Volatile Community Site

When work began on Volatile, we knew we weren’t going to get things right the first time. We had this big list of perks and equipment that change the way players receive and deal damage to enemies, which means we have a lot of balancing on our hands.

If I felt like a perk did too much damage or didn’t cost enough energy, I knew it was going to be a pain in the ass for Henry to do those changes for me. He had more important things to work on and I know he didn’t want me pestering him to fiddle around and change a few numbers here and there.

So, he did what any good coder would do, he minimized his work load. He came up with the idea of using an XML file for all of our balancing needs. If I want to change how much energy is needed for Hack or how much the Transmatter Fluxuator costs, I load up the XML file and start changing numbers. It’s in XML so it’s easy enough for me to dive right in, change some values and test it out.

Doing it this way lets us focus on what we do best and keeps us out of each others hair. Perfect.

As always, be sure to follow us on Twitter @insaneroot for up to date news on Volatile.

-Matt

I was having a conversation with another fellow indie developer about books that have to do with design or the game industry and I noticed just about everything that I have purchased has nothing to do with actual game design or the game industry at all. Games are designed by people and played by people, so I study people! Here is a break down of my three favorite books that I think helped me the most as a game designer.

This is the only book you will ever need for game design. It was written in 1988 but the lessons in design will still be useful until the end of time. It doesn’t mention video games at all but instead touches on the overall rules of design, interface, and human psychology, all of which are elements of game design. I’ve had this book for years and it’s been read over and over more times than I care to mention.

2. Rework – Link

This book will literally take you less than an hour to read but it’s worth every penny and every second. It’s a common sense type of business book. When you read it, it’s almost as if is reading your mind and putting it on paper for you to read and digest all over again. It’s simple, to the point, brilliant and will change the way you work.

3. When I Stop Talking You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man – Link

When you want to make a game, 99.9% of the time, you’ll be working with other people. And make no mistake, as a game designer you have to convince and manage people to get what you want. This book is a great source for stories about persuading people, getting what you want and how to get it in the best way possible.

To be a better designer, you have to know people. Having a deeper understanding of how people get angry and why certain things are enjoyable will make you a better designer.

-Matt

One of the main critiques from the San Francisco Postmortem was how lackluster the win/lose screens were. You spent a good 4-5 minutes kicking some evil bastards ass in a puzzling bout of mental fisticuffs and you were rewarded with a tiny little screen that said Mission Complete. Not so great.

After a few brainstorming sessions, I came up with the idea of having a giant hatch that would come from the top and bottom of the screen and meet in the middle. The hatch would then open and the player gets a full screen of information on their performance from the battle. Now that I had the idea, I needed to start making it!

The first thing I did was open up 3D Studio Max and start messing around with some basic ideas. Modeling it out in 3D is a lot easier than trying to paint everything by hand and it also gives me what we call an ambient occlusion map, which helps me out a ton when it comes to painting it in Photoshop.

The finished hatch in 3D Studio Max.

Using the AO map as a base, I can add color, hightlights, shadows, bolts, rust, grime, and all types of nastiness you would expect a dilapidated space junker to collect over years of planet hopping. Below is a progress shot of the hatch, from render to completion.

Texture Progress

Working in 3D first is a wonderful way to save time. If I were to do this all in Photoshop, it easily would of taken me a good 2-3 days. I was able to complete the 3D model and paint over in one night using this texture rendering technique. To learn more about texture rendering and how it’s used in other games, check out the tutorial section on the super talented Philip Klevestav’s website.

-Matt

This past Tuesday was the San Francisco Postmortem. It’s a monthly gathering of game developers in the San Francisco Bay Area to talk shop and share a beer or two with your fellow developers. I go just about every month, but this past Tuesday was special as I was finally able to show Volatile to other game developers for the first time!

To be honest, I was nervous about showing Volatile off to other game designers. It’s like a director showing a room full of other directors a movie they’re still in the process of creating. I’m not in the film business, but I don’t think that’s something that happens often. Nevertheless, I worked through my jitters and showed it to as many people as I possibly could.

Max McGuire from Unknown Worlds

John Graham from Wolfire

Brian Cummings from Unknown Worlds

Group shot of others playing

All though I didn’t take as many pictures as I wanted,  it was still a lot of fun talking about why certain game play decisions were made, features that need to be tweaked, and the overall progress. All of these guys know their craft so it was a great pleasure to get direct, hands on feedback from them.

If you developing your game in a vacuum you’re at risk to make some giant mistakes. Get your game out to some fresh eyes, no matter how nervous you are about it. Sure, it might sting a little to see the player fumble over a certain mechanic that you know is a work in progress, but you’ll be surprised at how much you didn’t notice because of how close to the project you are.

-Matt

It’s been awhile since the last blog post. That isn’t because we forgot or stopped working on Volatile, in fact it’s quite the opposite! Volatile has changed quite a bit in the last few months, and I look forward to showing how and why!

When development first started on Volatile, I knew I wanted to make it as packed full of detail and goodness as I possible could. Everything would be polished before AND after it was put in. Nothing would be rushed or approved without careful thought and delibertation. In part, that’s why Volatile has taken so long .Yes, it’s just an iPhone game but before that it’s an InsaneRoot product. I want everyone to know that our products are and will be as close to perfect (to us) as they possible can when we release them. Thankfully, there is light at the end of the tunnel!

I apologize for the long gap in between updates but that is the thing of the past. Check out the Twitter updates to stay in tune with the daily updates of Volatile and be sure to check us out next week for a look behind the curtain into the wonderful world of indie voice acting!

-Matt

Independent game development usually means you gotta wear a lot of hats. You might be an artist one minute, a voice actor, a web designer, or an IT expert the next. Sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of everything that needs to get done and finding the time to do it all. Today we are going to share a few ways we get things done for Volatile.

To help us organize our tasks, we use Pivotal Tracker. I’ve used a lot of different tools that do basically the same thing (Microsoft Project, Trac) but I kept coming back to Pivotal Tracker.

In it, you create new tasks, assign a difficulty and owner of the task (who you want the task to be completed by) and “start” it. After you start building up a stack of completed tasks, Pivotal Tracker keeps track of your velocity. Judging on your velocity and the difficulty of your current tasks, it’ll give you a date projection of when you’ll have all the tasks listed complete. Not only is it a great way to assign tasks but it also is a good way of judging what you can get done and when. Another great thing about Pivotal Tracker is that it’s all web-based, meaning I can use it from any where.

Volatile’s “Icebox” in Pivotal Tracker which are tasks yet to be started.

For source control, we use DropBox. I’m not sure what  humans did to deserve something as amazing as Dropbox, but we did and I’m not going to start asking questions now.

Quite simply, it works exactly the way I want it to. I drop in a file and everyone that has access to that folder can see the changes instantly. If I screw up, I can revert the file. If I delete something on accident, I can get it back. Sure, there are other programs out there that do this (TotroiseSVN) but for us, Dropbox just works the way we want it to. All the time and without any headaches. If you have a bigger project with a large number of developers, then you might want to use something like TortoiseSVN or Perforce but for an indie company, Dropbox will do you fine.

Some art assets under source control in Dropbox.

For everything else, there’s Google. We use it for mail, instant messaging, calender, document management (I’m writing this blog post in Google Docs on the train using Google Mobile from my iPhone!) and just about everything else. And the best thing about everything we use here at InsaneRoot is that it’s all free and doesn’t cost a dime!

I think one of my favorite things so far about developing Volatile is how easy it is for me to work on it from anywhere. Instead of sitting on the train watching an episode of Family Guy that I’ve already seen, I’ll use Google Mobile on my iPhone and write a few ideas down for Volatile or start writing up the next blog post. I know this won’t work for everyone (I couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to do any type of programming when you have a smelly bum next to you on the train asking you if you know a good place to get gingerbread pancakes…) but the point is to try and find ways to work on your project when you think you can’t. Those 5-6 minutes on the bus, waiting for your friend, or during a coffee break at work start to add up.

-Matt