The Serious Art of Designing Fun

Recently, I checked in with fellow indie developer Owen Goss - a stalwart supporter in my efforts to go indie. His company, Streaming Colour Studios, is on the verge of releasing its first title, Dapple. So far, the product looks to be on track towards its projected release date.

What's especially exciting is that the latest news update contains actual gameplay video footage! The video briefly demonstrates the game mechanics and the various game modes. Follow this link to see the video.

Personally, I can't wait to see the end product.

Good stuff, Owen!

The past few days have been distracting as I've diverted my focus away from my project in order to focus on updating my resumé. My next big step is to draft out a business plan in order to secure more financing.

It doesn't hurt to start figuring out the long term financial plan even though the short term development is financially secure - it helps me sleep better at night. In fact, the low development cost is both a blessing and a curse. Because the financing cost is low and the return on investment (ROI) are equally low, I can't approach venture capitalists. Instead, I'm going to have to go with the government, friends-and-family and/or angel investors as my primary financial source.

At the same time, I'm planning to take the initial prototype to the next level - by adding multiplayer support.

The combination is going to make for an interesting week.

Before I sign off, here are some noteworthy links regarding financing:

• Boston business journal article
  Discusses general financing tips for first time entrepreneurs (fairly old but I'm guessing, just as relevant)
• GameOn Finance
  A Canadian website dedicated to the task of finding finances for game development
• Infusion angels
  An angel investment company
• captureplanning.com
  Covers the delicate art of drafting business proposals.
• "Writing a successful proposal"
  A step-by-step tutorial on writing a business proposal by the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Torque Game Builder is definitely the way to go if you're building 2D games. I was able to produce a platformer within 2.5 days of effort (coding and art integration). By a platformer, I mean basic game flow and cameras, player control mechanics, and collection and scoring system. My objective was to produce a realtime multiplayer version of the game but I ran into a major issues which slowed my progress (more on this later).

I've included a video of the prototype for the more visually inclined. A big shout out goes to Aaron White and Roger Lee for providing the art. If you're wondering about the guinea pig theme, it's a product of Aaron's crazy imagination. You can find out more about him at his website designerwhite.ca.

Now, on with the actual evaluation of Torque Game Builder 1.7.4.

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What do you do if you have limited time and budget? You go 2D!

Let's face it - my main focus is on getting a game out there as quickly as possible. The sooner I get the game done, the sooner I'll see profits. Any development corners that I can cut (without reducing quality) increases my chances of success.

The issue with 3D art is the amount of time taken to create it. You need to do 3D modeling, you need to texture the models, and if you have characters who animate, you'll need to invest some time into building a skeleton, creating a skinned mesh, and then creating animations for the model... and that's just the effort required prior to putting together a game level!

On the other hand, doing 2D just requires a good paint program and a passable 2D level editor. To that end, I'm looked for an all-in-one solution and found one in Torque Game Builder by GarageGames. To be honest, I didn't actually spend that much time looking. I had used the Torque Game Engine (TGE) previously and I was very impressed with the engine and its documentation. As a result, my decision to start my exploration with GarageGames' 2D solution was a no-brainer.

Like its 3D brethren, Torque Game Builder is packed to the brim with development features you would need to build a 2D game. After going through some of the basic tutorials, I was able to slap together a non-interactive 2D demo fairly quickly. The only downside to the engine is the documentation - some of the tutorials look to be outdated (the tutorial on creating datablocks in just plain wrong). The good news is that the reference documentation looks to be up-to-date albeit a little sparse in details. But then again, I was playing around with the demo version...

For me, the real test is the ease in which the engine lets me slap together my game prototype. I should have a fairly good idea by the end of the week.

The past 4 days have been a whirlwind of application form filling, short snippet of conversations with ex-colleagues, and setting up my development infrastructure.

My primary focus has been on getting organized as quickly as possible. Without a steady revenue stream, any unproductive time hits me where it hurts the most - the wallet. As such, there were a few practices that I put into place immediately.

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