Hopefully less vitriolic this time around =)
The last few weeks have been a lot of fun, had more time to focus in the game itself, got some proper coding time in that is always good. The droid client has undergone major improvements, a long weekend was spent completely overhauling the app structure to overcome a nice android feature that flushes stuff out from the memory when mem runs low. This little operation was a major pain in the butt and we're still testing to catch all the little bugs and crashes the open-heart surgery might have resulted in.
As Dr. Lukasz was crying blood refactoring, I compassionately refactored our bots, there was a lot of hasty copy-pasta code where a shared libs were needed, some really nasty hacks and all kinds of concurrency mayhem inducing duct-tape and prayer-solutions there that were dealt with. Still hacky as hell but at least not destructively hacky.
Preparing for Ropecon I wanted to make a little LARP-quest for Hoodownr. The idea is based on a game design from like 5 years ago where the players are agents with specific, overlapping missions. I had planned the adventure to be redundant in a way that if a few of the players leave the game, the remaining players can continue their missions and finish the adventure. This, needless to say, adds a layer of extended complexity. =)
As we never had a real LARP test for the spy adventure, I felt I should test the game flow with intelligent bots with a bit of personality (read: level of paranoia). The whole game is based on information and how trustworthy the players regard others and the stuff that comes to light. I was quite tired after the big bot overhaul but still sat down to tinker about with javascript (great for lightning fast prototyping). And went on for like 38 hours straight. =)
After that 38 hours, the bot players roamed about locations, learned about other players and tried to syphon out information from the other players and tried to compute the trustworthiness of the information received. OO is really great for this. Gandalf enters and sees Thorin that starts to sing about gold. Except in our case it's Barry that enters and enquires the lady in the purple helmet if she is indeed Mary. The lady tells that she is actually Steve, a hobbyist female impersonator. This contradicts with what Tom and Dick told Barry and he has to evaluate his next move.
I think I could spend ages tweaking the thing, it's so much fun. Not really sure if the adventure part can be finished for Ropecon but gotta try! =)
This weekend we're filming another little hoodowning video and trying to improve our site a little bit by taking massive shortcuts. So much to do,so little time. Next week I'm off to Turku to help out at h2ö-festival, see Hawkwind and enjoy the summer. You do the same!
See you at Ropecon guys!
Sami
Hoodownr
lauantai 12. heinäkuuta 2014
perjantai 4. heinäkuuta 2014
intricacies of proper Indie development rant
Yet another fascinating update from the world of Hoodownr!
Again, the past few months have been a blur of activity for us. Earlier this spring we got into a program that prepared us for the Midnight Pitch Event to present our game to potential investors. Yep, who wants that honey as long as there's some money kind-of. The training program was really good, we got a lot of feedback and ideas about the game from people on the business side of things and managed to clarify our goals etcetera and so forth. Vital importance!
The pitch fest came, we had a flyer and t-shirts printed and all that stuff thanks to KM's lovely guidance, no hippie rugs this time like at Assembly, professional edges all around! =)
The actual event was held in sandy Nallikari, we pitched the game in front of a live audience and held a show-and-tell booth backstage, giving out fliers, showing the video and luring investment. We got a really great response from players and govenment people who are involved with activating nation to have more exercise. A coordinator from the Finnish occupational health institute was very keen to co-operate. One investor popped by to tell us specificly that this is not their field, thanks for the info, asshole.
As always, we're targeting this blog to indie developers as well as gamers. Hence the rants. Hmm here we go:
Any regular studio would report their Midnight Pitch festival experience as a resounding success. In a way, that is true. The number of new connections and new information that came to light is awesome and we also had a great, private afterparty at Kulttuuribingo with a DJ flown in from Japan and a kick-ass jam session till 4am in the morning. Party: great. But looking from the goals point of view it was a disappointment. We went in to find funding and that didn't happen. So that bit was well fucked. Moving on to pocketgamer:
We decided to do Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki and went there a few days after Midnight pitch. No booth this time but the engines were well warm to pitch the game. Again so many people were met, so many people wanted to sell us their shit but in general it was good, the feedback we got from Hoodownr was great. People love it =)
On the afterparty side of things, our PR lady km got herself on the Rovio table while I was talking to Fingersoft and a bunch of Chinese publishers that are looking into new games that already have a track record of ten million downloads. That's just fantastic, chinese install expectations scale well in Finland with less than 6 million people. Anyway those guys were funny so that was good enough.
Met loads of other devs and had good exchanges with everybody. I really loved this new game called Pako, it's out on for windows phone, check it out! There was a few more interesting titles out there, cannot remember the names now but I guess I'll save that stuff for a tweet someday =)
We met Oscar Clarke and Bob Heuel again and had a really nice word with them, Oscar was happy with our flier and said 'I'd buy that for a dollar' =)
Not being able to take people for a test run was a bummer, it was raining cats and dogs in Helsinki. But showing the video and our alpha worked out fine. No investor love this time around either, people at pocket gamer are looking for a copy of an existing succesful product which is always the way forward. The logic goes: It's angry birds with a twist == angry birds is making money === this could also make money for me. It's bad form not trying to copy anything but to build something original.
Currently there appears to be lot of investment money around for games business. Investment events pride with the amount of capital the attending investors have in total. In reality, a very small part of that translates into actual investment I'm afraid. Slush, pitchfest etc. from the indie dev perspective are mostly about complacent, rich penguins coming to hear other rich penguins talk and then watch the trained monkeys and village idiots (us indie developers) trying to amuse them with elevator pitches. And it's all very serious business and costly too.
The benefit of connecting with people cannot be denied. If you as an indie decide to put the money down to attend, I think thats a good thing to do. You need to meet people and talk about your game. Go with that expectation only. Finish your game, have an alpha and marketing materials and business plans all ready, create sales, you have a chance. If you only have a paper napkin full of doodles, stay at home. The events we went were all really hardball. I saw many Indies who had flown from across the world getting increasingly more sad at their demo booths when they realized that this is not going to help with finishing their game. Uh-ah.
The problem I feel is that with the current situation here in Finland is that money and talent don't meet like they should. Small studios talk about the shitty publisher deals they were forced to make, bigger studios talk about the shitty investment deals they had to make where they do the work and somebody gets the money if they do their work well. This is quite an oppressive climate for the newbie: Aren't games supposed to be fun?
Best piece of information at pocket gamer connects I heard in the toilet, two Finnish game enterpreneurs talking while taking a leak: Don't waste your time with Finnish investors, take American money, you get more and easier. I made a note to self about that. =)
So summa summarum, if you want to make your own game and release it, remember: Nobody is going to give a shit about you or your team or your game until it's almost finished. After over one year of development we're getting there. And it feels good. It's worth it!
There will be another foray into demoing Hoodownr and that is going to happen at Ropecon 2014 in Espoo, 25-27.7. We'll be there, come over and Say Hello!
Boom boom!
Sami
Hoodownr
Again, the past few months have been a blur of activity for us. Earlier this spring we got into a program that prepared us for the Midnight Pitch Event to present our game to potential investors. Yep, who wants that honey as long as there's some money kind-of. The training program was really good, we got a lot of feedback and ideas about the game from people on the business side of things and managed to clarify our goals etcetera and so forth. Vital importance!
The pitch fest came, we had a flyer and t-shirts printed and all that stuff thanks to KM's lovely guidance, no hippie rugs this time like at Assembly, professional edges all around! =)
The actual event was held in sandy Nallikari, we pitched the game in front of a live audience and held a show-and-tell booth backstage, giving out fliers, showing the video and luring investment. We got a really great response from players and govenment people who are involved with activating nation to have more exercise. A coordinator from the Finnish occupational health institute was very keen to co-operate. One investor popped by to tell us specificly that this is not their field, thanks for the info, asshole.
As always, we're targeting this blog to indie developers as well as gamers. Hence the rants. Hmm here we go:
Any regular studio would report their Midnight Pitch festival experience as a resounding success. In a way, that is true. The number of new connections and new information that came to light is awesome and we also had a great, private afterparty at Kulttuuribingo with a DJ flown in from Japan and a kick-ass jam session till 4am in the morning. Party: great. But looking from the goals point of view it was a disappointment. We went in to find funding and that didn't happen. So that bit was well fucked. Moving on to pocketgamer:
We decided to do Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki and went there a few days after Midnight pitch. No booth this time but the engines were well warm to pitch the game. Again so many people were met, so many people wanted to sell us their shit but in general it was good, the feedback we got from Hoodownr was great. People love it =)
On the afterparty side of things, our PR lady km got herself on the Rovio table while I was talking to Fingersoft and a bunch of Chinese publishers that are looking into new games that already have a track record of ten million downloads. That's just fantastic, chinese install expectations scale well in Finland with less than 6 million people. Anyway those guys were funny so that was good enough.
Met loads of other devs and had good exchanges with everybody. I really loved this new game called Pako, it's out on for windows phone, check it out! There was a few more interesting titles out there, cannot remember the names now but I guess I'll save that stuff for a tweet someday =)
We met Oscar Clarke and Bob Heuel again and had a really nice word with them, Oscar was happy with our flier and said 'I'd buy that for a dollar' =)
Not being able to take people for a test run was a bummer, it was raining cats and dogs in Helsinki. But showing the video and our alpha worked out fine. No investor love this time around either, people at pocket gamer are looking for a copy of an existing succesful product which is always the way forward. The logic goes: It's angry birds with a twist == angry birds is making money === this could also make money for me. It's bad form not trying to copy anything but to build something original.
Currently there appears to be lot of investment money around for games business. Investment events pride with the amount of capital the attending investors have in total. In reality, a very small part of that translates into actual investment I'm afraid. Slush, pitchfest etc. from the indie dev perspective are mostly about complacent, rich penguins coming to hear other rich penguins talk and then watch the trained monkeys and village idiots (us indie developers) trying to amuse them with elevator pitches. And it's all very serious business and costly too.
The benefit of connecting with people cannot be denied. If you as an indie decide to put the money down to attend, I think thats a good thing to do. You need to meet people and talk about your game. Go with that expectation only. Finish your game, have an alpha and marketing materials and business plans all ready, create sales, you have a chance. If you only have a paper napkin full of doodles, stay at home. The events we went were all really hardball. I saw many Indies who had flown from across the world getting increasingly more sad at their demo booths when they realized that this is not going to help with finishing their game. Uh-ah.
The problem I feel is that with the current situation here in Finland is that money and talent don't meet like they should. Small studios talk about the shitty publisher deals they were forced to make, bigger studios talk about the shitty investment deals they had to make where they do the work and somebody gets the money if they do their work well. This is quite an oppressive climate for the newbie: Aren't games supposed to be fun?
Best piece of information at pocket gamer connects I heard in the toilet, two Finnish game enterpreneurs talking while taking a leak: Don't waste your time with Finnish investors, take American money, you get more and easier. I made a note to self about that. =)
So summa summarum, if you want to make your own game and release it, remember: Nobody is going to give a shit about you or your team or your game until it's almost finished. After over one year of development we're getting there. And it feels good. It's worth it!
There will be another foray into demoing Hoodownr and that is going to happen at Ropecon 2014 in Espoo, 25-27.7. We'll be there, come over and Say Hello!
Boom boom!
Sami
Hoodownr
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