61 Frames Per Second : independent developer

Reminder: Nintendo of Japan Still Gets All the Nicest Things

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata's keynote today was actually pretty nice. We got the long-awaited Wii storage solution, confirmation and reveals of a bunch of downloadable titles, the reveal of a new DS Zelda game, and some insight into just how creepy Shigeru Miyamoto really is to work with. As ecstatic as I am to see Nintendo committed to promoting Rhythm Heaven in America (my early pick for "game of the year"), it's still hard not to envy Japanese Nintendo fans. Of course they get many of the best games we never do (Captain Rainbow) or get very late (Professor Layton...still waiting on either of the sequels), and there are a few times when the tables are turned (Japan will likely never get MadWorld), but Nintendo of Japan just gets to do things that Nintendo of America would never dream of. Japanese Wiis can control television browsing and order business cards with your Mii on them. Nintendo of Japan even sponsors an annual student game developing seminar, 10 months of programming, sound and graphic design training for forty lucky applicants, with the best of the final student games distributed at Nintendo download centers. Not only do we in the west not get a program like this, we don't even get to enjoy the fruits of their awesome labors.

Just take a look at Fufu Kirarin, one of the games made available from the class of 2008:

Feel free to skip the first 1:50 of downloading the software.

Blow into the DS's microphone to launch the happy stars up into the top screen in the ADORABLE shooter. Look at this! This could be a finished product! Sure, it's only 24 minutes from beginning to end, but considering it's student work it's pretty amazing. Add a few more levels, stick it in a box and charge me twenty bucks, please!

Today's the last day users with access to Japanese download centers can access Fufu Kirarin, but upcoming student games include a hilarious sounding voice-acting sim with "unexpected videos", an action game where you control things by moving your body (I assume "you" is the character in the game and not the player), and a game where you goof around with a character with no body, creating goofy faces and photographing them. Plenty of mind-boggling screens available at Nintendo's game seminar website. I would probably be very happy to take ten months out of my life to learn things like this.

Thanks to Andria Sang for the translations!

Related articles:
Everything You Need To Know About The Wii Storage Solution
Nintendo Might Just Hate You
Crossing the Uncanny Valley part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5

On Beating Braid

Bob Mackey — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:00:00 GMT

I hate to be late to the party--or whatever the lingo is for when you don't finish a game 48 hours after its release--but I finally got around to beating Braid. Yeah, it's been about three weeks, but this was a game I really wanted to savor.

Also, when it comes to logic puzzles, I suck on toast. If there's a Hell and I end up going there, Satan will lock me in a tiny room with nothing but The Adventures of Lolo trilogy for all eternity.

While I'm slightly ashamed, I was able to get through Braid with only a minimal amount of cheating. I managed to finish Portal unaided through sheer willpower alone, but Braid kinda broke me. The puzzles--save for one with an autonomous key--are all pretty watertight. My only problem with the game arises in a few of the later levels, when designer Jonathan Blow's penchant for non-intervention robs you of the tools you need to get some of the trickier pieces.

If you haven't finished the game, beware: spoliers lurk below.

The minimal amount of bitching I have to do mainly deals with the "time bubble" element in the last set of levels, which really should have been developed more before you're required to use it in some trickier ways. It took me hours--and a lot of experimenting--before I broke down and went to YouTube for help and realized that Tim's time bubble can actually drop to lower levels under the right circumstances.

There's also a puzzle piece very late in the game that requires you to know that Tim's glowy-green time-immune status exists for a few seconds after he jumps off of a time-immune object--which is something that never comes up before this point. These two examples aren't necessarily "bad" puzzles, but the rest of Braid is so immaculate that they kind of stick out.

The most common complaint about Braid that I'm hearing has to do with the inclusion of eight super-secret stars hidden in the game that can only be obtained through sheer tedium. I like to think that Blow put these collectables in the game as punishment for gamers obsessive enough to turn the game into an interminable collectathon, AKA, "YOU'RE PLAYING IT WRONG." An adorably dickish move like that is right up Blow's alley. Personally, I love it.

I was looking forward to Braid's final moments, since they've been hyped to hell and back by just about everyone; but at the same time, disappointment was possibly imminent. Even though I walked into the finale with grand expectations, they were mostly met; imagine if David Lynch directed the climax of a Die Hard movie, and you'll get the satisfying tone of Braid's final moments. Needless to say, this is a game worth finishing. And even if you can't understand what the hell happened, know that someone out there does and he's waaay smarter than you. But it's not me.

Related Links:

Yahtzee Says, Support Your Local Independent Developer (He's Right).

Beat Me Up Too: Open For Business

Amber Ahlborn — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Hey everybody, I thought I'd give you an update on Beat Me Up Too's status. The game is effectively finished. It's currently open to the public for beta testing so if you want to check it out you should head on over to Andrograde.com and take it for a spin! We have a comments section up and running so feel free to share your thoughts. Will especially wants to know about any glitches. If something freaks out while you're playing or level building, see if you can reproduce the glitch and tell Will what you did to make it happen. You can put it in comments or e-mail the web master. Eventually, you'll be able to find Beat Me Up Too on sites like My Space, Facebook, Kongregate, and Addicting Games. Oh, and if you like what you see at our little budding game studio, feel free to share your love through the donate button. Every little bit helps pay Will's rent.

Now that the plug is over, I thought I'd share a little end development info with you. At the beginning of any development cycle, there are a lot of ideas tossed into the pot, but not everything makes the final cut. Sadly, the backgrounds I made for the game can't be used. Will has a really tight budget for the game's file size to assure it loads and runs quickly. My backgrounds just took up too much space for this particular game. Ahh well, here's a sample of what I put together.

Another section of art work that was cut were my environmental objects. In level build mode, players get to literally draw in the environment. Objects can even be made to twirl and swing. In addition to this, I had planned to create pre-made zany objects that could be placed into the levels as part of the environment (I already made a pile of weapons and zany items that can be tossed around). Alas, there wasn't time to insert these sorts of objects into the code, so they were dropped.

When making a video game, developers always need to keep sight of the ultimate goal, that is, actually finishing the game and not letting it hang in development forever. Sometimes this makes it necessary to cut features you really think are cool. But hey, there's always hope that those ideas will make it into a sequel!

Related Links

Developer Journal part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Developer Journal part 7: Beat Me Up Too

Amber Ahlborn — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The end of development is near. I'm still busy drawing the background but at long last all of the characters are in the game along with a pile of items. This will be my last regular Developer Journal update. Though I might put out another pre-release post, most likely the next Beat Me Up Too post will announce the actual release of the game. Since there's not a lot left to tell about, I leave you with a handful of screen captures.

Developer Journal part 1

Developer Journal part 2

Developer Journal part 3

Developer Journal part 4

Developer Journal part 5

Developer Journal part 6

Developer Journal part 6: Beat Me Up Too Progress Report

Amber Ahlborn — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Friday already? Yeesh, you know you've been busy when you can't remember Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday passing by. No interview or art to post this week, just a short and sweet progress report.

The word from Will is that everything is looking good. He's icing the proverbial cake at this point and just waiting for me to feed him art. We did have some drama this week as we stomped some weird bugs that prevented me from running the game on my computer. It's a Flash Game for Pit's sake. Strange server related stuff that only seemed to affect my freakish home computer. All is fixed anyway.

On my end I've been fighting with unwanted transparent pixels on the edges of the character skins. I think it's finally dealt with now and I've seen some characters tested out in game. So far so good. I just want to get all of the characters done and out of my way so I can pour out more items and do the backgrounds. Getting the characters finalized is my one stumbling block at this point. Every time I think I'm done with them... Freaking transparent pixels! Ahh well, this weekend should find the characters done and a pile of items too. I'm eager to see them in the game.

The only thing not touched yet is sound. The original game had a limited number of horrific screams. This time around we will be adding a lot more variety to the yelling that should also reflect the expanded cast of ragdoll dummies. I've got some script suggestions to pass off to Will which includes classics like “Not the face!”, “My spleen!”, and the Wilhelm scream.

There's not much more to say at this point but I'm sure I'll come up with more for next week anyway. The end of development is near.

Developer Journal part 1

Developer Journal part 2

Developer Journal part 3

Developer Journal part 4

Developer Journal part 5

Developer Journal part 5: I get interviewed plus Disaster Report!

Amber Ahlborn — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The tables are turned this week as Will and I switch places with him playing interviewer and I the interviewee. In this delayed issue of Developer Journal I answer some questions about my history as an artist, show off a few pieces of in-game art for Beat Me Up Too, and finally tell the harrowing tale of the Night of the Big Wind...

WP: How long have you been doing art and why?

AA: Well, I've been drawing since I was a little girl. I always drew to entertain myself. I also drew pictures as presents for family members: Refrigerator art. I also drew to pass the time in math class. At a rough guess I've been scribbling for around 25 years.

As for professional art, I started taking commissions when I was in high school I think...maybe a little before even. I've done drawings and sculptures for people over the Internet as well as local businesses. Not much though. I didn't heavily pursue art as a career until I finally decided, at the tail end of high school, that I wanted to make video games.

WP: When was it that you got into digital/game art?

AA: After high school I went to DigiPen, that would be from 2000 to 2002. DigiPen was my introduction to digital art and animation. Prior to going there I was only semi-computer literate and I'd never touched a computer art program more advanced than Windows Paint. There was a lot of information to absorb in a rather short period of time so it was quite the crash course for me.

Before that, my medium of choice was colored pencil, and I still love to use them, but it's been a while since I last colored anything major. I also sculpt using a rather funky material called Crayola Model Magic. I swear the stuff smells like Elmer's school glue while it's still soft.

WP: Hah; so you do sculpting as well. What do you prefer then, 3d or 2d art and what type?

AA: Hmm...though I draw a lot more than I sculpt (or do CG modeling) I prefer 3D. Sculpture, whether in physical form or digital is my strongest talent. My focus is on character design. The irony here is that, for my day job, I'm a graphic artist for a company that does environmental restoration and landscaping, so I mostly draw landscapes in Photoshop. If nothing else, I have a much greater appreciation for landscape now.

WP: Interesting, so will you be drawing backgrounds for Beat Me Up Too as well as characters then?

AA: Heh, yes indeed. Every character will get an appropriately themed background, so that will be 10 pieces in all.

WP: Cool. A lot of people have had strong reactions to Beat Me Up; what was your first impression of it and why did you decide to sign on as the artist?

AA: Well, I signed on because this guy named Will asked me. My first impression of the game was "Wow, look at the fountains of blood." After tossing the anonymous little ragdoll dummy around a bit and successfully impaling it a few times I though it was cute and over-the-top enough to be pretty funny rather than gory. This was at work where I have the sound off on my computer so I have a separate "first impression" when I got home and heard all the screaming. Let's just say I preferred the volume really low. The new game will be getting a more varied audio treatment.

WP: What factors led you to use this particular style of art for the game?

AA: Bugs Bunny and friends get horribly beaten and abused, but it's okay because they are cute cartoon characters. Characters from all manner of anime end up bleeding oceans, but it's not horrific because it isn't going for realism. If you think about it, this is an incredibly violent game, and could be more than a little disturbing if taken too seriously. I didn't feel that was the right atmosphere to promote.

Beat Me Up is a very simple but fun time waster, good for relieving a bit of stress. It seemed to me that a light hearted approach would be the best way to convey the intentions of the game. This is why I went for cartoon stylings. As for the characters themselves, I made a cast of "types". You have your ninja and your pirate and a glasses wearing office worker and a politician. They're all representative of things seen in media and popular culture and hopefully demonstrate a sense of humor...while you beat the snot out of them of course. They're sort of a like a cast of "Busters", the dummy from MythBusters. He's just a mannequine but you love him because you know he's going to end up in pieces before the show is over.

WP: That's great! Well that's all of the questions for today. Thanks for the talk!

WARNING***you are crossing into non game related territory***WARNING

Yeah okay, so for the curious among you I have a tale to tell about the Night of the Big Wind. I live in the Midwest so really, we don't see too many hurricanes here. On the evening of July 10th we did get about a five minute slice of one though. A thunderstorm was rolling through the area and during the storm an area within town of about 3 square miles experienced something akin to a microburst or downburst.

I was actually inside a local restaurant at the time this happened. The power went out shortly after I had arrived and while pondering whether to stay or go, The Wind hit. I watched it through the large window I was next to. One moment it was raining heavily but not unusually so, the next it was a total white-out as the wind drove the rain horizontally and reduced the visibility to zero. It only lasted a few minutes, but that was enough to produce some dramatic results:

I think there was maybe one neighborhood street in the area that wasn't blocked by tree limbs. The power stayed out until around 2 in the morning. Since I couldn't do anything else I played Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings on my DS...when I wasn't using my DS as a flashlight and a clock. Remember folks, always keep your DS fully charged in case of emergency.

If you didn't get enough carnage from my photos, feel free to head over to our local paper's coverage and check out a crushed car or two. Thankfully, nobody was injured.

Developer Journal part 1

Developer Journal part 2

Developer Journal part 3

Developer Journal part 4

Developer Journal part 4: A Brief History

Amber Ahlborn — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT

We've heard about the history of Beat Me Up and its impending sequel. For this week's interview I thought I'd ask Will about his own programming past; school, work, and going solo. I've also pulled a little more art from my sketch book to point at and laugh.

AA: Tell us a bit about your own game making history: When did you first learn to program and how long have you been doing this?

WP: I remember being a kid and playing a lot of video games mostly on the NES. At the time, my mother had a top of the line 286 computer at home for her work. I was obsessed with the Mega Man series and also had a 5 1/4in disk of Mega Man for the PC (that was incredibly hard I might add). I remember my mom telling me that there was a way to make your own games on the computer and she bought me this book on BASIC programming. I took it up and began writing my own games aspiring to make the next Mega Man game. This was 1993, so that's about 15 years ago now.

At the time I was living in the back country of North Carolina and since I was twelve I couldn't go anywhere without asking my mom for a ride but she was always at work. Thus there really wasn't much to do aside from play in the woods, play video games and my new hobby of making games. Over time I just kept doing it and got better at it and taught myself new languages. I remember being eighteen and getting totally stuck though on how to make 3d games. That was my main motivation for going to DigiPen. DP taught me everything I ever wanted to know about it and then some, heh.

AA: Any shocks when you started at DigiPen? The programming course is legendary for culling the herd.

WP: My college friends still all talk about orientation; Claude Comair (the founder) sat us all down in the main auditorium and said "Look to your left; Look to your right. When you are done, they will not be here." Sadly it was very true... only about a quarter of us graduated. I also remember on the first day having my programming ego totally shattered by Claude from him asking a bunch of ridiculously hard questions about C programming. I really did love the courses though; there weren't any general ed classes to get in the way of what I wanted to do. Every class had something that I really enjoyed.

AA: So, you survived DigiPen and hit the real world. Was it difficult to find a programming job?

WP: No. The game industry pretty widely recognizes DigiPen and if you're interviewing at a game company that hasn't heard of them then you need to seriously question whether to accept an offer there.

AA: What sort of work did you do before you struck out on your own?

WP: A friend of mine somehow convinced me to make cell phone games. The pay was good for the game industry ... but making games on cell phones is frustrating and hard for stupid reasons. I decided to take my knowledge I gained about cell phone programming and bring it to a startup named Loopt after that but I inevitably ended up missing making games. But at the point where I wanted to go back to making games I had come to the realization that I didn't want to make other people's games; I wanted to make my own so I saved some living money up and decided to take the rather tall dive into starting my own game company.

AA: Before going Indie yourself, had you done much in the Independent Development community before?

WP: As far as small groups are concerned, we had to make at least 1 game every year at DigiPen in a team. One of the games I worked on, Scrapped, won the IGF student showcase. Aside from that I've always made games on my own.

AA: Onward to the future. Andrograde is the name of your own start up. Where do you hope to see the company in the next few years? Aside from still existing of course.

WP: I want to keep the company small; I don't like the idea of managing large numbers of people. I just want to make enough money with the company to pursue my passion of making quality games and pay the people that work with me well. I don't want to get in the 'theres not enough money so we have to pump out a half baked game every x months' mentality.

AA: That certainly sounds sensible. It's all an exciting prospect and based on the latest build your first Andrograde game, Beat Me Up Too, is looking pretty good. Before we wrap things up for this week, do you have any advice for budding game programmers out there?

WP: Don't lose touch with your vision; it's way too easy to get caught up in the details of making a game and forget the big picture. I find that taking occasional breaks from development for maybe a few days to take a breather really helps bring in new perspectives when you come back to it.

AA: Thanks again Will.

I also promised some more art this week so I've peeled a couple more pieces straight from my sketch book:

Let me first introduce you to Andrograde. Yes, we even beat up the company mascot.

And to celebrate Independence Day and the up coming election. I present to you Politician Guy.

Finally here's a mock screen shot staring Alien Guy. Time for some revenge!

Developer Journal part 1

Developer Journal part 2

Developer Journal part 3

Developer Journal part 3: Beat Me Up Too

Amber Ahlborn — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

For this week's edition of Developer Journal, I again interview Will for another look into the creation of his game and what he learned from making the original Beat Me Up.

AA: How about some insight into the challenges of making this sequel? What have you decided to do differently or add that's resulted in new hurdles?

WP: Well in the first version, I was using a database to store all the user accounts but because of issues with Flash security I used a little PHP script to tunnel to it rather than directly accessing it from the game. This created bad scalability problems. Because of the popularity of the game, that little tunnel script totally blew up not once, not twice, but three times and brought the entire server down with it. This caused quite a headache between me and the web hosting company.

This time I'm going to access the database directly but there are a lot of tricks involved with it. It's very difficult to get the whole database stuff working directly from Flash and the fact that I expect upwards of 300,000 plays a day of my game have caused me to buy a dedicated server which wasn't cheap and it's a complicated process to set one up. But on the good side of things, it allows me a lot more freedom than what I had before with a bunch of stuff because I'll have complete control over the server.

AA: Sounds like the last game was pretty popular. Was it expected or were you surprised?

WP: I was very surprised, it was my first Flash game and the art quite frankly sucked. But people loved the excessive amount of blood and the sound effects and I think the fact that it was so simple. No learning the game required.

AA: What kind of feedback, if any, influenced your work on the sequel?

WP: I had a lot of feedback from players of the game. A lot of people wanted better art and more stuff to do in the level editor. Just to make it more polished so as a result I focused the sequel on making everything very polished but keeping the core game play.

AA: Right now are you just focused on finishing Beat Me Up Too or do you already have an idea of what your next game will be?

WP: Well, I'm really wanting to see what sort of response I get from Beat Me Up Too to determine what direction to go in next rather than jumping the gun.

AA: Finally, I just thought I'd throw this one out there; If you could make any game you wanted, with no limitation on resources, what would you make?

WP: Man that's a hard one.... I like a lot of different types of games. I've always wanted to make an old school Mega Man like game but with social hooks and multi-player support in it. I tried to do something like this back in 2004 but I never finished it. Perhaps I will resurrect the idea at some point.

AA: Ok, now I've gotta' ask if you're excited that Capcom is releasing Mega Man 9 and what do you think of their retro approach?

WP: I totally love it. I've been wanting them to do a game like this for years.

AA: All right! That wraps it up for this week. Thank you once again for showing us a little behind the scenes look at your project, Will.

I hope you enjoyed this mini interview with Will Perone. Next week I plan to do another art special showing off characters and items from the game. Don't forget to tune in!

Developer Journal part 1

Developer Journal part 2

Developer Journal part 2: Concept Art Edition

Amber Ahlborn — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Welcome to a very late edition of my developer journal. First, let me tell you a story. As I am supplying the art for Beat Me Up Too, I need to be able to send my work to Will for the game. My stuff starts off hand drawn so a scanner is a very important tool. My scanner stopped working last week. After numerous attempts at resurrecting it, I had to accept the sad reality. It was dead. I ordered a new one but it won't arrive until Monday. No problem, I have a scanner at the office of my day job, I'll just bring my sketch book into work and scan it there. So I start scanning my art at work and... Hey! No fair guessing the punch-line before I'm finished! Three pages in, and the scanner stops working. I get an error message and go through the ritual of checking that everything is plugged in and so forth. Upon shutting down and restarting, the scanner begins to work again. Two more pages in, and it dies.

So! With great pleasure I present to you Five pieces of character concept art for Beat Me Up Too!

Likes: really big swords and long winded exposition.

Hates: low animation budgets

Likes: meh

Hates: meh

Likes: flipping out

Hates: Pirate Guy

Likes: paper work

Hates: spilling his coffee

Likes: conspiracy theorists

Hates: bad sci-fi

Tune in next week for a word from our programmer and hopefully more art work!

Developer Journal part 1

Beat Me Up

Developer Journal part 1: Beat Me Up Too

Amber Ahlborn — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Hemophiliac under High Pressure?

Video games are not just made by big time developers associated with big time publishers. Communities of independent developers have been thriving for years. Consisting of teams as small as two people or even individuals laboring away with a passion, these folks offer up their creations for anyone to play at sites like addictinggames.com. I've had brushes with both sides of game development, indie and big time, and it seems I'm once again getting in on the action.

I'm working with Will Perone, programmer extraordinare and fellow DigiPen Survivor, on the sequel to Beat Me Up. The original game was a fun little time waster where you got to unload the day's accumulation of stress on a hapless ragdoll dummy, effectively beating the crap out of it. Now I'll admit up front that I'm a total prude, but even I had to crack a smile at the combination of gore and absurdity to be found in Beat Me Up. Add to that the ability to build your own Levels of Doom and this simple premise offered up a lot of content.

It's exciting to work on a project that will be going public in a month or so and I decided to share the fun and keep a developer journal which I will try to post weekly. To start off with, I've conducted a mini interview with Mr. Perone to find out why this crazy game came to be.

AA: How would you describe this game to somebody who'd never played the original?

WP: The goal of Beat Me Up Too is to beat up a ragdoll as much as possible in a certain amount of time. You swing the guy around on an elastic rope and get to throw stuff at him. There is also the secondary goal to make your own levels and share them, but that's more on the meta level.

AA: What are you hoping to accomplish in this sequel?

WP: The goal of the sequel is to do everything how I should have done it in the first game. Now that I actually have time to do everything correctly. So, more emphasis/ease of use with content creation/sharing/player interaction, better graphics, more stable engine, and more interesting things to do in the sandbox.

AA: What inspired you to design the original game? Where did that idea come from?

WP: I've been programming games for 15 years and when I decide to learn a new language/platform I write a game in it. This time it was Flash so I thought to myself “what types of things can I do to take advantage of the fact that this game will be on the Internet and widely available?” So, I decided to make a sandbox type game that emphasized content creation/sharing in the pretext of a simple physics engine.

The content creation/sharing became problematic though because the game became so popular that my web host suspended my account for overloading their bandwidth which caused me to have to make a special version of the game without the custom content stuff, which sucked in my opinion. But people still loved the sandbox stuff in the game and I deliberately designed the game to be over the top with some shock value.

The point of the shock value was to get a reaction out of people and getting a reaction out of people is what causes people to talk about your game over other games because it tore them out of their normalcy/expectancy of what a game is. No matter if they were telling people about how disturbing the game was or how much they loved the game; either approach was good because it created a network effect of people telling people which dramatically increased its popularity. All that mattered was that people were telling people about it because the game affected them in some way.

Creating a name for yourself when you have no previous image/products in a market is MUCH easier when your product isn't more of the same stuff people have already seen. So that's my story with the first game. Of course, you know I have a history of making excessive games.

AA: Hah! Yeah. Thank you very much for the interview.

Will and I will talk some more about creating Beat Me Up Too next week so don't forget to tune in!