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

Ho! Ho! Doh!

Posted on December 24, 2010

There was a bug in Gratuitous Space Battles: Galactic Conquest until today. It was a bit obscure, and very baffling. Basically, in seemingly random circumstances, regardless of file version, people would develop a bug where the campaign backdrop was just plain white. I could not reproduce this. Re-installing seemed to fix it, for *some* people.

Anyway, someone noticed when I asked about it, that a line in campaign.txt storing the background texture name was missing. They had the latest version, and I KNEW that line was in there. It made no sense. Then they noticed that they could paste that line in, when the game was running, and voila, it worked. How weird.

So I looked at my code, and sure enough found some code which overwrites campaign.txt. Old, boring, unused, debug code for doing the campaign editing from about three months ago. This was before that file had this line in it, so because that code had never been updated, it meant that whenever it ran, and  saved out campaign.txt, it overwrote it with a new copy that had no data for the background texture (it used to be hard coded).

What a dork.

But even worse, I had left in this debug code mapped to the ‘H’ key (S was in use), and never remembered to remove it. So if anyone ever pressed ‘H’ during the campaign, it ran.

What a huge dork.

Anyway, it’s gone now. The bad news is, I am obviously a clueless muppet who could not code his way out of a paper bag. The good news is, I fixed this on Christmas Eve. Hurrah! It’s in patch 1.54, you will get it today / tomorrow.

Happy Christmas / Holidays / Festivus / Ascension of Kahless day to everbody!

Where is the market for indie services?

Posted on December 23, 2010

I’m surprised there aren’t more people targeting indie developers, for all platforms, with support services.

By this, I mean all those things that big development studios have dedicated staff for, but for which you can’t possibly employ full time people for as an indie. I already employ quite a few people on small or partial contracts to do this stuff. Such as:

  • An accountant
  • A company to host my websites
  • A company to host the domain name registration
  • A musician (often a different one for each game)
  • Several artists (also different, depending on the game)
  • Advertising management companies (google adwords etc)

I’m obviously pleased with having other people do all this stuff, because frankly, if I had to do all the art, my accounts, compose the music, run a linux web server, etc etc, then my games would be of much lower quality, or take even longer to make.

Like many ‘semi-successful’ indies, I’m now in the position where the bottleneck in terms of future game quality, and sales and success is quite simply ME. I just don’t have enough time to do everything. On the flipside, I don’t vaguely have the money to employ people full time. Nor do I have the inclination to deal with the myriad of bureaucracy and nonsense that the UK govt wishes to burden all companies with (sick-leave, employers liability insurance, pensions, national insurance zzzzzzz….)

However, I would be interested in making use of more people for some stuff in the next game. I’m a long way off needing anyone now, but as that game gets closer to completion, I can see myself seeking out and employing more people, short term to do additional stuff that I’d normally do myself. It just surprises me that there aren’t more companies providing a sort of ‘a-la-carte’ service for stuff like playtesting and balancing, web forum management, website design, art production, platform-porting services etc. It seems slightly inefficient to have to find all these people myself and deal with them individually. How come there aren’t indie-support companies yet?

Sense of progression

Posted on December 19, 2010

Increasingly I find myself drawn to games that have a sense of progression, a feeling of permanence, or some other ‘value’ beyond the immediate sensation of fun. I guess I’m a pretty ambitious, and long-term thinking person, so that naturally spills out into my gaming habits. I want my gaming time to be an investment.

Generally, my games have failed in this area. The very name of GSB suggests that it is pointless, a one-off bit of fun, to be enjoyed purely for the spectacle and the giggles. There is a high score table for the survival mode, but there are no achievements. There are unlockable items, but not a huge proportion of the options are locked. The game is more like a chest full of toys, than it is a linear, scripted and proscribed ladder.

Obviously there are gamers who prefer that. You’ve probably seen Dara O Brian lamenting the fact that he buys a game, but isn’t allowed to play it?

However, although I have some sympathy with that view, I also think that the worst cases of it can be worked around. I always remember my frustration in the D-Day landings part of Medal of Honor. After 15 deaths, I thought “Why the hell doesn’t the game kick in a script where a nearby soldier drags me to safety at this point? We all know I failed metaphorically here, so let me continue with the fun.”

The design of my next game is very much in flux, it’s more like GSB than any other of my other games, but it is not a straight GSB sequel or spin-off. It might be, in some ways, a bit simpler, but it will also have a lot more possibilities in others. It will have more of a feeling of progression than GSB did, and I am pretty sure it will be all the better for it.

Gratuitous Poster

Posted on December 16, 2010

My office wasn’t looking enough like a games studio office, so I got a nice big blown-up poster of the GSB campaign game background framed for the wall. This picture makes it look crap (reflections and blurriness), but it’s actually pretty cool.

stercesynamoot

Posted on December 15, 2010 
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