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

Bogged down with end of project stuff

I am currently wading through my list of stuff to do before GTB ships. The list is huge, but not colossal, and I’m now measuring time to beta + pre-orders in weeks not months. Some of the stuff still to do:

  • Auto-updating functionality (hopefully better than GSB’s), both version-checking, and also downloading of updates and installing.
  • Checking mod support works as expected. (not started yet, but likely to be similar to GSB’s installs system.
  • Checking the game runs and is functional on a range of different screen resolutions.
  • Putting together the scripted AI attacks for each mission
  • Finish off the metrics stuff which helps me detect and gameplay imbalance or difficulty spikes.
  • Finalising what is unlocked and what is locked at the game start, and checking the unlock system works as expected.
  • Gameplay testing for obvious exploits and weaknesses, such as overpowered units or silly tactics that somehow work.
  • Getting the final manual text done
  • Getting the final sound effects & sound balance done.
  • beta-release launch trailer, press release and screenshots
  • Website improvements ready for taking orders.

What will happen post-beta:

  • Fixes to any crash bugs
  • Implementation of any awesome must-have ideas from beta feedback
  • Some further optimisations for performance
  • balancing of units and maps based on feedback
  • release-video and promotional stuff.

The stuff that will take time will be the gameplay testing, auto-updating and metrics stuff. I can’t see a February release, but maybe early march? That’s only beta, so hopefully a full release not long after that. Eventually, I will need a BIG holiday…

Let us ACHIEVE things!

Sooo.. Gratuitous Tank Battles has had achievements in it for a while, although they get called medals in the game, inkeeping with it’s WW1/2 context. The achievements system is a universal one, based of data stored on my server, so if you bought the game direct, or through any store, it should all still work the same way, and you will get the same experience.

Today, is the day I finally got around to wading through the documentation to get my achievements system working with steam. Steam look like they will be carrying the game, which is great news, and probably not unexpected, but I never count my chickens beforehand etc… Anyway, that means I can blog this image:

yay! Essentially steam is just mirroring my own data at the moment, but at least this means that the achievements will show up on your steam pages, which is vital to many people :D

Lots more news to come in the next month or three. I am currently taking a look at the possibility of steam cloud, although I write a lot of tiny little files, so it might get very messy…

Comparing stats

One thing I reckon is pretty neat about Battlefield 3 and other modern man-shooters is the stats stuff, and comparison thereof. I like the idea of beating my friends highs cores in a game, and the great thing about lots of stats, is that even if your buddy is 10x better than you, can always say “yes but who has the ‘fallen in a ditch achievement? it’s me isn’t it?”

Many of the things I’m excited about in Gratuitous Tank Battles are things that I wish I’d done from the start for Gratuitous Space Battles. GSB had some online integration built around challenges, but not much. The center of the GSB community is the modding forums on my website, not the game itself, which means a lot of people miss out on it.

GTB will correct this a bit. There will be integrated friends lists in the game (hurrah!) so you can add some people as your friends, and then filter online challenges only to show your friend’s maps etc. Their comments should probably show up with an icon when you read their thoughts on other maps too (must make a note…)

One feature I put in today (still needs some tweaking) is this in-game ability to compare stats with a friend:

Right now, the comparison is between XP, rank and achievements. Maybe I’ll add other stats in there too at some stage. Like battles played etc. The UI needs a little love too. The biggest issue for this sort of thing is the multithreading and php web coding, two areas I am relatively inexperienced at, compared with normal C++ game coding.

In other news, Ubisofts shit DRM meant I couldn’t play Anno 2070 for 7 hours this weekend. Online DRM doesn’t bug me *that* much, I understand the argument for it, and so do the shareholders earning money from MMOS, but I understand why people hate it. What really makes me hate and despise ubisoft is not their usage of that DRM, but their total inability to fix it within 60 minutes (absolutely TOP whack requirement to fix a server problem if you have dedicated server staff). And where is the big grovelling apology to all their players for their screwup?

Maybe we should just look at funny pictures of tanks* to bring back a smile eh?

*thanks andrew :D

Tutorial

I’m doing the tutorial for Gratuitous Tank Battles over the next few days. In format, it is similar to the one in Gratuitous Space Battles. I have thought quite a lot about tutorials, and the best approaches to them when i make my games. My starting points come from ym own experiences with game tutorials which are thus:

  1. I hate tutorials that are slow. I learn FAST. If your game has a tutorial that will take more than ten minutes, then I’m likely going to skip it and not bother, and then try to wing it. Sorry, but I have little free time…
  2. I hate tutorials that rely on spoken voice. I can read. I can read faster than you can speak, even if you are some sort of entertaining rap-singer with extreme vocal dexterity. Plus, the accent and acting will often make me snigger or groan. Text please. (also some people game with the sound off, especially in a room with family members).
  3. I dislike tutorials that attempt to be too cute or funny. Save it for the games characters, or the manual, anything but the bit where I am purely after information, not flavour or atmosphere.

With these thoughts in mind, my tutorial is split into different parts of the game, and triggers when you hit them. Its basically text windows with the odd interactive prompt to click a button, and flashing rectangles that highlight which parts of the UI are being referred to. In a sudden outbreak of common sense, there is now a ‘reset tutorial’ button on the options screen, which resets it all and shows it again if you missed something.

There is a lot more to the tutorial than actual modal pop-up windows though. I also think that an effective part of a games tutorial is distributed elsewhere, for example:

  1. the website, and it’s forums
  2. The manual
  3. Videos showing how certain stuff works, linked from the website.
  4. Tooltips on everything

I think this works well, because it means you don’t burden veteran GSB and RTS players with forcing them (like FPS games do) to look left and right and click all the buttons before you let them play. Real gaming newcomers can read the manual, and every tooltip and tutorial window, but I’m hopefully not applying the brakes too much for gamers in a hurry who want to plonk down an army of mechs RIGHT NOW and watch things go bang.

Thats’ the plan anyway. I’m looking forward to the manual. Should be fun to do. Most game manuals suck. Hopefully this one will not.