked. The website itself is a mystery, but they just recently released a teaser vid showcasing something that I do not understand but like a lot! You can find that embedded below:



news via GamerBytes

2. Speaking of deadlines in game development, Codear is having a single-screen RPG competition. More details can be found over on the ludomancy blog, but basically, the competition is what it says on the tin. Design a single-screen RPG before the 15th of August. The owner of the ludomancy blog designed a single-screen RPG a little while back called Hunter RPG which you can find here.

I think I might try and enter this one and I already have an idea for one as well. Time to break out Game Maker.

3. And this, I found out via GameSetWatch. They have just released the free version of their annual career guide magazine. So, if you are interested in getting into the game industry, or just an interested observer, it is worth having a look at either online or via download.

That's it for now, but hopefully I should be able to deliver on my promised posts pretty soon.

Electric Ghost

Just a quick note about my game-in-progress. First of all, I have changed the name from Phantom to Electric Ghost. This is of course still a working title at the moment. I am using Inform 7 to write the game, and I am having a blast.

I initially wrote the beginning of the game's scenario in my diary with some of the various alternate paths sketched out on paper. I then took this and set about constructing the first scenario in Inform. Despite the program's user-friendly syntax, I am still confused as to how to get certain things done. So, I am attempting to dig through the documentation in order to figure out what I am doing wrong and what I could do right.

It is also pretty interesting to see how things never turn out as one planned them. I have already changed about three major plot points just by starting to create the first scenario.

Will probably try and finish the first set of areas, then will see whether I can come up with some puzzles. I realised that my game was going to become a simple choose-your-own-adventure type deal, but I wasn't sure whether that would be enough.

The world I am creating is heavily dependent on mood and obfuscation and I think that having a more interactive environment in which the player can communicate with it will make it a lot stronger.