Not having a lot of time for lengthy updates, I’ve decided to bundle a bunch of stuff into a single article. I think it gives you a snapshot of the sorts of things that lie on the periphery of game development but are integral to the final product. In recent weeks I’ve been scrambling to pull together all those loose ends that, if left unaccounted for, could easily unravel the whole project.

Audio

Before embarking on an expensive endeavor, it’s prudent to establish what aspects of it present the most risk. For BEEP, I knew I could handle the programming, visuals and marketing. But the audio has always been looming like a dark cloud over the entire project. Initially, in my naivete, I presumed I could spend a few months at the end of the project recording my own sound fx and purchasing tracks off the internet.  But it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t going to get me the consistency and quality of sound that I think the game deserves.

So to remedy this, I set off to find someone who could bring some experience to the project. I had some simple criteria. No students (I simply can’t risk it) and no garage-bands. I needed a professional I could count on to understand the game and be able to do original sound AND music. I scoured the internet and talked to a few different people before finding a chap by the name of Francisco Furtado from Portugal. I was impressed by his business acumen, proven experience and enthusiasm for video-game audio. After a bit of back/forth emailing he has agreed to come on board! Big Fat Alien has our first hire! I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.

Beta Testing

Now in addition to audio, the second biggest risk was my target platform, the PC. PC’s  (and Macs) are notoriously riddled with compatibility issues due to the vast array of hardware on the market. I’ve managed some of this risk by using middleware that abstracts the driver interfaces for graphics, audio and input so I don’t have to get into the nitty gritty (and boring as hell) stuff.

But it’s not enough to do your best and hope your game runs on all machines. You have to TEST. So I’ve begun sending out alpha tests to individuals who can run the game on their machine, email me their specs and let me know how it all went down. This data is crucial to the development of a stable piece of software. (If you want in on the next beta test, please send me a note kiaranritchie@gmail.com , I could always use more).

UI

The best user interface is the one you don’t notice. At it’s most basic, BEEP requires SOME method to allow players to perform basic high-level commands like, load a level, restart a level, pause etc…

I find 90% of videogame UI’s to be aesthetically disgusting and functionally retarded. The problem is usually a case of too many dials, knobs or tabs compounded by an inconsistency of controls and distracting visual arrangement. Basic ergonomics, it seems, continues to elude even the most seasoned video-game studios.

With that in mind, I set off to create something that would avoid all these pitfalls. It had to be simple, to the point and retain a sense of fun and visual elegance (nobody wants to play something that looks like a spreadsheet). I have only a half-dozen menu’s in the whole game and they all use the same visual arrangement.

When the user enters a menu, I apply a soft Gaussian-blur filter to the background. This is to draw the user’s attention to the menu. The mouse changes from the targeting reticule used in the game to a normal arrow pointer (so there is no question that you have to click on something now). All the buttons are stacked in a single column with most likely candidates at the top going in descending order. The button text is written in a clear, bold sans-serif font that changes color on hover. It’s all so painfully obvious a stoned monkey could use it.

It’s nothing fancy, and that’s the whole point. Check out the video to see what I’m talking about:

World Map

BEEP is a platform game, with a linear progression across levels of increasing difficulty. This is a formula I didn’t feel the need to divert from. It works and people understand it.

But part of this design is the need for a world map that frames the player’s progression and provides a mechanism to chose which level to play. I initially designed a world-map that works much like Super Mario. You have a small representative avatar basically sliding around a 2d-map between nodes that represent the different levels.

There’s a lot to like about this design. It’s simple to use and get’s the job done. But in the end, I decided to try something different.

I opted to replace the sliding-between-nodes map with  a mini-game involving a spaceship that the player pulls with the mouse.  The player simply directs the spaceship towards a drop zone in orbit around a planet.

From these zones, you can deploy a BEEP-Bot (the player character) to a specific level. It’s not quite as simple as Mario’s world map, but the slight loss in simplicity is acceptable given the benefit that this method communicates to the player exactly what he’s doing; flying around a solar system sending little robots down to the surface of planets. It killed two birds with one stone; picking levels, and telling the story. As a bonus, it’s actually kind of fun to drive the spaceship around smacking into asteroids and avoiding the sun.

Check out the video to see what I mean:

Losing It Mentally

This is an article about risks. The last risk I have to contend with is the possibility of losing my motivation. Writing this blog is cathartic. My huge network of friends and family provide a lot of support too. But at the end of the day, it’s just me in front of a computer GSD (Getting Shit Done).

I’m still pretty passionate about the project. The game is looking good which helps a lot.  I keep waiting for the day when I wake up and hate my game (I fully expected to be there by now). So far that hasn’t happened which is either a sign that I’ve lost all ability to judge my own work, or maybe, just maybe, it’s actually a fun game.

One thing I didn’t expect from this endeavor was to learn how to thrive on stress. I found out my wife is pregnant a few weeks after quitting my job (Cool? Yes.  Stressful? Yup). I’m into this game for a significant portion of our life savings. I haven’t got a single level completely finished yet.  I’m living in my in-laws basement and haven’t seen a sunny day in about 3 months now (that’s no exaggeration, winters high-up in the Okanogan Valley are very cloudy). Extraneous expenditures have been cut; no trips to the ski-hills, no hotel weekends and certainly no vacations. No paycheck.  No restaurants nearby. And the neighbor dogs keep attacking ours.

But despite all that, I’m having a great time. Working on this game is a joy for me. Getting to know my wife’s family better has been awesome (they are all reasonable, fun people which makes all the difference). And the thought of having a baby on the way is just a little more fire under my ass. Ain’t no thing but a chicken wing.