Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Startup mania, oh how I hate thee.

Posted on December 4, 2011

I regularly read the ‘silicon alley insider’ web site. I have a love hate relationship with it. I do it partly to remind me how inward looking and narrow peoples focus can be. To the writers on SAI, the only big thing happening in the world is the battle between smartphone companies, and the biggest news in the universe is if a silicon valley startup orders new office chairs. It is incredibly inward-looking. As someone who doesn’t even own a ‘smart phone’ (my phone doesn’t even have a camera) and isn’t even sure where his phone is  right now, I feel like I’m watching aliens through a telescope.

What I find most awkward about that silcon-valley-mania, is the obsession with venture capital and startups. it seems there is only one possible way to be in business:

  1. Start up a new company. Must be NEW! nothing older than a week, or you are yesterdays news!
  2. Employ young people. They must be young. The younger the better. Nobody with any experience at all. if they are good looking, much the better!
  3. Spend a fortune on flash offices and furniture. Have ‘zany’ stuff such as slides and table football in the office to show just how totally crazy you are! (Also helps scare off older people).
  4. Don’t worry about making a profit. profits are for losers. Spend any money that would have been profits on a superbowl ad, especially a hip one that doesn’t even mention your product.
  5. Smooth talk venture capitalists into lending you hundreds of millions of dollars, which you will spend on bonuses for the CEO and CTO, despite not earning a cent in profit yet.
  6. Sell to google or facebook, and then goto 1).

This is probably a smart move, if all you want from life is money, but there is only so much money can buy. once your strategy earned you $10million, whats the point? what are you doing?I have a strategy for what to do with my life if I ever have $10 million, and it’s not about making more.

Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur schmuck because I run my company this way:

  1. Make a game, using savings to finance it.
  2. Make profit from sales of the game
  3. Stash some aside for a rainy day
  4. Make the next game, financed by last games profits.

Schmuck or not… I sleep safely at night knowing positech is 100% privately owned and 100% debt free and influence-free. No bank, no investor, no business partner can turn the lights off tomorrow. In an increasingly debt-laden world, with every possibility of future economic wobbles and debt-financing squeezes, maybe I’m not the dumb schmuck plodding along, but the wiley old tortoise who will still be here after the startup kids are locked out the office because the creditors demand their money back?

Ha! who am I kidding, I bet lots of them sleep on a pile of gold on their own private islands already :D

Repair bonuses and how they should work

Posted on December 3, 2011

I’m dithering a bit about how some of the ‘support’ units in Gratuitous Tank Battles should work.

Right now, you have dedicated command vehicles and buildings, and repair vehicle and buildings. The command ones give a rate-of-fire bonus to every unit in range, and repair units reduce the damage that units take.

I’m not happy with either of these. The main problem is they just aren’t intuitive enough. What would you expect them to do? I assume you would guess command units give a boost to accuracy (like spotters or radar would) and repair units actively repair damage done over time.

I changed from repairing, to reducing damage because the ambulance module and hospital ones (for infantry) were useless, because the minute infantry got injured, they probably shortly afterwards got killed, so the modules were rubbish.

I guess with infantry, I could apply a damage reduction, and have repair modules (for vehicles and turrets) work differently (actively repairing damage done, at regular intervals). That makes more sense right?

That still leaves command units. Would a hit-chance modifier possibly be overpowered? Maybe… it obviously needs balancing like crazy, but I suspect it makes more sense than a rate of fire unit.

And even as I type this, I wonder if if would make more sense to have a new type of deployment slot on maps, one which can *only* be filled by a support unit. It might make for some more interesting tactics and map design. Ho hum…

Sense of humour / offensive check

Posted on December 2, 2011

I’v started doing some of the flavor text for GTB. My plan ( to be explained more in a future video blog) is for it to be a bit ‘blackadder goes forth’ in approach. I am assuming you are a british soldier fighting in and endless world war I against the Germans.

Note that the ‘story’ is a very small part of the game, just a few mission briefings and the manual. You can ignore it happily.

My concern is that I might accidentally be offending some people. So my question to you is this. Do you find Blackadder and Allo Allo and other world war 2 comedy style things offensive?

I assume hardly anyone does, but if you are a German strategy gamer who would be put off a game that affectionately mocked the patriotic jingoism of World War I/II Britain, and referred to the enemy as the Hun, ‘Jerry’, The Bosch, etc… Is that offensive?

I assume not, but we live in an age where people take offense at almost anything, so I’m checking. My stats show 5.7% of GSB buyers are German. I’d rather they still bought the game.

Gratuitous Tank Battles Challenge Browser

Posted on November 28, 2011

I’ve been working on the challenge browser for GTB. There is still more to do in terms of making it look pretty but there is a clickable screenshot below. Basically there is a scrollable list of challenges just like in GSB, some of which will be user-made maps, some just armies and deployments on existing maps. Clicking any of them brings up the details window from which you can play attack or defence with that challenge,

Unlike the simple username in GSB, GTB shows you the posters emblem, their username, general and regiment name, and the idea is to build up more recognition of especially good map designers and players. You can immediately tell if the map is made by a newcomer, or someone who clocks 500 hours in the game :D

Also, the details shows a list of comments that players of the challenge have left as feedback for the poster, and hopefully as a bit of explanation for other players. With luck, there should be some good, lively debates about the pros and cons of new maps here :D

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It needs prettying up, for sure, but this is the layout, and the content. Thoughts?

New video blog, and website

Posted on November 25, 2011

Soooo…. Two new things. Firstly, the GTB website has been properly re-done, although for the time being it’s light on content, that will change as I get closer to release. here it is:

http://www.gratuitoustankbattles.com/
Secondly, I did another video talking about the game, combined with some video footage showing the unit editor and map editor, which I haven’t really talked about before. Annoyingly the ‘auto-focus’ on my camera kept gurgling away, but I wasn’t aiming for an academy award this time anyway. Here it is: