Month: November 2017

What else is going on

Posted on by kipbrennan

I was actually planning on writing this post a couple of weeks ago, but got sidetracked by the Game Awards business.

On the Game Awards front (sorry, probably gonna keep mentioning these until after they are over) we’re just trying to work out who is going to travel over to LA to represent us at the ceremony. Looks like we should be able to have at least one team member attend, which is great!

Due to budget and work commitments it isn’t going to be me, but not all of us can fly across the world at the drop of a hat. *shrug emoji*

So – what else is going on?

I’m planning to use my summer uni hiatus to try to beef up my games portfolio. I’m aiming to make one game a month over the course of the break, so should have four new games to add to the portfolio by the time uni goes back in March.

I’m doing this for a couple of reasons. First, there’s a whole heck of a lot about game creation that I still don’t know, and doing this will allow me to explore some areas that I haven’t had the opportunity to work with yet, and in a way that’s pretty low risk.

Second, I get to make a few new games that can go into the portfolio, which will help when looking for jobs.

And finally: making games is pretty fun, you know?

The more perceptive of you will have noticed that it’s the second last day of the month as I post this, so it’s gonna take a fair effort to get a game done, right? Well, good news, I’ve been working all month already!

And, in fact, tonight have a playable prototype of a grid searching game.

It’s a simple game where the player is presented with an 8×8 grid with a hidden path underneath the grid. The player enters an X and a Y coordinate to reveal a square of the grid and has to reveal the entire path before a timer runs out.

As you can see, it’s pretty rough and ready at the moment, but I have managed to work out how to do some things that I didn’t know previously, like building and comparing lists and creating a random path generator.

My ultimate plan for this is to have the game controlled by a rotary telephone. So the player will enter the two coordinate digits by dialing the corresponding number on the telephone. I have a old phone that I’m going to pull apart and rebuild using an Arduino to send messages from the phone to the computer.

But so far, I’m pretty happy with how this is all going.

Next month I’m going to be learning to use Unreal4 so that should be all kinds of fun!

A quiet, uneventful week where nothing of note happened

Posted on by kipbrennan

Yep, you saw the title up there, nothing to report this week. Nope nothing at all…

Unless you count being nominated for the Best Student Game Award at the Game Awards as something worth talking about of course!

The Game Awards is an annual awards ceremony that recognises game creators and publishers. Games are usually nominated by a pool of journalists, with awards decided by popular vote.

This is the first year that there has been a Best Student Game Award. We submitted Level Squared for consideration in early November via an online application portal. We included our trailer and links to our presskit and website, as well as details about the development team.

And I guess they saw something in there that they liked, cos I found out when I woke up on Wednesday morning that we had been nominated!

There are five other really cools games nominated as well, from all over the world. It’s unbelievably cool to be up for consideration with all these great games from so many different places.

Best Student Game is not decided by popular vote. Instead it is decided by a panel of judges.

These judges:

HolyshitHideoKojimaandToddHowardandKimSwiftaregonnaplayourgame!

*ahem*

So, yeah, that’s about all that happened this week.

I was planning to talk about the games I was making over the summer break, but I guess that will have to wait for a couple of weeks until this is over.

Anyway, here’s a selection of links to pages where Level Squared (a game I worked on) is mentioned alongside games like Super Mario Odessey, Horizon: Zero Dawn, PUBG, Breath of the Wild and Destiny 2:

Where next for Level Squared?

Posted on by kipbrennan

First of all, apologies for leaving you all hanging last week. I hope you’ve managed to get through the last few days without any great stress.

Today’s hot topic: What are we going to do with Level Squared?

One question I was asked a lot over the course of Games Week was what we were planning to do with Level Squared after PAX?

All of our planning and focus had been on getting the game ready for PAX and we had given very little thought to what we wanted to do next.

No, that’s not quite true. We had deliberaly avoiding talking or thinking about what we wanted to do next.

There were a couple of reasons for this.

Getting ready for PAX was a big ask. Especially for us, seeing as we had scrapped everything and started over in July. We didn’t want to entertain any longer term thinking that could potentially open up development paths that we didn’t have the scope to explore in the limited time that we had.

We also wanted to avoid any potential avenues of argument or discontent. The decision of what to do after PAX was likly to lead to some disagreement, so it was best to keep it out of the way until PAX was over.

And lastly – there was a good chance that PAX was going to give us our answer anyway. However we felt going into the show was very likely to be changed by the public’s reaction to Level Squared.

So (most of) the team met up in the week after PAX and talked through our options. These ranged from dumping the game and never discussing it again to forming a company to create a full version of Level Squared for release on multiple platforms.

This last option isn’t quite as silly as it sounds. We had representatives from both XBox and Playstation come by the booth and leave cards telling us to get in contact if we wanted support to develop for their indie programs. So it was a live and valid option.

However – we did not decide to go that route in the end. But nor did we decide to totally abandon Level Squared either.

Our plan is to develop Level Squared into a reasonable length of game, and to put it up on itch.io as a portfolio piece that will be free to download.

There were a few factors that lead to this decision.

  1. Members of the team are at different stages of uni. Some are graduating this year, others have one or two years of uni to go.
  2. We do not have the personal finance or financial support that would allow us to work full time on Level Squared.
  3. No-one had much appetite for entering into the legal and accounting negotiations that would be associated with forming a company.
  4. I’m personally working full time already, and with part time uni study I have very little spare time to devote to this sort of project.
  5. We are a team of eight people. This is not a realistic number to launch a sustainable indie studio. And this way we avoid the uncomfortable situation of working out who would be essentially kicked out.

So there you have it. We’re taking a bit of a break following PAX before we get back to work. Our plan is to have something ready to go by the time uni starts back next year (early March).

Keep an eye out for our release statement then!

 

Post-MIGW, Post-PAX, Post-Uni…

Posted on by kipbrennan

Well.

It’s been a couple of weeks since the last update (sorry!). But what a couple of weeks those were.

I had a big Melbourne International Games Week. I went to a number of events, and a number of afterparties and networking events over the course of the whole week.

That was the first week, the second week I pretty much just took off cos I was tired from the week before. But we did have a meeting about Level Squared and discuss what we wanted to do now that PAX had happened and we had finished the semester.

But first – Games Week:

GCAP Loading

First off was GCAP Loading. This is a day-long conference that caters to students and those new to or looking to enter the industry.

I volunteered to help out at Loading, so started off the day checking people off the attendance lists and issuing lanyards and name cards.

This was a great way to meet a bunch of people right out of the gate, and also to help out with an event that is just getting started (this is only the second year that Loading has run).

There was a big contingent of Swinburne students in attendance and this actually had the effect that I didn’t end up meeting as many people as I thought I would.

The talks that I did manage to catch were good, but the shorter format of the day meant that many of them were just starting to get interesting when they were forced to wind up.

I’m not 100% sure whether I will go along to GCAP Loading again next year. I feel as though I’ve almost got as much out of the event as I am going to, and would be better off concentrating on GCAP and other events over the course of the week.

GCAP

Next up was two days at GCAP (Game Connect Asia Pacific). This was my first time attending GCAP and it was really eye-opening.

There were a huge number of people there and such an array of talks that it was almost a little overwhelming trying to work out what to go to.

In the end I spent most of the first day in the Design room and most of the second day in the Production room. The talks that I saw were informative and in depth and covered some topics that i’ve just started to wrap my head around this year, so it was great to hear from people who have been working with them for much longer.

A couple of highlights were talks on developing studio culture, data analytics for indie studios and production horror stories.

And following each day of GCAP were a networking event (on day 1) and the Australian Game Development Awards (on day 2). I had a great time at both of these, met and talked with a bunch of people and made quite a few new friends. It might have been good if these events didn’t revolve so completely around alcohol, to ensure that more people felt comfortable attending. I don’t generally have any problem with hanging out at these events, but I’m a straight, cis, white dude so of course I don’t.

PAX Australia

Finally, PAX. The culmination of our uni year and our chance to finally show Level Squared off to the public.

Overall there was a really positive reception to Level Squared. The people who played our game had a fun time, the majority of people played through to the end. People found the game challenging, but not punishing or mean spirited.

It was really great to see people finally playing through the game that we had spent so much time and energy working on over the course of the year.

I’m not gonna lie though – I found it tough working a booth for the first time. I’m no the naturally most out-going person, so I find it difficult to approach and talk to people. I was fine with people who were playing our game, and with people who came up to talk to me about it, but going out into the crowd and trying to convince people walking past to stop and play was very difficult, and I can’t say that I did a particularly good job of it.

After working the booth on Friday morning, I was feeling quite down about the whole experience and wasn’t feeling very keen to return.

But walking around the show floor and checking out the Indie section and speaking with people on other booths perked me back up, and by the end of the weekend I was feeling better again.

By the time Megadev rolled on I was feeling great about the whole week. In fact I spent much of Megadev telling everyone that I saw how great their games were and how great a time I had had over the week.

Well, that’s my quick round up of my Games Week. It’s gone a bit long, so I might have to cut it off there and make a Part 2 where I go into what our plans are for Level Squared following PAX and submission.

I’ll also run through what I’m planning to do over the summer break.