Game Development | Gamedev Brain

Animal Design, Yes I Said It.

Posted on September 4, 2015 by magicrat_larry

What do you write about when you do the same thing for days in a row? It is hard to figure out what to say. I’ve been just writing up descriptions of creatures that have the potential to make it in to Violent Sol Worlds. It is a fun task, but I find myself not wanting to just write about specific animals in this blog because the games website will do that.

It is fun though, I tend to just type in something like “Swamp Creatures” in google and flip to images and see what shows up. Usually something in there is inspiring for a creature to describe. Plus it is not just a description, it has to do with do they travel in groups, what do they eat, and how is their temperament.

For instance we have a rat-like creature that travels in groups, but only attacks wounded animals or characters. In the end I am hoping we have a good spread of unique animals that populate the world you are settling and makes it feel alive. We want you to enjoy the world and make it feel full and living.

If you have not checked out my current project…

Violent Sol Worlds home

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Am I a Failure, or No?

Posted on August 28, 2015 by magicrat_larry

Fear of all this work not paying off is looming. As we push to Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight it does cross my mind that people may not support us or even know about us. I’ve been working hard for a long time now to try and make that not happen. I suppose the fact that you are reading this is a sign that my fears are at least not 100% solid.

It will be a slightly crushing blow if our efforts do go unseen or even worse un-liked. Well our best is all we can give. I do appreciate everyone for supporting, following, and just being there through our hard work. Game development is not hard, the workload is the hard part.

Holding down the full-time job and performing on game development at the same time will kill a lesser person. I have the largest amount of respect to those who have made it before me and hope like heck that hard work pays off and I follow them in stride. All of your support is appreciated and there is a much longer road ahead. I’ll keep digging in as long as I keep getting up in the morning. I love this stuff.

As always here are some links to learn about our game Violent Sol Worlds

Violent Sol Worlds home

IndieDB

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5 Things I Learned About Twitter in a Year

Posted on August 26, 2015 by magicrat_larry

If you have not used Twitter, where have you been? It is a high paced social media site that allows for you to essentially voice out your ideas, observations, and general propaganda in 140 characters or less. It can be used for socialization, marketing, or general enjoyment. It is a powerful tool to get short bits of information out to people on a larger scale in short quick bursts. I have been on Twitter for close to a year now an have been using it to market and tell people about my general game development cycles. Here are 5 of the main things that I have learned about Twitter and how to get things done on it.

1. Tweet Every Day

The average life-span of a tweet is near 0 minutes, especially early on. You cannot expect to gain any real following of people about your product or movement if you simply tweet once every few days. Take the time to make sure that you have a consistent and scheduled tweet pattern and get into a groove of it. I use Buffer myself to make up 6 scheduled tweets a day.

Using a scheduling tool you can take 15-30 minutes in the morning and get them all out of the way and throughout your normal work day it will seem like you are tweeting to the world at a consistent pace. You will also be able to them reach more of the worlds population more regularly because you can schedule tweets at times that you are sleeping or generally not able to stop your life and use Twitter.

2. Be Yourself

People like other people. Keep that in mind. Twitter at it’s core is a game and a marketing engine. If you have a purpose do not hide it, and do not try and be something you are not. I am a game developer and I want to market myself as that, so I do. I tweet out mostly about that stuff and I attract mostly people who enjoy that content.

Don’t just create a Twitter account for marketing your product, truth is, on Twitter, people could care less about your product at first. You have to grab people with personality, which believe it or not all humans have. It is often the tweets that come from the heart, that are odd and unpredictable, that gain the most momentum on Twitter. So do not be afraid to stop and say something that you would normally just drop on your friends. It will gain peoples trust and those kinds of tweets are very entertaining.

3. Don’t Be A Serial Follower

What is a serial follower? If you follow everyone you see that says anything remotely interesting you could be a serial follower. If you follow everyone back that follows you, you are a serial follower. Make sure you hand out your follows to people that you really are interested in. If you notice somebody more than once or see that their feed is full of great content follow them. Make sure you are using Twitter for good reason, not just to gain followers by following others. If you see that your number of followers is almost the same as the amount of people you follow you are probably following too many people and fall into the serial follower category. You are OK when you are new to Twitter to follow more people than follow you, but as you get a presence start to deviate from following more than follow you.

4. Images, Images Are Your Friend

It is all over the internet that images help your tweets get noticed. It is true they do help, but not everything needs an image. You can feel free to throw together images for everything using things like Pablo and they do work well. I noticed that images in large quantities do not necessarily get you what you are looking for. they seem to attract people outside your followers, but your own followers don’t really care too much if you always use them. I try and use them 2 or 3 times out of 6.

5. Give Back

Be more than a person that talks about themselves. Help others get their stuff noticed. Retweet good content, ask interesting questions that are not about your project. Learn to be outgoing and converse with the community. Be a part of the larger Twitter universe not just a sole voice yapping about your project 100% of the time. You can have a strong number of your own content tweets, just make sure that you include the rest of the world in your conversation or it just ends up like a bad date.

I have lot more when it comes to Twitter, just thought that 5 would be enough. Keep at it and Twitter is very rewarding for you and you project. Enjoy it and try new things and in the end tell us all your tips and tricks so we can all keep making Twitter a better place to market and socialize.

If you have not checked out my current project…

Violent Sol Worlds home

IndieDB

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Tell Me What You Want!

Posted on August 23, 2015 by magicrat_larry

Business or not business, that is a good question. This seems to be something people struggle with in game development on the indie scale. Why are you doing it? I’m doing it because I love it, but that does not mean you should not do it as a business right? I tend to think that people make themselves have a harder time with things they love because they put strange walls up that would not normally be there if you were just trying to sell something.

If you just were selling spatulas, you would post adds everywhere. They would be the cheapest adds you can make, and you would repeat them as many times as you could to an audience so that your spatula brand would come to mind first when you think of spatulas. That seems reasonable to us all I think. It is done by nearly every company in existence today of any size.

So why is it when it comes to indie games that the development teams think that advertisement has to be different? Are people different when it comes to games? I tend to believe they are not. I don’t think people really mind hearing about an awesome game many times. Plus if you are talking twitter and social media, the amount of times a post is missed by nearly everyone in the world is astounding. I don’t think putting a strange limit on your marketing is the most wonderful of ideas. If marketing works for Disney, it will work for your indie title.

There are proven things that work with human beings. Use them to your advantage. To try and think of ways to covertly get people to see your call to action is not the most effective way. If you want them to buy spatulas, tell them, and tell them often. Don’t just think because you are making a cool spatula that the people will know what they need to do to make you a success.

Come see my spatula…

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Hey Look Game Design!

Posted on August 21, 2015 by magicrat_larry

Going full design, what an interesting transition from prototyping game-play. We spent a while getting the visual and the game play experience ironed out for Violent Sol Worlds now we have a great understanding of how this game will look, feel, and play. We now have to turn our attention to the design of a game that will encompass all that we now understand about it.

There seems to be two areas of design so far. The technical, which Aaron is running straight in to now, and the world, which I think interests me more. The technical generates things like flow charts and systems behind the scenes that all communicate together for the game loop to function well, and effectively. It is important to get that correct, especially for Violent Sol Worlds, it is going to be something we have to live with for a long while. We plan on extending this game over time to be much larger than it is at Alpha build 1.

The world design is interesting to me because it is a lot to do with what you will be seeing, hearing, reading, and interacting with. I am working on animals now and it is a bit of an experience in itself. I started with the types of biomes the planet will have, now I am thinking of how to come up with the animals that live within them.

Nothing, when done right, with love and care, is easy. So getting the creatures correctly placed and balanced with different types that will make sense is a task in itself. I need a system to think about it and that is what I am coming up with now. It is an enjoyable phase of development and I can’t wait to continue the journey.

If you have not seen the game I am a part of here are a few links…

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Problems Generated By Successful Actions

Posted on August 20, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I used to think that game development was this glamorous, fun, coding, experience that was intense but just a blast. I know better now. The truth behind game development is that it is a lot of work. It still is fun, but there is no glamour.

What do I mean? Well Let me tell you my story. I used to do this as a hobby. I loved to make cool things render to the screen. I would play around with it for a few hours a week. Then it turned into a few hours a day. From there I gathered people, they wanted to make games. So it turned into 20 hours a week. At that point I mostly coded, still seemed like my vision of what I though game development was was true.

I then started to think, if we get a game to the finish line, how do we sell it? Then entered marketing time. I started about 5-10 minutes every day. That turned into 30 minutes. Then it turned into and hour. Before I knew better, it was my entire 20 hours a week. Is that bad? No. I am driven by success, so as I got feedback and validation from people, like you, I spent more time doing it.

Now, I reach a problem. The fans, followers, and generally great people that I strove to entertain are pushing me further. I am out of time. Eventually I need to code the game, keep up marketing, and innovate in both areas. We have to get this to be a full-time equation soon or things have to be cut. Problem is you cannot cut either development or marketing because you’d be cutting your own projects head off.

I love this problem, can’t really have a better one. I just have to solve it and continue to grow. Love all you people out there that drive me, keep it coming and I do pass it on to our team that is working on the game. Problems generated by success mean you are participating in life and not just along for the ride.

If you have not seen the game I am a part of here are a few links…

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Games Are a No Brainer

Posted on August 17, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I’ve heard it over and over again, business is hard. I think peoples definition of hard is really the problem here. Business is easy to succeed in. Trust me. It’s not hard, just be smart and start something that a place needs based on a places needs, not on your love for the thing you are starting. If you do that then you have a successful business.

If you just say I love knitting scarfs. Then take that love and just open up a shop for knitted scarfs near you. You are bound to fail. Why? because you had no business thoughts that lead you to open that shop, just love and passion for the knitting of scarfs. I know you love it, but it still won’t make a terrible idea work.

The cool thing about game development is that it is location less. It is entertainment and it can be priced well for global sales. Gamed development is also a nice production model as well. You can make a great game for very little money and produce copies of that game, for nearly free, forever. The math works out great. The only things you have to do is execute a game and get it to release. That is the part that is harder. Remember business isn’t hard, it’s just work, and it takes some thought.

If you have not seen the game I am a part of here are a few links…

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Why Work Hard?

Posted on August 14, 2015 by magicrat_larry

What comes out of hard work? I wondered this years ago and never really answered it. Hard work in itself gives you nothing. It is not something that by itself makes anything happen. You have to be smart about what you are working hard on. With the correct focus hard work can make great things.

How you choose what to focus on is the key to success and the American Dream. Choose wisely and you will never be disappointed. Don’t listen to people. You don’t have to work hard on something you love either. What? Why would you do that? You can work hard on a smart idea that is not something you love and be successful at it. Hard work gets you that. The key to being happy though is to find something you like more that is still smart.

You cannot just work hard at the thing you love and expect great success. The fact is the thing you love is probably dumb to work hard at for business success. Find the next best thing that makes good sense and go for it. I’m lucky, the one thing I love to do is make games, and here I am making one and it makes sense for business success.

If you have not seen the game I am a part of here are a few links…

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Once You start You Just Can’t Stop

Posted on August 10, 2015 by magicrat_larry

You know you are having fun when you cannot stop. I’ve been going at game development for over 2 years now every day. I’ve worked probably 50-60 hours a week for that time, combining my day job and my game development “hobby”. That is a long time to have that work load.

I’m starting to feel it now, but I just can’t stop. It’s the, “just one more thing”, problem with an addictive thing you love to do. The Civilization of life. I love developing games, and I am seeing that I love developing a game studio just as much. Seeing something come out of nothing is a great experience and you all are making it that much easier.

There are awesome things coming from us in the near future so stay tuned and enjoy it as much as I am.

If you have not seen the game I am a part of here are a few links…

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Do You Love Me?

Posted on August 8, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I’m throwing it out there…

Do you love me? lol, This is crazy, we just met. Making this game is fun. It’s like you are falling in love every day, but just with a product, a dream, a vision, and the people who enjoy it. What a journey this has been.

OST Indie Games started off by making a game-play demo for a space agency tycoon game. It should be a cool game whenever we get to it. We then made a twist to a game called “Goobers”. It was a light game with a shallow story about an alien guy. We worked on a game engine for a long time and finished that up relatively recently. We had a few more twists and turns and ended up shelving that project and started looking at a project we called “Worlds End”.

That project was ambitious, so we narrowed it down to a top-down survival sci-fi game. It was not too exciting until the time when I was writing the proof of concept for the shooting mechanic and was throwing together art, but could not get a head to look right for the character. So I just threw on a cowboy hat. From then on I was in love. We switched his gun to be a laser pistol and even more love was there.

To me the cowboy hat, made me love the game you are seeing today, Violent Sol Worlds, It turned it from a crash landing survival game on a planet, to you are an early settler on a distant planet helping spread the human race across the galaxy. We all started to run with it. It was amazing how quickly things came together from that point on when love was involved.

Love makes everything easier, marketing flows, work just gets done, and magic seems to happen. I hope you love Violent Sol Worlds even a portion as much as we do. It is a great game to work on and we cannot wait to get it in your hands to play. It will be an even longer journey to get there but our team is ready for it. When you love what you do, you can’t help but do it.

If you have not seen the game I am a part of here are a few links…

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ViolentSol.com – Homepage

IndieDB – Indie Games Community with news, screenshots, and video