Andy Moore • Game Design and Programming • Page 3

Raging against clones isn’t futile

Sep 212011

When I posted about the cloning of Steambirds a few weeks ago, I was getting annoyed (visibly so, in the comments!) at people taking my post out of context.

The point of my post wasn’t “we should change the world!”… I know dicks will be dicks, it is just our duty to call out dicks.

The point of my post wasn’t “cloning is illegal!”… I even mentioned how it IS legal, and how it just makes you a dick.

And now there’s an article on Gamasutra, citing my article (briefly), and saying “Fans don’t care if it’s a clone!”… I know that too. It’s frustrating. But this blog isn’t addressed to game players, this blog is addressed to you – fellow developers.

So what WAS my point?

When I complain about cloners, it isn’t drama or some big wrong in the world I’m trying to right. I’m not trying to inform game players of the status of cloning.

And I totally agree with the premise of the Gamasutra article – people are going to be assholes and there’s nothing you can do about it.

What I’m trying to do is raise awareness. Awareness within the development community. I want people to think “Bungie Aerospace/Harebrained” and equate that with “Shaky morals”. I want other development studios to know that myself (and several others) will look down on you for teaming up with them.

If your company is willing to walk that thin line between “clone” and “legally distinct,” I’d hate to see what other kinds of legal shenanigans you get up to. I’d rather partner with, or team up with, or work for a company that is comfortable generating their own ideas. There are so many studios and publishers these days that it’s easy to quick-sort them into two piles: Morally Awesome, and Morally Dicks.

Don’t worry, the Morally Dicks pile will probably make more money, and if that is all you are interested in.. have at it. At least I know what team you’re playing for.

Most of all, I want to ensure that the next generation of game devs don’t look upon cloning as a totally-fine-and-dandy act. It’s still dirty. Legal, but dirty. To promote creativity and advancement of the gaming industry, we need to show people that making unique IP is AWESOME, wheras passing your game idea by your legal department is REPREHENSIBLE.

Organizing OrcaJam 2011

Events, VDev 4 Responses »

Sep 202011

Last weekend was OrcaJam, the annual gamejam event that I organize. Last year I made a blog post about the administration side of things, and I thought I’d do the same again this year!

This one is more of a blog post to other event organizers out there, and is more behind-the-scenes. I’ll make some follow-up posts with some content of what was actually created during the weekend.

The Beginnings

I almost didn’t hold an OrcaJam event this year. I wasn’t really feeling into it and I couldn’t motivate myself to start planning. I was secretly hoping that the event would manifest itself somehow; maybe last year’s attendees would just spring up with a plan and a venue. No such luck.

At a game-dev meetup in August, it occurred to me that if I didn’t announce OrcaJam right then, it probably wouldn’t happen. I called upon the most powerful force known to developers: A SELF-ENFORCED DEADLINE.

Setting the deadline to a mere 30 days in the future was enough motivation and encouragement to make things happen. Organizing the venue, food, ticket prices, and everything else went very quickly – without headache, without waffling on decisions, and while maintaining a certain energy level about the event. Momentum feels really good.

Lessons Learned

Last year I listed the biggest failings of OrcaJam, and I wanted to be sure I touched on each of them this time around.

Internet/Venue. The hotel we rented last year was not capable of supporting our internet habits. The very-square and confined-feeling hotel conference room was uninspiring and even made me feel a bit claustrophobic. This time around, we partnered with InHub – a collaborative co-working environment that doesn’t use their awesome facilities on weekends anyway, and had plenty of internets. Win-win!
After Party vs. Pre-Party. Last year people had to leave early, and the Sunday night festivities were not enjoyable by all. This time around, we met at the pub before the event (as well as the after-party), giving people extra opportunity to socialize and get to know one another.
Catering. The hotel we were at last year did not allow outside food. This was a pain in the butt for people just wanting to bring their own snack, AND it was very expensive hauling in their overpriced buffet. This year we went with simple Subway sustenance (some of the cheapest catering I’ve seen) and chopped our own veggies and fruit for platters – again, made possible by our move the InHub. The private venue even let us bring our own keg in for the afterparty!
Rants/Talks/Presentations. Last year the talks/rants slipped off the schedule and we didn’t have much time for presentations at the end. This year there was tons of time for announcements and quick talks each day, and was a nice reprieve from the code-marathon.

I think I took care of all the biggest downsides to the previous OrcaJam!

Improvements

To break up the endless march to coder-exhaustion, I held a mini-board-game-party every night at 8PM. About a third of the attendees participated, and fun was had by all! I think I’ll bring this feature back next year.

Last year was 60 people, this year we strove to halve that. It’s easier to get to know people, manage size and size related issues (seating, garbage, food, etc.), and took less advertising efforts as well. We made it up to 20 registered attendees fairly quickly, and the final 10 trickled in in the last weeks. I do definitely prefer the small size, but could probably aim for 40 people next year.

Another big improvement was price-point. Last year we relied on sponsors to get us most of our funds, and charged a $10 ticket price to prevent flaky attendees ruining our plans. Attendees were flaky anyway, so $10 wasn’t enough of an enticement – plus the low ticket price gave some people the impression that it was a silly/low class/outreach/student event of some kind. This year we pegged the ticket price at $50 per seat (which seems to be a standard price in Western nations), and we only had 2 complaints on price. This lessened our reliance on sponsors and made our flake-rate drop dramatically.

Failures

Though our internet was devoted to us, the router couldn’t handle the strain. At it’s peak usage – Saturday night – it needed reboots every 30 minutes (probably overheating). When it was working, it was working fine and fast, though! Just need some better hardware for next year.

Socialization was still a problem. Imagine – you are a local developer with a day-job, family, or you live out of town. You can’t make it to the friday-afternoon during-work-hours mingle, and you have to get home or catch a flight before the after-party. There’s no time to socialize! I might have to re-rig the schedule a bit for next year.

The discount I organized at a nearby hotel – same rate as last year (down from $90 to $70 per night) – turned out to be their standard book-online rate. They also didn’t bother to record the event name, so a few people had some confusing phone calls. I’ll have to try to get better rates next time.

Finally, there is clean-up. Even the other co-organizers left early this year, and by 10PM it was just myself and two others finishing up a few games of RockBand. I didn’t finish cleaning up (all by myself!) until about 2:30AM. :C Might be worth hiring someone next time!

Surprises

Two things genuinely surprised me this year. Feedback for the website, and our Five Minute Game Challenge.

Last year hardly anybody mentioned the website at all, and I didn’t bother to do much more with it this year; just updated a few dates and images and that’s about it. But the feedback this year was tremendously positive (despite having less people show up? crazy!). If anyone else out there is looking to do a game jam, be sure to cover the bases I tried to:

Transportation (international and local)
Lodging (discounts & directions)
Weather (what to expect/wear)
Food (restaurants/groceries)

The Five Minute Game Challenge made a return this year as well. Last year it started as a joke mini-event, and two other people joined in and attempted the challenge after I failed (only Chevy succeeded, and barely so). This year, the FMGC took on a life of it’s own, and (to me, anyway!) was the highlight of the entire weekend.

Six individuals attempted The Challenge and most of them succeeded. Unlike last year, where everyone used FlashDevelop and made basic avoider-style games, a few of the games this year were written in various IDEs and actually really good. One of our attendees even wrote a song in five minutes!

One of the games in particular went on to another 20 minutes of graphical polish and still completely blows me away. My own game makes statements about mankind and could be an art game (with an ‘innovative’ mechanic). Chevy’s game is an insane bullet-hell shooter that ends in your own intentional suicide.

I love it. I absolutely love it. If I could hold an entire weekend of 5 minute game challenges, I would. I’m afraid it’s simply too intense, however; it must be taken lightly and in small doses. Lest my brain asplode from awesome. I’ll do a whole other post after this on how awesome the games were (and videos/downloads where I can).

How I Survived

Last year I was completely dead to the world – I could hardly stay awake, and my brain felt absolutely exhausted – even with getting plenty of sleep. I was there in spirit form only. I wasn’t sure how to solve that; I made sure everything was planned in advance, I made sure everything was taken care of, and I made sure I stayed in bed for regular sleeping hours. Didn’t help.

My brain was always going a mile-a-minute, checking and double-checking everything. I guess it didn’t help that it was my first big game dev event, maybe it was the pressure?

This year, I decided something very early on: Despite hosting and organizing a game jam, I wasn’t going to be making any games. I was going to be there to socialize, organize, and keep the machine oiled.

That seemed to do the trick! I slept much better, I didn’t feel constrained by time, and I often found myself sitting idle, without a thought or a worry. It was those moments that I allowed myself to make games.. but I was sure to keep thinking that it was only temporary, and I could stop whenever I wanted.

I ended up making two games! :D

Anyway, I hope this helps someone else organize their own events in the future. All in all it was an awesome event, and even more of a success than last year. Woooo!

The Third Cloning of SteamBirds

Game Design, SteamBirds 38 Responses »

Aug 242011

Talk about cloning games is in fashion this season. Colin and Sarah both wrote about it on their blog recently, and there’s been numerous accusations flying about the net with tons of examples and case studies to pick from. Greg Wohlwend’s open letter about Ridiculous Fishing (and some backstory) was particularly soul-wrenching.

I don’t particularly want to talk about cloning, but a bunch of people keep bringing the latest SteamBirds clone to my attention, so I should probably address it at least once, and point people here from now on.

As a quick pre-amble, you may recall that I have nothing to do with SteamBirds anymore, nor am I authorized to speak on the franchise’s behalf. I also have not played or seen the offending title in action, and have no idea how different it may be.

Also, I was also cloned two other times – someone beat me to the punch with a shitty iOS version of SteamBirds, and someone else beat me to the punch with a shitty multiplayer version of SteamBirds. So technically this is the third clone. This is the first clone that isn’t shitty, and is being done by a big studio.

The Culprit

Here’s a screenshot I’ve seen of this brave new completely original IP by Bungie (Makers of Halo!), Crimson: Steam Pirates:

(Click for Bigger)

So the UI there is pretty similar (with identical placement for buttons). The movement controls, the powerup selection, the gameplay style – it pretty much looks like a clone of SteamBirds to me. Then there’s the name (also mentioning “Steam” in the title), and the backstory to the game (also an alternate universe WW2-era fiction), and not to mention that SteamBirds has always had boats and pirates in it’s lore and design docs (things I have spoken about at the various talks I’ve given and posted in the SB official forums, when people ask what the next version has in store – very much public information). Then there’s the multiplayer gameplay that takes all the best elements from the Android edition of the game.

So yeah, my knee-jerk reaction is that this is uncomfortable cloning territory.

I think Colin did a great job summing up most of the counter arguments, so I won’t repeat them here. Again, Greg made a heartfelt post about originality, so I won’t go on about that either. But there is something that does irk me that is rarely addressed, and came to light in a recent Google+ post I was browsing:

G+ Rocks

The fine fellow in the original post here is stating his rage about the recent Bungie announcement; a new game called Crimson: Steam Pirates. The responder is saying “No big deal, SteamBirds wasn’t original either.”

But what isn’t mentioned here is TIME ELAPSED.

WHEN You Clone is Relevant

Yes, SteamBirds’ core mechanic had been “done before” in an aviation video game [unbeknownst to me]. The most recent? A game from around 2001. Before that, there was a spaceship game that apparantly ran pretty similar in the late 90s, and an even older one in the late 80s.

There’s a card game with similar mechanics to SB, but for automobiles – from the 80s. There’s one about airplanes from around 2001 (and I’ll admit that the earliest tech-test prototypes were indeed very much clones of these games).

I think waiting 10 years before cloning something is a lot different than cloning something that isn’t even released yet, or cloning something that has only been out for a few months. It’s only been TWO WEEKS since the latest version of SB launched.

The one video game that was a big influence on my Steambirds designs is called DarkWind (2009) – an awesome, fully 3-D car-racing simulator… Done in a turn-based fashion. I am a pilot, and I wanted to do the same thing for aviation as Darkwind did for automobiles. Which leads me to the question,

Is SteamBirds a Clone?

Let’s see. I wasn’t aware of any other games; kinda hard to clone them right there. Despite this, previous title is more than 10 years old (in forms digital or otherwise). No sources of inspiration (including card and board games) included the fantasy/steampunk elements or aesthetics; other games in this genre (digital or not) tend to focus on realism and accuracy. Power-ups, gameplay balance, control mechanisms, UI, and all that other good stuff that goes into the game – completely original.

Darkwind’s inspiration resulted in almost zero practical crossover to my design (the game is simply too different). The only thing I lifted for the released design of SteamBirds was the SteamPunk universe that I surely did not create.

If someone told me SteamBirds was a clone, I’d have to laugh at the ridiculous implausibility of the suggestion.

Is Crimson: Steam Pirates a Clone?

I’d say yes.

I’m sure they’d phrase it something more like “We are acting on current market pressures to deliver an enhanced gameplay product that iterates on other previously successful titles, in a legally distinct way.”

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? It’s probably very much “legally distinct,” and there probably is no legal defense the current SteamBirds team can use to protect themselves from them.

Bungie is being a moral dick for scooping the next release of SteamBirds though. Why couldn’t they have waited a few years at least?

Google+ Scares Me

Uncategorized 5 Responses »

Aug 092011

Whenever I have something direly important to say (which is every other sentence), I often have several outlets to choose from. Here’s what I think of each one, when I’m poised at the keyboard and ready to shout out to the world:

TWITTER: Can’t have discussions, not enough room to make long-winded posts
INSTANT MESSENGER STATUS UPDATE: Easily ignorable
FACEBOOK: Signal:Noise ratio is way off, impossible to consume relevant content (such as mine) unless users monitor my feed 24/7
BLOGS: Take a lot of investment. A blog post that is 180 characters long makes readers feel “ripped off.” I have to fluff up content a bit, think things through, and do a long post. Plus, I hardly ever get any feedback.
TUMBLR: I swear Tumblr is just WordPress redesigned by Steve Jobs
INSTANT MESSAGES: Audience is too limited for broadcast statements
ANYTHING ELSE: lol it’s 2011 why are you still on friendster — OR — lol do you live in brazil

Then along comes Google Plus.

If I want to make a short, 10-character post, that’s cool (like twitter)
I can easily show off a video or picture in-stream (like tumblr)
I can make long-winded posts with bullet points and paragraphs and crap like semicolons (like blogs)
I can chat in real time with several people (like “group chat” in other instant messagers but better)
And I can monitor the friends’ updates I truly care about (better than facebook)

And if that weren’t enough, there are some extra benefits:

I can post to limited audiences (sexy wink), other limited audience (game dev wink), or the public (hi mom wink)
+1s and comments push content up, so popular stuff stays visible
Google’s new universal G+ toolbar thing means I don’t even have to leave GMail to respond to a response on a post
Group Video Chat which has been a LOT of fun (I’ve done a few “cooking hours” where I show people how to make a vegetarian curry or spaghetti sauce)
It’s way faster and easier to post than any of the other mediums – lower barrier to entry
… and a dozen other benefits that don’t really matter anymore, in terms of this argument.

So now I’m left thinking: Why do I have a blog? I’ve all but deleted my facebook and twitter accounts. My blog is being neglected. Anytime I have something to say: I go straight to G+.

I’m not convinced I should get rid of this blog. At the very least, there’s a good archive I’m proud of. But I think more technical discussions, and perhaps more close to the heart discussions, still belong here – rather than in the swimming pool of G+. The pool is a lot shallower, and content discovery is easier, than any other social medium.

As narcissistic as this sounds – the biggest flaw of G+ is it doesn’t make me feel as important as this blog. Here, it’s all about me. :D

Edit: Here’s my G+ Profile!

Humble Bundle 3

Monetization 2 Responses »

Jul 282011

In case you live under a rock, the Humble Indie Bundle 3 has been launched. Go buy it! Right now!

I don’t care if you own it all already. It can cost you $1 if you want! OR LESS!! Just buy it already sheesh

SHEESH

You know that excuse you have?

Yeah, SCREW THAT EXCUSE.

SteamBirds: No longer my project

SteamBirds 17 Responses »

Jul 252011

I’m no longer a part of the SteamBirds project. Yeowtch, how’s that for tearing off band-aids?

It’s been a crazy ride, hasn’t it? From the first inception of the game, it’s development, release, re-release, sequel, mobile editions… What a fun trip. I’m proud to have been a part of it up until this point.

I won’t dwell on the reasons or factors behind my leaving (contractually, I must keep things secret, or I lose the money involved!), but if you want further updates on the SteamBirds franchise you should keep your eyes on the new 100% owners of the title, SpryFox.

As an aside, that’s why this blog has been pretty quiet recently.. I was unsure what the future would hold, and it was pretty distracting and stressful. Those feelings are gone now, and I’m starting work on my next titles!

FullIndie Meet in Vancouver (plus FerryJam!)

AS3, Beer, Code, Events, Game Design, Photography, Travel 3 Responses »

May 242011

I run the local Victoria game developers group (LEVEL UP!), but our sister group in Vancouver (FullIndie) was having it’s one-year anniversary last week and I was invited over to give a nice short talk of some sort.

The Trip

I had a blast on the trip. FullIndie had probably over a hundred people show up for the birthday celebration, and we all went roving across three pubs after our talks. It was great to meet so many new people – but the size was a bit overwhelming! I couldn’t even meet everyone if I tried.

I took my FlashGamingSummit talk and slimmed it down to around 14 minutes (originally 60 minutes!). I basically cut out all the “facts” and just left the jokes and the summary “lessons learned” and tried to quickly barge through it all. Because of the size of the meetup, I actually had to give the talk twice to two seperate groups of people! They were both laughing most of the way through though, so I think I did a good job. :) It was a lot of fun for me anyway. A student was there filming one of my talks, maybe it’ll find it’s way online someday?

SteamWorks Brewpub let us into their secret cellar meeting room, which was pretty cool. Had some awesome pints and talked my throat raw. Good times!

The day after the event I hung out with some new friends, played some prototype video games, and even got a few board games in. Wonderful trip.

Since Victoria is on an island, seperated from Vancouver without a bridge – we have to take a 1.5 hour ferry ride between the two places. During the day, the view is beautiful and inspiring, as the ferry weaves between the Gulf Islands. At night, the wind and chill is usually so great that it’s best to huddle inside and do something productive…

I decided to do a GameJam!

The Jam

I was jamming on my own but I invited others along via Twitter. I did a screencap of me working at night spliced with the earlier trip during the day. Check out my rough editing skills here:

(Thanks to DVGMusic once again for his awesome tunes that accompany the video.)

In the end, I made an educational game that attempts to teach people fractions. I didn’t have a lot of time so a lot of elements are missing, and it could definitely use some work – but it might be a neat app to develop further in the future. My girlfriend teaches math, and she approves! Check it out the first prototype here:

AheadFull!

(You’re supposed to be at the speed controls of the ferry, being shouted orders by the Captain.)

Finally, a post about Minecraft

Game Design 1 Response »

May 122011

You knew the day would eventually come!

My first encounter

I grabbed a copy of Minecraft way back in the day, before multi-player was a big “thing”. I had a bit of fun – I wandered around, I punched a cow, I made a little hut out of dirt… But the joy of pointless exploration was quickly lost on me. Nevermind the fact that the worlds were relatively small back then.

I’d occasionally fire it back up, but exploring just for the sake of exploring didn’t really appeal to me. I love exploring in other games – hand-crated game worlds, where I explore vast tracts of land that were designed by someone to be fun, or at least interesting… But in Minecraft, I don’t get that joy for some reason… Probably because I know it’s entirely random, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the most “epic” landscapes the engine could provide. There’s no guarantee that there’ll be anything of note over the next hill.

MultiPlayer comes alive

A year(?) later I was playing on a freebuild multiplayer server. You had unlimited items, and it was a lot of fun “building a world” with other people. I took screenshots of the first “house” I built, which was largely just a green-cloth rectangle with a hole for a door:

And I remember the Great Flood, back when water would multiply to infinity horizontally:

Which we then sponged out and made into this awesome, glass-tunneled spooky world:

I think that last shot there might have been one of my favorite moments. Sure, this was an early copy of the game, before you could “die”; Knowing that the only thing between the safe dry tunnel and a several-day-long water-clean-up-duty was one layer of glass… It added a lot of atmosphere to the game. That underwater facility was as close as I’ve come to role-playing. And it looked beautiful. I could imagine the fish swimming by outside.

Sure, I went on to make secret lairs hidden within mountains, completely encased in lava:

But the game hasn’t really been the same since then. The game is kind of like LEGO, but having unlimited bricks cheapens the experience. There’s no creativity through limited resources; there’s no challenge.. It’s just a one-upmanship contest of who has the most free time.

Upgrades Happen

Now the game has grown a lot since then.

The game world is now eight times larger than the surface of the Earth. You can now die in multiplayer modes, and free-play servers (with unlimited bricks) are places I do not frequent. They’ve added circuitry, musical-note playing boxes, doors, switches, minecarts, levers, power sources… Even pet wolves. The world is really coming into it’s own, becoming a place of imagination and fun.

On the recent server I’ve been playing on, nobody cheats – if you make a castle out of pure Iron, that’s iron that you spent the time to find and mine out of the ground. If you have an amazing open-orchard design, you accomplished it despite those fucking creepers blowing you up every night. Those sky-platforms were built at the cost of many lives, thanks to gravity and the non-use of flying hacks.

And now the game world is so big, you can travel to exotic places, and exploration actually means something.

Now it’s an awesome game, but only because my friends are there. Doing all of this single-player doesn’t do anything at all for me. It’s like building an epic race-car out of LEGO, and locking it in your closet for nobody to see. The act of creation appears to be mostly meaningless if there is no audience for it.

If a creeper blows the fuck out of my forest, does anybody hear it?

A New Hobby

My favorite part about Minecraft now, though, is the circuitry system. It’s complex enough that people have made complete computers in-game – and I don’t just mean replicating someone’s real-life blueprint. To conform to the constraints of the world, everything right down to the basic AND and OR logic gates had to be redesigned, and the “circuitboards” are all stacked together in 3D – something no current computer manufacturer does.

I’ve always wanted to do circuit-work – making robots, wiring things, playing with little chips and cheeseboards… But I didn’t want to invest the time/space/money in taking on a new hobby of that scope. MineCraft lets me explore and satisfy that craving, with even more exciting results than I could ever do in real life (I’m not allowed to wire my front door to an automatic steel-tipped-arrow firing machine, or sling vehicles through gates to hell… unless I’m in MC!).

So I’ve made a few impressive structures in the MC world that aren’t just pretty looking: they’re functional. I am really proud of them because each block was hand-mined by myself, and not cheated or glitched into existance. I gave a brief tour of them in some Youtube videos below:

MineCart station, with multi-track selector, multi-platform arrival bay, and optional cart dispensor:

Combination lock system and valuables “bank”:

So thanks, Notch, and thanks to the rest of the Mojang team. This isn’t just a game, this isn’t just a fun time with friends – this digital product is allowing me to explore a hobby I wouldn’t have in real life.

At least, when the server is going fast enough to be playable. :)

SteamBirds Developer Diary

Game Design, SteamBirds 10 Responses »

May 102011

So… there’s this:

Not sure how proud of it I am. First video is always the worst. I’ll try to keep it up.

Things to improve:

Say “uh” less
More light = better video quality
Keep the videos on subjects that don’t translate well to blog posts

At least I’m happy I did this in one take. The edits were just deleting out segments where I got distracted by things.

SteamBirds Forum Opens

SteamBirds 3 Responses »

May 092011

Almost a year ago, I installed a copy of vBulletin and set it up on the SteamBirds domain. I didn’t think the franchise was ready yet for proper community management and support, so I deactivated user registrations.

Today they went live again.

Before I push the link to the main Steambirds.com site, I figured I’d give our best fans (those that follow these bloggy things!) a chance to login quick and grab their preferred usernames. As time goes on I’ll make it more and more public.

We’ll be opening up a few SteamBirds 2: Multiplayer alpha or beta slots soon, and we’ll probably pull those from our forums, so be sure to jump in and be active!

Link to the forums

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