The Bytten Write Up: Mark Sheeky

2007-04-04T21:32:00.001Z

Not just because of the Flatspace II banner on the site do I mention the redesigned Retro 247. The site lists and promotes independent game with good old fashioned gameplay and is clearly capitalising on the growing retro gaming cult. Founded by Marc Georgeson of Addictive 247 fame, an early game by Addictive was one of the first ever Bytten reviews.

Something 2 Play For

2007-01-22T17:58:00.000Z

If you're looking for an indie game but don't know what to pick, then the pixel wall on something2play might help. The page offers a free 100x60 pixel avert to indie developers so there's a lot of games from a variety of developers to choose from.

The Mini Ministry Mystery Mix

2006-11-20T17:46:00.000Z

Top London dance music venue Ministry of Sound have released Ministry of Sound The Quiz, online and on DVD. The Flash web version is a multiple choice music quiz which is short and little simplistic but has nice 3D graphics and you get video clips with some of the questions. Perhaps one for a five minute break.

2006-11-15T10:08:00.001Z

I've just had news that Oddlabs have updated Tribal Trouble. There are only a few small changes, perhaps because nothing major needs to be changed in this excellent indie R.T.S. game, which is as beautiful to play as it is to look at. Website: http://tribaltrouble.com.

Free Textures

2006-09-07T08:35:00.000Z

Some good news for game developers from the Genetica creators, Spiral Graphics. They have just released a royalty-free collection of 150 beautiful quality textures in Genetica format (which can be read by Genetica or the free Genetica Viewer). The new collection is free on www.spiralgraphics.biz/packs/

Stargamer

2006-08-07T11:35:00.000Z

www.stargamer.net is a new website with news and reviews of all space orientated games. The site is mainly aimed at full blown PC and console titles but will feature the odd indie game too. The site is the brainchild of former deputy editor of PC Zone magazine, Richie Shoemaker and is described as a public beta at the moment with a lot of content to due be added.

2006-07-16T08:26:00.000Z

Tim Henman, probably the world's best tennis player (I did say probably) now has a tribute game courtesy of a company that specialises in Flash games and web based promotional material, TAMBA Internet. Tim is so good that he has mastered tennis, quit, and taken up pinball instead (who can blame him?). It's a free browser based game so here it is.

2006-07-12T09:13:00.000Z

Rag Doll Kung Fu is the first indie game distributed using the Steam system and it's a sort of "Thunderbirds beat each other up" type game, or as Gerry Anderson might say a Supermarionattacktion. Let's have a snippet from the press release:

In "Rag Doll Kung Fu", players have the freedom to control character movements by guiding limbs and body parts with the mouse in a puppet-like fashion. There are no pre-set animations, so fighting styles are unique to each and every player. In addition to staging kung fu fights, the game allows players to dance, chat, act, record movies, and remix audio tracks.

Wow this does more than some film stars I could mention. Hey if it was multiplayer and live a bunch of people could get online and perform Evita or something. What a cool idea that is that I've just had. The weblink: www.ragdollkungfu.com

2006-06-18T13:23:00.000Z

Cloanto have released Amiga Forever 2006, a CD and online distributed set of Amiga games, demos and video. The cross platform distribution seems to be targetted (via built-in emulation) mainly towards current Windows PC's. I've given the download 'plus' version a spin and getting the demos and games to run on Windows is as simple as installing the package then clicking on the demo or game from the menu. The latest version of WinUAE plus the Amiga ROM files are on there too. Details on http://www.amigaforever.com. As Cloanto say:

Compared to the previous release, Amiga Forever 2006 features 200 MB of new Amiga games and demoscene productions (CD version) and hundreds of enhancements. Some titles, such as Eric Chahi's Another World, have been re-released as a special build for Amiga Forever 2006.

Codex Alpe Adria 2006

2006-05-27T17:47:00.000Z

European Amiga fans will be interested in the Codex Alpe Adria 2006, probably the world's biggest Amiga conference. They say:

Codex Alpe Adria 2006, the friendly alternative computing event,
will take place in five weeks in Udine, which is within a one-hour
drive from three airports, as well as from the Alps, beaches, Venice,
Trieste, Austria, Slovenia and other beautiful locations.

Jens Schönfeld (developer of tools such as the C64 Ethernet interface)
and Bernd Schmidt (author of the UAE Amiga emulation software) already
confirmed their attendance, while other familiar retrocomputing and
demoscene personalities are finalizing their plans.

Visit http://0xAA.org for details.

Neo-Genetics

2006-05-24T21:47:00.000Z

News from the Genetica people (see below). Two things that will undoubtedly come in handy to any developers. I'm a fan of Genetica and its gorgeous textures and used it for most of the procedural graphics in Flatspace II. Genetica 2.5 didn't change much in graphical quality but made great strides in the user interface area. Here is some blurb from their press release:

Spiral Graphics Inc. has released a royalty-free collection of 127 high quality seamless floor and wall textures. As well as standard JPEG previews, the collection is available in the specialized Genetica procedural texture format, which includes embedded effect maps for use with bump and specular channels, among others.

Genetica Viewer, a free texture rendering application, has also been released to allow artists to freely make use of these and other textures that are saved in Genetica's powerful texture format. Genetica Viewer is capable of rendering the textures, along with their corresponding effect maps, at any resolution up to 3,000 x 3,000. Genetica Viewer can make a number of adjustments to each material, such as re-randomizing the texture, zooming the texture while maintaining seamless edges, and color adjustments..

The free textures are available at www.spiralgraphics.biz/packs/
Genetica Viewer is available at www.spiralgraphics.biz/viewer/

Three Men And Their Horses

2006-05-24T15:05:00.000Z

The latest addition to the Bytten review queue is a game called Team Penning Game, penning meaning herding cattle and sheep etc. into pens. The graphics are simple but the idea is innovative and it looks fun. The review will be up in a few weeks or you can check out the demo or video trailer on http://www.teampenninggame.com.

The GameProducer Interview

2006-05-16T14:25:00.000Z

I recently had an offer from Juuso Hietalahti to ask him about his website www.gameproducer.net, a web resource for game developers. A quick e-interrogation ensued and I became enthused and convinced that this is a site worth telling the world about!

For the readers out there, what is gameproducer.net?

GameProducer.net is a site dedicated to help new (and bit more experienced) game producers and developers. The resources on the site are to be practical, something that you can use right away. The entries are short, and right to the point: I want to make sure that readers get the information fast. Some of the entries are news items or offer some other general info, but the major part of the posts offer some insight in different production issues.

Game production job is a task that requires lots of skills, not just programming. As a producer you need to know how to handle business, marketing, sales, team leadership, negotiations, game development tools, production, design and development. GameProducer.net concentrates on giving information on all areas of game production.

What makes the site different from the other sites for game developers?

I believe there are some differences with other sites for developers: The site offers a daily production hint, tip or insight. There are many sites that are not updated daily, nor weekly. GameProducer.net stays fresh - every day.

The site offers practical information that comes directly to my experience. The posts show my point-of-views and my insight on games production. I don't copy other authors' texts, unless I find something that really hits me. I'm not writing posts about what others have written - I'm writing this resource as I experience games production.

GameProducer.net is dedicated to help beginner game producers and developers. There are game development sites that are highly valued, but might sometimes offer the information in a language that's hard to understand by a beginner. I admit that I also do that sometimes, but luckily the readers kindly remind me when I it happens...

GameProducer.net offers one very interesting resource that's hardly ever available anywhere: sales statistics (http://www.gameproducer.net/category/sales-statistics/). There are detailed information about the sales of different games. In this accuracy I have not seen sales data anywhere else. I know there are some forum posts about the sales, but those posts might lack some important details like development time, team size, promotion methods and so on.

It seems that the site lies somewhere between news, a developer's blog and articles for others. Would that be a fair comment?

Perhaps it lies somewhere there, but I wouldn't put it exactly in that way. I'd say GameProducer.net is 'Daily ideas, hints, and inspiration to new and aspiring game producers - from a producer'. At the time of writing, there are 17 news out of 147 posts written, and only 5 posts that could be categorized as 'developer's blog' - the rest of the posts are more or less helpful production hints & tips. The site is dedicated to help others, not to just tell what's happening somewhere. Whenever I get an email with a comment like "I have been following your "blog for a month or so, and I think you offer some very good ideas" I know I'm on the right path.

4. Do you do all of the writing yourself?

Yes

5. Why did you create the site (and what made you come up with the idea)?

The main reason why I put the site online was to help beginner game developers. I believe that helping others is the best way to help myself, and this has happened to me. If I hadn't put the site online, I wouldn't most likely get such a good chances to write a book or write articles to other places like GamaSutra. Or to get interviewed by great places like Bytten ;)

Secondly this site gives me a chance to publish my thoughts. I want to write, this is a way to do that.

Thirdly, the site (hopefully) helps me to learn to write better English. As a Finnish person, my native language is not English. Writing English is something that today's game producers have to handle.

Mythic Blades Caption Competition

2006-04-26T19:59:00.000Z

Cartel Games, the people behind Mythic Blades had kindly offered one lucky Bytten reader a FREE copy of the Ernie award winning game. Mythic Blades is a beat-em-up with a theme of greek mythology so all you had to do to win is take a look at the picture below (Odysseus and the Sirens) and come up with a caption. Entry to this competition is now closed. Congratulations to the winnsrs! The winning entries were "Stupid harpies! Why can't we just get pooped on by pigeons like everyone else?" and "Will you put some clothes on? Just the sight of you is killing all the birds!"

The GameTrove Interview

2006-04-21T08:41:00.000Z

For the readers out there, what is GameTrove.net?

GameTrove is a free indie/casual games portal. Games are submitted by the developers who made them instead of by a publisher or an affiliate. Users decide which games are the best instead of an editor. GameTrove puts the users in touch with the developers and gives them control over which games are shown on the site.

What gave you the idea for the site?

After finishing a game at work we looked for sites to post it on and couldn't find many. It seemed like there was a site missing from the internet and someone needed to make it. I really like how digg.com works and tried to incorporate a lot of their ideas.

What are the aims of the site?

For the players it's to provide a easy to use portal of casual and indie games. For the developers it's to get rid of the middle-man, the publisher who takes sometimes as much as 75% of the profit.

Why is it different from other listings sites?

I tried to add a lot of features and polish that most listings sites don't have and a wider range of games than the big portals. Also there is no middle-man. The developers provide the content and the players provide the ratings, comments and reviews. There is no editor or publisher deciding which games are good, it's the players who decide.

What plans do you have for the future?

I have a few ideas I'm throwing around but mostly I just want to wait and see what happens. How are players going to respond to the site and is it going to be able to support itself. I'm going for a community site not just a list of games so expect more social type features.

Sounds great! The site is looking good so far and has a large set of indie games, we all hope it keeps going with as much enthusiasm as it has started with. Thanks to Dan for the interview, you can browse the site at www.gametrove.net.

Bytten Ernie Awards 2006

2006-04-14T09:20:00.000Z

The Bytten Ernie awards are given each Easter and reward independent games that stand out of the crowd or deserve recognition.

The category list can vary. Each of our resident reviewers has selected a number of games that they have played, choosing games that excel in a particular area or games with promise that might not win an award elsewhere.

Best A.I.
Awarded to Tribal Trouble by Oddlabs

Most games require artificial intelligence of some sort and in the past year I've seen my fair share of games that demand it, from the first person shooter War World: Tactical Combat, to the Risk-like game The Strategist.

As a real time strategy game, Tribal Trouble needed A.I. on many levels and it had it. From path-finding by your soldiers, to their local intelligence, to a global strategy demanded by the computer opponents, Tribal Trouble managed each task to make a game that was easy to play despite many levels of complexity.

The Same But Different Award
Awarded to PaperBall by E-Giraffa

To some, clones are the evil face of indie games but each game has its merits and sometimes an old idea will be done well enough to equal or beat the archetype. For a game to be fun it must be balanced well no matter how original the idea, and in many ways making an existing idea stand out is as hard as making an original game. Arcade shooter Zig by Ben Campbell came close to winning this award but PaperBall simply had me addicted.

PaperBall is a simple Breakout game with graphics that looked like scribbles on paper. The game has exactly the right level of pace and speed, with enough features to keep you interested and enough gameplay to keep you hooked. Graphics and presentation are well done and the game didn't go overboard with type of pickup or complexity. Innovation is not necessary if the game is fun and distinctive, and PaperBall proves that.

Most Original Idea That Worked
Gink in Trouble by Generation Stars

Although independent games are famed for their innovation, innovation in gameplay is not as common as variety between games. Many so-called innovative games are clones with one new idea tacked on. Few games defy categorisation but Gink in Trouble did.

The player character, Gink, was constantly falling and all you could do was steer him in an effort to keep him falling. The central game dynamic was rather fun, and this combined with the cute graphics reminded me of the classic platformer The New Zealand Story. The gameplay did suffer from a lack of variety and depth but Gink was among the most innovative games I've reviewed.

Best Graphics
Mythic Blades by Cartel Games

I've seen many impressive games over the past year. Zig was stylish and retro, and PaperBall was innovative too. War World: Tactical Combat and Tribal Trouble had top quality visuals but graphically I think both of those were beaten to the post by Mythic Blades.

Mythic Blades was a beautiful spectacle to behold. This performed well in all areas from the large and wonderfully animated characters, to the well designed selection and plot screens. It was a great shame that the gameplay wasn't as fine tuned as the graphics because games of this type are very rare in the world of independent games.

A game as large and complex as Mythic Blades deserves acclaim as an achievement for the production team. Indie games are often labours of love, with small teams working for nothing but the promise of possible sales. The indie beat-em-up is a relatively virgin genre and this only increased the commercial risk but the team didn't compromise on production values and must be applauded for that.

2006-04-09T12:34:00.000Z

Ultimately this blog will replace the Articles section on Bytten so the entries below represent a republication of the articles and previews I have written in the past.

Bytten Ernies 2005

2006-04-09T12:28:00.000Z

Strangest Game Experience
Awarded to Holepit by Rene Dudfield

Of all the games I have ever encountered as a player, I remember Holepit as the strangest. If the title isn't distracting enough, the dark red and black background coupled with teratismic player characters and bright green glowing boxes certainly make this game one that is hard to forget.

A multi-player game, the aim is to race against other competitors to push boxes down a hole in the middle of the level. The control method sees your character chasing a normal mouse pointer as opposed to any direct control, and the digeridoo music is the first case of a live performance recording I've encountered in any indie game soundtrack.

Best Solo Effort
Awarded to Aryan Mukherjee for Railway Mogul

Game development is a very difficult thing to do, and most games nowadays are developed by teams, but a number of solo developers submit games to Bytten. Lone developers need to do the game design, programming, graphics, sound and testing, not to mention the essential marketing and customer support.

Railway Mogul is at the pinnacle of a those solo efforts. The resulting game was perhaps too complicated for mass appeal, but the task achieved by developer Aryan Mukherjee is definately worthy of distinction and praise. Aryan built a virtual 3D community with animated factories, roads and farms to create a complex and very substantial train simulation.

Game developers often dream of that giant perfect project. A few start, and many get bogged down or give up working on games that take over a year to create. Railway Mogul may have been too specialised and unwieldy for an average player, but represented the best of individual talent and perseverance.

Most Artistic Game
Awarded to Smart Lines by Rototo Studio

I turned a few heads when I awarded Smart Lines 96% and a gold star. The game is little more than a simple four in a row game, but if the graphics are right, the sound is right, and the game worked as well as it could then 100% should be attainable for any game genre.

Games are as much about style as playability and it was the look, sound and design of Smart Lines that made it stand out among the other games. It's a simple game from a playability perspective, but every aspect of the game looks attractive, and a lot of thought clearly went into getting the feel of the interface and controls just right.

The measure of an artist is knowing when to stop. Adding feature upon feature can sometimes detract from a game, and the quality of a game cannot be measured in the quantity of extra features, weapons, enemies, pickups or bonus rounds. Smart Lines demonstrates that.

Most Ambitious Game
Awarded to Silmar by Jeff Mather

I find that most programmers consider their game genre the most difficult and complicated to make. I think that of all game types, dungeon games like Rogue are the most difficult. Such games have lots of monsters and objects, and each can be interacted with in lots of ways, and the random environment adds a level of danger for the game designer that takes a lot of hard work to balance effectively.

With that in mind, I award Silmar an Ernie for most ambitious game. The dungeon game has been in constant part time development for many years, and although the graphics are simple tiles without animation, and although the game is difficult and sometimes frustrating to play, Silmar has as much depth and complexity as any other role playing game.

To create a Rogue-like game from scratch takes a lot of work. Games like Nethack and ADOM have been in development for many years and games like those are highly ambitious projects for any lone developer.

Special Award
Nightmare Castle by Thomas and Andrew Venables

Some players believe that playability is more important that presentation. While this might be true, a highly playable game essentially requires high quality graphics and presentation to get noticed.

I wanted to give a special mention of the platform game Nightmare Castle. Created by two brothers, the game is highly playable and many aspects of the game were very well constructed. From the lightning strikes and living statue fight during the opening sequence, this scrolling platformer in the style of the original Prince of Persia game had exactly the right amount dramatic content, when most games have none.

The controls and feel of the game were perfect, but the old fashioned looking graphics and lack of slick presentation probably unfairly damaged this good game. Of all of the games I've reviewed, two stand out because of the excellent dramatic presentation of their respective plots. Those games are the highly acclaimed Starscape, and the less well known Nightmare Castle.

Genetica

2006-04-09T12:17:00.000Z

Introduction
Genetica is a texture generation tool. The logic behind it is impeccable. A series of image generators or manipulators called "nodes" which are not unlike Photoshop filters, are fed through a hierarchy of the users design to create a stunning image at the end. The nodes are procedural in design and can be manipulated and combined in various ways and as you might expect are especially good at organic or noisy, dirty textures. The seamlessness of the images also makes the program useful for web page, or even fabric design.

A couple of things make Genetica more useful than Photoshop for texture design. The ability to tile seamlessly is designed into the image processing, and the texture can be zoomed in or out to create more detail. Every node on the tree is visible as it's resultant image so it is easy to edit one part of a texture and see your changes instantly proliferate through the network.

Setting Up
The program requires the dot NET framework, which if requested is downloaded and installed by the set up program. There are currently a few niggles on Windows 98 machines like mine, but there are work arounds and once I knew about them everything worked fine.

The first thing that struck me about the program was its complexity. The middle window shows the node hierarchy, that is the arrangement of nodes that make up the final texture. The hierarchy can have branches that are packed into one node, so one node in the middle of a tree could represent the end of another little tree. These 'group' nodes are like sub-routines in a program, little image processing boxes designed to your specification. It takes a little getting used to, but it makes the screen less cluttered, as well as making it easier to add a preset effect to any point you want in the tree.

In the top left of the screen, a second window shows a Windows style tree of the current nodes. You can't drag any of the sub-windows around but the default layout works well.

Node Processing
Like Photoshop filters, nodes can generate or manipulate images. The nodes are not plug-in based, but built into the program so Genetica is not as expandable as it could be but the ones there cover a very wide area and are all very high quality in end result. The 'Cells' node alone can be used to generate crusty skin, leopard rings, marble cracks, bark or cratered moon-scapes. Importantly you can use your own bitmap as a node which is great if you want to add dirt, or some other effect to an existing texture.

There is a fantastic Distortion node. Two images combine to distort your image, one channel specifies the direction and another the power or intensity. With both together you can create a massive range of distortions from refraction to fuzzy edging to whirlpool swirls to ocean ripples and more.

Interface
Every node parameter has a number, often a floating point. Full white is 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 which is a standard I applaud. There are no sliders for any parameters (which is inexcusable) but each parameter has little up/down arrows to increment or decrement the values. Most of the time you'll end up typing in a number then clicking somewhere to get the image to update. It works fine when you get used to it, but a slider would really have helped. Notably the Gaussian Blur is very sensitive, often needing increments of 0.001.

Preset values for the nodes cannot be stored or recalled which is less than ideal, but you can copy a node to a new texture, save that and then later include it as a preset. There is no font support either which is a shame.

The vital recursive undo is there and it works well. Presets can be dragged and dropped straight from a folder (or folders) of your choice into the node tree. Very useful context menus make it quick and easy to insert or delete branches or nodes. The main menu is small and neat, and the controls are easy enough to understand without the need to read the help file.

Results
The interface might take some getting used to but ultimately the program can be judged by it's results and Genetica's output is wonderful. Some of the images are simply amazing. The rocks, bashed up wood and even the hedge presets look very very good, certainly better than an artist could hand draw in something like Paint Shop Pro. When versed in the program's use, the textures are easy to create too.

The 3D lighting effects are just great. It's a shame that the 'Illumination' mode functions more like a monochrome 'emboss' filter than a bump creator, but you can create height maps with a little work by combining multiple images. The refraction node can produce some amazing effects with minimal work too.

Nodes are generated as fades from red to black, a choice of other shades here would have been nice because red can be stressful to work with. To add color the exact gradient can be manipulated with a very good 'Colorize' node, that uses the common system of adding and dragging little anchors in the spectrum. With this you can add bands or design any other gradient, complex or simple. You can change the smoothness of the fade too, a nice option. Reduce it to quantize the levels of a blurred image and contour-up the edges.

The detail present is simply amazing. You can zoom the texture itself in any single node, branch, or the whole tree to add or remove detail. Of course the program is resolution independent so if you save your textures in Genetica, you can always re-render to a higher or lower degree as your game and it's hardware require.

Masking off/stencilling areas, or creating complex textures like faces can be awkward. The program works best for organic seamless textures like rock, wood (there is a wood grain generator), hull plates, gratings and things like that. It can also produce nice lens-flare light glow or fire effects.

Conclusion
With Genetica some detailed, focused and very beautiful images can be created. Textures are created by 'programming' the shapes and not drawing. The learning curve is quite steep and at first I found myself floundering a little. A graphic artist who is not a programmer might have a hard time learning to use Genetica, but after a day or two the amazing results will convert any scribbler. $135 represents a good investment for the presets alone, but it has to be noted that there are some lower price alternatives like Game Creators Texture Maker.

Could a small studio live without it? Well it depends on how much time you spend on texture design. The seamless tiling is great, but the quality of the output images are a better reason to buy the program. At first I could only see the omissions in the interface, but now I can only see my wonderful textures.

Resources
Spiral Graphics Website
Online Tour of Genetica (Recommended)

Program Details
Published by Spiral Graphics

System Requirements
Windows 98 or greater
Dot NET framework (optional upon install)
500mhz CPU
128Mb RAM
10Mb Hard Drive Space

The Moonpod Interview

2006-04-09T11:59:00.000Z

Starscape is the impressive debut from Moonpod, An A-Team of industry professionals who decided to take the indie route.

The game is a shoot-em-up with resource finding and research elements, as well as a good plot and excellent graphics and presentation. With a review due here in a few weeks, we caught up with the team to ask them about the game.

The Team
Nick Tipping: Art.
Darren Griffiths: Engine programmer.
Mark Featherstone: Game mechanics programmer and game designer.

How did the whole project come about?
Moonpod: We had talked about setting up our own studio for a long time (most developers do), one of the problems was the small team size, it would take us far too long to get the next all singing and dancing 3D engine up and running. We looked into the whole independent/shareware scene and realised there were a few gems out there, games small in scope but big on fun, and at that point we started looking for game ideas that were within our reach. There are a lot of indie games that promise the earth, but we'd rather see a game reach a high overall level of quality that approaches/matches that found in high street games.

How long did Starscape take to make and how much planning went in?
Moonpod: The project took 8 months from start to finish, coming from mainstream development we had plenty of experience with the normal development process. The only difference here was that the reduced scope of the game let us condense the time line from two years to 8 months. That said, it was still a mammoth undertaking, 7 day working weeks and 16 hour days.

Nick: My lazy way of avoiding perspective setup. Create a quick 3d model of the room with a grid on it, and roughly model any difficult surfaces (e.g. curves). Print this out at A4 and stick it on a lightbox.

You've worked on full blown commercial titles. How different is indie development and what are the pro's and con's to each?
Darren: I'm happy no suits talk to me, but I don't have as much money to spend on useless gadgets anymore!
Nick: The main difference for me is I'm an art team of one, so I have to do everything. It's great though because every day is different, there's no production line mentality, and I don't waste half my day explaining to management why a particular unit looks like it does! I do miss having other artists to bounce ideas off, but luckily Mark and Darren are pretty good with feedback.
Mark: Yes, you have to wear a lot of hats with indie development which is interesting but also tiring. With a small team communication is instant and direct, when the team size is 10-20 then it takes a lot of work just to keep everyone motivated and moving in the right direction. The lack of higher management lets us respond more quickly to changing conditions, we don't have to wait a week for a decision. Managers, producers and directors tend to form committees and distance themselves from development somewhat. As a result mistakes can be made because the people in control are balancing 5 different teams or just don't have the right familiarity with your specific game.

There aren't many games that combine 2D shooters with space conquest games, what were the influences on the game idea? The cartoon graphics reminded me of UFO/X-COM.
Mark: Yes I was a big fan of the X-COM series, inspiration for gameplay came from games like Star Control 2, Sinistar and Area88. I love it when a game takes simple familiar fun themes i.e. shootemup's, but then widens and deepens the experience with plot, characterisation, customisation and exploration. I think the ability to customise and freely explore are plus points in any game, another favourite of mine and good example being Syndicate Wars.

There's a cartoon look to the cutscenes and characters, were these sorts of graphics easier or more difficult or more fun to produce than the more conventional bitmap graphics and textures?
Nick: We wanted to introduce the story via animation, but video would have drastically increased the download time. We looked at techniques used by cart based games that were also limited by memory, in particular, Snes games like Metal Warriors. This prompted Darren to write a 2D animation tool, for recording sprite movement and playing it back. As a bonus he exposed all the sprite renderer's features to animation, like nice screen blend modes available on modern 3D hardware.

The look of the cut scenes and characters had been something I'd been experimenting with for a few years (I was originally looking for a way to spend more time working on character expression rather than photo-realism) However, I'd not been able to convince anyone to use the style in a game. Starscape seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it out. It was a bit of a gamble, but it seems to have been successful, judging by the number of fans JJ (the female mechanic in the game) seems to have acquired!

Which aspect of the game is each of you most proud of?
Nick: The front end backdrops are my favourite. I love clean edged art (probably because I'm quite a messy artist with traditional media), but I wasn't sure anyone else would like the style. After Starscape was released, we were inundated with requests to make desktop wallpapers available, so I added some to the customer section of our site, and we all have mousepads with them on too!
Mark: In the mainstream games industry part of my job was to monitor and maintain the overall quality of the game with a focus on the programming content. I think there are a lot of games that have great sound, or fantastic graphics or good gameplay, but rarely does a game manage to maintain the same level of quality across all elements. A game is made of a lot of separate parts i.e. graphics, gameplay, plot, sound, user interface, etc and if you drop the ball on any of them you ruin the overall effect. As an indie development I was particularly worried about this with Starscape, but I'm proud of the high quality of implementation we managed to achieve across the board. Oh and I also think the partnership between fighter and space station is a pretty unique and cool feature.
Darren: That the game was completed to such a high level of quality, in all areas, in such a short time scale.

What are your top favourite games of all time, on any platform?
Nick: Elite (not Frontier!), advance wars on GBA, Speedball II on the Amiga. RanaRama on spectrum! Bomberman.
Mark: GTA3ViceCity, FinalFantasyX, StarControl2, Elite, UltimaOnline, Wolfenstein/Doom/Quake, Ultima Underworld, Zelda, Goldeneye, SyndicateWars, Starcraft, Diablo, Dune2, Castelvania, Halo, Unreal, Command&Conquer, 3DMonsterMaze.
Darren: Head Over Heels - Spectrum, Elite - Spectrum, Escape From Monkey Island - Amiga, Quake 3 - PC.

Finally, what future plans do you have?
Moonpod: Work is already underway on our second game which should be out later in 2003, it is probably going to further develop the Starscape world and characters, but wont be a shootemup. We may come back and do a Starscape sequel at some point though. As our success continues we hope to develop our studio, take on a few more developers and expand the scope of our games.

Starscape will be reviewed on Bytten in a few weeks. Meanwhile you can take a look at the game yourself by visiting www.moonpod.com.

The Indie Enigma

2006-04-09T11:57:00.000Z

The Puzzle Problem
As a game developer and indie game reviewer on Bytten, one thing has become increasingly obvious. I see a lot of small games by independent developers and this growth area of gaming may have a fundamental problem at it's core. Independently developed games are much more genre restricted than main stream games due to time and money budget constraints. In short, the majority of games I come across are puzzle games.

First person shooters, driving games, real time strategy can appear but generally the whole independent sector is slanted in a different way to the mainstream triple A sector, and this could scupper plans for any deep market penetration by the independents.

For your average game playing 12 year old, 'puzzle' is a turn off word. Images of jigsaws (or worse, virtual jigsaws) are no competition to games like Unreal 2 and never will be. Music by indie record companies can become mainstream then passé, but it is looking increasingly likely that the only growth area indie games will undergo is a growth in developer numbers due to the ease of selling online nowadays and the difficulty in selling in retail outlets.

The Future
Indie games will never replace mainstream games in this writers view, but they are still vital. My first computer, at the age of nine, was a Dragon 32. An 8-bit machine with 8 colours, 3 of which were 'green'. BASIC was built in and this meant so was the ability to make games which I did even back then. Now it seems the indie game sector is the world's programming course, a vital role in a world where ease-of-use can make the mandatory Microsoft software hard-to-understand as well as inefficient-in-operation.

Indie developers go on to make mainstream games, and vice versa too. Indie and mainstream are two sides of a coin rolling into the future, not the resin and hardener in the epoxy of game development; destined to merge.

The best resource indie developers have and utilise is originality. Just when people were beginning to think that there were no new ideas, new ideas appear. Basegolf and RotaDim reviewed on this site are prime examples of unique game ideas that work. It is ironic then, and heartening in the mass-explosion-first-person-high-speed game world, that the most popular search keyword for games is that 12th century classic 'chess'.

2006-04-04T16:29:00.000Z

Hello dear readers from the editor of Bytten. These blogs will form a sort of staff column for Bytten writers and ultimately replace the Articles section on the main site. Expect to see game news, articles, chat, previews and other things here direct from the writers.