So, without further ado…

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Q: Can you give us a bit of background on Whisper Game Studios and the team?

John: Whisper Game Studios was born from an instant-messaging conversation in October 2008, between two gaming friends across the Atlantic from each other, myself and Corey Blakeborough. I was beginning my education into a career in Games Art & Design, and Corey was halfway through his education in coding languages (Java, C++, C#, PHP, and so on). We’d often spoken about repeating the online community and upstart legacy of our favourite Game Developers, such as Bungie.net, where the vast majority of our team originally met. It basically started with the simple, harmless question of “Hey, couldn’t we pool our resources together and start up a company too?” We certainly could. So we got to work on spreading the word, looking for people who wanted to help us out, and on 11th November 2008, Whisper was officially formed.

At first, we were a tiny team of 5. This was before we’d heard of the Xbox Live Community Games service (as it was called then), and we’d set our sights on starting small and making simple games in Flash (which are still available on our website, and we’re slowly adding to them). Once word got about our game Elysia (which was originally named after one of the main protagonists, “Quiff”, but was changed because not everyone knows how to pronounce it correctly, so that led to a few problems) being upgraded from just a Flash game to a full game on the Xbox Live Indie Game marketplace, interest spiked and more people started taking notice of our efforts.

We are now a team of 18, with our recruits hailing from Scotland, England, Australia, Norway, Washington, Ohio, Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado and Canada. Each and every one of us works purely for the fun and the experience of it. Our hope is to one day have core team members migrate to a singular location, and form a physical studio, whilst retaining our cloud-based system for those yet unable to move (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but feel free to add to it).

We are constantly taking on people, and we don’t mind if you haven’t had much previous experience. As long as you’re a pretty cool, laid-back and talented individual willing to take some criticism and help us make some great games, you’re free to send an email to myself, and I’ll forward you to the right people. If you’re more musically inclined you can contact our Audio Director, Christi O’Donnell, who has her own start-up record company, Rare Pop Records, which we consider to be our sister company. They’re on the lookout for talented people who can do sound design, mixing, mastering and composing. They currently work in the cloud too, using the same setup we use.

Q: I understand that you use quite a unique, cloud-based development setup – can you explain to us how that works?

John: Currently, we split up our cloud into five key sections, using as many free resources as possible:

1. Communication – Using Skype’s Group-IM and Group-Call services. Segregated work-related and general chats helps keep order, as well as keeping people focused.
2. Collaboration – Using Dropbox’s simple file-sharing systems. Segregated folders for teams (i.e., Art, Writing, etc) is important as Dropbox only allows a small amount of space, which you can increase by referring friends to sign up.
3. Task Assigning – Using Huddle’s web-based ticket-software. Allows tasks to be assigned to individual or entire groups of people for collaboration efforts, as well as a handy calendar of events.
4. Subversion – Using Tortoise SVN’s server-based code-collaboration software. Essentially works as a code-only collaboration tool, allowing multiple coders to work on a single file without (much) conflict.
5. Susurration – Corey designed an entire back end area of our website designed exclusively for our employees to access important team-based information and resources, and allows authorized people to add, remove or edit content on the website.

With these, we can essentially replicate the exact same sort of software physical studios use in-house, whilst also allowing the team to communicate openly and freely with each other.

Q: Was this setup always the same or did it evolve over time?

John: Originally, we were all piled up in a single group-conversation on Windows Live Messenger. Which was fine when we only had about 5 of us on the team, able to simply send files to each other privately, and were just starting out, but when we began to expand, and conversations became increasingly difficult to stay focused on work, and instead led to mass memefests and sharing of custom emoticons (often spanning the entire screen), we figured we needed to make the shift to a better system.

So after doing some research, I started piecing together the cloud-system we’re using today, and it feels a lot more efficient and professional whilst still retaining that feeling of ownership and independence, which is what makes Indie Development so exciting to be a part of in the first place.

Q: Do you find that this setup is difficult to work with compared to a traditional development environment?

John: Having worked at a game company previously, as well as participating in Dare to be Digital 2010, I can safely say that yes, working in a cloud-based environment with team-members from all sorts of different time zones can be extremely difficult; especially considering that a lot of already have jobs or are on courses at Universities, or both. As a result, a lot of us, myself especially, find ourselves staying up until the early hours of the morning, throwing off our sleep schedule, and then struggling to get back to normal.

At one point, at the very beginning of Pie Collect’s production, back in June 2009, I was working with my friend, Scott Dunbar, who lived just a couple fields away from me. When we were both available to, I’d put my laptop and graphics tablet in a small suitcase, walk uphill to his house, and we’d work out of his shed; the sort that had electricity that ran on a ticket-based meter. The majority of the game was created in the weeks we spent working away in that shed, and I owe that to the simple ability to turn around, face Scott, and talk to him directly about what needed to be done for the game. Whereas, with our cloud-based development, there’s no set time for work, there’s no guarantee for if someone will be online to work with, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll reply in time before you have to get offline.

So in that respect, it’s very lacking, and isn’t helped by the fact that Skype will only actually send messages when both conversation participants are online at the same time, as opposed to MSN, where messages are stored and received even if one of the participants are offline.

Otherwise, with our collaboration tools like Dropbox, it’s completely efficient and easy to share files. You place a file down in a folder people are sharing, it’ll upload to the Dropbox site, then it will automatically download to everyone else’s Dropbox folder. Almost works like a Local Access Network.

Q: Pie Collect was your first project. Is there anything in particular you have learned from the experience?

John: Two words, really: Feature. Lock.

The simple arcade-styled game took us almost 2 years to get out the door. The game was based on the Flash games Corey designed on our website, and I figured that it would make a fantastic icebreaking title for us, to get to grips as a team as well as to understand the XBLIG process. And it was; we learned a lot of things that may have tripped us up if we had just started working on Elysia immediately (it also bought us plenty of time, too). Since its launch in November last year, the game was bought by over 150 people and trialled by over 1360 people in total. That’s about an 11% rate of purchase-trial counts. Which isn’t that bad, in the long run.

The game suffered from a combination of hacked hacks to fix hacks that were hacked to fix bugs, absolutely zero documentation about the game’s content, which essentially led to a widespread migraine amongst our coders (we actually lost a couple as a result of the project), and finally it was crippled by something that the XNA community fail for: a “code 4″ error occurred when the game was saved on a memory card and was ejected whilst selecting a storage device. This is one of the most hated issues regarding the XNA service, and a lot of people feel it is a hardware issue rather than the developer’s issues. It eventually got sorted and saved by our awesome coder, Tayler Wilbourn.

Whilst it doesn’t feature any flashy particle effects and superb graphics, it does have a retro theme that is its own (who liked my picnic blankets, by the way?), and there’s a certain addictive charm and replay value to it.

If it had flashier graphics, online multiplayer (Which it almost had, but essentially couldn’t due to how broken the base code was) as well as a few gameplay improvements I came up with and put on a list after mass-feedback from those who played it, and if it had actual achievements that gave out points, I think it would have been a lot more successful. But instead of polishing something that *might* be more successful and popular, we decided to go ahead and concentrate on something that we feel a lot of people are going to adore: Elysia.

Q: You’re now working on a couple of new projects, one of which is the platformer Elysia. Can you give us a summary of the games?

John: Elysia is a 2D puzzle-platformer game for the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace, where you control not just the usual platforming dude, but you also get to control a portable-platform character simultaneously, who you meet up with in the 3rd level of the game. You progress through levels by collecting Dream Orbs, which allow you to pass through Dream Gates, marked with a number of how many Dream Orbs you require to open it. There are various enemies and complex puzzles that require skilled use of both characters at once. The game begins rather airy and slow-paced to ease you into platforming gameplay as Quiff, but after you rescue the platform-cloud, Whisp, the environments and enemies become a lot more hazardous, complex and dangerous.

Whisp is more than just a handy platform; as a cloud he can transform into forms of weather, such as Lightning, Heat and Rain. These weather elements can be activated by kicking signposts and can help defeat certain enemies if used in the right order, and can also change the environment in order for you to progress.

Something dark and sinister has infected the world of Elysia. It came raining down in the form of thick, black sludge, changing everything it touched into an evil, mindless puppet. And so, as the unknowingly-chosen protectors of the world, it’s up to Quiff and Whisp to liberate the infected creatures’ souls, lay them to rest, and discover the source of the great evil. As the game progresses, you’ll encounter the evil umbrella, Ego, who will attempt to stall your progress. Chasing after him will take you to the ends of the world, and beyond, into what the two heroes never imagined possible. Quiff and Whisp discover their origins, and discover the dark secret behind the world of Elysia.

Our other project, codenamed “Heron”, is our attempt at creating a game with a solid universe and solid canon. After seeing how careless some game companies have been regarding their games’ canon, and watching the effect that has on their fans, we were very disappointed in seeing how little these companies cared to try and keep new content consistent with their game’s world and back-stories, for the sake of a cheap and easy storyline. The majority of our writers, led by S.P.C. Hapner, are collaborating together to create a timeline of events that span a multitude of games that compliment fun gameplay, whilst keeping canon entirely in check.

Heron is set on Mars in 2189, telling the story of its inhabitants who survived the events in 2145, when mankind first started work on terraforming and colonizing Mars when a massive rock was jettisoned from the moon after an unexplainable explosion occurred. The rock smashed into our home-planet, crippling it and killing all who resided. The people of Mars are now on their own with nowhere to go. Heron tells the story of the fight for survival, and the civil war that erupted, complete with genetic enhancements and mutations that were a direct result of initial attempts at adapting humanity for Mars’ atmosphere. The game is a 2D side-scrolling shooter which will feature a nice lengthy storyline as well as fantastic characters and environments. You can read more about it, follow along with the project’s Twitter feed, and see concept work on its project page on our site.

It’ll make an interesting change from the colourful cheerful world in Elysia, that’s for sure.

Q: A trailer for Elysia was released earlier this month, and it’s looking great. What was your inspiration?

John: We’ve taken inspiration from a variety of sources; some obvious, others not so much. In October 2008, I wrote the story and designed the characters after finishing playing the game Braid. I simply adored the art style and the slow-paced feel of the world, but most important, I loved the shock of the ending, and that feeling of awe when you realize the truth of what is happening. We wanted this game to bring platformer games back to the best platformer gameplay dynamics that existed in the 90s but seem to have been replaced with less fun elements nowadays. We wanted the environments to be extremely detailed and saturated; almost preschool.

The portable platform concept was loosely based on the Sonic and Tails “helicopter” mode from the old Sonic 3 game. It’s essentially the same sort of function, except the entire control scheme is based on the dual-control dynamic. Though if you have a friend who wants to play locally, or over Xbox Live, they can join you as Whisp, which can lead to a lot of fun and hilarious moments between friends, but a great coordinated team of two could potentially win the fastest time-trials if they know what they’re doing.

An old accidental inspiration of mine is the Brackenwood animated series. The animations and world of Brackenwood are amazing, vivid and beautiful. I wanted to capture that same feeling of freedom and paradise without taint by man.

The Dream Orbs, Dream Gates and Souls dynamics were loosely based on old 3D platformer traits from the Rayman, Spyro and (later) Crash Bandicoot series. It’s the sort of thing that really inspires exploration, and the drive of finding enough Orbs to enter through a Dream Gate that has some really cool stuff behind it, is something that’s extremely powerful for a developer to use in level designs.

A lot of the game is essentially our own design and creation however, and if there is a source of inspiration for it, it’s likely not something we’re aware of, we’re just combining things that we’d love to see done in a 2D platformer game. We really want Elysia to stand out on its own as something of its own style, and I believe it’s paying off nicely.

Our audio director, Christi O’Donnell, too, has found the perfect blend of instruments to compose Elysia’s signature sound. Her catchy melodies have had the team humming, clapping and whistling them to ourselves as we work. There are some very subtle elements of Zelda and Final Fantasy in there, but overall it’s Christi’s own sense of style that makes Elysia’s music what it is.

Q: What are you hoping will set Elysia apart from the thousands of other games available through the Xbox Live Indie Games service?

John: In a word? Community.

We’re incorporating as much statistical data, XBL functionality and unlockable content as we can into the game to provide our players with enough extras to keep them entertained for hours. As Xbox Live Indie Games don’t have any APIs to connect to servers outside of Xbox Live, we’re incorporating a code-based system, where the game will generate a code based on your Gamertag as well as all of the statistics based on your gaming habits and progress in Elysia, and you can then input this code onto your profile page on our website, and it will display your gameplay history. This is something that we’re certainly hoping to do; whether we can pull it off or not is a totally different matter, but we have a functional plan for it and it appears to work well, even just in our prototypes.

So from being able to share your statistics on site, you can compare your medals, unlocked costumes and progress with friends and other site-members. And providing we get the system to work, it’ll even be backward enabled to unlock content, limited to things like costumes, in the game if you sign up on our site and submit your first code. This opens up a lot of avenues for us, and like I said, it goes back to the community-based development we’ve been aiming at since being active members at Developers’ sites that pioneered this sort of thinking, such as Bungie.net with their Halo series. Whilst Bungie are able to send data from XBL directly to Bungie.net, we had to come up with a way to get around that for XNA, and I’m very glad to say we did.

Of course, if we somehow get XBLA publishing rights, that could quickly change. We’re planning on entering Dream.Build.Play. with this game this year (providing we qualify for entry), and as the winning prizes are large cash sums as well as access to XBLA development, we’re extremely keen to try out for that, as it would essentially give us the tools to do everything we’ve ever planned to do for Whisper, and Elysia.

Thank you very much for giving us this opportunity to talk to you about who we are! It’s extremely appreciated.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Once again we would like to give a huge thanks to John for taking the time to answer our questions and wish everyone at Whisper Game Studios luck with their current projects! I can’t wait to get my hands on Elysia.

Now, Blitz 1UP is the indie arm of Blitz Games Studios Ltd., and it aims to give struggling indie games devs a helping hand with PR, QA, development and distribution, so they’re good guys in our eyes.  An experienced and established studio helping out not so experienced and established developers is refreshing to see, and we hope more studios follow Blitz’s example in the future.

So, without further ado, here is the video interview with Neil Holmes:

Much thanks go to Neil, everyone at Dare Protoplay 2010, and everyone at Blitz 1UP.

So without further ado I’ll hand you over to Alexey!

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Q: Did you study at University and which course did you take? Has it helped you?

Alexey: I attended Kiev Polytechnic Institute, circa 1993, but during my study it became the National Technical University of Ukraine. My faculty was Aerospace Systems and Metrology (I got a Masters degree and I now can measure anything with 0.0000000001 precision!) but to be honest it wasn’t my dream activity So in the first year I, with a friend, was involved in demoscene and created a coders group called Virtual Illusions and made several products which were quite popular in the Russian charts. It started as hobby – we made Mandelbrot fractal rendering on Turbo Pascal and it was the beginning of a big journey. So yes it was useful but university itself didn’t help a lot in terms of knowledge – but you definitely study how to browse and process information fast.

Q: What inspired you to take the plunge and start making games?

Alexey: Can’t say exactly why I started looking for a job in game industry. I always liked games and I think that the first Ukrainian development company at that moment, called Action Forms (who created Chasm: The Rift) inspired. If they can, so can I, it was like a challenge for me.

Q: Before starting on your own projects would you advise getting experience in the industry first, such as working with an established studio?

Alexey: At that moment, Action Forms worked on the first Carnivores dino hunting game. I was an experienced visual effects programmer but also I had a special interest into audio. So when I tried to get a job there, I had a choice of becoming a programmer or audio designer – so i choose to become an audio guy simply because there were not many of them around. As I had programming skills I started to code audio engines as well and worked closely with Aureal, Creative Labs and Sensaura, and implemented some 3D audio technologies, but also had my own pet-project (http://delaydots.com), special audio software for the sound designers to make new way of mangling sounds (That was one of my most successful projects, I sold this company to Little Endian in 2009). After that I worked in other companies as a game producer – the most known were Rhythm of War (IGF Mobile 2009 Finalist) and IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey for PSP platform. And I felt that being only the audio guy or games producer was not enough for me, so I started my own company.

This is what was my way – I definitely advise working in an established studio, understand the market, see how it all works and then see whether you can run the studio at all. It took 10 years for me.

Q: Are there any core skills which need to be learnt, such as a particular programming language?

Alexey: Learn everything that you can reach. Being an oldschool demoscener and programmer I took all other “jobs” as well: drawing, converting, music writing, sound editing and so on. This was an opportunity to learn software like: Photoshop, 3D Studio, Sound Forge, etc etc. This helps me a lot nowadays and helps me work optimally – for example preparing the press kit and converting art work. I know my artist is very busy with drawing for new games, so for me it is not a problem to load Photoshop and do the job. Also I believe every programmer has to know Photoshop and any 3D modelling software in order to load/quick draft/convert assets – this helps to understand how software works and optimize the development process.

Q: How much planning and preparation would you advise before getting stuck in with development?

Alexey: We are constantly optimizing our planning process and are very close to an optimal now: while the engineers are working on first playable demo, the art and design team and I work on the game’s look and feel, and then we start full scale development. If the prototype is not working, we close the project; we had a couple of games canned last year.

It’s never enough, you can’t foresee everything but this process should be done with iterations. The main thing – you have to understand what you’re doing, and what it should look like at the end. This is complicated but possible. How to do this is a second question.

I have had bad experiences in the past and participated in several game developments which took 3-4 years and when the game was finally released, they were outdated, so it is very important to think ahead.

Q: What are the main challenges that you face during development, and how do you overcome them?

Alexey: We have several challenges. One of the main ones is memory limitations and we always invent ways to fit it all into 24Mb of PSP memory (Big thanks for our lead engineer Vadim for handling this).

Second issue is a controls approach: games we bring to PlayStations mini come from PC, so are controlled by the mouse, and its quite complicated to adapt to gamepad controls; this takes several interactions until we find a compromise variant for the game. But the main challenge is not in development but in marketing and selling the game, but I believe this is a different topic.

Q: You currently have multiple games in the works. Have these been influenced by previous experiences, and have you tackled them differently?

Alexey: As I said, our team was responsible for the Rhythm of War, a music strategy game for PSP which hasn’t been released yet, and this experience helped us to work on MelodyBloxx (IGF 2010 Honorable Mention Audio Achievement), our own music-puzzle game. So yes, previous experience helps alot. Another title which is not yet announced (coming in July) is actually a port of game I worked on a while ago, and remembering the secrets aids a lot in current development.

Q: Any last freestyle advice you would like to give?

Alexey: Be hungry for the new knowledge, you’ll never know where you need it later.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

I’d like to thank Alexey hugely once again for taking the time to answer our questions, and we wish the guys at Beatshapers luck with their current projects!

That’s enough from me, let’s hear from the man himself.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Writing game code can be approached from a number of different directions – I’ll try and describe some of the most straightforward.

I started writing on machines like the Spectrum and BBC micro – obviously unless you have a time machine stuffed in the loft that’s not going to be the best approach these days. However you can take a similarly undaunting approach by downloading either XNA or Visual Basic from Microsoft. Visual Basic will allow you to get PC apps running pretty quickly, and the BASIC language is a good vector for understanding all languages. My preferred choice would be XNA, which is a general games making package for PC and XBOX 360. Essentially it runs using a language called C#, which removes many of the horrible decisions that went into making C++. I personally use C for coding where possible, and C# when writing quick tools or even games on the PC. C# is very well documented – installing it, along with Visual Studio Express Edition (all free software), will give you access to a lot of tutorials, including the all important first steps to getting something to appear on screen. From that point you want to start experimenting and fiddling with the sample code, slowly adding new features as your first engine starts to take shape. Don’t assume you will be able to write Halo right off the bat – aim more at getting a sprite appearing on screen for starters.

You may need to gain some new skills, such as being able to count in hex and binary. One day you will be able to convert real world colours into hex strings in your head. This can also be a sign that it’s time to get a girlfriend.

Learning C, which is a fairly low level (i.e. non-human) language is a very good idea, as it provides a backdrop to both C++ and C# (and the frankly disgusting Objective C, used on Apples and iPhones). Kernigan and Ritchie published the definitive guide to C years ago – and the book is so popular it is still in print 30 years down the road. Also worth investigating are the Dummies series, which can be very helpful – I use a C++ one from time to time for reference. C++ is a bag of crap language but it’s still popular at a lot of game development studios – I expect that to slowly start to wane. You should also consider looking at game dev systems which try to take some of the programming hardship away, such as Unity. They rely more on art assets and simpler scripting – but the basics of coding will always be useful so do try XNA.

Once you have a feel for the language operators (things like while loops, if statements, for loops etc) you have the beginning of your recipe book for creating any kind of application. To apply those techniques to games coding the next step is to build up a library of useful routines based around a central loop in your code. That might look something like this:

while( true )
{
Process_Joypad();
Move_Player();
Move_Enemies();
Do_Collision();
Update_Scores_And_Lives();
Draw_World();
Draw_Overlays_And_Text();
}

Each of those subsections can be broken down further. You will need to learn, in order of priority, how to do the following. Firstly get a sprite or 3D model to appear on screen. XNA makes this step quite simple. Then you will need to know how to load assets – again XNA has a fairly straightforward approach to this. Assets are sound effects, sprites, models and level information. You will also want to write a font plotter, especially useful so you can print out information for yourself when debugging. Then camera code if using 3D and beyond that the sky’s the limit!. Bounce algorithms, 2D collision systems, 3D collision, player cameras, lighting, shading technology, sort and search routines – the list just goes on and on, you will never stop learning new things.

As for learning resources, the internet is your best resource. Youtube hosts videos explaining how to get up and running in C#, Microsoft hosts an extensive XNA site, you can google C programming tips on any subject you can think of and last but by no means least are programming forums. Type “programming forums” into a search engine and a ton will appear – I use a lot of different resources so can’t recommend any one site in particular.

Another thing to consider as you begin to get a little more confident with games programming is that you may want to try and find an artist and perhaps another fledgeling coder and a sound engineer. For starters you can probably put together basic assets yourself – but very few coders are also artists as both skills take years to develop. In the meantime I would suggest picking up GIMP and Blender 2.50, both of which are open source, along with a basic hex editor, a development environment like Visual Studio, Codelite IDE or Eclipse, perhaps a children’s text book introduction to 3D geometry and matrix mathematics (you often only need the basics) and Codehead’s Bitmap Font Generator, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

GIMP is one of many admirable 2D texture editors worth picking up. You often need to be able to export to a lot of different formats when writing games, especially if you end up writing for lots of platforms. The PSP tools from Sony tend to favour TGA files for instance. Blender is an open source 3D editor, perhaps the most astonishing piece of free software I’ve ever seen, and a handy tool for creating 3D assets or generating 2D artwork. Until you can get your hands on an artist that is

cprogramming.com is a good place to look for further information about C and C++, but almost any specific query you type into google will give you dozens of sites.

So far I’ve looked at conventional game programming, but of course you can also investigate the worlds of Flash and HTML 5.0, both of which will let you write games in the browser interface. However whilst a C coder can pick up Flash pretty quickly, if forced at gunpoint, the reverse isn’t often true. Flash is fairly high level, or abstracted – you are a long way removed from the really powerful hardware features needed for high speed gaming. Some smashing games have been made in browsers though, just not generally fast 3D games.

Some final tips – use fixed arrays where possible as garbage collection (something you have to do a lot in C++ but not C) can be a huge stumbling block, and cause hard-to-track-down errors. Use constants in your code at all times.

For instance instead of saying
int maximum_x = 800;
write

#define MAX_X 800
at the top of your code

and
int maximum_x = MAX_X wherever it needs to be set. You may need to set it multiple times so using a #define statement will be invaluable.

Also, keep your code simple, avoid too much abstraction (a huge bugbear in C++, as well as being one of the strengths of the language) and try to make sure you use lots of comments.

// This is a comment
is useful when you come back to your code a month down the line and can’t remember what any of the damn stuff does!

I would also suggest you use the patented Jubber system for naming things in your game code.

#DEFINE SOME_CONSTANT (all capitals for constants)
int a_variable_for_player_speed  (underscores and english lower case words for variables)
void A_Function_For_Something_Or_Other()   (capitalised words, underscores for functions/methods)

ignore any programming guide that tells you to use reverse polish notation or any other system for naming variables. English is the most powerful tool humanity has yet created – use it where possible. Your code will be more readable if you don’t call variables ‘i’, a practice that is taking years to die out amongst older keyboard jockeys.

- Robin Jubber (coder of varying ability on PSP, PSP Go, PS3, PS2, Playstation 1, Acorn Archimedes, Acorn BBC Micro, Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore Amiga, PC, XBOX 360, Satellite set-top boxes, GBA, even a little bit of monkeying around with an N64. Horrid horrid N64 )

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

So there you have it, coding advice straight from a PlayStation Minis programmer. Once again I give a massive thanks to Robin for taking the time to give us all some programming pointers, and hopefully it will get people going in the right direction with the coding for their first game!

Following on from that I’ve got an interview with Steve Hunt from Cold Beam Games, the man behind the awesome Beat Hazard (you can read our review here). If you’ve never seen Beat Hazard being played before, you should check out this gameplay video. In short it’s an arcade, twin-stick shooter which is powered by your music. Oh, and I forgot to mention, Steve developed it entirely by himself.

So, let’s get started!

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Q: Did you study at University and which course did you take? Has it helped you?

Steve: I learnt to program when I was 8, BASIC at first and then 6502 & 68000 assembly language later. I went to Uni and did a degree in Computer Science. I think this blend of self taught and formal education is a powerful combination. Both helped me in so many ways.

Q: What inspired you to take the plunge and start making games?

Steve: I just love games. Right when I first started to programming I wanted to write games. It’s just my passion. My first published game was on the Atari 800 in 1987 when I was 14. Here’s a link if you want to check it out! And it’s been pretty much games all the way since then.

Q: Before starting on your own projects would you advise getting experience in the industry first, such as working with an established studio?

Steve: Getting some experience in the industry can only help. You will learn a lot doing that. If the option is there then take it! But I don’t think it’s essential as they will work on a completely different scale to a project you might do on your own. You can definitely be successful even if you’ve never worked in the industry before. I find the Indie scene is pretty friendly, a lot of the Indie guys talk and will help each other out.

Q: Are there any core skills which need to be learnt, such as a particular programming language?

Steve: Definitely. You really need to know C++ or C# as these are the standard languages you will always need (Unless you’re going for flash games, but that’s outside of my area). You also need skills in the other disciplines, artwork, design and planning. I guess small Indie teams need a broad spectrum of skills to succeed.

One point though, don’t feel you need to do everything yourself. There’s a ton of middleware / art / music resources out there that won’t cost the earth and will allow you to focus on the creative part of the product. For example, Beat Hazard PC has licensed music ($49), a free middleware 2D engine and a middleware audio engine ($150). These have saved me months of work! So really look if you can buy a solution before you dive in to doing it yourself.

Q: How much planning and preparation would you advise before getting stuck in with development?

Steve: For me I don’t spend too long here, maybe a few weeks. But that’s normally because the game I’m going to work on has been in my head for ages so I’ve pretty much gone as far as I can from that point of view. There’s only so much upfront design you can do before you need to see how the beast will work when it comes alive. For new platforms I find I need a few weeks to try some sample apps and tools before I’m ready to get started.
I like to spend a lot of time tweaking and testing once the basics of the game are up an running.

Q: What were the main challenges that you faced during development, and how did you overcome them?

Steve: I’m not a fan of low level programming so I personally find all that stuff challenging, e.g. graphics engine coding etc. However, I’ve been able to side step most of this though as I can buy off the shelf solutions. Creative challenges are hard, but sort of fun too. Balancing the game play for all types of skill levels, deciding how much content is enough etc. Sometimes getting too close is a problem too. You really need to get other people to play your game and listen very carefully to what they say (especially if it’s negative). However, think long and hard on how to solve players problems in the best way, don’t necessarily implement what they want to see.

Q: I assume that Beat Hazard 2 is in the works, so are you tackling the development differently in light of your experience with the first?

Steve: It’s rattling around in my head at the moment. I’ve got a load of ideas and I’ve got a good idea where I want to take it. I’m currently adding updates for Beat Hazard PC and looking at doing an iPhone version before I start BH2. When I do start BH2 though, I’m not sure I’d change the development process too much. The first went pretty well and I’d use the code base as a starting point for V2.

Q: Any last freestyle advice you would like to give?

Steve: Yeah, here’s some random thoughts. I think it’s important to write a game you really want to play and to stick with your vision and really work on bringing that to life. Trawl the net for resources and help, there’s a ton of stuff/people out there that can help you. And keep faith I guess, sometimes the going will get tough, you need to get your head down and work through these times.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Once again I’d like to thank Steve hugely for taking the time to answer our questions. Hopefully we’ll be seeing Beat Hazard on more platforms in the near future (including the PSN), so we wish him the best of luck and hope everything goes smoothly!

I’m starting off with an interview with James Marsden, Managing Director of FuturLab. James has done everything from designing websites, creating flash games and even constructing the PRISM Game Engine. His most recent project was the wonderful Coconut Dodge (you can read our review here), a self-published PlayStation minis title.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Q: Did you study at University and which course did you take? Has it helped you?

James: Yes, I studied Fine Art at University. A lot of people will poke fun at a Fine Art degree, myself included, as on the face of it, it’s pretty useless in the ‘real world’. However, I wouldn’t be doing what I am today if it weren’t for that course, as it taught me how to set my own goals with confidence. Many degrees, whether they are creative or academic are led by brief or curriculum. In contrast, our course had an extremely open minded view of what constituted ‘Fine Art’, and we simply had to decide ourselves what we were going to do for three years. I had to get up every morning and decide for myself what I was going to do that day/week/month. Those three years gave me the confidence to think independently – which is something a sad proportion of humanity seem incapable of doing. So, thumbs up for Fine Art I say!

The answer to this question goes deeper for me – School is geared up to teach creative people they are worthless, as the odds are they’re unlikely to be great at Maths, Science or Sport. A Fine Art degree does a great job of reversing this, as you come out realising that it’s everyone else that has it the wrong way round – the vast majority of people that excel at school are lining up in the hundreds of thousands to follow other people’s orders rather than thinking for themselves; thinking creatively about what they can do with their lives    .

Q: What inspired you to take the plunge and start making games?

James: WipEout. I played it so much and got so good at it that I reached another level of consciousness; the flow state. Racing in Phantom Class on WipEout 2097 was so blindingly fast that if I thought about what I was doing for a split second, I’d crash. Maverick had that right!

That’s the point when I realised that all other art forms would pale in significance in comparison to computer games. Look at what the Depthcore artists are doing with PhotoShop compared to what the Impressionists were doing in the early 1900s. One day games will enable artists to eclipse other art forms in the same way, and I want to be part of that! Jenova Chen is the first artist of that generation in my opinion.

Q: Before starting on your own projects would you advise getting experience in the industry first, such as working with an established studio?

James: Well, this continues from the last answer actually – it depends on what your goals are. I wanted to take my Fine Art degree and apply it to games, which means being able to creatively direct. I’ve taken a long way around, but I am now in a position where I have the experience, both professionally and creatively, to lead a project in the direction I think it should be led in – I know game designers that have been in the industry a lot longer, in high profile roles, but have yet to realise their own ideas.

The industry now allows small teams to get their games out on miniS or iPhone, so there is scope for someone fresh out of University, College (or even school if they’re switched on enough), to make a game and sell it, learn from it, and go from there.

However, if you want to do a specific job to an excellent standard, such as 3D Modelling, Animation or Game Engine Programming, there probably is no substitute for getting a job in a company that gives you the time and experience to develop your skills. Does that answer the question? I’m not sure!

Q: Are there any core skills which need to be learnt, such as a particular programming language?

James: Again, it depends on what your goals are – If you want to be a programmer, then yes there are certain languages you will need to learn. C/C++ for native console/PC programming, but also Lua, Flash ActionScript and Unity are well established game development tools that will help anyone get started. It’s how I got started.

Q: How much planning and preparation would you advise before getting stuck in with development?

James: That depends on what kind of game you’re making. If you’re using the game mechanics of an established genre, then you probably will need to do plenty of game design planning; designing the aspects of your game that are different or better than other games, what’s known as the Unique Selling Points (USPs).

However, if you’re trying to design a completely new kind of game, then it’s best to just get started testing your ideas as soon as possible. If the game isn’t fun in a prototype state, then it’s not going to be fun no matter how much artwork, sound or story you hang around it.

When you know you’ve got a core game mechanic that is fun, then you can start planning how to flesh it out with a design document.

In terms of scheduling the project however, if it’s your first game, and it’s a new type of game, then it’s actually impossible to schedule. Scheduling effectively only becomes possible once you’re experienced, so… I don’t recommend doing any scheduling at all if it’s your first game project.

The prototype is the most important thing. If you don’t have a fun prototype, you don’t have a game. Your prototype doesn’t have to be in code either – we’ve designed a couple of our games using paper cut outs, and it helps you solve a lot of the problems you’re going to encounter without writing a single line of code.

Once you’ve got a prototype that is fun, you can build out your design document and look for the best artist you can, and the best musician you can, and let them play the prototype. You can then sell them on the ideas in your design document and get them invested in your game idea!

Q: What were the main challenges that you faced during development, and how did you overcome them?

James: The biggest challenge was finding an excellent team to work with – it’s very hard to do everything yourself, and if you do manage to do everything yourself, it’s probably not very good!

Q: Now that Coconut Dodge has been released, is there anything you would have done differently looking back?

James: No, we did what we could with the resources we had. That said, we are already working on an update in response to some of the feedback we have received. Now that the game is out there, and selling a few copies (hopefully), we can spend a bit more time polishing the game to the standard we would have polished it if we had the time.

Things like quitting from the pause menu, extra little sound effects and animations, and making the game more accessible for less skilled players whilst still recognising that bad-ass players want a hard challenge, and still rewarding them for being bad-ass.

Q: Any last freestyle advice you would like to give?

James: Be nice to people. We have managed to get a lot of help and support with Coconut Dodge by being polite and friendly. At the end of the day, the game industry is run by people, and interpersonal skills are the unpublicised requirement for a) Getting a job, b) Keeping a job and c) Being able to create jobs for other people

Secondly, read this book: http://artofgamedesign.com/ – it will teach you everything you need to know about designing games that push the right buttons.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

A massive thanks to James for taking the time to answer our questions, and we wish the FuturLab team the best of luck with their next project. Hopefully James’ answers have provided an insight into world of game development for those of you considering taking the plunge into the world of independent game development!