Whoops.

That last post was a lie.  No 12 hour notice.  Sorry about that.

Since the fine folks at Mochi don’t take holidays off, we’re now live.  The game is spreading fast, to game portals I’d never heard of, so it’s time for us to play a little catch up and make sure our friends hear it from us first.

Special thanks to Danny B. for the amazing score and Allyn McElrath for the character art.  The game wouldn’t be what it is without their work.  Just as important, a lot of fine folks provided testing and feedback, all of which helped us immensely.  Games are hard.

Hopefully you like it as much as we do.  Go play it!

Play Cyber Recession Warrior: Edgar

Now if I can just find a way to make sure all of the hosts use the proper resolution…

After many months, the game has a name (which makes it real). We promise to show it at LEAST 12 hours before it’s publicly available. For now though, wallpaper:

Cyber Recession Warrior: Edgar

A totally gutted quote from Shigesato Itoi, the creater of Mother (AKA Earthbound, AKA We’ll Never get the Third One Legitimately so Play the Translation):

A game isn’t something that can be made by one person alone. Well, it’s possible that a really hard-working game creator could finish a game all alone, but even then he would still need a player.

Games grow and mature when they’re created, played, and conveyed over and over…

…The truth is, in the end, the player is the one who completes a game’s creation.

Original (and full) quote can be found here [earthboundcentral.com].

It’s a fairly good question, I think. When does a game become a game? When you first come up with the idea? After the tech demo? Perhaps once feedback and advancement appears during “gameplay.” Through the course of development, there have been lots of times where Scott and I said “Holy shit, NOW it’s a game!” But you have to wonder, when did that actually happen? Was it really not a game before? Which one of them is correct? In our case, it was the moment we basically hit feature completion and had a save system in place. And I quote:

Scott: I know we’ve said this a lot
Scott: but saving and loading
Scott: …
Schild: ok
Scott: it’s a game!
Schild: jajajajajajajaja

Turns out, he was right. All those other times we said it, it wasn’t a game. It was just a work in progress. I’m pretty sure most developers have that moment where life is finally given to “that thing” they’ve been working on so long. A watershed moment, perhaps. It’s also amazing how fast something will fall together. We went from what couldn’t be called more than a tech demo to something that is legitimately “a game” in roughly 2 weeks. I think we both fully understand now why so many projects are dropped before that crucial “thing” happens. Where all of the art and programming and design falls together to result in something that is tangibly “playable.” Sure, we could “play” it before, but we really couldn’t play it if you know what I’m saying.

With all of that out of the way, I suppose I can say we’ve made it past the hardest hurdle in the lifecycle of game development. It’s really a point of no return, and I would wager every developer out there knows what I’m talking about. With roughly - and I’m guessing here - a few more weeks of tweaking, balance, and bug-fixing (and the addition of sound, haha!), we may actually have something to show the public at large.

Maybe we’ll have a proper beta in a bit, maybe not. It’s not exactly an MMOG or some AAA PC Game, so it may just be something we let out of its cage and see what happens. For now though, I just wanted to assure you that we’re alive, decently fed, and still working, but updating the blog is and will continue to be one of our lower priorities.

I can only hope that anyone reading this has never had the “unique experience” of providing pretty much all of the art for a reasonably in-depth game. Particularly if that game is:

1. Isometric.
2. Limited in palette (self-imposed, I must admit).
3. Limited in size (as in, the actual resolution of said game effecting the size of each asset).
4. An RPG of any kind.

Look, there’s no easy way to say this so I’ll just come out with it: Pixel Art is Hard. Not just “a little hard,” like trying to understand chinese checkers at the age of six. More like trying to understand the complexities of Go at the tender age of four.

While having rudimentary art skills is helpful, nothing particularly prepares you for the amount of time you’ll spend with the pencil tool (set to 1px) and paint bucket. While I’m loving the creation of the art for our title, I’m fairly certain I’m already well into about 10,000 (yes, ten thousand, that’s more than [or over] 9,000) pixels drawn, one by one, using said pencil tool. It’s slow, arduous, and a good deal more intricate than I expected. What’s worse, as I get better, it feels like the art is taking longer to produce as I’m not willing to compromise nearly as much anymore.

So, we’re making a flash game and as I’ve revealed in this post, it’s lodged somewhere, quite firmly, in the RPG genre. Now, say it’s an RPG with a lot of items. Not just a “few” items, but like, way more than one would want to cope with as “the artist.” Add seamless tilesets, walls, flair, mobs, characters, the GUI, and animations into the mix and you’ll start to grok the sort of rabbit hole I’ve been buried in since September.

This may seem like some sort of big, whiny LJ type post, but I assure you it isn’t. I’ve learned a great deal in doing this and honestly, I’d recommend pixel art (as a style) to anyone making a flash game so you don’t end up with your typical, downright ugly vector graphics we see so often as people churn out title after title. At the same time, I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t warn you.

There are, of course, great reasons to do all of the art yourself. Everything will (stylistically speaking) be very cohesive. Sure, there’s only so many ways to do pixel art when everything is so small, but very little of our art is in the vein of NES blockiness. I’d like to think we’re approaching the late SNES era in what we’re doing, but you’ll be able to judge that for yourself when we finish. In additional, you’ll be able to make sure, that in any situation, you’ll be prepared to rework something to make it fit as you won’t be relying on anyone else - and I promise, you will get better as time goes on. Maybe, unlike myself, you’ll be able to produce art faster and more efficiently. Maybe not. No matter what though, you will get better and you will rework nearly every image at least once.

I suppose, the best two tips I can give are the following:

1. When you screw up - and you will - do not be afraid of scrapping any work. The second time around, any given piece of art will almost assuredly be better, and all told, should take less time.
2. Palette swapping is your friend. Sure, it’s cheap, but honestly, while graphics mean a great deal, they are not everything. For some situations, variety in function means more than variety in art.

I know I’ve been all over the map with this post. I started out telling you not to do what I did and then I closed giving you reasons to do exactly what I did. Really though, you’ll have to decide which road you take should you decide to jump into indie-gaming development head first. The payoff is worth it though if you’re working with great people (which I am) and eventually you’ll see all of your work spring to life. Of course, if you’re like me, you’ll lose all ability to be coherent after an 8-hour art creation binge. Excuse me while I go draw more very tiny things.

Addendum: As has been pointed out, 10,000 pixels it not a lot. I know. It’s a poor, poor joke. At the moment, we’re floating somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000.

Almost!

In the coming days, things should start appearing here. For now, nothing. Not even annoying background music that you would just turn off.