Update Omnibus

Wow - Lots of things have happened in the past three months but I hadn't taken the time to update my blog. So here is a summary of all things big and small from the past few months.

1. Quit my day job 

I finally quit my day job in order to pursue independent game development full time! I had the following projects which I thought were good enough reason for me to quit. And also thanks to the financial support of my wife I can take some time off to figure out what I wanted to do with games (and also my US green card came in last year). So this has really just been all the right things coming together finally.

2. Babycastles

I  have been helping the Babycastles folks with a few things. First I made them a new website - http://babycastles.com/. This is a project which is important to me personally because I know I missed out knowing about Babycastles earlier because I couldn't find enough information about what they really were!

I have also been helping them with smaller things like arranging a Global Game Jam venue at Silent Barn - Silent Jam! We put together a toolbox of game making tools which some people outside the Silent Barn venue found useful - https://docs.google.com/document/d/10doDd27Shk4I7dX8OSbUK5croQZLeQsOXufrECqP4LI

I have been attending the Babycastles meetings more regularly. It's all coming together as Babycastles moves to it's next phase of finding a more permanent space from where it can continue it's awesomeness. This is going to be an exciting year!

3. OUYA Game Jam - Tossers with Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson of Babycastles and I collaborated on creating a game for the OUYA game jam - Tossers. It's a 2v2 local multiplayer game that is a cross between Curling and Marbles where instead of a rock/marble you throw your teammate into a ring of marbles. So far it's been fun working on the game and playing it. So I think we will take it to completion some time in the next few months.

The game didn't win anything in the OUYA contest but we showed it at the NY Gaming Meetup - The first OUYA game to be demo-ed there. By this time we added a powerup feature to add to the mayhem in the game and also added a puppy AI so that the game can be played 1v1 also with an AI teammate. People seemed to like the game play and we got some good feedback.

The meetup and our demo were covered in Alley Watch :P - http://www.alleywatch.com/2013/03/new-york-february-gaming-meetup/

4. Ejecta WebGL talk at onGameStart NY

WebGL bindings on Ejecta allows you to port your WebGL apps/games to iOS. This has been a pure technology project as I want to keep a good mix of games and tech projects.

The work I did has been merged into Ejecta main branch! - https://github.com/phoboslab/Ejecta. A lot more interesting WebGL/three.js demos are now functional on iOS devices (Maybe a different post for this).

I presented the work I did with adding WebGL bindings to Ejecta in the first edition of onGameStart happening in the US. Here are the slides. I hope the videos never come out because I wasn't too happy with my presentation :) I really needed to cut it short in few places and maybe just gone to the demos earlier.

I met many of the HTML5 folks whom I had known only on Twitter. It was nice to meet them in person finally! 

5. GDC

I attended my first ever GDC! More than the talks I spent most of the time hanging out with really interesting people and helping out Babycastles curate/setup what was a really great installation of relaxing games at SFMOMA. Here is a cool review of it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWLuEp4u5PE

My highlight from the few sessions I attended was the Experimental Game Workshop. All the games in the lineup were amazing but the one game that blew me away in it's elegance was the Katamari-esque Kachina.

Of the parties the Wild Rumpus was by far the most enjoyable. It featured the amazingly fun party game by Keita Takahashi called Tenya Wanya Teens with it's own controller. We also arranged our own Babycastles party at the end of GDC and invited all our friends to it - It was a great way to end GDC.

There are more exciting things afoot - I can hopefully start talking about it in the next few months! This has been a very interesting journey and I really owe it to the amazing folks at Babycastles!! 

Games are only getting more interesting as different kinds of people are getting into it and Babycastles has been an amazing force in progressing the scene in this regard. Hopefully I can help them keep doing their awesome work in the coming years and we can spread this mission to many more places in the world!

go away, norman

Back from the dead. After two exciting years find myself in a different job and New York. A new start. Hopefully will not ignore my game creation itch this time.

It got rebooted thanks to the amazing folks at Babycastles and Parson school of design, who organized a game jam about a week ago.

Teamed up with the amazing geejay who handled everything from art to sound to level design as I floundered to finish the game code in 48 hours. I knew writing code from scratch in a game jam was bad idea - but I didn't have time to prepare on anything else. So just Javascript and HTML5 canvas it was. Spent a stupid amount of time on the collision detection. If I did it again I would probably just figure out some engine with basic collision detection before the game jam.

The theme of the game jam was any tweet from @Horse_ebooks and we picked "Solution to Cat behavior problems" and "It will catch up with you". So here it is our game - "go away, norman"

You can play it here.

We are continuing to work on it - Expect a more official release soon...

Game Project update

Been long since I updated this blog with any details. Work on my next game has been spotty over all, but it has picked up in the last few weeks. Hopefully I can maintain the momentum. I have been playing around with new ideas and been learning quite a bit in the process. I have also solidified broad ideas for the game. For now I can tell you it's going to be a narrative game with story telling - Something other casual games have shunned but has been my interests - And probably leaves an opening for something to be explored.

Here is an updated screenshot from the work in progress (With clues on its internal name). Good to see it has come some ways from the last one but clearly I could use artists. For the next next game maybe...

My next project

Been busy working on my next project. Just wanted to update with this post to see what people think about it.

Can anyone guess what the game is going to be about?

Please Save the Great Flea Circus!

After two weeks in development I am happy to announce the release of my first game - "The Great Flea Circus". You can play it in a few nice places that host Silverlight games.

http://gamejolt.com/online/games/action/the-great-flea-circus/592/
http://www.mashooo.com/SilverlightGames/The_Great_Flea_Circus.aspx

http://www.SilverlightClub.com/apps/PlayApp.aspx?AppId=114
http://silverarcade.com/games/vikerman/the-great-flea-circus/

What's with the name "The Great Flea Circus"? Well, the game is a clone of Circus Atari and hence the circus part. The flea part came because the characters I initially drew looked like fleas. Hence I made the theme a Flea circus instead of a regular circus!

The main purpose of this game was to test the feasibility of using Silverlight for game development - And I have concluded it is not only feasible it is absolutely the most productive way to develop a game given my .NET background.

Also after my previous post I have decided to switch to using Microsoft Expression Blend for the game development. Particularly I have been using the Behaviors feature in Silverlight to separate game logic(code) and game design(in Blend). For example in the Blend design window I just attach the behavior Paddle to the paddle in the designer and Jumper to the two jumpers.

An interesting thing happened where behaviors were really useful - When I showed the game to my wife (A great play tester and critic !) she asked me why there is ball in the middle of the screen which doesn't interact with the Jumpers. So I added the Bounce behavior(which the two black blocks on the sides have) to the ball and viola!, the Jumpers now bounce off the ball in the middle. It turned out to be a nice twist to the gameplay and so I left it in. Also check out the cheesy animation I put on the Ferris wheel in the background through Blend.

More on Silverlight, Blend and Behaviors in a later post. Now go and "Please Save the Great Flea Circus!! "

Why get into Indie game development? (or Why Not)

This is not the first question I asked myself when I thought of making games and I suspect it's the same with so many of you thinking of getting into it.

But I think it's an important question to ask early. Again I haven't done anything at this point and so I am not trying to give advice or answer any questions. Just putting down my thoughts here.

For me the "Why Not?" question is the easier one to list. It follows logic more. "Why?" is probably more emotional (This is turning out to be a recurring issue in my life - "Do I want to go back to India?"). And by putting them down it should be perfectly clear to anyone why you should *not* get into independent game development.

Why Not?
1. I already have a good paying job which takes a lot of my energy
2. The game market is saturated with too many games - high budget and independent
3. Because of 2) the money you can make in games is low and way less than what I currently make in my job
4. The chance of failure is lot more than success

Why?
1. Because I really want to make games (if not, just stop right here)
2. I am my own boss. I decide and control the outcome(at least I feel I do)
3. Satisfaction with work is high. Work is no longer a bad word (is that good for my personal life though?)
4. Applying creative ideas at levels unprecedented in my current job

At this point my friends might tell me - "You should join a start up". Some of them are in one and they seem to get 3), 4) and some of 2).

But I guess it all finally boils down to 1) - Why do you want to make games? This is where things cannot be put down on paper. At this point I am probably comparing myself to an artist who likes the art. But then there is this extra thorn in my subconcious - I am not even sure I am good at the art.

I am not sure of any of these things and it is this uncertainity which leads me to treat it like an adventure. And I could just stop it all one day and go back to my cozy life - Forget I even went on an adventure. Which is where I hope this writing will help me - Not to put down some memories but to remind myself that there is no turning back now...

Why this blog

I am setting up this blog so that I can chronicle and share out my experiences in trying to become an independent game developer.

Right here is step 1.

The other purpose of this blog is to share out information on specific technologies/ideas that I have been playing with in creating my games - Aggregation of information I found on the web or things about which I haven't found enough information on the web where I would like to fill the gaps in.

Also my hope is that this blog would be a place where I would announce progress and completion of my games and the lessons I learnt on the way.

And finally the name of my blog "indie-indian" - Is to probably just identify myself with the sub-minority group that I am in - The Indian independent game developer. Maybe there will be some posts on this, trying to reach out and connect with others in this group. Maybe if I become successful I can get more people into this group...