Monthly Archives: December 2014

2014, a year of new platforms

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2014 was the first year I spent almost entirely working on games. (One or two freelance projects didn’t qualify, but the majority of them were games, which is very exciting!)

As usual, I tried to split my time about 50/50 between freelance work and product development. I spent a lot of that product development time in 2014 working on Catchup. And, as expected, I still spent the majority of my time this year in Xcode, working on iOS apps. iOS is definitely the platform that it is still easiest for me to prototype in, simply because I am most familiar with it, and to some extent because I can re-use code from previous projects. I think I did less iOS prototyping this year than in previous years, but there are still a few new projects sitting around that I would love to give more attention to (and release) in 2015.

But the point of this article is that I also spent a lot of time thinking about different platforms. And when I started thinking back on this, I realized there were a lot of them. So here is a rough list:

  • Unity – I’d “played around” with Unity before, but early in 2014 I spent a weekend at the Global Game Jam working with a rather large team on several games in Unity. Since I was such a newb, I ended up just playing pinch-hitter, helping out where I could, and in general learning as much as I could from the other more experienced Jammers. I left the game jam feeling like I could code a Unity game from scratch if I had to, which was far more skill than I’d had when I started.
  • PuzzleScript – In the middle of the summer sometime, a few of us at #Doughvelopment (game dev co-working on Fridays from a donut shop) started playing with PuzzleScript. Mostly this was Ian’s fault, but several of us ended up working on PuzzleScript games. I was intrigued mostly because PuzzleScript is a language written to encode a particular type of game (box pushers in the Sokoban family) as simply and flexibly as possible. I got a couple of levels into a pretty derivative design before abandoning it, (in PuzzleScript it takes a lot of extra effort to be original, I think), but I spent at least a day working in the web-based editor, which is just very different from most of the coding I’ve ever done before.
  • Board Game Development – I’ve designed a lot of board games over the years… but very few of them have had the sort of iteration usually associated with a polished (or better yet published) game design. Board Game Development is the process of playing and testing your design, then iterating on the rules (or as in my case, specific cards), playtesting again, and iterating again, etc.. The actual work involved ends up being quite different from game design, and this year was the first time I actually spent any time and effort at it during work hours. I’ve sort of put that game away for the near-future, but I do hope to get back to it again in 2015, possibly in a publishing context.
  • Physical Games – This year I had some ideas for playground-sized games, including one idea that stands out above the rest. That game is something that I now consider to be a long term goal to actually see played / implemented. It will be expensive though, which is why it’s a long term goal. Incidentally, I can think of very few projects that qualify as “life sized” video games. There are a few, but nothing like what I’m envisioning. There is a blurry line here, for sure (is laser tag a life sized video game, for instance?), but the point is that I am moving slowly toward a real life implementation of this game. There will be programming involved, for sure, but that is only a small slice of the project in this case.
  • Unreal Engine / Oculus – I do occasionally have ideas that are “bigger” than the 2D puzzle type games I typically make. Adding the 3rd dimension is not something I’m excited about, but sometimes I have designs that feel like it’s probably necessary. I subscribed to Unreal Engine ostensibly to start working on some Oculus games. (As usual, I’ve got lots of ideas.) I made a tiny bit of progress toward that goal, (got some of the sample projects working with my Dev Kit 2, as well as watched a bunch of Unreal tutorials), but ultimately haven’t really started coding anything yet.
  • Processing / Arduino / L3D – I’ve always been peripherally aware of and interested in the Arduino / hardware Maker movement. In the fall of this year, partly as an extension of the physical game I eluded to above, I started thinking a bit about prototyping games with simple LED arrays. Then the L3D project fell onto my radar, and now I’m super into creating games for it. There is a Processing plugin to stream signals to the L3D, but in my testing so far, it’s relatively bandwidth intensive, so while I’ve done a bunch of work in Processing already (a platform I’d only dabbled in years ago), I’m now moving the project to “native” code running on the Spark core that powers the L3D. This means taking a step backwards in terms of functionality, but assuming what I want to do is possible, (reading Xbox controller input from controllers plugged into a USB hub that also powers the L3D) it should be much faster, and has the added benefit of not requiring a laptop/computer to run it on. I’m waiting for a powered USB hub from amazon, then I should have a quick test for this shortly thereafter. Anyway, in the mean time, I’ll be playing with some L3D visualizations needed to help “juice” the games anyway.

There are of course infinite things to learn and do, even limiting your activity to “game development”. I made a deliberate decision when I went independent to continue working in iOS so as not to lose the “depth” of skill needed to pick up a full-time job again if Abstract Puzzle didn’t work out, and I’m definitely not going to abandon that decision in 2015. That having been said, dabbling in new platforms gives you perspective! And as hot as IoT is right now, it probably won’t be a bad thing to have some microcontroller programming on my gamedev resume.

Game(s) of the Year

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I’ve seen a few posts and tweets by game designers about their favorite games of the year. I thought I’d collect those and comment. (Maybe even compile my own list!)

It’s hard to believe that Threes! came out this year. Amazing really, considering how much time and effort was spent thinking about it, re-imagining it, not to mention playing it, of course. It probably gets my vote for game of the year.

I almost didn’t mention A Dark Room because it came out last year, but wanted to say that it’s well worth playing (as are all of these, now that I put it that way). Any game designer will especially like the “extras” that are unlocked after the first playthrough.

I got Stellar Smooch after reading this post, and LOVED it. It’s very short, and I was able to finish it in less than an hour, but everything about it made me happy. I did also pick up Woah Dave! on my 3DS, and played it for a few hours. Don’t think it would make my top 10, but it was worth $.99, for sure.

Monument Valley would also make my list. It was too easy, and I’d have liked MORE, but neither of those are reasons to deny yourself this absolutely amazing experience. It’s the best Escher inspired 2D puzzle game I’ve ever played. (I believe I also played Antichamber for the first time this year, although it came out in early 2013.)

The linked MetaCritic list is definitely worth reading. Cavanagh’s VVVVVV does take slot number one, and I would put it near the top of my list as well. I’d never played the game before (on any of its many platforms) and was absolutely blown away when I downloaded it earlier this year. I’m not even all that huge a fan of platformer games in general, but VVVVVV is definitely a game worth playing for the sheer number of ways platforming is re-invented (mostly around the central mechanic of reversing gravity at will).

After I read Adam Saltsman’s post in bed a few nights ago, I picked up Alcazar and played it until I fell asleep. Also, I’d completely forgotten that I wanted to buy Framed, so picked that up, as well as Hitman Go, (which I had been resisting, but is on sale currently for $.99).

Saltsman also mentions Michael Brough’s Helix, which I have played for a fair share of hours, and would probably make my top 10 (especially if limited to iOS).

Finally, after thinking about this long enough to write this post, I said:

Here’s the list with links: Threes!, Fantasy Life, Monument Valley, Dream Quest, Hoplite, VVVVVV, Poptile, Helix, Galaxy Trucker, & Catchup.

Hoplite came out December 21st, 2013, but that may as well have been 2014, I think. Galaxy Trucker has been around for years, but I’m speaking specifically of the iOS port that came out this year. We’ve already talked about VVVVVV. Anyway, off to play some more games!

L3D Games

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Screen Shot 2014-12-23 at 11.39.59 AMIf you haven’t already seen the L3D kicksterter, head on over there and check it out. As of this writing, there are still 13 days left to get one of these awesome LED cubes.

I’m excited to announce that I’m working on some games for the L3D. As of last night, I’ve got a project with 4 game controllers working with the L3D “simulator”. You can see one controller working with my sample project here:

I’ll be posting the code in the next week or so, after I get my cube in the mail and test on some actual hardware. The L3D library (including primitive simulator shown in the video above) is all written as a plugin for Processing, (which, incidentally, I’ve wanted to work in for AGES), so it was a relatively simple matter to get the L3D plugin working with the Game Control Plus plugin.

Now that I’ve got them working together, I’m planning on working on the following projects:

  • L3D Snake — a 3d version of this classic game, for 1-4 players — this one is practically done in my example code, just needs some auto-movemet, and an array of previous spaces for each player, and end-game conditions.
  • text library — I’ll be helping write a general library for scrolling “marquee style” text. This should help with displaying who won once the game is over, along with maybe showing the score, or even game selection, if I get around to wrapping up several games into a package of some kind.
  • some games of my own design — I’ve already got a simple color-selection territory game ready to go. This should look really pretty, as well as (hopefully) being fun to play. For 2-4 players. There are some other ideas I’m floating around also.
  • L3D Tetris — This just needs to happen. I’ve written a lot of tetris variants, but never a 3D one (though I’ve always loved 3D tetris), so I think it’s finally time.
  • L3D Invaders — A 3D space invaders could also be really fun.

I’m also really interested in the possibility of designing some turn-based “board games” using the L3D. I haven’t written anything down yet, but there are some ideas percolating in the back of my head.

Q&A – Porting Board Games to Digital

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I recently answered a short barrage of questions by some non-technical folks researching the business feasibility of board game conversion. Since I gave them these answers freely, I thought I would also post them here. This is all based on my own personal experience, so feel free to exercise skepticism and I absolutely welcome your thoughts or differing opinions in the comments below.

1. What resources estimates and how much time do you feel is needed to do a strategy board game conversion to digital?

The answers for this question are as varied as the answers to the question “how much time is needed to do a mobile game?” In my experience, if you’re paying your programmer(s) what they’re worth (which is not a given in the gaming industry), you’re probably looking at a budget somewhere between 30k and 120k. Less is certainly possible with an experienced team, maybe with a code base they’re reusing, but it would raise a red flag for me. (I get a lot of potential clients who come to me with 2-5k, and I politely tell them that we can possibly make a prototype without graphics for that much.)

2. If using Unity as a gaming language, what do you think is involved in porting to another platform say from iOS to Android or vice-versa?

I am familiar with unity, but no expert. (So take this with a grain of salt.) My feeling is that android is more work, what with supporting all the different screen sizes and hardware/processor idiosyncrasies, so if you’ve already done that work, porting to iOS should not be that much more difficult. (Depending on the project, of course.) Going from iOS to android on the other hand could take longer, especially for complex games. (It’s going to depend on how many screens or “scenes” you’ve got to prepare in unity.)

3. Are you aware of what the maintenance/support costs would/could be, if so what do you believe is involved?

This is a great question! Not something a lot of clients think to ask. It’s easy to throw something in the App Store and forget about it, which is exactly what everyone else will do too.

There are obviously diminishing returns though, so I recommend planning a release with at least one maintenance update about a week or so after the initial lunch, and maybe evaluate then whether it’s worth doing another “feature” update a couple of weeks to a month later, also with a follow up maintenance update if your budget can stand it. If the game is still doing well at that point, it’s a good idea to plan to spend some time and push out littler updates as frequently as you can, more for marketing purposes than for any development related reason. All of this will require developer involvement, but it’s the person crafting marketing and messaging that should be spending the most time after launch. I generally think this is underestimated, and can easily be a full-time task.

4. Do you have an idea of hosting (storage/bandwidth) costs?

This is only relevant if you are hosting your own server for some reason. The game should have a website, which is another often overlooked marketing piece, but it will cost far more to create that than to maintain/host it. (Hosting fees shouldn’t run more than $20/ month, or you’re probably getting ripped off somewhere. I pay $5/month + $10/domain, but that comes with doing mostly my own support.)

If you ARE hosting your own backend multiplayer server, you can think of it as another domain name. (It definitely cost you more up-front to develop, so make sure your dev is including that in their estimates.) And unless the game is super successful, most hosting plans should include enough bandwidth. If you get to the point where you are paying ala cart for bandwidth, it still shouldn’t be more than a handful of dollars unless you’re at an extreme end of the spectrum, which is a problem you wish you will have.

5. What’s your thoughts on the digitization of family board games, and what may happen, and when?

Well, “family board games” is a term that might mean a bunch of different things, but here are some initial off the cuff thoughts:

a) it’s already happening to some degree, see Monopoly, Scrabble, Jenga.

b) The family market is much larger than the hobby market, but much tougher to crack. Quality is going to be a very important consideration, as is ease of use and first-run experience, including tutorials and teaching.

c) It’s possible that the aforementioned digital game examples are mostly getting played by board game hobbyists, rather than the general populous you’d expect to be playing a family game, which would be hard to prove either way unless you are the publisher of one of those games.

d) In general, (this is advice I like to give to anybody thinking about physical game conversion), the advantage that board game conversions have over their fully-digital counterparts is that there is already a population that knows about that game and to a lesser extent how to play that game. So the bigger that group, the bigger your advantage. How successful your board game conversion will be is very much influenced or enhanced by how successful a game you are choosing to convert.

6. Are you familiar with Steam, and would you recommend porting or building for that platform?

If you want to target desktops (OSX, Windows, or Linux), then I would highly recommend building working with Steam. I cannot make a recommendation about whether those platforms are viable for board game conversions in particular. Steam is a bit like Apple’s App Store and Game Center rolled into one, but cross platform for desktop games. There is an API that you as a developer can write to, and implement Steam achievements and various other social offerings.

7. Do you feel the effort to port from say Android/iOS phones requires more work to port to Tablet versions as well, or not?

Generally there is a portion of every project devoted to UI work. The amount of time spent will be different for every project, but generally I think it’s a higher percentage of the project for games than other application types. Let’s say, for a game, 50% of the development effort was put toward UI work. If you had only developed for one screen size at that point, you might have to re-do or at least re-touch much of that work. If you plan from the beginning of the project for multiple screen sizes, you can save yourself a lot of pain in “porting” to a different screen size, but it is still more work, no doubt about that.

8. What about PC/Browser porting, are you noticing or see the need/demand or value in doing that, and if so are you familiar with the effort in that case let’s say after a mobile version has been completed?

I do see this happen from time to time, though not with a lot of board game conversions. My concern would be monetization, since the folks who play web-based games are used to getting their games for free, and you have to have a very large active userbase (in the hundreds of thousands, from what I understand, although I’m no expert) to make money with advertising alone.

9. How many people do you believe is needed to convert and maintain a board game digital conversion, and what roles?

For a “full featured” conversion, I see the following needs:
– Programmer/developer
– Artist/graphic designer
– Sound Effects person and Musician (often can be the same person)
– Some kind of project manager or person making feature decisions
– A person (or team!) in charge of marketing

I have worked on a lots of projects where there were a couple of developers who split duties. This includes several apps with Tysen Streib, who would expertly craft the AI and game logic, while I handled all the rest of the application, including ultimately integration of his code into the project.

Another optional role I’ve found myself filling briefly at the start of smaller projects is that of UX designer. It is always nice to have a blueprint to work from, and good wireframes can really speed up development as well as help keep your team on the same page if there are multiple developers.

The mix and makeup of all of these roles will be different on every team, no doubt. There are certainly some indie developers who tackle all of these tasks for every project! I’ve found that keeping scope small is always a good thing, work toward manageable milestones, and you’re less likely to be surprised by how long something takes you to complete.