Galaxy Map, Tea and Agent Cooper

Just a quick teaser of info for anyone out there who might be interested.
Here's a screenshot of the game as it currently stands:


In the shot you can see Inco (little guy in helmet) and Helios off exploring a planet featuring Helions (stars) encased in quartz, swingable Grapple-points (huge fun to use), PowerPod generators, Microportal units, and a computer screen with a message from The Corporation apologising for the genocide of all other life in the universe. Fun stuff.

Here's the overall Galaxy Map for Incoboto:


I always find it a huge amount of fun creating maps like this. For me, it's a sort of statement of intent, and a mark of confidence: one of the first things that must be done to make a world 'real'.

Creativity is all arbitrary. Meaningless. If Agent Cooper had preferred tea, he'd have been a different, but equally good Agent Cooper. There would have been 'Damn Fine Cup of Tea' mugs, bumper stickers and similar merchandise. People would have said: "Bet he's going to have a cup of tea! That's soooo Cooper."

If this seems wrong to you, it is only because you have - as Lynch would put it - eaten the Donut and not the Hole. As an end-user, you don't get to see what was thrown away. You don't get to experience the alternative universes of potentialities that might have been. Lucky you.

For us inside the creative process of a project, creative decisions are only made convincing and 'real' by acting as if each decision is correct, and maintaining this for a prolonged period of time. This can be difficult due to the many forces that buffet creativity around and attempt to alter or influence the constructs you have in your head.

This map may change due to the realities of development, but I'll be sitting here for much of the time looking at this map and by sheer force of magical will, making it as real to my own mind as I possibly can.

First Sightings and the Name Game

First Sightings

Went to BAFTA a week or so ago and took Inco with me. I had a vague intention of showing it to a couple of people I knew - more from a sense of 'this is what I've been doing with my time' than from a PR message point of view. Having not shown it to anyone other than family and friends before I was a little nervous.

Incoboto is a bit of a weird game. Trying to describe it is quite hard: 'Mario meets Portal meets Ico meets... um... Flaboo? No, you really have to feel it all together with the art and the music and Helios' weird dialogue and... oh, I give up.'

Thankfully, the people who saw were:

a) Lovely folk I liked working with in the past
b) Kind to someone clearly utterly uncomfortable demoing their work

The good news is they seemed to like it. Seeing people struggling with one or two of the controls gave me some really valuable feedback and now the controls have been tweaked to 'playable at social gathering after alcohol' level.

After Kara (my wife) gave me a good kicking the other week for wallowing in self-doubt and self-indulgent examples of artistic temperament Inco is now on track for getting finished in a reasonable time-span. The current release date is set for around the end of August. As Helios would say: "Woohoo! Where's the coffee?!" Inco wouldn't even gesture. He has no arms.

The Name Game
The one really niggling thing remaining (apart from weeks of content creation and bug-fixing) is the name.

The reality is that this is an iPad game. The iPad store is only really set up to work on searches and thus names people can remember. As a result, Incoboto is probably going to change to something more clearly memorable in the next few weeks. I have a few ideas. None quite fit, but that's the problem with working titles; you grow to love them quite quickly, and they soon become mentally entangled with the game overall.

I can expect a few shocked reactions when the renaming occurs - but that's wonderful. It means people care.

The reason for dealing with this name malarky now is that I'm going to have to produce a promo video relatively soon, showing the promise of this game and why people should be interested. It'll need a firm title by then. The good news is that I'll have to write some more 'music' for it, which is always enjoyable. I had written an entire album for it, but on reflection it got a bit... um... dark and strange.

For those who haven't listened to it before, it's available for free download here.

Enjoy.

Game Changers

We're Back
It's been a while since the last blog. Incoboto is not gone, nor even resting.

The reason for my silence is simple: I've been very busy sorting the game out. I've begun to adopt the Team Ico approach (no, not take 4+ years to make a game) but to start stripping away elements of the game that aren't engaging or fun, and to highlight and accentuate the areas that are proving to be interesting. As such, two main areas have changed - and they are huge.

Helios?
Incoboto's story has always focused on the two themes of longing for the unattainable and loneliness. Helios, the sun-creature was always a (malevolent) puckish figure, offering you the universe while quietly taking you further away from that which was truly important. Things have changed somewhat.

At one point in development his cheeky little face loomed up from behind a planet and surprised me. I suddenly realised that his central placement in each solar system was nonsensical. He's an enormously appealing character who was in a strangely off-screen role for most of the time. Silly.

I felt this had to be fixed, and thus initially just had him follow you about a bit, mocking you. This in turn pointed out that - far from being a menacing figure - he was actually quite comforting and friendly: indeed, the only friendly thing Inco had seen in his lifetime.

As such, Helios could not stay as he was. Now, Helios is no longer so menacing and has a wide range of powers he puts at your disposal. The player can now draw a lens on the screen by placing two fingers upon it. Helios will guide a beam of light through this lens. In this way the player can discover hidden things, kill off shadow baddies, power up contraptions and ultimately feel that his big glowing friend isn't just there to bob around like some infernal balloon.

Controls - or 'the Hardest Button Two Button'

The game's controls are now completely different, and much better for it. An entirely touch/tap/drag/hold style no-button interface was proving far too taxing for newcomers.

I watched as they failed to grasp the difference between a tap and a press ("How difficult can it be? I said tap! No, that's not a TAP that's a PRESS... and now that's a slide... TAP! TAP, GODDAMNIT!")

As a result, the game now has two buttons; one in each of the bottom corners of the screen. Press the left one and you'll go left. Press the right one and you go right. Press both and you'll jump. No tapping, no hold and release. Just press. Easy to explain.

This left me the entire screen free for the player to use as a 'more interesting interface'. You still pick things up, throw them, draw lenses and drag machine-levers around with the nice little tap and drag interface I developed before, but now it never clashes with the basics of movement.

It's lovely. And it's finished. Hoo-rah.

Scripting
I'm now heavily into the scripting part of the game. I have largely abandoned the total randomisation with which I had planned to populate my world. Imbuing randomness with meaning is very hard indeed.

The game now creates and populates each universe to a very basic degree, but then I go in after and choose where key items and characters go. It's a nice compromise, and I hope it works out as the levels come together over the next few weeks.

In the meantime, here are some screenshots:

Some teaser shots

Things have been quiet for a while on the blogging front, so I thought I'd share a few bits with folks, just so you know I'm not dead, and nor is Incoboto.


Spy-bots went in today and they're creepy as hell. I'm not yet sure if they clash too much with the general cute feel of the game, but I love their floaty movement. Very, very unnerving. Their little eye-stalks track you, and light up red or green depending if they've acquired you as a target or not. Brrr...

In other news, I'm trying to simplify the interaction at the moment. Up until now, EVERYTHING was a physics object. While my physics system managed perfectly well, the poor player had to contend with hundreds of clickable, draggable, carryable objects any time anything exploded, shattered or... well, did anything, really.

As of now, I'm doing the 'nethack logic' thing. If I can't think of 3 reasons why something should be in the game I'm either adding reasons, or jettisoning the idea off into deep space... or into Helios if that's a more terminal metaphor. Personally, Helios gives me the willies when he's angry:



Not a friendly character when he turns. No, he's not based on anyone I know. Honest.

Where does the time go?

So it's been a month since my side-tracked rant about gender images in the media... and longer since I've actually posted anything of note regarding Incoboto, so here's where we is at.

I spent some time making weird, droney noises like this. I may use this stuff as music in Incoboto. I may decide it's too 'cold'. We'll see as time goes on.

I've just returned from holiday in Iceland and am currently suffering from post-holiday blues. While there's a lot in Incoboto already, there's a lot to do to make it into a game, let alone polish that game to perfection.

- The movement/interaction/interface is pretty much done.

- I have 'creatures' in the game. They don't do much, but they are flammable. Believe it or not, that's important.

- The physics has been re-vamped yet again. It's now a very peculiar hybrid of verlet integrations and rigid body physics. From a consumer's point of view, this simply means: "I can make windmills you can stand on, turn by hand, chuck rocks at and so on, and it all reacts correctly." Yay! Seeing as my background isn't particularly academic or technical, that's a big deal to me.

So - why the delay?

The problem is that I've a huge feature set, but no actual level demonstrating how this all goes together. As such, I need to make a big choice. Generative, or edited content.

This isn't a game where you 'make stuff yourself', leaving all that lovely creation to the user. My 'meaningful' content has to come from somewhere. I'm loathed to spend another month and a half creating an editor, but the sheer wall of work that is required to generate the content in a non-game-breaking way is really quite scary.

At the moment I'm taking time to think and finish off a few technical bits and bobs that'll lead to a smoother, more polished experience (getting planetary atmospheres and stargates rendering quickly, for example).

Once this is done, I have to face the 'wall'.

As such, I'll post more screenies next time around when there's a game to show rather than a bucket of disparate features. Thanks for your patience.

Now if I can only stop myself playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 multiplayer...

Gender Polemic

So, I was sitting here working while my housemate was watching the television. An ad-break came on, during which I heard the refrain 'Here come the girls...' My reaction was quite extreme: I think the correct phrase is 'my blood boiled'.

I suddenly realised I had a profound loathing for the false gender-identities projected by the media. While men and women do have slightly different wobbly bits we are fundamentally the same species, and I find myself increasingly annoyed by the fractious, factious way in which gender differences are presented.

It starts when you're a baby. Walk down the infant aisles of any toy shop and you'll see what looks like a tactical battle-map of baby-blue and pastel pink intended to genderise us before we can even figure out where our own toes are.

With these gender lines drawn, childhood sets about reinforcing them. Certain toys are deemed 'appropriate' for certain genders, and parents not-so-subtly nudge their offspring into stereotyped roles in order to ensure their kid isn't pointed out as 'the funny peculiar one' at school and mobbed like a peculiarly hued crow... or a Muslim.

Adulthood offers no respite. Conversely, the situation worsens in relation to our spending power. According to marketing firms and the media, women are superficial, materialistic, overly-emotional airheads who only care about babies, their weight, Davina's hair-style of choice and whether Kerry Fucking Katona is fat/in rehab this week.

Worse, we hear phrases like 'us girls have got to stick together' and 'men are from Mars, women are from Venus'.

Really?

As a bloke I prefer to decide who I spend my time with based on shared values and tastes rather than the fact that we both stand up to pee. I like logical, clear people whose motivations and beliefs are consistent, well-considered and understandable (and preferably geeks in my case).

I imagine a majority of women feel similarly (bar the geeks bit).

Women: next time you hear 'Here come the girls' ask yourself if you feel included in their perfumed, vacuous number. I know a majority of you don't, just like many of us 'guys' aren't obsessed with shaving, football or beer.

We'll love you just as you are.

Physics and Input

Chuck Rock
So, the last couple of weeks have been a real challenge. My physics work is almost complete, but - as ever - edge cases cause lots and lots of problems. I had rocks that forced you back through 1-way walls, balls that went into a non-decaying orbit when thrown, clouds that made you flip into the air as you approached an edge, objects you could swing off causing the player to enter into a non-decaying orbit, and countless others.

The ultimate problem emerged when I realised the player wasn't gaining mass when carrying objects. My little (as yet unnamed) pal wandered around quite blithely, leaping all over the place with a boulder on his head the size of a small 4x4. It seemed a bit silly. When players walked against the boulder and thus pushed it, it felt suitably massive and rolled sullenly, like an overweight cat being shooed off a couch. However, flagging the boulder as 'carryable' allowed the player to loft the massive object into the air with ease.

I fixed this.

And then I realised why I hadn't fixed it before.

In game design there's a constant fight between realism, expectation and fun. Realistically, you shouldn't be able to move a heavy boulder. However, if you could lift it, you'd expect to stagger under its weight. However, that's no fun.

I realised I was going to have to be a little more binary in my treatment of all this stuff, and figure out why I was letting the player do these things in the first place. I always think that once you get into the psychology of game design, a lot of complicated issues become a little clearer.

So, why am I allowing the player to lift the rock? Because it's fun to carry stuff. Because it's necessary for some quests. Because you can throw rocks, and in order to throw them, you need to be able to carry them. See - all this stuff basically says: "Hey! I'm fun! You can do stuff with me!"

So, in this case I decided - even if it is hard to push a rock - if you can lift it, you can move it around with ease. If you try to throw it, it'll arc just like a small pebble.

'But surely that's nonsense!' I hear you cry.

'No,' I respond. The key is in the 'if you can lift it'. It's impossible for any normal person to lift a fecking great rock. However, if we're saying 'you can lift it' then you're super-strong. The end.


I remember the Halo team talking player expectation in relation to AIs, and how 'grey' rules really don't work. If you can make a squad of baddies run by killing their leader, it better happen every damned time, or else don't bother doing it. It'll just confuse the player.

In my case, if you can lift it, you can carry it. If you can throw it, you throw it in a manner identical to every other item you can throw. No exceptions.

Click, Swipe, Press, um... Lick... uh... Fondle?
Have I mentioned how much I hate on-screen controls? The little virtual joysticks that effectively say: "Sorry - I forgot I was designing for the machine you now hold." I think they're awful, lazy, impractical and fiddly.

However, I really wish I were using one.

At the moment, players can do the following, all by pressing, tapping or swiping the screen.

1) Walk
2) Run
3) Jump
4) Pick up
5) Throw
6) Swing

None of these use on-screen controls, nor the accelerometer*.

Balancing all these things involves careful tweaking of interaction radii, the minimum valid distance for a swipe and the maximum period you can keep your finger on the screen before it decides you're pressing rather than tapping

If you make jumping more responsive then you find stuff you're carrying around sticking to you like pathetic industry execs on a booth-babe. Make jumping less responsive and the merest flick of a finger causes stuff to fly off without your say-so. Watching my wife play the game last night was an exercise in frustration. She fundamentally doesn't understand the difference between 'tap' and 'press', nor how 'make the player jump on a press' simply wouldn't work (because that would mean you couldn't move without jumping first).

That's the thing with casual games - there's a lot of training involved because your audience has not had 10+years of tropes and rules to fall back on when faced with a new control system. It's irritating as hell. At some point I'll just draw a line in the sand and say: "Yup... I know. You don't know how to swipe the screen. Quite how you've managed with your iPhone so far, I don't know, but I think you and I part company here.' I'm thinking of giving away 'Act 1' of incoboto and then selling subsequent chapters, so that people who just can't deal with it don't feel too annoyed.

Despite the eventual training issues, it is working - and relatively well. There are no on-screen controls apart from 'Pause'. When you use the machines on the planets, there'll be no mini-game, GUI or other distraction. You'll be manipulating real, physical objects that spin, slide, rotate and otherwise give you tactile feedback.

It's taking a while, but there's the potential for this to be quite awesome.

Now, where's that bloody rock gone.. ow!


*I tried the accelerometer for a bit and then realised that using one on the iPad is no fun at all - and Incoboto is destined for the iPad at some point. Tilting the iPad makes me feel like I'm drunk while in charge of a vehicle, albeit with less lethality, lifelong guilt and prison sentences.