Category Archives: general

posts about general topics, even not related to computer games

Planet Stronghold status of development – September 2010

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I thought about writing each month a sort of mini-development diary about what is the current status of my upcoming RPG sci-fi game “Planet Stronghold”. I know it’s not the end of September yet but I am so busy recently that I can assure I won’t be able to make anything more beside what I’m going to write in this post.

So let’s start in order:

  1. at beginning of the month I thought I made the game a bit too much “casual”. There was little strategy involved in the fights, so I decided to add Action Points, several different kind of attacks, and more
  2. I then realized that, beside being a pain to code, it would have been too much “hardcore”. So I ended up with a middle solution that I believe works quite well. You have different attack types that can change a lot the course of the battle, and now each item can be used only once, then your turn ends (before you could just heal yourself completely provided you had enough healing kits in your pack)
  3. Then I started implementing the quest and side quests. I made only one so far, as a test, and I am very pleased. Before uploading the new alpha though, I’ll wait until I have written a bit more quests / main plot story, so you can try different kind of quests. I like the fact that now you can use the heroes skills to solve certain situations instead of simply jumping straight into the battle (you can still do that, of course!)
  4. like many RPGs, the game is mostly linear as far as the main plot is concerned, but the side quests are very open. You can complete them all, or you can ignore them all, as you wish. Some give very powerful reward items though, so I would advise trying to complete them all!
  5. I am now at a good point: the game engine, including the battle system and the new quest/skills usage system is very stable. I believe I fixed all the bugs. I am also going to improve the barracks so that you can also choose the party formation: this way you can fight the battles with less party members and they’ll get more XP each one.

About this last point, I am still unsure if to use the Training Screen I’ve been coded though. In practice would work like this: the heroes left unselected can begin a training session so they slowly improve the skills automatically on their own. Though I am not sure would make much sense? Perhaps would be cooler to have lower level heroes to bring with you so they would then level fast when fighting higher level enemies? (it’s some sort of powerleveling  that you can do in the MMOs :D)

I have to think about this! Share your thoughts if you want.

In October, I’ll surely reach a point where I can think seriously which direction to take. I could start a beta pre-order of the game, since then the game would be already quite long and don’t want to keep it public, or perhaps do a closed beta. I have also to see if to integrate some optional online features in it. I think a pre-order would be a good move so could give me an idea of how much people like the game, so I know if I can spend lot of more time/resources on it, or not 🙂

Why you shouldn’t compare adventures with other kind of games

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Was talking by email with Dave Gilbert of WadjetEyeGames yesterday about some complaints from players for the length of story-based games like adventures or visual novels. Some would say that for $20 they expected at leat 8-10h of “gameplay”, since most other games you find (especially in portals) offers you that.

As I wrote already a few weeks ago in my “how long is it” post, you can’t really compare such kind of games with other games. Take a look at the Hidden Object Games you see in portals: they offer usually 4-5h of gameplay, but they do that using several tricks:

  • first of all, there’s much less text/narration. This isn’t necessarily bad: many people don’t like to read much texts, and that’s why I want also to make some more classic adventure games alongside my actual Visual Novel and Dating Sims. But is much easier to write a story with less dialogues, than come up with a long story rich of plot twists and interesting situations, as you can imagine
  • then they’re filled by minigames. Many minigames are mini-puzzles, so it depends also how skilled you are. But should that count towards the gameplay length? If so, the problem then is not the actual story/plot length but the kind of minigames that are in it. Also the risk is of breaking the narration by putting too many minigames, so there will always be someone unhappy
  • reusing content. Many games reuse locations, for example the same background, but you have to find different set of objects. That’s ok of course, as a game designer I know perfectly that you often have to find a compromise. But is the player really happy about that? I mean, why stretch the story/gameplay recycling stuff, just to “reach 5h of gameplay”?

I understand the complaint of some people, but you need also to understand the amount of work that’s behind those games. Is much easier to come up with a new “reskin” of time management games or even strategy games (unless you put something different). Many RPG made with RPGMaker XP uses all the same tilesets/sprites! So you need to understand how hard is to make adventures, since you can’t recycle/reuse stuff, but everything needs to be drawn from scratch, a interesting story needs to be written, and so on. There is a reason if mainstream AAA companies left adventure games a few years ago. Now they’re coming back a bit because with 3d content is indeed possible to re-use many assets (a new character can be easily created starting from a old 3d model as base).

I really think that the only solution in this case would be recurring to microtransactions but also some online game. If I was selling my Vera Blanc games for $9.99 I probably would sell more copies but would almost for sure make less money overall (believe me I tried so many times to lower prices but I simply couldn’t survive with the revenues).

So I was thinking that a webgame made like an adventure, at a very accessible price (price based on game length) should make everyone happy and at same time being online could get more viral and known, so get more exposure (needed because if I set such low pricetag I need to shift much more copies).

Though I’m sure there still would be someone who complains about price 😀

How all indie developers can get their games on Steam

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Today was talking with some other developer friends about a “hot topic”. Steam, and the difficulty to get in it.

If you’re an indie developer, at least once in your life you got a forum/post comment saying “you should get your game on Steam!”. It sounded almost as an insult, like saying “you fool, why don’t you just use that?”. Yeah, like if Steam was an OPEN platform.

Getting on Steam is really HARD, and for most indies they represent the main source of income, a bit like casual portals are for casual game developers.

There’s really no rule (for Indies) to get on Steam. Many games look very similar, yet “some” are accepted, and others not. Their selection criteria aren’t really clear to be honest.

Now, I came with a solution that I hope the Steam people will at least consider: why Steam doesn’t allow any indie to sell their games through them, as a sort of shareware vendor? We could add “Buy on Steam” button beside our usual vendors like BMT Micro, Plimus, Regnow, and so on.

And those games wouldn’t appear on Steam. They would need absolutely to do NOTHING, except create an interface for developer so they can setup their products. They could even get away with a submission fee or a yearly subscription like Appstore does.

Advantages would be for both sides: indie devs would finally be able to tell to the users who ask if they can buy from Steam “Yes, here is the link.”

Steam could get “free money”, and honestly they would get the most advantages from this idea. They could also be surprised by how some apparently unknown games sells, and maybe “promote” the best selling “underdogs” on their main games catalogue.

I see really no downside to this idea. Now I hope someone at Steam looks at this post, and at least takes in consideration this suggestion 😉

Au revoir, Vera Blanc

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In other words, the second episode of Vera Blanc, “Ghost In The Castle”, is officially out. To find more about it, just visit the game official page at http://www.verablanc.com
This time, Vera must investigate a mysterious ghost that is haunting a old castle in the italian town of Bargi. It’s the ghost real or is a myth? is Roberto Anastasi, the man who hired you for this case, hiding something? why Eva and the Master are still following you?

You’ll find answers to all those questions in the second and for now last episode. As I said before, it’s very unlikely that a 3rd chapter of the game will be released in this format, since the production costs are much higher than those of a traditional visual novel, but maybe next year something might change. I would like to make a “real adventure game” based on Vera Blanc character since I think would be perfect for that kind of game.

Imagine something similar to those good old Lucasfilm adventures with many puzzles to solve, less texts to read, and maybe a fully voiced version.

However, first need to finish several other projects I’ve started (many RPGs and otome games) and then next year we’ll see. Meanwhile, if you like the games I’m producing, and if you like the character of Vera Blanc, please buy the game and spread the word so the chances of having a 3rd great episode will increase 🙂

So for now, au revoir Vera Blanc. Hopefully she’ll come back next year in a completely new gameplay system, and why not, maybe with a more manga-oriented style!

Minisurvey about VN/Dating sims results

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Disclaimer: speaking with some friends who knows more about statistics than me, they said that the data collected might be not really reliable. I know, I made it mostly for fun with no intention of providing the “ultimate guide to make visual novels” for game developer 🙂

However, from my personal experience (I’ve made many VN/Dating Sims in past 3 years) I have to admit was quite surprised by the results, because they match completely my experience regarding which games sells more. The data collected comes mostly from Lemmasoft, Amaranthia, my own twitter, my forums, and indiegamer forums.

The total people who answered is 126, but recently has been progressing of only 1 new person a day, so I guess is time to draw conclusiong and post results.

I’ve made a PNG image of the final result, so anyone can link to it or share it easily, look on the right side of this post for the clickable thumbnail. As you can see, the standard Otome and Bish?jo are the most popular genres (well, no surprise here). As for art-style, detailed manga (I suppose like Heileen, Bionic Heart) wins hands on over all other art genres. People don’t like american comic style and cartoon style (I wish I did this survey before making Vera Blanc, I would have used manga art for that game too!).

As for setting, again no surprise: fantasy settings are always the most popular in any kind of games, not just VN/Dating Sims, so really I expected that. The other settings are more or less equivalent, only the modern drama/slice of life is slightly more popular (and yes, sci-fi isn’t much popular!).

Sexyness in games is a bit surprising, and probably the result less reliable IMHO. From my experience is always safer to go with family friendly (if you’re interested in maximizing revenues) for the simple fact that most big portal/sites wouldn’t accept your game otherwise. If you are making the game just as hobby or with direct sales in mind only, then you can ignore it 🙂 So far most of my games fall into the 2nd category from top, sexy stuff, but I have many family friendly games coming out next. One day I would like to make a very sexy, almost erotic game though. Maybe when I have enough funds to make Bionic Heart 2 as I have in mind of doing it.

The extras question is really a surprise. And I believe is very accurate: Most people don’t want to mix genres. If they want to play a minigame, they can find plenty of them in casual games. I really think VN/dating sims should focus more on typical dating sims elements and statistics. Or just let the players to read the story. You can also argue that if you put too many minigames in a VN, then it isn’t a real VN anymore but a “game with a story” 😉 It’s somewhat hybrid territory here.

“What is most important” result is also interesting. The most important thing is WRITING! Not art, as I was always thinking. Also, the starting idea, and I agree completely. If the starting idea is good, and the writing too, you have all the elements needed for a good VN. That’s the reason why I’m not personally writing my future games anymore 😀
Also is interesting that most people don’t care about voice overs. I had already given up on that because of too many unreliable voice-artists, and the result somehow comforts me. People don’t seem to care too much about the number of endings as well. Maybe better to make a more linear story, but longer to play ?

Based on the next question, “Do you really replay dating sim/visual novels to see all the possible endings?” it really seems so. Not many people are obsessed about unlocking all endings, apparently. I sort of agree since I do the same. I did the same also for AAA titles like Dragon Age / mass effect 2. I simply went to youtube and looked for videos for the other possible endings 🙂

About the remaining results, people seems to like game series (after a slow start I am now getting good results with Heileen 1+2 bundles), most people use a PC to play, and they don’t seem too much enthusiast about the idea of having to be connected to play a game.

That’s all! Again, this is not the holy-bible-of-VNs, but I found the results quite interesting and in many cases matching my own experience.

It means that you should all make fantasy based VN with stats and RPG elements? Well no, I believe that any game that is GOOD can sell: is your choice if you want to try to appeal mainstream (but have more competition) or niches (smaller market but much less competition). Personally I’d like to see more horror VNs, for example! 🙂