Archive for the ‘Design’ Category
The Creative Process
Monday, September 10th, 2012
(I started writing this as a series of tweets and realized it would be better served as a short blog post)
As I get closer to the end of development on Finger Tied, I’ve reached that point of development where there’s not a lot of fun stuff left to do. The tasks left on my list as the things that need to be done to finish the game, but none are particularly exciting. As a consequence, I’ve been thinking a lot about the process of making a game lately, and the changes in confidence levels that I experience throughout the process.
For me, my own confidence in my game ranges from those moments where I’m SURE that the game is going to be GREAT, to those where I start to wonder if ANYONE else will like it?
Yesterday, @HelloCakebread wrote up a great post  where he had a conversation with his own doubts. The post reminded me that we mostly talk about the positive in our work, and I think, keep the negative hidden away. For myself, I think I’m nervous talking about doubts because I don’t want anyone to see the flaws in my work. (Which is ridiculous because all great creative work is flawed, I think)
However, in being surrounded with only positive comments from others, it can lead us to feel like everyone else is succeeding all the time, while we struggle away wondering why it’s not as easy for us. While the truth is that at least parts of the process are a struggle for everyone…I hope. 😉
With that in mind, I thought I’d share a somewhat tongue-in-cheek diagram of how the creative process feels to me sometimes.
Here’s hoping I’m not the only on who feels this way. 😉
Owen
S.O.U.L. Survivor
Thursday, May 17th, 2012
Last weekend (May 11-13, 2012) I took part in the annual Toronto Game Jam (or TOJam). It’s an incredible three day jam that happens at George Brown College in downtown Toronto. This year there were over 400 people jamming there!
I teamed up with Matt Rix, Dan Cox, and Whitaker Trebella to make an iPad game this year. The result is a game we’re quite proud of: S.O.U.L. Survivor
The game design started as an Action RPG, but we ran out of time to do any actual levelling or progression, so the game’s just and action/adventure game, I guess. 🙂 We wrote the game at the jam using cocos2d for iPad, but we liked it enough that I spent a couple of days porting it to run on the Mac this week. So with that, we’re making this Mac build available for download so you can check it out!
You can download the build here: S.O.U.L Survivor – Mac OS XÂ (8.3MB)
Just unzip and run the app inside. Toggle Fullscreen with CMD-F. There’s a README with instructions and story in the zip, but I’m also including them here:
S.O.U.L. Survivor
(Where “S.O.U.L.” stands for “S.O.U.L. On Unknown Lands”)
Created at TOJam “The Sevening” (www.tojam.ca) – May 11-13, 2012 in Toronto, ON, Canada
By: Team Plain Cat
Dan Cox – Art
Owen Goss – Programming
Matt Rix – Programming
Whitaker Trebella – Music and Sound
Requirements:
Mac computer running Mac OS 10.6 or higher.
Unknown hardware requirements, but they should be pretty reasonable (it runs fine on my 2008 MacBook).
Story:
You have just crash landed on an island and you are the sole survivor. Parts of your plane have been scattered across the island. You must gather the parts of your plane, then return to the crash site to fix your plane and get off the island. But be careful…the island may not be as deserted as it looked from the air…
How To Play:
Goal: Gather plane parts (marked with wrench icons on the minimap) and return to the crash site to fix your plane.
Moving: Click on a tile to move to that tile.
Attacking: Click and drag a path from your character to plan an attack path. Release the mouse button to unleash your powers.
Note: You can combine a move then attack by clicking and dragging from a tile. You will first move to that tile, then launch your attack.
Good luck!
Design Trek III: The Search for Inspiration
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011
(No, this isn’t the 3rd in a series, that was a bad reference to Star Trek)
At the end of last week I wrapped up my work on a contract I’d been working on since last fall. My part of the project has been passed on to the next team of developers who will wrap up the final features. It feels great to be able to get back to work on my own projects, and I look forward to seeing the game launch when it’s done.
As I am returning to working on my own games, I thought a post about the time between projects would be in order. I often get asked by players where I find the inspiration for my games. I’m sure we all have different answers for this, but I thought I’d try to explain mine.
Where an idea comes from is difficult to answer. Inspiration comes in many forms for me, and I’m never quite sure where I’m going to find it. Sometimes it comes from playing another video game, sometimes a movie, sometimes discussing politics with friends.
One of the things that I think is most misunderstood about inspiration is the idea that you don’t need to work at it, that it will just come to you in a flash. I don’t believe this ever to be the case. Inspiration takes work, it takes dedication, and it takes patience. You need to work at being inspired. You need to work at your ideas. An artist might do dozens of sketches, then several small paintings working on an idea before finding the direction they want to take the final work. We too must actively look for ideas, experiment and refine them. That flash of inspiration only comes after you’ve done the research, the work, and given it all time to let your brain process the ideas.
Well that’s great, you say, but where do I begin? If it takes all this work, where does the work start? These are some of the activities I’ll do when I’m actively looking for inspiration:
- read a book about a new subject
- watch a film
- go for a walk in nature
- go for a walk in the city
- play a video game
- play a board game
- go to a museum
- go to an art gallery
- write something
- draw
- build something with my hands
- go out for a good meal
- cook something new
- go out with friends and/or family
- walk to the river and listen the sounds of the water
- start writing ideas down
You might have your own list that’s totally different. However, I believe that one of the most important items on that list is the last one: write down your ideas. The act of forcing yourself to think about a problem will lead to inspiration. It is not easy, it may even be actively difficult, but working through it will lead you in new directions and to new solutions. The more ideas you write down, the more ideas you will have. The less you work at actively thinking of new ideas, the fewer ideas you will have. This is why inspiration takes work.
But perhaps most importantly, you need to be constantly open to new ideas. You need to be aware of when an good idea is speaking to you, and know to follow it. That means resisting the urge to make assumptions and snap judgements about an idea. It means talking with people who disagree with you. It means debating without shutting out. It means empathy. Because finding a new idea often means looking at a problem from another point of view; understanding someone else’s feelings; putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.
As game designers, we need to be engaged in the world around us. Games are about interactivity, emotion, and narrative. The world is full of all these things, we just have look for it, and work at it seeing it.
Owen
Finger Tied: A History
Thursday, December 13th, 2012
Yesterday I released a big update to Finger Tied (get it on the App Store) which enables the sharing of levels in the game. You can now share the levels you create, and download levels created by other players. I think it’s pretty cool, and I hope the players do too.
As I was working on the update, I started thinking back on the process of creating the game from start to finish. I like it when other people talk, in detail, about the process of creating their games, so I thought I’d do something to share the process of making Finger Tied. I wished I’d kept a diary or journal about the development of the game, but then I realized that I had the next best thing: my commit logs from my Git repo for the game. Every time I check in code or art, I add comments about what I accomplished.
With that in mind, I exported the logs and wrote a little PHP script to generate HTML code of all the commit comments. I’ve also gone back through my screenshots and pulled some that are relevant to given dates. I haven’t edited any of this, so you’ll see references to features that don’t appear in the finished game, because I decided to cut them.
The first commit comments are from Guelph Game Jam 3, in April, where I first prototyped the game. It was a game about planting flowers, called Trillium Fillium. From there you can see it involve into something more abstract and into the final game.
This post is long. I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t read it. I hope one or two of you find it interesting. 😉
Finger Tied: From Start to v1.1
Wed Apr 11
Sun Apr 15
Original Prototype created for Guelph Game Jam 3 (Apr 15, 2012).
Fri Apr 27
Mon Apr 30
Tue May 1
Wed May 2
Fri May 4
Sat May 5
Mon May 7
Tue May 8
Wed May 9
Sun May 27
Wed May 30
Fri Jun 1
Mon Jun 4
The style of the game is starting to come together.
Tue Jun 5
Wed Jun 6
Thu Jun 7
Fri Jun 8
Main Menu design is largely what shipped, though obviously with different colours.
Tue Jun 12
New colour palette is in the game.
Wed Jun 13
Fri Jun 15
Tue Jun 19
Wed Jun 20
Thu Jun 21
Fri Jun 22
Wed Jul 4
Mon Jul 16
Tue Jul 17
Wed Jul 18
Fri Jul 20
Mon Jul 23
Post Game screen. It’s becoming clear that lanscape orientation is becoming problematic.
Tue Jul 24
Wed Jul 25
Fri Jul 27
Game has been reworked to render in portrait orientation, making everything better.
Mon Jul 30
Tue Jul 31
Wed Aug 1
Fri Aug 31
Tue Sep 4
Thu Sep 6
Fri Sep 7
Mon Sep 10
Tue Sep 11
Final layout of the Level Select menus.
Wed Sep 12
Thu Sep 13
Fri Sep 14
Mon Sep 17
Tue Sep 18
Fri Sep 21
Sat Sep 22
Mon Sep 24
Tue Sep 25
Evolution of the icon design.
Fri Sep 28
Sat Sep 29
Sun Sep 30
Tue Oct 9
Fri Oct 19
Wed Oct 24
Fri Oct 26
Mon Oct 29
Tue Oct 30
Wed Oct 31
Fri Nov 2
Tue Nov 6
Fri Nov 9
Tue Nov 20
Mon Nov 26
Wed Nov 28
Fri Nov 30
Sat Dec 1
Sun Dec 2
Mon Dec 3
Tue Dec 4
Wed Dec 5
Fri Dec 7
Posted in Art, Business, Design, Finger Tied, ipad, Marketing, Misc, postmortem, Project Management, Technical | Comments Off on Finger Tied: A History