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

Reach for the stars

cliffski

“Reach for the stars, cause they’re sweeter by far, than the moon, though she’s brighter and closer to you…”

Lyrics from a song I listen to (bonus points for spotting whose), but also my attitude in recent years to my job. The whole idea of ‘lone-wolf’ indie game development is absurd on paper. Activision spent $70 million making COD:MW:2, and $130 million to market it. That’s vs Me, in a spare bedroom.

I am doomed to fail.

Except somehow I don’t fail, but keep going for years on end, even making a reasonable living from it. Clearly, fighting such impossible odds attracts a specific, maybe warped mindset. I’m glad to say that ever since I started work on GSB, I’ve had that mindset in spades. A lot of the reviews for GSB praise the visuals, saying it looks really good, and that’s welcome, and very nice, but when I see it, it looks crap. it looks really cheap and badly done, and old school, and unconvincing. The reason I think like that, is rather than playing other indie games and comparing them to GSB, or other AAA games and comparing them to GSB, my point of comparison is Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, or any other high quality movie special effects.

You might as well set your sights high…

One of the things I do when I want to improve the graphics is take a huge bunch of screengrabs from space battles on DVD like this: (I’ve got dozens of folders like this). This takes hours…

I then take a look at what those ILM visuals look like in a single frame, which is very helpful for designing visual effects in code. For example take a look at this freeze frame of a laser gun in Revenge Of the Sith, I find stuff like this fascinating.

When I have time to improve the visuals again, I’ll go through a lot of this and study in, and also zoom in and study GSB and work on making one look like the other. I had a number of false starts with the explosions and debris for GSB, and although it’s better than it was at the start, I still need that stuff to be better still. Expect the game to keep getting better as long as it keeps selling.

9 thoughts on Reach for the stars

  1. Maybe I’m letting my geek show, but I would find it really interesting if you just spent a blog post detailing the little elements you were inspired by in various movies and how you interpreted them in game.

    Of course that would probably take a lot of screenshots!

  2. if only other developers treated their products in this more organic way rather than a finished ‘shelf job’/gold release the we would have more faith in PC gaming in general.

    personally I think you’ve set the graphics bar a tad too low for GSB in a attempt to ensure the game runs on a lower spec as possible (programmers willy waving anyone?) I’d love to see some cool lighting and particle effects, but I’m still happy with the game due to its gratious gameplay.

    I think its great that you have tried to ensure a broad compatability, as often small budget games try too hard on this front and neglect the gameplay and/or get murdered by the complexities of creating an engine thats too advanced for their purposes/time/budget.

    It will be interesting to see what the final version of GSB (1?)will look like compared to the initial release.

  3. Judging by your skills, experience, efficiency and dedication, you should be earning 5 times the salary of an average code monkey from some big AAA developer. The problem of the game industry right now is that your level of motivation is impossible to achieve, when individual employees are just tiny pieces in a huge machine, are dispensable and have no share in sales profits. More often than not they are more interested in their careers (viewed as a list of projects and positions on their CV) rather than in making the best player experience possible.
    So I guess that’s your biggest adventage.

  4. Cliff,

    As far as I’m concerned you are the “do less, better” compared to Activision. You aim for something you can achieve with your skills, slug at it until you get it, and then publish it. You, unlike Activision, don’t have a multi-million budget to throw at a game and make its problems go away … like Duke Nukem: Forever had a “never-ending budget” (which recently crashed). You make the hard decisions instead of throwing money and man-hours into the issue.

    Unlike your blog implies, it’s Activision that’s struggling to compete with you.

    Unlike Activision, you don’t have to charge $60 for a new release; you probably don’t lower your prices much, if at all, through the product’s lifetime. Unlike Activision, you don’t have to pay salaries to anyone you don’t need.

    You’ve done well, Cliff, better than you know. That “somehow” is the true way to make money: you aren’t competing with Activision. You have purposely aimed for what you can reach, haven’t attempted to tangle with multi-million-dollar corporations, and have made your own market segment. You’ve made what you enjoyed on the hunch that others would too… unlike the corporations that chase the almighty dollar.

    – krebor

  6. Is it just me that noticed that the Lasers in that picture don’t match the angle of the guns barrels?

    I suddenly feel like ILM do a shoddier job than they let on.

  7. Cliff,

    I’ve pretty well stopped playing games. I used to play a lot. But that was Before Windows. Windows ruined gaming for me. All of a sudden everything was about glitz, and gameplay went to hell.

    For example your post is titled ‘Reach for the Stars’, and there was an absolutely wonder game of that name that was available on the Apple ][, Commodore C64, and IBM PC. The company later came out with a Windows version, and when I tried the demo is was junk. Total junk. I still play the DOS version in DosBox once in a while, Great game. Nothing like it available now.

    About three years ago Windows screwed up one to many times, and I abandoned the PC world for Linux and OSX. Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of good OSX games, besides Solitaire. So I was glad to see that your Democracy is available for OSX, and I can’t wait to try it.

    Wayne

  8. Your stuff actually looks really cool. Especially considering you’re a solo developer, there’s no rational reason it should be looking as good as it does.

    Part of the problem, I think, is the fact that the engine is fundamentally 2D. If your ships were pitching and rolling as they turned, it would look far, FAR better, even if it was only by 15 degrees or so.

    Also, ships that self-shadow would make it look much better. Hard to tell in the videos if it does this or not.

    Old school != bad.

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