Step 137 - The Pinnacle - Since you've been gone

You are awake. Through the fog of memory you are vaguely aware that significant time has passed..years in fact since you stood in the murky caves at the bottom of the mountain. It feels like centuries have gone by since you embarked on this fated journey with that madman of a wizard, what was his name again? You search around feeling a sense of disembodiment that feels all to real overcome you as you try in vain to get your bearings. Everything around you is covered with a glassy haze and you spin around I a liquidy twirl, only to be confronted with...

Hello there weary traveller! Or should I say smeary traveller, eh? Your jar is in an awful need of a clean, heh...whats that? Oh yes well, you wouldn't know would you. I had almost forgotten you were still, umn, around. Turns out with a little bit of magic and a whole lot of luck you can save a persons soul as long as you have at least a little teeny piece of them left. But you were lucky, weren't you. After that goblin tore of what was left of your limbs and was drying you out for backpack leather I was lucky enough to stop your journey to the great beyond with a bit of the old magic dust and an eyeball.

Dear Reader

Welcome! For those of you joining me for the first time, hello there. For anyone who has managed to come back and discover this blog after all these years. What can I say? I'm sorry, congratulations? We made it?! Because, that in fact is why I am back and here and you are too here and we are together. Because 'We made it!!" That tower you see is no illusion of grand magic. No mirage through the glass, so to speak, it is real. I have finished my very first game and will be publishing it on Steam next month. Yes, next month! You are in for a rare treat indeed, in this blogs tradition a successful ending! Read on for more...

Epic Adventures

Let me start by saying I'm sorry for my absence, sincerely and truly. To myself and to you the reader it has been a long and uncertain journey that has finally led here, the top of a giant tower on top of a treacherous mountain of doom. We have made it, though and perhaps that's what matters, or perhaps the journey is what we should reflect on. I am too shocked by this revelation, Black White Trey is long dead and another game lies dead in between and the one that will be out on Steam next month.

How did we get here? Well to be totally honest I am not sure how I overcame all the obstacles and disappointments. All I know is that I kept moving forward and trying again, learning from the mistakes of the first two failures and taking all I knew to the third and final triumph. Will this be the success story I have dreamed of? It kind of already feels like I have made it. The game is finished albeit for a few small finishing touches and minor adjustments. 

Dungeon Scale

So I think we could ruminate and reminisce on past mistakes, but lets just say this. I had some grand ideas and they led me on side quests and adventures with dismal ends (but at least you didn't die). That said, I did gain some experience and levels along the way and some knowledge that helped get this game across the finish line.

The game in question is Dungeon Scale, a couch multiplayer game for 2-4 players that is about racing your opponents to the top of a tower filled with monsters, traps and gold. The levels are exactly the same for each player, but as the game progresses those who rank higher will be faced with faster monsters and more dangerous traps, to give some balance of course. There is also a store that allows player to spend their winnings along the way on upgrades, or bombs to waylay the top three players. The game has a total of eight levels spanning four scenario types. In addition to the game balance feature, there is the ability to dish out justice to the losers if you or your team manage to pull off the win.

I have been testing the game over the course of it's production, which began late last year, within my family. I have been adding features, fixing bugs and trying to get as perfect a balance as possible. Within the bounds of my family I have to say it has been successful. Last weekend we played for a few hours and it was just amazing to see the reactions of my kids who are avid gamer's and my fiance,  who is definitely not. There were such authentic moments like when my son managed to get overly cocky about winning causing him to kill himself within five seconds of starting a level and his older sister taking advantage of his error by collecting as much of the goodies as she could and securing a massive victory. Needless to say when the fates were decided my son was not awarded a gold coin by the glorious Queen of the Realm! Nor, did the King of the next realm forget this slight. 

On and on went the cycle and it felt so great and so natural. I feel like no matter how the release goes on Steam, this for me this was a real win.

See, I still remember that fateful magic moment in the twilight of evening, when I had been searching for an age on the PS4 store for a suitable couch coop game for me and the kids to play and came up trumps. This had happened so many times that watching trailers for games was more of an event than actually playing the games with my kids. I went to lay down for sleep and started to think of what would be a cool game, with an 'if only' attitude I started to picture dungeon scale. The kids and I love action RPG games, but we also needed something simple enough my fiance would be interested. Before I knew it the basic concept for Dungeon Scale was born. 

The First Hurdle

As soon as I had the idea the first hurdle I had came from a solid understand of my programming skills from previous endeavours. How can I display four views on one screen, if I could do this I was pretty sure everything else I had thought up in principle was within my purview of skills. I think it was even the next day that I had my girlfriend trying to race me up a blocked out set of platforms and before you knew it we were competing and having fun. No traps, no goodies just simply get to the top first and bang right then I knew I was onto something. It was only a small flame, but I fanned it and kept it safe. Almost as safe as you were in your glass jar riding with the donkey food! Am I right? Ahem, anyway I digress. Point is this was the starting point, perhaps you have been here. I had twice before at least and this is where the path changed slightly from my previous adventures.

Forget the Mountain

So if you have been paying any sort of attention I am guessing you realise after two failed game attempts that before I even began I decided that this idea was going to stay hill sized and was not going to turn into a mountain. However, of course if you also read the above talk of frustum culling and fate decision screens you realise feature creep well and truly happened and again almost led to yet another dismal failure. But, what is this I have here, a Potion of Forgotten Knowledge! Mmm, delicious and tangy, full of stuff I didn't actually stuff up last time. 

When I began in earnest at the end of 2019 I planned to make a couch coop game for two to four players. This idea turned into a couch coop game that had a solo/coop campaign with twenty levels. Why not, this seemed feasible. The principle game mechanics were the same, I just needed to change where the players spawned, the scoring system, add in different mechanic here. A variation there and before you knew it I would need to make two games when I wasn't even done with one.

Luckily the potion had kicked in and I remembered something I had learnt when making Shafted, the game in between BWT and DS. Make quality the first pass and you will have a starting point and not just more work to come back to. This might sound counter intuitive as a lot of the information out there is all about prototyping, as quick as you can to make sure your idea is sound. While I agree this is one hundred percent a great idea if you are testing a concept. When you are at the stage of making your game you want to be working towards finished systems and not broken things you will have to redo again when your motivation is waning. 

In BWT, I remember I built a door picking mechanic which took me around a month to finish. The system was great, although the door opening was very buggy. But you could pick that lock like nobodies business. In Shafted, I created all the systems up front, but didn't end up making more than one level. Shafted was a good game concept I think, but the tough part was I had no one to share it with. I didn't have enough of a game to play so I couldn't get feedback. Eventually I was left with a bunch of mechanics and no game. Sadly the motivation died and I was left dejected and back to square one. With these two failures under my belt I knew two things. One, I needed to keep the scope in check and two I needed to make systems I would use in the final game.

I also took shortcuts. I bought assets off Itch.io as art is one of the greatest time sinks of solo game dev and getting stuck in making pretty things can be your undoing. As I had with Shafted, I limited myself to the GameMaker sprite editor and worked with a limited colour palette and got to work. I made the basic game loop, score screen and then set to work on the shop. I took a few weeks leave from my day job and spent long hours trying to finish. It was exciting and exhausting all over again and eventually sometime in January of this year the fire burnt out. I had got to a point where my hill had become yet another mountain. So I went away again and gave the project some space saying to myself with that familiar tone 'I will finish this later, I promise.' However this time I did come back.

Riding waves

I have suspected for a while that I may suffer from a mild form of bi-polar or other disorder that involves heavy mood swings caused by nothing in particular. Reason being is that I go through waves of motivation, exercise and creative activity which seem to fall outside the normal realm of normalcy and have done for quite a while. But whether I suffer from any real mental illness or I am just a hypochondriac is not the point of this story. The point my dear friend, is that I know myself well enough at thirty seven to know that I will be motivated strongly for a period of around a month and then that motivation will evaporate. I also know from experience that this motivation will come back and with it another wave of creativity. 

So when I was lying in that dead ocean of fast food containers and stretchy pants I knew in my heart that wave would be back and this time I had my eyes firmly set on that same hill. When the exercise started again I started in on Dungeon Scale. It started the second time watching a video by a Youtube indiedev and suddenly like a light being switched back on it was there again.

I opened up my game and started jumping through the code and playing around. I ended up making a few small fixes here and there and before you knew it I was back in one hundred percent.

Knowing that this motivation was a finite resource I focused on the big issues, the interface needed updating. The score screen needed a rework and levels needed to be created. I set about on the hardest problems first.

Being Uncomfortable

One thing I always found was there was always seemed to be a part of the game I wanted to work on more than others,  a part of the game I had envisioned and loved the idea for and really wanted to see work. This inspiration you have can be harnessed. For me personally it was motivation to get through the days and days of getting my scores to calculate correctly, to get the displays to work as intended and to fight through all of the little bugs that required hours and hours to fix.

The trick to knowing what it is you should work on first is like this, if when you attempt it you get that niggling doubt and procrastination bug crawling up your neck when you first start on a task, you are doing exactly what you should be doing. Stick to that piece of work, no matter how tedious and it will help provide that motivation. Those victories over the hard parts of my game are what made me feel the most sense of accomplishment.

That and sharing success is a huge and important part I had forgotten along the way. I have been lucky to be in a great relationship with someone who gets excited at every little victory and new part of my game. I have two kids who adore gaming and are always keen to help me test out my game. I think if you are going to make your game, you need your audience. That, I think was the real key to me finishing my game. Find someone who is as passionate about your game as you are and you are halfway there. 

Step 137 - Win

That is about all I have to say for now about Dungeon Scale and my six years of game development. I hope you found something out that might help you on your journey.

I hope my 137 Steps of game making have provided the clear and concise guide you too need to a successful indie developer...or not. I mean you were riding with the donkey for most of it. 

I wish you all the success with your game development journeys.

Thanks again fellow traveller, for the steps we have taken and the journey well spent! If you enjoyed my blog please come follow me and drop a message @mfproduct. 

Step 3 - Wash Rinse Repeat

Your eyelids rise slowly anticipating an influx of radiant light, but only a black foggy haze fills your view. In the corner of your vision the flicker of an ember draws your interest. You turn noticing for the first time the shadowy figure of your guide. He is huddled in a thick cloak  on the opposite side of a dying camp-fire muttering quietly to himself. Even so, each of his mumbled incoherent syllables echoes off the hard stone surrounding you both on all sides. With each utterance, a memory of the endless journey through this hellish tomb flashes in the flame. How long has it been since you have felt the warmth of sun on your skin or a summer breeze brush your silky bearded face? Weeks? Months? Time seems as lost to you as the separation of night and day. Here in this ungodly place there is only the barest difference between conscious and unconscious. Here under miles of stone and bedrock there is only the endless unforgiving darkness. 

Happy Holiday’s my faithful, or perhaps, first time readers. Thank you for taking the time out to come back and read another long winded, self-inflated post from the team here at Midnight Fair Productions (me). It has been a very busy and fulfilling year and I apologise for not writing again sooner. I will endeavour to make this post shorter than my other epics as I intend it more as a brief summary of what has happened this year and little on what to expect of the year ahead. As you may have guessed our travellers have not made the progress they had hoped, having following the river Styx to its end. But let us go back to our verbose narrator to fill you in of what’s been missed. 

“Ah, you’re awake” your guide says, cracking a rough smile. In that brief moment you take in how the light dances in the dark crags of his face, extenuating rugged features. You feel any harboured anger towards him slip away all questions of his amazing abilities in guiding you on your journey fade into the nothingness around you. The moment passes into anticipatory silence as you stare raptly into his deep set ice-blue eyes and he begins again.

"So remember how we had that trusty boat and a little slither of light leading us along the winding river Styx and out the darkness?  Well, after a day or so of furious paddling (well done on your part) we reached the slither only to find it was somewhat lacking in the required width to fit the boat, and said occupants, through comfortably. So, being the rather ingenious, albeit overzealous, wizard that I am I decided to use a little dash of magic to precipitate, the er, extradition of our vessel out said slither. Which in turn caused rather unforeseen and somewhat unwelcome consequences. The magic itself was flawless, as was expected, however due to the ah, clearly insufficient structural integrity the, um surrounding bedrock..." the wizard trails off his speech stroking his beard and turning to you with a frown. "I can see from that look on you face I may need to water this down, that's probably due to the rockfall that landed on your head. Ah, but more on that later. Look, the short and curly of it is, I used a bit of magic on the hole and it became wide enough to sail through a galley. This would have worked perfectly if the cave opening didn't then collapse trapping us and almost killing you in the processes."

A knot of wood popped in the fire and a silence falls between you. "Well, now we have all the bad news out the way let's get to the good news shall we." the wizard reaches into his robe and you instinctively flinch as he draws out what appears to be an oversize bag of marsh-mellows. "How's that?" he says that handsome smile you know all to well resting once again on his face. As you look around with a large rock that might serve as a weapon you notice the scrap of paper that was serving as marshmellow wrapping. After a few moments of mouth agape staring you realise that this scrap of map clearly shows the exit. 

Progress

Since we last we spoke I have a confession to confess and a revelation to share. Firstly I have been lazy, I haven’t had the capacity of mind or will power to work on BWT. I have tried very hard to force another hour of work here, or an idea there,  but the creative juice that once flowed strong had ebbed to a mere trickle. I spent a good few months wondering if I would ever find that spark that started the fire inside me to pursue this great endeavour of making an indie game. During this time I took a couple of holidays and tried to keep working on something creative, I did some writing and some exercise. All in all I don’t see it as wasted time, just time spent away from my game.

After a month or so off I found that my mind had cleared a lot of the debris, the fire had rekindled itself into a low flame, I started to have ideas again. I looked back at my game and was pleased at what I saw. I solved this niggling bug in the game which was doing my head in for weeks before and I felt empowered. I guess the revelation in this time was two-fold for me. The first part of it was that by giving myself some time off I allowed my mind to re-focus (and for me this was about my only choice at that stage next to quitting). The second was once I had taken time off I had a clearer idea of what was weighing me down was that this project didn’t have a foreseeable end.  

The way forward.

So after rekindling the flame into a fire, I have made a few firm decisions I plan to stand by. The first of which is that by the end of next year I will have finished the game. Come rain or shine, spelunking or fresh air fighting I am committed to push this game into its final state and something which I can be proud to show as my own work. Also, I will commit to writing a blog post a month giving a progress update on the game. Since making this decision I have been busy working on finishing the interface for the game which is my first goal. Which I am happy to say is well on its way and will hopefully done by mid Jan. I will also be making goals for each month I write this blog, which I will most likely fail to meet. But, if at the end of each month I can feel like real progress has been made I will be satisfied I am doing what I can to finish this massive quest I have begun. I hope you my favourite ever amputee comrade will stick by me and be there for the day when I finally have a game to call my own.

Thanks again for tuning in. I hope you all have a safe and enjoyable NYE and put some of your own plans for creative fulfilment into action, if you haven’t already. I will see you back here again next time to continue our quest (hopefully out of this god forsaken cave and out into some beard blowing breeze daylight) enjoy!!

Step 2 - aka The Cave of Despair

Oh good, you're sitting down! No, no don't get up, because, well, I have a tad bit of bad news. Now don't give me that look, you haven't even given me a chance to explain. In the scheme of things it is relatively only a small drop of bad news in a vast ocean of despair, so there’s that. Umn, so there is no real easy way to say this, so I will just go on and say it. 

Your leg is gone. Yes, gone. I would blame myself but really that shifty looking old guy in the battered cloak—who swore to me on his bow-legged donkey’s hide that it would cure any illness—was to blame. There was no possible way I could have seen this coming. You know I spent a good solid copper on that big jar of goat weed and I applied the whole thing as liberally as possible to your wounded leg. Honestly who could have foretold such tales of woe? You really can't trust travelling salesmen in this day and age…

What's that? Oh yes, no it doesn't really matter. Why is that you ask. Well because after leaving the forest road and heading into the foothills we got stuck in this cave. How? Well you remember that travelling salesman I mentioned earlier, he had this bargain basement special on quest maps and....

To cut a long story short we are lost. Where exactly, well in the dark damp cold somewhere of the beginning of the #indiedev cave. You strode in with your bright light of an idea, eyes blazing, sword flashing slaying everything in your path only to realise your supplies of courage and stamina were somewhat lacking or misplaced. You should have spent more time practicing on forest spiders before slashing your way into certain doom.

So this week I will be discussing with you how to escape the traps and pitfalls of the commonly occurring despair cave which most of us accidently stumble into at some point in their quest for glory. It’s the place where you have reached a point where failures, set-backs, piles of to-do lists have come to rest and you are about ready to give up your passion and learn the oboe. But before you go filing your project folder away under old projects read this and learns how you can overcome the hurdles ahead.

Since we last spoke I have been rather busy. I have planned to finish the majority of the art and coding for the weapon system in Black White Trey. A month and a half has passed and well it’s still not done. I am close, but I would probably say sixty percent finished is a tad on the generous side. How did I get so lost you ask? Well, I have had two holidays, started an exercise regime, I have work, children, a girlfriend, a day fulltime day job and friends who all need a small portion of my valuable stamina pot of time. But those are all excuses; whoever says they don’t have time has lost control of his or her journey and only has their own selves to blame and I am not different.

When I sat down after so much time away I wasn’t sure where to begin again, I had lost sight of what I enjoyed about BWT and what I wanted to achieve. The ideas seemed old and the work tedious. You too will find points where your mind will scream to abandon this foolhardy endeavor and cry off. But just as you thrust your broad sword or long staff up into the foreboding darkness and scream “Why have your forsaken me!” you see a light spark in the darkness and out of the murky shroud appears…yours truly!

Come on now, don’t groan like that. You will ruin the fiery passion my hearty words will reap on your tattered and tired mind!

Look, let me break it down for you, the cave of despair is really not all that scary if you understand its evil mind tricks and treacherous pitfalls. So let’s load your crippled form onto the donkey saddle and let’s journey boldly ahead where any great person who has ever achieved anything great has been at least once before.

The forked road

As we slide along the first passage of the colossal network of interlocking tunnels your eyes slowly become accustomed to the dimness and you take in your surroundings. The rocky walls glisten in places and give off a funny dank smell, which quite possibly could be coming from your guide. Who, come to think of it hasn’t showered since the journey began…umn...but all of a sudden, this thought is shaken out of your mind as the torch lights up a massive chamber containing many interwoven shafts.

You have reached the crossroads. The chamber through the passage to your left leads to a large beautiful chamber full of iridescent gems which draw you to them. Even from hear they appear to be singing sweet siren songs of easy work and reward. As you struggle off your makeshift sled a hand catches your tunic. A disapproving—yet ruggedly handsome face—stares kindly down from above.

So here is the first challenge, the old forked road. This part of the cave is a simple trick yet a very devious one that catches many by surprise—including yours truly on occasion. Where is the harm in going in and grabbing a few of those beautiful sparkling gems? What’s the damage in giving the house a clean on the day you are supposed to animate your sixth level boss sprite? Why not sit down and organize your entire mp3 collection? You know exactly why not and don’t pretend you don’t!

Because the journey through the cave is not one choice but a plethora of choice and before you know it, your water supplies are running low and your map is blank in places where it’s been rubbed through from using it for gem polishing. You see success isn’t one decision to get started on the right path. It is a multitude of choices and given you have a reliable guide I say we go this way. Agreed?...No seriously, , stop giving me the one legged beggar look would you and get back on your sleigh Santa.

The impossible keyhole

Your mind whirls as you become aware of your surrounds once again. The realisation that you had been knocked unconscious for your uncouth behavior at the last crossroads comes to the fore of your mind as your sled hits a solid bump in the cave floor. You push yourself up to your elbows to see where you are being taken only to realise you have stopped.

Ahead a solid wall of stone towers above and to all sides seemingly impenetrable, but as your guide comes back to check on you, you see it. Half way up the wall balanced precariously on a ledge is a small opening where you can hear the echo of running water emanating. You look up, fear and doubt clouding your small untrained mind and into the maddening look of surety and amusement plastered on your guides face.

Ah, welcome back! I see you have regained your composure after our last little incident. Now I need to mention this next bit will likely be a tad bit unpleasant. Trust me though, it is worth the effort. If this map is anything to go by, once we are through, we are in for a real treat.

Now this part of the cave we face when we have been unaware or unconscious of our final goal to escape the warren of doom. We finally awaken to realise that since we have been sleeping that simply to move forward we must ascend to a great height and push ourselves forward through a seemingly impossible hole.

The trick is to realise that this is the only way forward. There is no way to avoid the keyhole, to skirt around hoping the road back to your goals will become easier. You needed to get in the god forsaken harness and launch yourself up that rocky slope. You will likely be cut and grazed by how far you have fallen behind in your work and how much time you spent procrastinating at the bottom.

Once you drag and pull yourself through that barrier you will find though that the other side will come rushing back to you. The sound of ideas and possibilities your project had previously will once again fill your mind. You will be dying to get back down to the cave floor to continue on your way!

The mighty river Styx

After a precarious ascent in which your guide twice lost grip on your harness rope you have finally both reached the fissure you must navigate. You push your curious and, come to think of it, rather disproportionate head through the keyhole in the rock wrenching your shoulder sideways and feeling the spray of cool water hit your face. Suddenly, from behind you, two strong hands shove you hard forward. There is a brief moment when the situation is in question and then your body pops free, out over the chasm on the opposite side. As you sail down towards certain doom you hear a jovial voice call out from above. Sorry about…

That…the rope you forgot was attached to your waste whips taut around your one good leg just as you almost reach the outcrop of rock below. You spiral out of control downwards throwing out your hands to shield your already crippled body from the impending collision. But by some miraculously twist of fate the rope pulls tight with a whine leaving you suspended upside-down a few meters of the rocky ground below.

Just as you let out a sigh of relief you hear the voice of your ever-present companion above say something inaudible about a knife. Your mind locks onto the understanding an instant to slow and as you plummet head first the remaining few feet to the ground you barley have time throw out a free hand. You writhe around screaming like a wounded baby lamb staring wide eyed at the row of fingers that are now pointing out at odd angles away their stumps. Thankfully consciousness again slips away.

You awake to a frightening sight, your trusted companion has descended from above and has decided to test out his rudimentary knowledge of finger re-alignment. Before your dulled mind has a chance to register the movement there is a crackling pop sound and the world goes dark once again. Your third returning to consciousness thankfully signals the end of the ordeal. You look down to see that by some miracle all your fingers have returned to their normal bearings.

See now, that wasn't so bad! I mean, it was actually lucky really, last companion I tried that on ended up losing his whole hand and look over there. The river Styx lies ahead. According to the trusty map, all we need to do is jump in the river and it will take us all the way to this little smudgy bit right near the exit.

This part of the cave is where you have overcome the hurdles to get back into your project and your juices are flowing. You ride the waves of the river out towards the light at the end of the tunnel, smiling in relief and anticipation that the worst is hopefully over. Feeling safe in the knowledge you have not given up, but become stronger and more resilient in your spelunking adventure.

So that concludes this adventure! Thanks for tuning in, feel free to leave your thoughts here or on my twitter feed. If you have any suggestions for the journey ahead, I would love to hear them. I hope you enjoyed yourself as much as I have, although a little bruised you may be. He he!

I have started to include a links section in the blog to any relevant articles or posts.

Enjoy.

Links

Here is an insightful look at the art of finishing by Derek Yu the guy who made the original Spelunky in Game Maker

Step 1 - An Idea

Woah! What the...what are you still doing here? I thought I lost you back at the ruins! What's that? No, no I didn't mean to leave you caught in that bear trap. I was...err...I was going for help. But it's great you're still alive...really. Huh? Oh yes, of course we are still going on that epic quest of indie game creation. Let’s put a bit of goat weed on your leg wound to stop it falling off shall we? While I do that I can catch you up with what I've been up to since you've been gone.

The Mountain

So last time we talked I shared with you my journey to the land of creative inspiration. We talked of the lighter and darker sides the creativity and the path that led me to my moment of clarity when I discovered my purpose in life. What I want to show you this time around is a mountain. Can you take a minute and let your imagination fill up with your creative mountain, your magnificent peak of glorious conquest? That’s it! Now picture yourself at the top standing on its uppermost tip, staring out over all your accomplishments. Imagine you have reached that future point where all your wildest dreams are reality. Picture how you succeeded easily at every adversity and your flashy clothes stayed immaculately well ironed in the process. Now wipe that ridiculous image from your mind, because you are getting way ahead of yourself! This image represents a falsity perpetuated far too often to appealing to the egotist within us. It skips all the awesome questy bits and takes us straight to an effortless climax.

The Foothills

You see the road starts not in the hanging peaks of the mountain but the grubby roads of the foothills below it. You see most people overlook the starting point because they are so focused on the end product. They don’t brace for the cold wind that hits you when you take that first step down the road to glory. This is where the signs are written by our own false confidence and the traps set by our own fears. We doubt our capability, underestimate the time our quest will take and often forget to realise that failure is part of the process. How does this relate to indie game making you ask? Well it was in these foothills I learnt how to go from wanting to climb a mountain to getting to the base of one with a clear plan of action. It all started with preparation, a key step often overlooked by the novice mountaineer.

I understood from reading the two books I mentioned before (The Game Makers Apprentice and Companion) that if I had any hope of reaching my mountain peak I would need to write a pretty comprehensive project brief in order to work out how much time and effort I would need to commit to each section of development and also to understand how ambitious my end goal was. So I opened a fresh word doc and started bashing away typing out a summary of the game, I started with an outline of the game, the style I would use, the different levels and each of the different type of assets I would need to make in order to complete the finished game including cut scenes etc. It took me a good few hours and at times was tedious. But once it was finished I had a real sense of what my target was. I had drawn a rough sketch of the glorious mount Black White Trey and its winter peak and knew exactly how much rope to bring.

An Idea 

Now I can see by that foothills look on your face that you are still fantasizing about the mountain top. No, just because you have a beard does not make you a mountaineer. There is more than one bear trap out there and you only have two legs. I'm sorry, I know that's a sore point.

So, to give you an idea of what a good rope looks like, here is my game outline for Black White Trey: 

"Black White Trey is a quest driven Top-Down-Shooter that leads the player into morale choices which impact on the two possible paths of the story. One leads to a moral high ground full of intellectual problem solving and thievery. The other pathway leads to action packed violence and moral despair. The game will be set in a fictional city based loosely on New York called Midnight Fair and will be split into five unlock-able districts, with three levels in each area. It will feature ten weapons with three different ammo types available for purchase through a store system. There will also be an leveling system that unlocks different skills which can be swapped out depending on the players situation. The player will be able to perform many different actions which will lead to creative ways to solve the problems of the game. The story will be presented in a number of stylised cut-scenes available on completion of each district."

I implore you, if you have any great idea for an indie game. Open up an empty document and bash out something like the above and then since you have started down that path go on and flesh it out a little. Take your time, do it when you feel inspired when an idea is fresh in your head. If you do this well you will always have this first step you can go back to at any time. Taking quality steps in the right direction is one of the ways to overcome the challenging foothills of despair.

The Treasure Chest

The next thing most people who know a bit about the indie game journey process tell you is to think about budget. This was an easy step for me. I have decided that I will be doing everything, from concept art, to coding, to game art, to marketing, to screen printing t-shirts and beta testing. I am doing this not just because my purse strings are tighter than the bear trap you went dancing into, but because I want to learn. This game for me is not so much about having the most amazing, polished game on the market. But to have something I am proud to have created from start to finish. I want to relish the journey from the foothills to the great snowy summit. In fact I am so convinced the journey is more valuable than the prize that I don’t care if I make a viable game, I don’t care if it takes me two years instead of one. I only care that I make steps in the right direction and that I learn from the mistakes along the way. If you see your first project as a learning experience, and don’t focus so much on success being about have a big gold chest at the end of your quest you will find the journey much more enjoyable.

Graphic Artistry

Deciding on a graphic style in general can be difficult. Maybe you want the slick style vector shadow graphics of Limbo or the artfully hand painted pixels of Fez, that's up to you. This step can be pretty tough for some people depending on your background. If you aren't pixelly inclined then I would suggest finding someone to collaborate with or look to possibly commission someone to do the work for you. A bit of searching found me this page there are also a many great artists on Twitter that aren't too hard to find. If you are like me and want to do it alone I would suggest thinking outside the box with your game idea. Some games do amazing things with very little in the way of graphic glory.

Platform(er)

Once you have your idea fleshed out and have your budget fleshed sorted it is time to choose a platform for your game. Are you making a PC or console game. Maybe you want to tackle the profitable mobile market? This will then in turn decide which development platform you will work on, for the more adept programmer I would go with Unity. For those like me starting out I would go with Game Maker, unless you’re making an old school role playing game, then RPG Maker is probably more for you. There are also other engines out there that require a much higher level of ability, but do your own research on this. A good way is to look into the games other people have made with each so you can see what each platform is capable of before you jump in head first. Again there is no harm experimenting but don’t get distracted from your goal, because as much as getting to the top of the mountain isn't everything, you still to climb one to be a mountaineer.

Target Audience

If you are planning to sell your game then you need to know who you are marketing it too and also understand how to get your game put there. If you are a gamer and you are making a game you want to play, then there is going to be an audience of sorts. But if you intend on making lots of money and being ridiculously successful or even break even you will need to spend further time on this invested in this step. Again I go back to the point I made previously about reaching your goal. If like me this is your first game, then don’t stress on success. The vast majority of most successful indie game makers made a dud first time around.

The Perilous Foothills

Ok, so you are still here reading my blog and not out there failing. I guess your leg is still a bit sore or you just really love mountain analogies. Before we throw water on this blog entry and say goodbye to another stage of the quest, I wanted to briefly and honestly talk once more about creativity and more importantly the perils of the first few steps in the foothills. When I began this journey I was afraid, scared silly of not reaching my goal. I thought I would lose focus and patience with the process, and at times I did. I got frustrated and thought to myself, this is it. This project is too hard; it’s going to take too long. The nights were cold and hard and I wanted to just pack up and go home.

Why didn't I go back like I had so many times before? Well I think because I allowed myself the luxury of failure. That, and I made sure I spent time doing everything right and not rushing toward my goal. That’s not to say I did that the whole way, to begin with when I made my first HUD for the game I did it in black and white thinking it would be the final version. I soon realised I didn’t like it, not one bit, and redid the whole thing. It sucked going backwards, but It allowed me to perfect my initial idea and the next HUD was way better. The colour looked amazing and I even added a few features that I didn’t have the first time around.

When I finally burnt out after working ridiculous hours for the first four weeks of the project, I was freaking out. I couldn't stand the sight of the damned game! I didn’t want to even think about game making ever again, it made me that irate! But I took a break, spent some time with friends, doing outside things and I soon realised I wanted to go back. The progress I had made was clear and well defined. It wasn't some loosely drawn wild vision of a three year old high on sugar, but something I could see and appreciate and was proud of.

The point is if you want to climb your creative mountain you need to go about it the right way. You need to know the lay of the land, and plan out your path. Take time to enjoy the wind in your hair when you climb that first peak. Most of all don’t beat yourself up when you slip and scrape your knee occasionally. Because the hardest part of all is getting up, dusting yourself off and realising you just learnt something valuable. You are still there, slogging away towards that mighty peak where many others have given up and gone home. As long as we both take the right steps (and gangrene doesn't take your leg) we will reach that summit together and share the hard earned riches of knowledge!

Thanks again for tuning in for another episode in the adventures of Black White Trey. I hope you enjoyed the mountainous metaphors and took a little rope away with you for your journey. Feel free to leave a comment or share this with your friends or anyone who might be interested! We will be back next week for more adventures and the next step in the long journey to the top.

You can find the latest on Black White Trey and other indie game news by following me on the button below.

First Post - The Beginning

Wow, so this feels rather daunting. As I am
writing this, I picture myself standing in front of a vast audience of sternly
faced critics poised to jump on every miss-made point and rip apart each ill
articulated analogy. Although, I am hoping in reality that you are perhaps just
a half curious creator of worlds or maybe even an adventurous explorer of them.
But whoever you are, I thank you for your curiosity and time. I am sure glad to
have some company in this long journey of game development—and you look like
you have been around the block at least once or twice. ;-)

Let me introduce myself, my name is Aaron, and I am a Game Developer and part-time mincer of words. I assume by your attire that you are perhaps an entertainer of sorts.  Now that we have got the formalities out the way I let me make few things clear from the outset. Firstly my aim for this blog is to give you an insight into—not just the development process of an indie game—but also the challenges you can expect along the way. Now even if one of you, after following me along the road for a while decides they want to start his or her own journey or finds his own creative outlet, then my time here will have been well spent. Because I believe the path to true fulfillment is not found stepping in muddy well-trodden foot holes, but deep in the dark undergrowth of yonder forest. Yes, the one with the big volcano looking thing in the distance behind it. No I can’t come with you. No you can’t take my horse…moving right along.

So in this first entry I want to explain how I came to the glorious epiphany that indie game development was going to be my number one creative pursuit. I want to take you on a journey back in time and take you through my struggle to find an outlet for my ever flowing creative juice. Because I think this is something anyone who has the creative bug can relate to. Hopefully you can find something in it for yourself, it is rather long, but please be patient. In the words of a great man, stay a while and listen.

Since I dropped out of college ten years ago I have had what can only be described as a veritable treasure trove of jobs. I have worked in computer shops, butcher shops, factories, call centers, superannuation, investigation and many other exciting variations. Now don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with pursuing a career in any of these pathways, if you are so inclined. I however was not inclined, not even a little bit. Sure I found a certain reward and sense of achievement in the more challenging of these roles, but it always felt like I was performing the role of someone who was not really me. This was not who I was or wanted to be. I tried to see it, I really did, hence why my journey spread so far and wide. But no matter where I roamed the niggling little itch of creativity chased me, reminding me in the fading hours of the day that this was not where I was supposed to be.

So faced with a need for a fix I began searching. I opened many doors and strode down many a path sure that the answer lay just over the next hill. There were times when I had glimpses of satisfaction, like when I wrote my first song on guitar or coded my first program in C++ but for every small victory there were so many failures and so many dead ends. Each project I completed never seemed to lead me any further to my ultimate goal or I could never quite find one that seemed attainable. These were the days of my early twenties and they were days spent wandering.

Somewhere in a darker part of my mid-twenties after giving up on song writing and graphic design as career paths I stumbled across a mold covered knee-high door marked with a flashing neon sign that said ‘Online Poker - riches and glory this way’. Curious and with a confident grin spread firmly across my lips, I lowered myself headfirst through the doorway and into a passageway lined with what appeared to be gold. Looking back now I realise I was lucky to back out when I did, only losing a chunk of skin and larger chunk of my pride. Had I stayed long enough eventually the noise of oblivion would surely have overcome me and taken me to the point of no return. I am ashamed to admit this is not the only dark adventure I have been on in my time and perhaps it won’t be the last. The turning point for me was a summer afternoon at my father’s place, it was around Christmas and I had been drinking heavily and after relieving myself in the bathroom I caught a glimpse of a man in the mirror. What shocked me was out of the corner of my eye I had seen someone who I didn’t recognise. I turned and saw a man who was overweight, unmotivated and unhappy. It sounds cliché, but this was a turning point for me. I decided that when I returned home in the New Year I would finally change for the better.

I went online and found online training regime and diet program and followed it to the letter. Bitter determination stirred in every part of my being, I have never been so motivated in my entire life, even to this day. I still to this day remember how awful the first 5AM push-up felt like when I could barely manage a set of five without collapsing in a sweat. Twelve months later I was twenty five kilos lighter I was happier than I had ever been before. I thought I had reached my goal and why not? I was confident, I was healthy and so many facets of my life had improved dramatically. Nothing seemed impossible, but I was still young and as everyone knows, no life is a destination, it is a journey with my small victories.

The fitness lasted two years before the weight came back along with the rabbit holes, sneaking around the edges of my consciousness. They offered an easy out, a quick release. I was again feeling depressed, again struggling to understand how I had come so far backwards down this road. So I took up arms again and began another battle against my weight thinking here was my nemesis. Here was what was keeping me down. What I didn't realise then was that my old spirited friend was whispering in my ear, luring me away from where I really needed to go. My weight was a war distracting me from the root of this disease. It took a few more years before I was able to call a truce and begin my search again.

Then my thirty first birthday rolled around like a large immovable rock and it hit me that if I didn't commit to something soon I would soon be forty and those rabbit holes might just be the only inviting roads left to take. I have never been and never will be someone who gives up on life. You get one shot at it and I am not going to waste it feeling sorry for myself. So deciding to mix things up I drafted up a list of New Year’s resolutions, like I have since I was about twenty. I looked at it and then at the one from the year before. Too similar, I started again. Eventually after an hour of sitting staring at the screen I deleted it and wrote one simple line.

‘This year I will be productive.’

That was it. I just got straight to it. In January I tried my hand at fiction as I have always loved reading I figured I could at least find some satisfaction in jotting down an exciting tale. I found a competition for a short story and wrote and re-wrote again. Over the course of the month I polished my prose, I got my friends to read it and give me feedback, what worked what didn't? I had spent an entire month dedicated to doing something and doing it well. January taught me a valuable lesson, that doing something well, whilst harder, brings a much greater sense of achievement. What’s that you ask? Oh no, I didn't win…so back to the riveting monologue…

As I mentioned before, I spent January writing. Then once I was done I got worried. What if my motivation fails, what if I lose interest like I have so many times before—embedded in that panic was the understanding that the creative beast was hungry. Writing like so many other things had only satisfied his hunger for a while. More than that I realised I didn't enjoy the process, I was forcing it. Sure the first draft was great, but the endless re-writing sapped the joy out of the process. So I started to write again, I found another competition, but slowly the interest waned and I started to get distracted. It was during this distraction that the epiphany finally came.

I was browsing a copy of my favourite PC gaming mag PCPowerPlay when I came across and article about a two man indie game team that had developed a twitch shooter with a deep underlying message. The article went on to question the validity of Game Maker as a commercial development platform. After grabbing a copy and immersing myself in an amazingly addictive retro bloodshed that is Hotline Miami I got to thinking. If two guys working from their lounge room for a year or so can make something this successful then why can’t I?

Now I saw your jaw just drop open then, but give me a chance to explain. I understand clearly how arrogant and ambitious this thought was, but cut me some slack. This was after all, the pure creative part of me talking—that brilliant part of my mind that convinced me that there was really a pot of gold at the end of the rabbit-hole-rainbow. The parts of my brain concerned with reason and humility hadn’t been invited this internal brain storming session. This turned out to be what I needed to get motivated, I downloaded a copy of GameMaker Studio, spent a few weeks working through The Game Makers Apprentice and Companion books until I felt ready to begin.

Fast forward four months later and here I am, talking to you over the embers of a low burning fire, the gentle breeze of progress is blowing on the back of our necks. Just behind us lies the path to creative achievement. I hope after we rest here the night I will still find you willing and ready to journey ahead with me as I delve into adventure of indie game development and talk more specifically about my current work-in-progress Black White Trey.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my first blog post. I hope I entertained you at least a smidgen. I will be updating this blog again in the next week, so please stay tuned. The next post will contain a synopsis of Black White and Trey with a few quests of my indie development journey. Stay tuned!

PS. Stay tuned for all the lastest from Midnight Fair Productions by following me at