Development Info Them Indie Developer Blues

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Scars of War

<p>Gareth "Naked Ninja" Fouche <a href="http://scarsofwargame.com/DevBlog/?p=1583" target="_blank">discovered</a> that actually developing a game is harder than to just talk/write about developing a game.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It really has become clear to me that I&rsquo;ve been too ambitious with art content. The game sprawls across too many environments, too many locations, it&rsquo;s simply too much of a strain on my resources. If I had to start again I&rsquo;d set everything in a single city location.</p>
<p>For that reason, I&rsquo;ve been doing something lately that is a bit painful, but necessary. I&rsquo;ve taken the pruning sheers to SoW. What that entails is attempting to cut planned locations/environment types and shifting quests/plot to other locations (places where I already have much of the environment artwork needed). For example, the starting city location was supposed to be Korrinport, from there you&rsquo;d be able to travel to Tyver, the capital city of Athar, or visit the town of Sarenbosch, home of Torvaire University. Now, those three locations have been folded into each other, the combination city being named Korrinport and housing Torvaire University within it. That location is where you start the game, it&rsquo;s also the primary game hub, and you will return to it many times throughout the game.</p>
<p>This change means reworking the main storyline, which was supposed to span locations in a number of nations (with different environment styles), to use the art I have. In certain cases this means dramatic changes to the plot and backstory to make that work. Some locations you were supposed to visit you may just hear about now, others have had to be nuked from the plot completely. Some of the information I&rsquo;ve already shown you will be changing, I&rsquo;m sorry about that. And I&rsquo;m dropping multiple race selections, you can now only play as an Atharan, a fairly standard human type, in order to reduce the player avatar art burden.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yes, if you want to do a kickass first-person 3D RPG you're going to need art-resources. Who would have thought.</p>
<p>Spotted at: <a href="http://scarsofwargame.com/DevBlog/?p=1583">Blog Of War</a></p>

 

[SimpleComplexity]

Gareth Douche

 

[MicoSelva]

I hope the next level he reaches won't be 'Still too much work. Ah, fuck it, never wanted to make games anyway.'.

 

[Yeesh]

Yes, if you want to do a kickass first-person 3D RPG you're going to need art-resources. Who would have thought.

Oh will you be nice? What does it take to melt the Codex's icy heart?

 

[AndhairaXI]

Dang, it's a bummer to hear about the races. Multiple races are always a huge plus.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

He's 4 years away from this.

 

[hanssolo]

llllllllllllllol!

can't wait for vince to announce "we're cutting all game-paths other than loremaster".

*casts summon vault dweller*

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Ah well. Probably a good idea at the end of the day. Even Pirahna bytes fell over themselves when they tried to reach too far with Gothic 3. Save up your ideas and improvements for the next one.

 

[Roguey]

If I wanted a streamlined icky-looking 3D realtime action game with RPG elements, I have a lot more options to choose from. Is this an "It's okay because it's indie" thing?

 

[Naked Ninja]

I have art assets. Just not enough of them, sadly. It was a miscalculation on my part, for sure, overambitious. I have bits and pieces of many environments but to bring them all up to a complete state (with all the detail props that would involve) would take too much work without an artist or two on the team. I'll concentrate on the environments where I already have a good portion of the art I'll need.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Take comfort in another struggling indy developer.

http://www.adamantyr.com/crpg/

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

If I wanted a streamlined icky-looking 3D realtime action game with RPG elements, I have a lot more options to choose from. Is this an "It's okay because it's indie" thing?

If he plans on streamlining gameplay elements, then to hell with his game. I was under the impression that the 'landmass' and amount of talky people was being cut. This would be a wiser move so long as the effort is placed into other, more important areas.

 

[Naked Ninja]

I'm cutting the spell creation system and dropping race selection, you start as a member of a single, set race.

That isn't streamlining (making systems less complex so that you don't have to think as much), that's dropping things that add to my workload/art requirements and don't add enough to the core experience to be worth focusing on for this, my first game.

In future games, with a base to build on, I will add more features. For now, finishing is the priority.

 

[Roguey]

Sounds like streamlining to me. What makes you better than Bioware because they also choose to drop gameplay elements to make their jobs easier?

 

[Naked Ninja]

You're boring me Roguey.

If anyone has any less obviously trolling questions or comments, I'll respond to those. Otherwise, thanks to those who continue to offer support or encouragement, it's appreciated.

 

[commie]

He's 4 years away from this.

So you actually tried to do something useful with yourself?

Never say never faggot. If you took the time to work on FMF instead of dicking around here, you'd have it finished! All it would have taken was to get Cloaked Figure and Prosper on board!

 

[Serious_Business]

I was expecting Scars of War to tank before Cyclopean, which at least was getting some shit done. I don't see how this will not tank yet though. Just bring back Cyclopean and forget about this shit. I'm starting to see how bringing in all those shitty half-baked projects into the fold might not have been the best move for Iron Tower's image. They should just pool their ressources into one project or something. When AoD is done then can move on to Cyclopean, right? Because AoD will be done, right? Right guys? Right. So that would be cool. Gareth Douche and his blog about his personal life (and sometimes about his game design documents) can fuck off though.

/trololo

 

[7hm]

Finishing the game is what matters.

Worry about adding more shit next go around. Better to get a C than to fail to submit your project.

Good luck.

 

[Phelot]

I'd actually like to see a game set in a single location that is fully realized and detailed as opposed to a tour of various areas that are poorly done or that have some "wow" feature and that's it.

BG2 sort of had just that single city, of course it delved elsewhere a lot, but I'd say it's a pretty good example.

I mean, most cities in real life have so much shit in them that you never really have to leave, so why not make that in a game? That's how most PnP modules are. One hub/town/village, a few outlying locations and a whole lot of detail.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Vaporware

 

[GarfunkeL]

Well, Cyclopean only got character generation and a bunch of backgound/fluff stories done. Plus apparently some of the quests were mapped out. Very little else and the character generation might have had to be re-done after getting the actual gameplay finished.

In any case, ITS is now both finishing AoD and helping Brian&Annie with Dead State plus Gareth has always said that Scars of War is his pet project baby darling so hard to see how the others could help him out on a concrete level.

Also, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, as the two gentlemen above me said - C is better than F and one detailed city is better than half a dozen half baked ones.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

How hard is it to make 3d art?

I don't know anything about programming, but from the size of 3d modeller teams on other games I had imagined it as being really really time consuming.

 

[Jaesun]

Sad to hear Gareth . But understandable.

 

[Naked Ninja]

It's not as much hard as time consuming. Really good art requires a fair amount of skill, but something passable is do-able even with moderate skills. But that doesn't change the fact that it consumes time, and time is my scarcest resource.

Where I've got a decent chunk of art for an environment it tends to be because I've bought 3rd party art packs ( which is way cheaper than hiring an artist to make customized art as the artist makes money on bulk sales). I can then use my own art skills to 'flesh out' what remains to be done. But that means you have to take what you can get with those packs.

For example, I have a fair amount of Persian style art. I hadn't planned to use it for this game because I wanted to avoid obvious analogues to real world cultures (rome/norse/egypt/etc) but I bought it at the time because it was discounted and I thought I could use it in the future. Now I'm thinking that I should maybe try incorporate it. Maybe.

 

[J1M]

I'm confused as to how you could have gotten so far before realizing something so obvious.