Game Blog Week 5
It came to my attention via family and friends that my blog posts were a bit pessimist or lacking joy. In the attempt to simply show what actually happens during the process I may have left out the enthusiasm and fun of making the game.
I didn’t leave Disney to be miserable making a game. I love what I am doing, and am a guy who just naturally can’t go to sleep or relax if he feels there is stuff to do. I left Disney for two primary reasons (beyond starting Facerocker with the guys); to make a game I wanted to make, and to throw myself in the deep-end and really learn more about game production and design. So far it’s a blast. I want to make a good game, and the type of game I choose is probably a bit ambitious for my small team. I naturally stress out a lot and am a bit of a workaholic. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am making my own game and working with great people, and that is just rad. Hopefully after this one is done, I get to make another one, and make it better. So for the sake of my mother who read these and thinks I am making myself sick, not sleeping and being miserable, believe me, I am having a great time working on this thing at all hours.
This week, there isn’t much new to talk about production wise. Morgan has made major headway on the core engine of the game; save systems, checkpoints, tracking stats and items, dialog, and other backend items are almost done. So it’s a good time to introduce the game a bit more and show off some concept art.
Say Hello to Marble Quest – lame name pending
The game doesn’t really have a name at this point but I can say that all of our project folders is simply called “Marble Quest”. I will definitely be called something different, as that name is lame. Actually, I believe the title page of my GDD says “Marble Quest: crappy title, very much pending”
So what is Marble Quest? I was pondering over the other game ideas I had when I got into a discussion with a friend about the lack of longer more traditional single player experiences on the iPad. Chair had a clever distillation of the action-RPG with Infinity Blade, though that is really a series of 30 minute experiences. I am a fan of Hand Circus’s Rolando series which are both long, polished, interesting single player experiences. Square released Chaos Rings to great success. Beyond that, there isn’t much else out there.
Clearly short and clever experiences is what thrived on the mobile market initially, but as people play on their phones more and more, these sort of experiences definitely have a place along side the Tiny Wings. The mobile market is becoming a very real, and large game market. Also, it is not merely a matter of not having buttons, as plenty of games on the DS were full fledged experiences using only the touch pad; Kirby Canvas Curse and Nintendo’s DS Zeldas are absolutely wonderful games.
Which brings me to my favorite game series of all time, Zelda. Ocarina of Time is what made me fall in love with games. I got to thinking, why there isn’t a Zelda type game on the iPhone, and if I were to make one how would it play? There would be nothing more I could want then to make a sweet, good hearted adventure game full of dungeons and fun and interesting items in the vain of my favorite game series.
I stumbled upon the realization that controlling a character like a ball would relieve the need for a thumbstick as there are already many successful games using the accelerometer to control a ball. It wasn’t long before I was coming up with some interesting mechanics and weapons possible for a ball character. I was then convinced that a charming world of platforms, ramps, rolling hills populated by weird ball creatures would work. It worked for Rolando, and it could work in 3D. Attacking, items and the like can all be controlled via touch pad, and it could actually be fun.
So that is Marble Quest. It is a streamlined Zelda type experience featuring a ball as its hero. It is looking to be a near 7 hour experience, featuring about a dozen environments that make up the over world, and 5 dungeons. There will be 4 selectable items, plus a variety of other moves such as jumps, attacks and ground pounds. I have a whole lot more I would like to place in the game, and a massive text doc of mechanics, items, and ideas I would like to do if we get to do a sequel. Not to mention some stuff would come out later via free updates. It will feature a fun, length story full of interesting NPCs, sidequests, and other fun (hopefully) stuff to do.
Goodies and Baddies Concept Art
I will get into the story at a later date, but the main dude is called “Zero”, and the world and concepts are being built now. Obviously the first question was how to make the world of the game interesting, and the characters unique. I am actually a big fan of marble games – played almost everyone on the iPhone, and consistently play with the indie games that come out on Steam. One of the problems with all these games is that marbles just aren’t interesting main characters. Most of these are just physics based games, and don’t really have any personality or charm. My favorite marble game, and one of my favorite game series of all time is actually Monkey Ball. (Monkey Ball 1 and 2 are masterpieces of hardcore precision and arcade fun, every game since has ranged from mediocre to awful). Monkey Ball did a smart thinking by actually having humorous, animated monkeys within the balls. You were actually controlling a character, not just a sphere.
The biggest problem is how do you get a sphere to be an interesting character. I clearly wasn’t going to be placing a sword swinging hero inside a hamster ball. We went through a variety of ideas. Do we make them more creature like? Like a sonic the hedgehog head? My concept artist, Josh Newland, had an idea of a toy world, and you were essentially a clown head. It would actually be super cool for a different game and one on a high def console rather than mobile. Josh and I have talked back and forth for the past few weeks on a Miyazaki-esque, medieval world. I mean, afterall, this is inspired by Zelda. Well, came up with a look I love, and features gorgeous armor, and likable characters.
These are Josh’s first pass at this look, and all these characters are being tweaked and revamped.
Josh's first pass at our enemies. Fire guy wants your soul.
In the picture above you see Josh had an idea of the balls having armor and then jumping up onto Mech type suits of armor. We may or may not feature these in some regard. If I do a sequel, the mech armor enemies will be there, for sure. We quickly prototyped these guys in game to see if the detail came through on the small iphone screen. They did! The flaming guy looks especially great as he rolls after you with fire shooting out of his eyes.
Benefits of a very simple main character is that he stands out from the rest of the pack.
This is the first pass at some of the good guys. Josh is playing with different looks, and you can seem some deviation in style between characters. What is great was my first reaction to Zero (little dude with green hat) was “that might be too simple, but it could work. However, I am not sure all white will work”. Josh informed me he just hadn’t colored him. Though white may actually work. Josh is currently working on a variety of looks for Zero, and should have them for me soon. The color of the main character is very dependent on the background art and color palettes. That will be worked on in the coming weeks. However I wanted to share the look we were going for and would love any feedback on the designs for the characters. The feather was all Josh’s idea, and I am loving it. It adds some life to a rolling ball, and if we can get a good looking effect for it we will probably keep it.
Anyways, let me know what you all think about this.
If you want to see and hear more about the game as it continues production, follow me on twitter: mattlarnold
This is going to be a great game.
I certainly would buy this game when it is coming out
Artworks Coming along great. Keep up the good work dude.
Looks fun, I would buy it. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the kind words. Any comments on the character designs?
They are awesome.
It would be cool to have some character themes or actual characters with a weather or element theme, like one themed like a thunder storm, another rain, and so on and so forth.
I can’t help but think of Kirby. How long does it take to come up with one of the sphere characters? Or I mean how do you come up with it, what’s your thought process? Are they still in concept art stage? Have you modeled any yet? What did you determine as the maximum polygon.
Without knowing the story or the personality, there are always cut scenes to portray your main’s character. You mentioned this is on Ipad and I’m guessing limitations don’t allow for small videos. You could show his emotions through color. For instance, when he’s ashamed he’ll turn grey, anger turns red etc. You could also go for shape deformities, ie. embarrassment shrinks the sphere while anger enlarges him. I guess in order for those work or make Zero interesting they’d have to be used in exaggeration and purposely. Alternatively instead of straight perfect spheres, each of the characters could be something that is close to a sphere IRL: a chef character is actually an onion with a chef hat on. The cueball from a game of pool would have the asshole attitude. (why you would have a chef I don’t know, but the pool ball sort of fits the toy world theme). You could go even more and use 2d sprite images for emotions that hang above character’s heads. I’m thinking of those animes where they put the “#” for stress. A random idea is “glow in the dark.” No clue how that would fit in but it would be interesting.
I don’t know how Ipad programming works or even what language apple prefers but if you can customize your own shaders, there are shit ton of effects you could pull off.
I forgot to mention I’ve never played Zelda.. troll me. lol
Yes we are very much still in the concept stage, at least as far as art goes. We had some very basic versions of the Dreadnaught and Juggernaught from the first image modeled, so we could get a sense of how much detail could be conveyed on such a small screen. But for the most part we haven’t started the 3D asset phase.
I like your idea about color changing for emotion, that could come in handy for conveying something like when a passive enemy becomes “alert” and starts attacking. He could turn more red, or start subtly flashing red to indicate he is “mad”. Or when the main character is damaged, he could could have a slightly more muted/greyed palette.
Maximum poly is a bit uncertain since it also depends on transparencies in the scene an other issues, but we are budgeting around 40k – with quite a bit of room upwards. We did some art tests with 60k polygons, and it never dropped below 30fps.
As for how long does it take for a concept – its tough to say. Using ball creatures was one my biggest concerns as it is rather hard I would say, to come up with a design that feels like a real character, but still functions as a ball. Kirby is a beautifully designed creature, but we can’t copy him. Rolando has a solid look as well. Beyond that – even Monkey Ball just placed characters inside balls, because making ball creatures are hard. They have no limbs, no real animation. You have to cheat a bit. De Blob has great simple art, but those creatures morph, have limbs, etc.
We have talked about changing colors, and it is a good idea. There are issues with it as well – such as it is always a danger to have your main character change colors quickly. You want your main character to pop out of the background, and be instantly recognizable even in the flurry of combat, or jumping across complex platforms filled with fire effects, etc. Changing colors means it may be possible to lose sight of your character.
Obviously there are ways around this, such as keeping the colors that he change into, with in a certain palette. Or having a large part of him that doesn’t change (hat and feather). But we are definitely making sure the characters emote.
@Mccool
Where did you learn to program or how? I taught myself general programming concepts back in one summer of highschool. Was fun, but I find learning APIs to be confusing sometimes. Have any tips? I dabbled in the directx sdk for sometime, was an interesting experience. How is it developing something for an Idevice or mobile app? Do you subscribe to any game dev magazines?
@Matt
Yeah I get what you mean by character contrast. I get confused much in a game like Magicka, where there are a bunch of particles of different colors. You have an interesting dilemma with character building though, even Pac Man has some form of personality. Think the next best option besides anything visual is sound. Do you ever go through Valve’s developer commentary that come with their games?
Finally, is there a way to change the generic picture/avatar below your name?
mm random and i dont know much about making games
but i have played quite a few, was just wondering what the game was going to be like or feel like ?
when i read that line about having ur character pop out admist the battles and stuff, i had an image in my head of those older side scroll arcade games where there ll always be like “player 1″ or “P1″ in the middle or above an arrow thast always flashing and pointing down at u as u walk aroudn the screen,
and then reading about zelda further up about game concepets made me wonder if it would help if u guys just lock him in so hes always in the center of teh screen ? with exceptions when hes locked in a room with a boss etc..
as for giving ur “marbles” character what would eyes and accessories hats, hair, helmets, etc? maybe even tattoos,
was reading this page and i noticed that as a kid marble for me always has little spirals in tehm with the glass around everything and marbles u get in north america tend to be a bit more solid?
also. if u google marbles online and u go look at the really nice marbles for collectors theres alot of stuff we dont think about unless we actually collect stuff like that ?
obvious but might help =P
Looks sweet dude. In case it takes forever for me to have cell reception when you aren’t buried in a coffee shop. Wanted to give you some feedback. Christmas 1997…Ocarina of Time + N64, our parents’ best and worst idea ever. Best Christmas ever. Keep plugging away, making great progress, and I legit like the concept art.
How well would the game have to sell before you would consider it successful? Looking great!
Dont know yet. But well enough that I can pay more people better wages, and have everyone working on the game be happy and ready to make an even better game.
Digging the designs. Reminds me of Dragon Quest’s various slimes.
I’m really pleased with the addition of that feather. Not only does it have potential to show off physics, but could have practical gameplay application as well. Imagine using it to swing from branches, wrap around columns for sharp turns/stops, or catching air to glide.
These designs really cracked me up. This is gonna be FANTASTIC.
I see the one Queen Ball. But I’d love to see some girlballs (mostly just to know how you pull it off.)
I wanna see Zero’s “Saria”. (Although I feel like you were always more of a Malon fan…)
Recall that I first received Link’s Awakening and the GameBoy. Guess I didn’t take full advantage of it.
Love the artwork. I’m interested in the AI and how that works.
Hey Guys!
Just wanted to say that I am really enjoying all these updates and I am eagerly waiting for the game.
The character design in early stage is excellent. I like the idea of visually simple character and the different versions are all great. The “flaming guy” is fantastic.
So I think you definitely are in the right path and I wish you luck.
-MikaelT
Love the sketches! I can’t wait to see the finished project, before I read the article I scrolled down just to see the pics. I immediately thought of The Great Deku Tree from OoT. The little dudes that would hop up out of the ground and shoot those annoying seeds at you. Then I read the article and my suspicions to OoT roots were confirmed. Awesome job guys,
Love what you guys have going on and I really enjoy the simplicity of your sphere based creature things. you milk a lot of personality out of those simple shapes. Ever consider other objects other than the grappling hook(?) and feather, like a razor thin blade or ball and chain. keep it up.
Most definitely. I think I said it in a previous blog, but I have a ton of weapons and ideas that are more complicated. I had to very much streamline this and go with the items that are the simpliest to execute. Mostly in terms of animation and art since we cannot afford much of that right now.
I have a massive list of ideas and things I would want for a sequel. Hopefully this (and the next) game goes well, and I can do a sequel with a bigger budget, and a longer dev cycle.
Looks awesome and the character concepts are really cool.
Looking forward to playing a zelda-like game with lots of accelerometer control. Good luck!
@Andrew
I am self taught with programming, been doing it professionally for a few years now. I started learning in my junior year of highschool in my spare time using books/tutorials. After highschool I took it a bit more seriously and spent a minimum of 4 hours a day working on various projects to get better, and at one point hired a tutor for a little while.
My best advice for beginners would be to pick one language and one engine/environment and stick to it until you know it through and through. When I first started I dabbled in flash/Actionscript, Unity, C++ Open GL etc all at once and found it hard to progress. When you are brand new your biggest hurdle is just understanding the basic concepts, and moving around like this gets in the way of that. Once you have been doing it for a while and understand the basics then branch out into other languages and environments, which generally speaking are quite similar to each other.
And for game design specifically I would say to start small, like WAAYY small. To many people I’ve known just dive right into a massive RPG or RTS they have been dreaming about and just get burnt out constantly beating their heads against it. Its better for learning to have 5 small and crappy but completed games, than one giant, bloated and unfinished game.
Is it possible to get a itouch emulator and play this? (when it comes out)