Waiting for Review and an Easter treat.

So last weekend was busy...

It was Easter, so therefore in the UK, we had Friday and Monday as national holidays. So we used this time to launch ROO on the OUYA and to prepare for the iOS release.

ROO is currently (as of the 9th of April) waiting for Review. This apparently could take a little time so we all have to be patient. It will be really nice though when it's released as we've done a load of work to make it look nice on the iPad and iPhone with that lovely Retina screen.

Preparation is key

Of all the stores we've released on, the App store is probably the most difficult to get going with. There are many aspects of the store which take some research in order to get right. Luckily for us, Dean knew what he was doing and was able to steer our wayward ship through any potential rocks to get us out to sea. It's also the 3rd time I've had to fill out a Tax form. As Songbird Creations is a Limited UK company, we don't pay US taxes (instead we pay UK taxes) but Uncle Sam needs to be reassured that we're not trying to get away with his money, so we fill in a W-8BEN form and sign it.

For the OUYA I had to print it, physically sign it, scan it and send it back to them. Amazon had a version online and a handy helper, which while was handy could have used a "We're a UK company, just fill it in for me" button like Google does. 

Confirmation is key

While Preparation was certainly important, I've never had to confirm as many things in my life as I did getting the more legal aspects of the store running. Phew, glad that part is over is all I can say.

Customization is key

Phones typically have a slimline aspect ratio some are 1080p others a variation of, however for a landscape game, you're typically looking at most of the action being towards the bottom of the screen, certainly for ROO this was the case. Pretty clouds, blue skies and mountains cover the top to middle and give the illusion of distance and speed while the foreground and character reside towards the bottom to ground the action. 

For the OUYA, we needed to move things up a little otherwise the player is bombarded with a TV image made entirely of sky, for iPad it was worse as the aspect ratio is different again.

So we had to work out how much space was required to keep ROO in pretty much the optimal place while filling the rest of the screen with interesting but not too distracting detail. We had to make some more graphics to place at the bottom of the level.

Once we we done however, it looked and played really nicely. We also had to add an Achievement Toast system to complement the Game Center achievements which you can see in this video.

Feedback is key

On Friday evening, I went out around Cambridge and introduced a few people to ROO, one of the bits of feedback was to do with the Perfect Landing / Resurrection system. It waited for 2 seconds after ROOs failure and used a perfect landing token to burst back into the game (basically a lives system) however it turned out that people were becoming frustrated with the way it was implemented. Often they would reappear only to hit a cactus, a rock or worse - fall directly into a ravine. So something had to be done because while funny, I don't want unhappy players. So now there's a system where you're prompted to tap the screen to reappear when you want to or wait the full 2 seconds. Play testing this feature made it obvious that it was the correct solution. It makes failure your own fault as opposed to the game punishing you randomly.

A Happy Easter

It was really nice to see ROO on the OUYA store so I documented it with a little video. So you can see me install ROO for the first time on the OUYA as well as see how to get those pesky perfect landings. Stick around to the end for a little discussion in difficulty, game dev principles and a personal message from me.



So there you have it. ROO is on the OUYA market as well as Google Play store and the Amazon App store and we're awaiting  our entry to the App store.

If you'd like to know more, why not follow me on twitter @thecacktus

Have fun.

The little console that could.

A little Kickstart!

Back in January of 2013, I was procrastinating on the Escapist Magazine website and I came across an incredibly good idea. A micro console which takes advantage of the recent surge in phone processing power and the Android Operating System; all combined within a tiny stylishly designed box which wouldn't look out of place next to the nicest TV. A full HD 1080p console from the outset with it's own games market with games which must be free to try.

Kickstarter had shaken up the games industry and it seemed that the reported stranglehold publishers had over the various software houses would be weakened and it would usher in a new age of the bedroom coder.

Well, that happened somewhat; The bedroom coder did emerge and a lot of them released games; and some of them were really good. Kickstarter became the go-to place to get funding for the more adventurous or ambitious. There were a few bad apples of course but the net feeling was positive. There are debates as to whether Kickstarter has been over saturated with games and that it's become more difficult to be noticed among the crowd, but that discussion is for another day.

Mr Schafer I presume?

Anyway, I'd been following the antics of the people at Double Fine and backed their kickstarter for the game which would later be known as Broken Age.

Their kickstarter went on to demolish their originally requested amount to the tune of $3.3 million dollars. The internet went bananas.

As part of the deal, they would document everything and the documentaries would turn out to be really insightful to watch. 

It reminded me that Game developers, those people who create these amazing experiences that we love are regular people with hopes and dreams. They weren't too dissimilar to me, they had the same drive and passion as I did - just better funding. 

A large dose of gasoline was poured onto my previously thought to be extinguished candle.

So with both DoubleFine and the OUYA breaking records on Kickstarter, it seemed like the perfect time to get back into games... and the OUYA seemed to be the perfect platform to release it on with it's almost guaranteed success and it's open - yet moderated - marketplace.

I missed the Kickstarter for the OUYA however I did pre-purchase one in January and it arrived in July while I was in the USA - I wouldn't be able to get my mitts on it for another 2 weeks. The plane didn't get home faster because of tail-winds, it was by the sheer force of my will! :-)

I remember being surprised at how small and shiny it was and how the controllers felt really nice and solid. It was simple enough to set up and with it's online market and free to play nature was instantly appealing. I soon found myself purchasing many games. 

The biggest question became, what kind of game do I want to write? Platformer? RPG? Adventure? The ideas flowed fast and strong and eventually I settled on the game currently known as the Reversion Bureau, a puzzle platformer - which has had 2 years of development time spent on it. However more on that game later. 

Fast forward to now.

It's April 2015 and we now have a game released on the Android platforms. It's not the Reversion Bureau, ( that game will come ). Instead, it's a cool little endless runner where a kangaroo named ROO! must race across the Australian outback to rescue his best friend Timmy from a well he fell into. 

We've already released it onto Google Play, Amazon App store and now (pending) the OUYA. On top of this, we're putting a lot of work into preparing for the iOS release, as well as a Windows Phone release.

The OUYA is still going in spite of 2 difficult years in the industry which saw the launch of the new XBox One, the WiiU and the Playstation 4. OUYA have altered the rules a little in response to that; games no longer have to be free to try as long as they have a video to show the gameplay. So we've released our game for a very small fee.

To get this far it has taken a lot of work covering many aspects of the game development process.

• Game Design
• Lots of coding
  
  
  
• Graphics creation
• Rigging and Animation
• Assets pipelines
• Music authoring
• Sound design
• Video editing
• Storefront management
• Device Testing
• Play Testing
• Focus Testing
• Project Management
• Marketing

If it seems like a lot of work, that's because it is. 

Most of it goes unnoticed as it's mostly not fun or glamorous. 

For instance, Project Management and Marketing are incredibly taxing to do correctly and are utterly vital if the project is to have any chance of commercial success - or even being released as a product. Each market place has it's own store-front with it's own way of handling things. Marketing is hard work, even for something you love. It often feels like climbing to the top of every building in the city so you can shout from the rooftops. Those with money or sense employ others to climb the buildings for them, or employ those already positioned to shout.

So here's what I'm hoping for: That the OUYA can fulfil it's promise, that games made independently by small teams can reach those who want to have some fun, kick back on the couch and play games on their TV made by people who care. 

But no matter what happens,

 I'm grateful for that glorious moment where the stars seemed to align, the rebirth of the bedroom coder and the infinite possibilities which they could bring.. that and flappy bird, mostly flappy bird :-)

A plug for the cool little box 

The OUYA is being sold online at http://shop.ouya.tv/ as well as on Amazon and in Target stores in the USA. If you don't have one already, you should pick one up. There's a lot to be said for the games available and playing with the controller is great.

A note to travelling executives:

The OUYA packs away nicely into a travel bag and given that most hotel TVs have a HDMI socket, and there's rarely anything on the TV anyway, it makes a great travel gaming system. Something else to do on those long business trips.

Also, a note to parents: 

There are no disks, so no expensive games to break or scratch or leave cluttered all over the place. Kids can start the game they want, they're mostly for free and those which aren't are inexpensive. It supports up to 4 controllers, it's cheaper than an XBox, a Playstation and a Wii and it's still totally worth the money.

Making a trailer

So we put a trailer together for ROO. It took a couple of days to do and was a lot of fun. But why is this news-worthy? Well, apart from the fact that Roo is a fun game and shouting about it increases the chances of someone else having some fun (which is always a good thing) - I actually used some new video editing techniques in putting the trailer together which might be interesting for some people to read about.

Putting a trailer together looks really simple - and ROO being a very simple game, appears that it should be a very easy thing to do. Well, in a way it was a lot easier than putting a trailer for perhaps a movie or a show. (I've not edited a movie or show trailer - but after editing the London Part Deux game jam video, I can only imagine the difficulty involved).

Even though ROO is a simple and fun game, it's not enough to just capture footage and slap it into a video. When you consider it, you have more time in-game to enjoy the everything the game has to offer but only a tiny amount of time in a trailer video to show the goods and hook a potential player.

Before I start, I'll admit - I'm not an expert (watching the trailer will attest to that) but as with most Indy developers, I don't have a marketing department (or a budget for that matter) to give the task to, who can spend their considerable skills and experience putting something amazing together.

Unfortunately, until Songbird-Creations becomes somewhat bigger, everything is in-house by those who wear many many hats.

So this Trailer, how was it made?

Well, just like any other task in game development, you need to have the right tools for the job. I'll be putting some articles together over the coming months describing the tools we use and why we use them. But for video editing, we use Adobe After Effects.

Now, Adobe After Effects is a professional level tool which can accomplish a devastatingly overwhelming number of things. It's so powerful that most people will only ever scratch the surface of its potential and it used to have a price tag to match - which was normally sidestepped by pirates - however, through some amazing vision, Adobe have licensed their entire suite of software on a subscription basis, so it's not expensive any more. So there's no longer any justification in pirating (to learn it) and you get the added bonus of Photoshop and Illustrator (amongst others) included too.

The trailer is broken down into 4 main sections.

• Introduction,
• Story hook
• Gameplay 
• Call to Action.

Introduction

The introduction shows our company logo and the Game's title. This is important to get right as it's the first thing the viewer sees. It has to get them interested enough to want to watch the rest. Viewers have a lot of content they can watch instead, so a video has to be worth it and someone making a video has to respect that time.

So I open up with the Songbird creations logo, some clouds and a Balloon. This is supposed to set up the viewer with the company signature and they follow the balloon towards the game's title when it appears. The balloon appears in the game in the distance. The balloon itself is from a game which was never completed which starred a cartoon version of my Wife, meaning that She's in every game I make in some way - kind-of like Stan Lee in all Marvel movies.

The screen then changes to show something similar to the in-game titles. All of this should only take a few seconds.

Story Hook

Then we need to get the viewer right into the story. ROO! has a very simple story where little Timmy has fallen down a well (again!) and it's up to Roo to get help. To do this, I wanted to have a scene I could move around in. This meant setting up a 3D scene so that I could have proper Parallax backgrounds to add a sense of depth to it. I could have done this by panning from left to right in a 2D scene, but it would have actually meant more work. After Effects has everything you need to manipulate a 3D scene; you can place cameras, manipulate them with dummy objects, alter their positions, rotations (and pretty much any property they have) all smoothly using key frames.

So I built the scene using real assets from the game and animated the camera to tell the story. 

Roo and Timmy are in the outback (although Timmy is never shown) Timmy sees a well, and falls in - the camera pans and zooms in on the well. Following the splash, the camera quickly pans to Roo who looks suitably concerned.

Cue the game!

Gameplay

This is the part where we let the potential player know what the game is all about, what to expect and why they should play the game. ROO! is a very simple game, it starts out easy enough and gets progressively more difficult as it becomes faster and have less time to react. Eventually the player will succumb as their reactions become less able to dodge the oncoming obstacles - ROO moves at a fair lick of speed when he gets going.

The game is a mobile game for the most part, so to get the footage, I recorded the PC version using Fraps and ran through the game many times. My hope was to get a high enough score to show the game running a breakneck speed as well as record some amusing failures. The resulting movie file was 7.8gb - I'd have to edit it... a lot.

Roo is a game which can't really be shown off in static images, they don't do it any justice so hopefully the video does the trick. I cut several failures back to back for laughs, then did a run as far as I could get. The entire section is about 50 seconds long and basically shows the game in it's entirety. It sounds a little sad when said like that, but it's strange how something so simple can keep people engrossed for so long.

At the end of the gameplay section, is the Noooo section which normally greets every failure.

Call to Action

A trailer is after-all a marketing video so there needs to be something which informs the potential customer where to go next to find out more and potentially buy the game. 

On this part of the video I wanted to show where the customer could get the game from - in this case the Google Play store as well as the Amazon App store. Later we'll have the App Store, Windows store and quite probably the OUYA market place. As these become available, we'll have to upload other videos - potentially replacing this one.

I didn't want to put a Coming Soon part on the video as I wanted it to be Factual, to 'close the deal' right now. When we're on the other stores, we'll be factual about that too.

The entire video is just short of 1:27 and is accompanied with the opening titles music for the game.

Although it is tricky, I tried to keep as much of the video in time with the music to keep them from feeling disconnected. I even make the Google Play and Amazon store logos dance to the music towards the end of the video.

As I said, putting a trailer together is Marketing, you have to try to get people interested in your product. Without marketing, a game is a fun programming exercise. If you want people to play your game, you need to let them know about it and a trailer is a good starting point.

Have fun

Roo's getting an update soon.

ROO has only been out for a week

and we're already getting a serious update ready. This isn't to fix bugs in the code, this is to improve the graphics.

ROO's graphics are nice and cute and simple, but compared to some other games out there, they could do with a bit of a refresh.

So we've given Roo a bit of an update with new textures all round. Even Roo himself has had the artist's brush with some nicer shading and even different facial expressions.

We've updated the way the ground looked because, the outback doesn't look that green - but it's also not a barren desert.

We haven't finished completely on the graphical update, there's still testing to do - we need to make sure that it looks good across a variety of form factors and resolutions.

Depending on testing, we should have this update ready for the weekend. So look out for that.

Before that though, You can still check out ROO on the Google play store and support us :-)

In other news...

Soon...

We submitted ROO to the Amazon App store today. So we should have ROO available on your Kindle Fire soon. This is exciting news as it opens an entirely different store front to us.

We may have to tweak a few things to get through their testing/approval process, so it may be that the Amazon build contains the new updates off the bat.

Finally, 

ROO is still as fun to play as it was when we first made it. This to me is a great sign, the game has a soul and this shows through in the gameplay.