Rawkins Games

Like the headline says, the Steam version of Dolphin Up has a tentative release date of April 27! I am in the final stages of testing and fixing right now. The steam store page is live right here.

If you are interested in helping to beta test the game as I get closer to release, please drop me a line at alan@rawkins.com. It's Windows only for now, but I will be aiming to do a Mac and Linux release soon after, so even if you are on one of those platforms and would like to test, let me know.

Dolphin Up was greenlit on Steam way back in September, so I figured it was time for an update on what's happening with it. The game is now in a beta testing phase and will hopefully be ready soon. I'm going to start with the Windows version, and then the OS X and Linux versions will follow after that, provided I don't hit any major snags.

So far I've made the following changes to the game:

1. Increased the framerate from 30fps to 60fps
   I've struggled with getting this right for awhile but I think I've got it nailed down. The whole game feels a lot smoother; going back to the old 30fps version feels really awkward now.
2. Added a soundtrack
   I never felt like Dolphin Olympics and Dolphin Up needed music. They were always being played on a desktop browser or phone, where the player usually has access to their own music library. On the Wii U though, that wasn't the case, and the game was fairly criticized for it. Though I would peg the steam version closer to the browser version as far as player environment goes (in the the player has access to a music library), they may also be playing in big picture mode, or just not want to have to bother with loading up their own music, so I went ahead with adding music to the game.
3. Steam API
   I have integrated the achievements and leaderboards with Steam. It also has the score chasing feature of the Wii U version, where you can see the next friend score above you on the leaderboard and try to beat it.

Those are the big changes. I've also tweaked the interface to better accommodate the keyboard and gamepad controls.

As far as the release date goes, if the beta testing phase goes ok, I expect I'll have the game out in a month or two. I will post another update once I have a firm release date set.

On Saturday I attended the Full Indie Summit in Vancouver BC. It was the first Full Indie event I’ve attended since the first summit back in 2013. It was great to get back into Vancouver to meet up with other like minded devs and discuss game making. Below are some of my impressions & thoughts about the speakers and their presentations:

Effective Audio in Game Design

Unfortunately I missed most of this talk by Kevin Regamy. Taking the ferry in from Gibsons ate up the morning. I did catch the tail end of it though and got all of the Q&A. As someone who has never really paid a whole lot of attention to audio production, even the basic tips were valuable. Panning audio slightly to the left or right channel based on the position of the player seemed like a subtle thing that any 2d game could do. I will definitely watch the rest of the lecture when it goes up on the full indie website.

Beyond the Zombie Shooter: Unexplored possibilities in VR

Kayla Kinnunen gave a great talk that served as both a primer for new VR devs and a look into some of the more cutting edge and experimental VR work that is currently being done. I think the VR space is something that is a little bewildering for a lot of developers; even those like myself who have tried it and understand why it’s such a big deal. Where to start, what to make, what works, what doesn’t; they are difficult questions and this talk helped point to the future and show us a bit of a roadmap. It was also a bit of a throwdown challenge; this is the time to do something new in VR. The window for radical experimentation is open right now, but it won’t be forever. I don’t know that I am going to go down that road myself, but I am excited to see what people make of it.

Firewatch: Design Constraints in Narrative Exploration Games

Nels Anderson's humorous and energetic talk focused on some of the design lessons he learned at Campo Santo while working on their narrative exploration title Firewatch. I wished I had played it before going to this talk as I feel some of the lessons might have been clearer to me if I was more familiar with the game. The simple advice of making sure to reward exploration was not lost on me though. I think I will have to play Firewatch and then come back and watch this talk again.

Smooth as the Titanic: What scuttled Brigador's Launch?

I had already read some of Hugh’s posts online about the launch of Brigador, but this talk was still great. I found it to be one of the most thought provoking, and it seemed in many ways to tie into a lot of the other talks throughout the day. For example he touched on the importance of the trailer and how it failed in various ways; I couldn’t help but here his comments later in the day as I watched to Kurt Gartner blow everyone’s minds with his crazy mixed reality VR trailers.

I think my biggest takeaway from this talk was that it is crucially important to convey exactly what your game is and what makes it special, especially if you are making something out of the ordinary. Brigador sounds like a great game (I will definitely be checking it out), but it doesn’t look like what it is, which sounds like it was a big problem.

Let's get physical — lessons from the real world

Books and talks on traditional/non-digital game design always seem to be illuminating in ways you could never expect. Zach Gage’s talk on his experiences building card, dice and billiard games was filled with ideas that are applicable to any game. His comments about dice games and their randomness really resonated. The idea that random games become fun based on their context and the story that evolves around them. He talked about how he knew two friends who had a long standing daily game of paper rock scissors and how they tracked their scores via a whiteboard over the course of a year. The game of paper rock scissors is usually a tool for decision making, but placed in the context of a yearly rivalry, it becomes something more.

Behind the Scenes: Making Mixed Reality Trailers

Kert Gartner wowed the crowd with some of his amazing work building mixed reality trailers. His talk was a whirlwind of shop talk and wizardry as he quickly took us through all of the tricks he and his crew used to transpose VR playing people INSIDE of the games they were playing to help convey the magic of VR. Until I sat through this talk, I didn’t even know what a mixed reality trailer was. Well, now I know and it is pretty impressive. These are the two trailers that he made. I would recommend watching both and then watching his talk whenever the Full Indie folks get it online.

Take a Walk(ing Sim) on the Weird Side: a guide to #altgames and you

This talk by Claris Cyarron was in many ways emblematic of the great, diverse selection of ideas that the summit represented. I didn't know what to expect going into it, and left it with a new appreciation for something I had no idea about. Hilarious, dark, creative, and beautiful creations filled the screen. Stick Shift by Robert Yang was probably the highlight but there was so much more there. If you are feel like games are boring, samey, or have no artistic value, watch this presentation or check out the #altgames tag on twitter. 

What's going on in the Hardware Game Scene

Robin Baumgarten outlined many of the techniques he used to build his 1D LED wall climbing RPG Line Wobbler. No that doesn’t make sense and yes, it was awesome. Embedded processors and 3d printing are breeding all kinds of neat things. I was particularly taken with how he started to use door stop springs as a game controller; I don’t know a single kid that doesn’t love springing those things. Genius!

The Sidestep or How to skip the things that don’t work

Steve Swink gave a thought provoking talk about deliberate practice, and how in a new field like game design, there is no handbook on how to train up to greatness. He talked about how he deconstructed puzzles from popular games to help improve his understanding of the puzzle making process.

As someone who is mostly self-taught, I found I could relate quite a bit. I usually try to look at the skills I am using and improve on them, but I have never thought about designing my own grueling practice regimen to drill the improvements into me. My process for improving my own skills usually involves getting a good book or two to set a foundation, and then practice by applying the skill on a real project. This talk made me think more about how I could approach self improvement, and what skills I rely on and need improvement with (drawing drawing drawing).

Making Games in Four Spatial Dimensions

I won’t pretend I understood much of Marc ten Bosch's bewildering talk on 4d game design, but it certainly made for fun discussion afterwards. I feel like I will definitely need to play his game Miegakure to fully grasp what it means to be able to move a character into the 4th dimension.

What Makes an Indie Hit? How to Choose the Right Design

What are your game's hooks? Can you describe them quickly and accurately? Ryan Clark’s talk focused on this practical process for analyzing ideas to see if they are a good fit for you and the marketplace (he also has an article here) This was a great talk to close out the day on. It contained a lot of down to earth, practical advice from a successful indie dev. A lot of the indie game scene is filled with lucky stories and hits that seem to come out of nowhere. Ryan’s process definitely grounded all of that into something more concrete.

Demo Night!

Afterwards there was a great demo night / networking event with free sushi and drinks from the generous folks at East Side Games. Justin and I demoed our game Viper League to a constantly rotating crew of other devs and got a lot of great feedback. If you came by and tried out our game, thanks! I think the most common suggestion was some sort of late match pressuring mechanic, like walls that close in. Matches seemed to drag on in a lot of cases. I think as developers we’ve become good at ending matches quickly by hunting each other down, but new players who don’t understand the game as well don’t know how to finish things as quickly. There were some other bugs in the game that surfaced as well, and I’ll get those patched and fixed up in the game soon.

Wrapping up

The summit was a ton of fun. Every talk managed to generate great discussion and get me thinking about game making in a new way. I definitely hope to make it out again next year.

I picked up RPGMaker VX Ace in a Humble Bundle a few years back and have finally gotten around to playing with it.

Like many a game designer, I have always dreamt of making RPGs. I grew up playing games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, Ultima and The Bard's Tale. They were a big part of my formative game playing years as a young 'un. I've always wanted to try my hand at one, but one thing you quickly come to terms with when learning game dev is that even the smallest thing can be really, really hard to do, and RPGs are packed with thousands of small things that you have to do.

RPGMaker eases that burden in a lot of ways. It comes pre-loaded with a lot of systems that you can lean on. It's dead simple to draw out 2d maps, sprinkle them with scripted events (dialogue, locked doors, chests, etc.), spec out monsters, weapons, armor, characters...everything you need. Dialogue and cutscenes in particular are a real joy. I found it so fun to just throw down some characters and get them talking and walking. It definitely spoke to my inner playwright :)

There were some limitations to it that I found frustrating. There is not much in the way of API documentation. It's not totally absent, but it's a far cry from what you can find in other commercial tools. I think that is probably holding back the tool somewhat, as it makes it harder for more advanced users to break apart the engine and do more unorthodox things with it. You still can, but they just kind of put the ball in your court and hope you can figure it out. I hope that in the future the creators of the software get more serious about improving the developer experience.

The software seems to have something of a bad rap amongst players and game developers. It comes loaded with a lot of assets, which means a lot of the games made with it look exactly the same. But there are clearly some great titles that have been made with it, and really there is nothing stopping you from replacing all the assets in the game with your own, which you would have to do with any other tool anyways. I think RPG Maker just makes it easy to NOT have to do that. But I think to release a quality commercial title with this engine, you still have a lot of work to do.

And yeah, let me just say that again. You'll have a LOT of work to do. RPGs are HARD. There are so many pieces you have to fit together. You need to have the right amount of dialogue, plot, the right size of level, the right progression of levels, items, skills, etc...I built a dead simple 20 minute rpg, and it took me almost 25 hours of dev time.

Overall though, I was really impressed. The software is helpful and thoughtfully designed. I think even for something more outside the box, like a zelda style action rpg, using this tool would still be beneficial. You would have to code a lot of the engine yourself, but you'd still have to do that in another engine anyways. In some ways, RPGMaker feels like a very advanced level editor. It comes with some pre-coded stuff, but you can re-jig almost all of it and make anything you want, while still retaining the great editor.

That does mean that RPGMaker is definitely a top down sort of tool. You start with a finished engine and then break apart the pieces you don't like and fit them back in to the larger whole. With a straight up framework like Phaser or a language like Monkey, you can build everything piece by piece yourself, using some solid, base level components or classes. I think I work a little bit better with the latter type of workflow, as it gives me a hands-on understanding of each piece of the system, whereas with something like RPGMaker, it's hard to understand at first glance how each part of the engine interacts with all the other pieces. That ties back to the lack of good developer documentation. If that was explained and outlined somewhere, it would make everything a little bit smoother.

Regardless, I loved my time with the program. You can go a long way with it without doing any coding, especially if you are building a turn based RPG. if you are looking for a good tool to learn game dev with, have just always loved RPGs, or just like playing with creative tools, I definitely recommend RPG Maker. It makes one of the hardest game genres slightly less hard to make, and is a whole lot of fun.

The Android version of Dolphin Up is now available as a free download via Amazon Underground. If you are unfamiliar with Underground, it is a service by Amazon that provides "Actually Free" versions of apps, meaning they are premium or paid apps (like Dolphin Up), or have all of their ads removed and in-app purchases included for free. You can find more info on Amazon Underground here.