Random coolness from the past two weeks

Posted on: April 7, 2010

In the development of Jimmy Pataya, a lot of things were new to us. And I noticed several things:

iPod v1 > iPhone 3G

When ever you develop for a platform, you need to work within it’s limitations and specifications. For both the iPod and iPhone these specs can be easily found. Whenever you read them, you think: “Ey, iPod has less Mhz than the iPhone, so it must be slower.” Wrong! We actually had to put a lot of effort in making Jimmy Pataya run smoothly on the iPhone. The main problem is that there are several background processes while running the game. The iPhone obviously checks for incoming calls, but also runs other stuff like the 3G connection and email.

Unity..

.. just keeps amazing me every time.
This time it was with music and sound effects. It. Just. Works.
In Jimmy Pataya it makes no difference whether you are listening to your own music or not. Whenever you play your own music, Unity knows it and it disables the game’s background music. But, it doesn’t disable the game sound effects! If you want no sounds, you can just hit our mute button. This cool because we didn’t write a single line of code for it and now you only have to have one mute button, which works for both music and sound.

Hidden Talents

Speaking of music and sound effects, Paladin has the most well-hidden skills team ever! :-) I have been working at Paladin for about 3 years and only just now some team members revealed their unique skills.

Derk, normally CEO, and usually busy running the company, has made a great and very addicting soundtrack.
Dylan, normally sales guy and also busy running the company, did some great voice acting. Starting the game with a “Here we GOOO!” shout makes me smile over and over again. Next time he will do Keanu Reeves.

I asure you, you’ll love both the music and voice overs.

I should not forget to mention our team member Tijmen, normally our web dude. It was his first project doing 100% Unity and was responsible for atleast 50% of the programming. He did a great job!

(although he was scratching his chin quite often)

Our two interns also did a great job while there was the big time pressure. Didn’t bother them really as they made a fantastic gui, character and in-game art assets.

Last but not least is Niels, who was the project leader which wasn’t easy considering the time we had and all the choices we had to make.

Oh and lets not forget about me, I have never done any blogging in my life and here I am writing several posts about Jimmy Pataya ;-)

Attention!

Something very different, but also way too cool, was all the (media) attention! A dutch game dev magazine featured us two times on their website, Dutch Game Garden wants us to give a presention about Jimmy Pataya on the INDIGO festival and if all goes well we will be featured on several iPod and iPhone game websites. Then there are all the people dropping by at our office or sending us messages on Twitter. Like Boris would say: “It’s nice!”

Read more
Categories: Blog
1 Comment

Break or be broken

Posted on: April 4, 2010

This isn’t about breaking physical stuff nor it is about trying to break software. No, it’s about getting broken mentally.

As Nick said before, creating a game in 2 weeks changes game development, a lot. As Jimmy Pataya was my first as a game designer I had little experience in this area. Every time you do something new, you jump right into it. In my case I landed unexpectedly early, head first.

The first week of game development was a tough one. We had democratically chosen something with skydiving, my job then was to work that out to get a game design. I did exactly that. Then I presented the game design, it was all about falling down without control of the movement, passing rings and match the color, heavily relying on a Japanese themed graphics style. Some team members were positive, others disagreed big time. So big that the concept wasn’t going to make it. The concept was taken back and after a lot of discussion we ended up dropping the Japanese stuff and adding character controls.

To be honest, it broke my heart and was thinking, “This was not how I imagined the game to be”. A good night sleep does fix your mind most of the time. Especially when you don’t have the time to cry like a little girl.

Some days later, it happened again. Most of the testers found the color matching too difficult or couldn’t control the color matching and character movement at the same time. We choose to drop the color matching. In my heart I wanted to keep that mechanic because it was coolests thing but my head told me to go with movement as the testers liked it and the team wanted it. You could say I’m a wuzz but then I would say team motivation is more important than my own ego.

The point I am getting to is that as a game designer, there is a big chance you will get broken, mentally. You can strengthen yourself and the process though. Instead of breaking, you now might only get bend.

In my case it was all about expectations.
Some team members expected a skydiving game to be like a base jump game in which you have a start at a ridge and an end, landing on your feet.
I expected the color matching mechanic to be a strong and simple gameplay element.
The testers expected, well I’m not really sure what they expected but the first version we sent was definitely not it :-)

Who knows how bendy I can become with some exercise?

Read more
Categories: Blog
1 Comment

The day after

Posted on: April 3, 2010

Well we did it, Jimmy Pataya has been submitted to the App Store and is ”Waiting for review” at this very moment. Like every deadline, it was a though one. Not only did we have to fix some performance troubles, we also had to create and implement the last portion of the graphic user interface and all the sound effects. Deadlines are exhausting because of the stress level so the best thing we did that day was going outside, take a deep breath and do nothing :-)

Today was a great “day after”. Played the game a couple of times, beat my own personal record and even showed it to an employee of an iCentre. Apparently it’s also a great starting point for a nice conversion. Who knows what other good things come out of it.

I noticed that everytime I played or showed Jimmy Pataya, I was smiling. Smiling big time. I have to say, I am very proud at what we at Paladin Studios have achieved already. And it can only get better when it hits the App Store…

Read more
Categories: Blog
2 Comments

iPhone game: deadline is closing in

Posted on: March 31, 2010

When we decided that we would try to build an iPhone game in two weeks, we knew it would be tough. We knew it would involve doing a lot of technical research, creating a lot of designs and making a lot of tough decisions. Lukas already talked about a big cut we made, which resulted in a more focused game experience. Today we sat down to review our progress, painfully aware of the impending deadline in just two days.

The good news is that we are well on our way. The central gameplay mechanic, dodging blades by tilting the iDevice, works nicely. In fact, both our own team members and outside testers enjoy the thrill of falling down and dashing sideways to avoid serious injury. We’ve been experimenting with speed and blade spawning frequency. We’re testing all these different stages, and keep those that work best. The latest incarnations are actually quite demanding – average playtime is now 30 to 60 seconds, which is exactly what we’re aiming for.

Regarding visuals, the team is producing a lot of great assets. We are lucky to get a bit of outside help from Bang Phan, a veteran concept artist. He’s working on the background image and cloud textures.

We’re also gathering a small group of dedicated testers, which is fantastic. It’s so rewarding to get honest and constructive feedback. Personally I am looking forward to improving our quality assurance and user testing efforts in the upcoming months. It makes sense to have an external focus: we want to make games people want to play.

The not so good news is,  time is really running out. We have so many wonderful ideas but not enough manpower to get it in. While we have solid artwork,  implementation into the game takes longer than expected. For the past few days, we’ve been playing a promise. Even if we did manage to work more hours, every new feature and every new asset potentially introduces bugs. Adding new mechanics means we’ll have to test everything again from scratch, as we basically have a whole new game.

That’s why today has been about cutting stuff from an already lean design. It’s about making things work, dumping excess bagage where-ever possible. We won’t have power-ups, we’ll keep sounds to a minimum, we’ll have to be strict about animations.

On the other hand, we’re still definitely ambitious. We do want exciting gameplay, we do want Twitter support, we would love to give Jimmy a voice. With two days left on the clock, we’ll do whatever it takes to make our Friday deadline. And that’s not even the end of the road yet: we’ll have to submit the game to Apple, get it reviewed, and hopefully approved. If all goes well, we’ll have an iPhone game in the App Store sometime next week!

Read more
Categories: Blog
4 Comments

iPhone game: putting it all together

Posted on: March 26, 2010

Things are moving smoothly now. We have a test application working on our iPhones, including main menu and gameplay loop. There’s motion control, rings to fly through, colors to select and match, obstacles to avoid… it’s shaping up nicely!

Later today we’re building a first version to share with a handful of testers. We still need to put in the placeholder art, and see if we can fit music into it as well. Time is ticking, we’re approaching the deadline fast!

Here are a few video’s:

An early version of the game running on the iPhone.

A mockup in 3D Studio Max, for testing the vibe of the game.

Derk composing the music for Jimmy Pataya!

Read more
Categories: Blog
1 Comment