It's matching time!

While putting together the Match-3 in Unity I found out that velocity was supported, but not acceleration.  It didn't take me too long to get tired of blocks falling at an even speed and I decided to try using gravity.

Turns out adding physics to a match-3 wasn't the best idea.

Stuff ended up not falling very far before getting stuck and stopping all gameplay.  I ended up putting in my own acceleration to make things better.

One of the biggest problems I've had when telling people about the match-3 I'm working on is that no one knows what I'm talking about.  I almost always have to tell them "Like Candy Crush.  Match three things and they vanish."  Once I got past that past and told them how I'm going to make it an educational game, they are usually excited about the idea.  

Since it's not very far along, I didn't want to have many people test it.  That was a big mistake on my part.  I've shown it to two people so far, and even just as a basic match-3 I could see there were some problems.  I've got it set up for click and drag, but both of them clicked on a tile, then clicked on the tile they wanted to switch it to.  Allowing that method of play is my next goal, after I finish building the database.  

One other thing that showed up in testing was something that I was worried about.  I had the board set up so that only one thing could happen at a time.  You switched tiles?  Nothing can happen until it either makes a match or switches back.  That's pretty fast, so no worries there.  You made a match?  You can't make another move until the tiles are gone and new ones have fallen in to take their place.  I kept telling myself that it would be okay, but I knew I wasn't being truthful.  After watching their frustration watching the clock tick down while they couldn't do anything I knew I had to change it.

That took longer than expected, because I didn't plan it out well and my todo list just said "make it so you can match at any time", when really that should have been broken into smaller tasks to help me focus.  It was basically a rewrite of the update function and I changed a LOT of stuff around.  But as of today it's all working and it's much better than before for it.

I'm feeling pretty motivated to get this thing finished.  There's a Japan Festival coming up on the 26th and I want to have it done by then.  Will I be able to?  I'm not totally sure.  But I'm hopeful!

What we've been up to!

Yesterday on the train to work I say next to a guy from Nuemont University.  I remembered that their gaming program hosted Indie Game Night a few times so I started talking with him.  Turns out he's one of the teachers in the gaming program and he had a really nice chat.  Near the end, he asked me if I had any projects I was working on.  I hate that question.  I always freeze up and I'm never sure WHICH project to talk about first.  Then I realized that we've been working like crazy on all sorts of stuff but I haven't updated the blog in a while.  So here we go, all the projects that are currently on our plates!

Siphon Spirit is still our main project.  But we are very worried about not being able to get word out to people.  Peter took some time away from Siphon Spirit to work on a trailer for it while I worked on the editor.  We soon realized we needed something more than a trailer to get people's attention.  So Peter started working on a new project.

Spirits of Elduurn is a puzzle game written in flash.  We're going to be releasing it everywhere we can to pull people's attention to Siphon Spirit when it's ready.  It tells the history of the world that Siphon Spirit takes place in.  Peter's handling this one solo since he works in flash.

My side project while I was waiting for Peter to get back to Siphon Spirit is Japanese Arena: Kana.  A game for learning the basics of Japanese.  I've put that on hold because it's being written in XNA which doesn't give me many options for porting out.  I needed to find something else to program with.  I started rewriting Spirits of Elduurn with a built in solver and editor as well as a few more new elements.  It's fully functional now, but missing a few screens such as the level select.

But then I realized that I didn't need to know how to make it in XNA.  I already know how to make games in XNA (even if I don't have as much time to do so as I would like!).  So I downloaded unity last week to get going in that.  I've finished a few tutorials and I think it's working out for me well.  But then I decided that I wanted to make something even easier than Spirits of Elduurn to ease me in better.  I decided to make a simple Match-3, which is nearly functional now.  Of course, since I'm solo-ing it it looks hideous.  Frankly, it's much worse than March to the Moon because I haven't even tried to do any art on it.  I just made a square, set it to different colors and exported them.  It will look much better when I'm finished, but my main focus is learning how it all works.  Once the match-3 is fully functional I will make it available as a web game.  Don't worry, I am not going to just make another generic match-3 and throw it out there!  I have a nifty little twist that I think will make it really unique.

I think that's plenty of projects for a two man team, both with day jobs and two young kids each.  But wait, there's more!  Peter's been teaching a game design class at a community college and I've been teaching Japanese.  For some reason we both chose Thursday as our teaching night, so neither of us have been able to make it to the last few Indie Game Nights.  On top of both of us teaching, Peter's put together a Siphon Spirit-based card game to inspire his students with.  An early example is on the left.  Did you know there were dragons in the Siphon Spirit world?

Don't be a designer.

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a game designer.  I wanted to come up with the stories, design worlds, do all that stuff.  In high school I designed a table-top RPG that my friends and I had a lot of fun playing.  When it was time for college, I decided I needed to get an English degree.  As a designer, I figured I'd be writing a lot of dialogue, design docs, flavor text, etc.  English degree seemed to be the way to go.  I told my dad that's what my plan was, and he said no.  He reminded me that he was helping to pay for my degree, and he wanted his money to go to something useful.

So I decided I would get a degree in Computer Science.  I figured it would help me understand when I talked to the programmers what was possible and not.  I knew that I wouldn't be very good at programming because I took a high school AP class and I couldn't really do anything after it.  I mean, I really couldn't do anything useful.  All I could do was declare variables.  (Turns out that the teacher was just really bad.  Everyone in the class got the lowest possible score on the AP exam.)  So I took some time in college to learn how to program.  It was rough at first because most everyone else there seemed to have some practice with programming.  I felt very behind.

But I got to the point that I could start doing things.  I started making my first game.  A little text-based RPG I wrote in Java called Darkened Dreams.  (I only wanted to get the link, but I ended up playing like a half-hour and now I'm convinced I need to remake it!  I've gotta tame that Giant, Draconic Bunny I saw outside of town!)  This taught me a lot.  Not only programming (I learned so much, I never want to look at that code again!), but also something major that I learned about my dreams.

I was now able to make a game.  I could do all the design just like if I was a designer.  Sure, it's still just squares and circles and a lot of text, but I did it.  At that point, my dream of just being the guy that writes stuff down and has other people turn it into a game felt silly.  I never realized I was shooting so low.  Throughout this, and working at Sensory Sweep, I learned a lot about the dangers of being a designer.  I want to share them below.  These are not in order of importance.

It doesn't pay as much as other jobs in the same industry.
No matter how important having a good designer is, the designer is going to be paid less than the other people on the team.  The producers, the artists, the programmers.  They are all getting paid more.  Maybe you'll say, "Fine, I don't care about getting a lot of money, I just want to make games."  And I'll say "Fine, why don't you get some more skills so that you can get paid MORE to make games.  And be able to make games even when you're off the clock because you have the know-how to do it?"

Your skills are only relevant to a single industry.
When I was in college, I knew I wanted to make games.  That's all I wanted.  That's all I would ever do.  I would make games from the time I got out of college until I retired.  Maybe make some more afterwards, just for fun.  You know how long I was in the game industry?  TWO YEARS.  That's right, only two years before I realized that working on a game that you don't care about isn't any better than working on any other project you don't care about.  First game in the industry was a kid's game based off of a movie.  Second game was My Japanese Coach, which I believe I have complained enough about.  Third game was some pro-wrestling game for the DS, and I have no interest at all in pro-wrestling.  And with how unstable the industry was and is with my young family to care for, I needed something better.

If I had focused all my studies towards being a game designer, what else could I have done?  Welcome to McDonalds?  That's not a better way to take care of a family.  With my coding skills I can and did get another job.  A good artist can always get a job.  A game designer is pretty limited in what they can do.

Your skills are only relevant to a single, crowded industry.
When Sensory Sweep started sinking, we started running to the other game companies to try to get work.  They weren't particularly looking to hire, especially not is such large amounts.  I ended up leaving the game industry, and even with two degrees (Computer Science and Japanese) it took me seven months to get another job.  Do you know what I heard over and over?  "All you do is games."  As if writing a game was such a simple task that I would never be able to learn how to code up the forms that they wanted.

Months after I'd gotten a job, I met up with two designers I knew from Sensory Sweep.  Still no work a year later.  No hope of work on the horizon.  I felt terrible for having a job.  Survivor's guilt, I suppose, but a little more than that.  I knew, deep inside, that that was the life I had chosen.  If not for my dad veto-ing the idea of an English degree, I would have been in the exact same position as them.  Jobless for more than a year with no hope on the horizon, wife and baby to take care of while I lose more and more self esteem through hundreds of companies never calling me back or offhandedly dismissing me.


Your skills are only relevant to a single, unstable industry.
After I got out of the game industry I kept in touch with a lot of people that stayed in.  For years, I kept hearing about layoffs.  People that suddenly didn't have a job anymore.  A friend of Peter's was at his birthday party and we got to talking.  He was a designer.  He had just gotten laid off.  In his words, he was now working a "dead end job" somewhere.  Say he got another job at a game company.  How many years would he be able to stay before another lay off happened?


If you want my advice, work on building up a marketable skill first, then worry about design second.  When I started this path, not only did I not know how to code, I was lead to believe that I was bad at it.  I hear people that complain that such things are too hard for them.    There are a number of valid, useful skills that you can learn.  Programming, Art/Animation/Modeling, Business, Marketing, Community Management/Leadership, Music/SFX.

Now, I'm not saying that designers are bad, or that wanting to be a designer is bad.  Designers have a very important role to play in the game industry.  A great designer can turn a decent game into a great game.  But it's just not safe enough to rest all your hopes and dreams on it.

And say you get out of the game industry.  Say you go indie.  Indies wear many hats.  They need to do multiple things.  If you are a pure designer, who is going to want to join up with you?  Design is the easier of the hats to put on, so it's more likely that an artist and a programmer will team up to make something and do the design between them.

Christmas Wallpaper!

Happy Holidays from us here at Califer Games!  Peter's whipped up a nice wallpaper of Miranda from Siphon Spirit fighting off a festive demon.

Krampus?

There's a bunch of different sizes for it at the media page, so head on over and get the size you want!  Other wallpapers are also available for those not in a holiday mood.

You're not important

I was reading an article the other day by Indie Gamer Chick, where she talked about doing a kickstarter correctly.  Well, mainly it was a list of what not to do.  One in particular was to not set a really high reward for people to come out and meet you.  After seeing some ridiculous high costs for being able to meet the developer, she had the following to say.

You would be lucky to have someone eat lunch with you and pick up the check, let alone get $10,000, or $1,000, or even $100.  If the reward involves anyone flying out to meet you, save it.  I don’t know who you are, but I assure you, you’re not worth it.

This made me remember something that happened at Indie Game Night a while back.  I was walking down the halls when I met up with a large group all heading to Indie Game Night, but weren't quite sure which room it was in.  I offered to guide them and asked if they all happened to take the same bus or something.  They chuckled and said it was something like that.  Then they told me they were Triple Slash Studios.  I wracked my brain, but couldn't think of who they were.  When we got into the room I googled them and realized that they were the group that made Magnetic by Nature.  I'd read a positive review about that in the last week and was somewhat familiar with the game.  If they had introduced themselves as the team that made Magnetic by Nature, I would have had some idea of who they were, and had something more to talk about.

I'll admit that I made a similar mistake on March to the Moon.  One of the testers mentioned that they didn't like it when a company put the company name first in the installer, but since I was allowing them to set their own path it was probably okay.  But really, me setting the default installation path to be "Califer Games/March to the Moon" was a BAD idea.  Say someone bought March to the Moon and left it at the default install path.  Later on they want to mod it, but they can't find March to the Moon anywhere.  I know that I'll look around in my folders and wonder what on earth they're holding.  Gaslamp Games?  Who's that?  Oh, this is the Dungeons of Dredmore folder.  NIGORO?  I don't think I have a game called NIGORO.  Oh, it's La-Mulana.

Gaming news outlets have it figured out.  If they do mention the company name, they'll usually clarify it by adding in a "makers of _____".  Again, it's not the developers that are really important.  If you're doing things right, many more people will play the game and have a good experience with it than will ever meet you and have any real experience with you.  Put the game first.  If it does well, you can make things easier by declaring that you are the developer that made "Awesome Game 1".

Spirits of Elduurn

Peter's been working hard on Spirits of Elduurn, and I've been hard at work making a simple game to test on multiple development methods.  Peter's work has the advantage of being nice to look at, so here's some art for you.

He hasn't told me what it's all about, but I do know that Spirits of Elduurn covers the tale of the creation of Elduurn, the world that Siphon Spirit takes place in.  The large creature is also the color of the spirits in Siphon Spirit.  What do you guys think is happening?

XNA Alternatives - Time to start looking

I've pretty much wrapped up on the editor for Siphon Spirit.  This puts me in an interesting position.  See, I could get back to work on Japanese Arena: Kana, but frankly, I'm rather nervous about it.  XNA is what I've been using for making the games so far, and the future doesn't look to bright for it.  I'd really like to get Japanese Arena on tablets and phones as well.  XNA just doesn't do that.  XNA will make games for XBox LIVE Indie Games and Windows.  Windows 8 gives it problems since they only work in desktop mode and not metro mode.  The new XBox One is coming out soon, so maybe there won't be too much use in putting games in an older console.


It's time to move on.

But what to?  Whatever I choose, we're going to want to port Siphon Spirit over to it since it would be great on a tablet.  There are a lot of options out there.  GameMaker, MonoGame, Unity3D, SharpDX, SlimDX, SFML, etc.  I'm going to list out all of them, and start weeding them out.  Starting with what platforms they cover, and how much it costs for each platform.  After that, I'm going to make a simple game in XNA.  I'm going to port that game to each of the survivors and see which is the easiest to use.  Now to get a simple game going in XNA.  Wish me luck!