Isn’t it always the way? When you start to feel comfortable in a routine, things change. My time at Helios Interactive Inc. is drawing to a close, but I’m not ready to leave. We’ve been hard at work on projects that deal with everything from integrating in Facebook, to developing proposals, to getting our very own FPS game off the drawing board and into interactive mode. The FPS project has gotten me very excited, but I’m afraid that my internship will finish before the game is fully complete; according to our schedule anyway.

Audio and sounds are always very important in setting a mood and theme to a game. I’ve mentioned how we recently started working on a new project at Helios; well the project it turns out is not so new to the studio. We’ve been developing a multiplayer FPS demo over the past couple of months, but most of the work was already in place. However, we have been developing at an increased pace and our FPS has come a long way. It already plays relatively smoothly and although we have a lot of bugs, it is progressively getting more stable. To speed up development we’ve been re-using some assets and creating new ones for use in Gamecore 3D. A big part of my tasks this week revolved around compiling a list of audio assets to be used in the game as well as collaborating in gameplay ideas for generating achievements.

This recent project has motivated me to consider different multiplayer options that will work in an environment that may be technically constricted. I am referring to web friendly games. Games developed at Helios are all 3D, with the kicker being that they can be played on a web browser. This puts some extreme limitations on how we develop our games. For example, our design may call for two teams of 8, but in reality we may only be able to support 4 vs. 4 and only in small maps. Luckily we have ninja programmers and artists who consider optimization when developing code and designing assets. As for me, I’ve been writing up concepts for different scenarios and QA testing new builds of the game every 3 days. We have a handful of maps to test and some still need more polish.

The next couple of weeks should be centered on our FPS game development. Meanwhile I’ll continue to research and document our progress. Have a Happy Halloween everyone!

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I do believe that my finger tips are now stronger than a three hundred year old tree’s trunk, what does that mean? Who knows? I do know that I’ve been writing way too much these past two weeks, but it has also increased my typing speed. The Helios Interactive Inc. report for this week is made up of words and letters and punctuations and links and… Sorry it’s been a nutty week.

I had to attend a few events at school which bit into my work schedule, yet I was able to do some writing at home, well a lot of writing at home. The draft for our proposal pitch is coming along nicely and just about everyone has had an opportunity to provide input. One of my contributions to our workflow has been implementing more transparency in our intra-office work. At times we’ll have developers working remotely and having documentation on the web, like in the great Docs of the Google, has been really helpful. Recently Google has unleashed some under the hood and not so well publicized upgrades to some of the Google Doc applications. One of those is their version view for text documents, this allows me to see who on the team made edits on the document and when. It has been a great help as far as building a document collaboratively with multiple users in various locations. The writing for the draft consisted of creating a snippet of what gameplay may be like; the obvious goal is to get a reader interested enough to want to see more. I may be putting up a template on my site in the near future, after I get clearance of course. Enough of the docs…

Not only was I drafting this proposal, but I also assisted in the writing and formatting of another game design document for our in-house game project. This document is also seeing much creative writing, with our Art Director providing some sick and amazing storyline direction. This is the game we are currently developing. I’m still trying to get approved to talk about it in more detail, perhaps even get screenshots going; maybe next month.

We also got a couple of new builds to play test, this of course means playing. The game may be very buggy, but already it is so much fun. There are four of us in the office that have the build and can log into a server to play together, it’s led to some interesting conversations. By far the strangest request in the office this week came during testing. It was my turn to host a gameplay session and the request went as follows; "Would you create a game, and kill me a bunch... thanks". Really? Um, yeah I can do that; of course I can do that. There are quite a few game modes that we have been planning, but hurting teammates is one that is already working, and it’s been bringing us joy. Writing rough bug reports or chatting with our developers over Skype is also helping the development. Once we get to a more stable and fully flushed out game build, we’ll transition to using FlySpray for logging official bug reports.

On the school side of life, I was stressed out on my thesis and finally delivered a draft that I’m more or less content with. It could always be better and hopefully I’ll have enough time to implement suggestions and fixes from my committee. I’m also wondering if I’ll have time to dress up for Halloween this year, but it’s looking a bit dismal. There’s always next year right? Till next week, keep playing!

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This was a very exciting week, with visible and playable progress on our multiplayer 3d game; more on that in a bit. The week has been long, and without a doubt it was one of those weeks where I felt like the hands on the clock were moving faster than I could keep up. It may not have been because work was hectic or stressful, although my thesis did provide me with some stress, but it was more due to the nature of the work I did. Keeping up with the team is still one of my main priorities and I have found an easy and non-intrusive way to maintain status updates. The brief meetings surely keep the workflow moving along, but it’s also the non-formal nature of our meetings that makes the meetings themselves more productive. I don’t bog our team down with too many details unless I need something cleared up, and in those cases it’s usually me asking questions so that I may better understand what issues they may be having. The week progressed with three main goals; deliver another interactive demo for a visualization presentation, QA our in-house multiplayer game, as well as brainstorm and develop a pitch proposal document for a large publisher.

Our Gamecore 3D engine is pretty damn potent, I mean it has juice like entertainment wrestlers have muscles; it can rock some vertices! One of the more awesome-tastic tool sets provides the ability to setup pathfinding, road systems, and traffic systems. We use this to simulate traffic flows on highways or enemies patrolling areas of a game world. For one of our interactive demos we experienced a “rush service all-hands-on-deck” situation where we all had to pitch in. After a brief crash course on modifying path nodes, which we were using as spawn points, I was tasked with cleaning and editing a section of road to better manage where 3d objects would spawn. This helped us to create a more believable scene and manage the amount of objects appearing on screen. It was quite fun once I got the hang of it, but I’m not going to lie on this one, the task was tedious. Then again, I am the associate producer/gopher/rey can do it guy. I was happy to help and I learned yet another toolset in the game engine.

Our proposal writing continued and I had a chance to apply my week’s previous research to assist with enhancing gameplay ideas. This is also quite a fun project. Although we are at the very early stages of drafting a pitch proposal, I can already begin to see in my head, how the game we hope to land as a contract would play out. The client is a big wig player and this type of contract could really overload us with work, but who would complain? It would definitely mean more spreadsheets… Sadly I can’t talk about this too much right now, but it is a great chance for me to see the costs associated with developing such a project, yet another learning experience through hands-on work. The coolest part of this assignment has been writing and coming up with ideas along with our Art Director, he’s got some great gameplay concepts in his head!

Finally, and the most exciting of all is the development of our super secret and quite fun multiplayer game. Right now the game is at a state where we can play it, sort of, and see all the glorious bugs manifest themselves in mysterious ways. I am enjoying watching this project come alive from what started as an idea that went onto Google Docs, to what the rockstar programmers are building and creating with blinding speed. The game world looks great already and that is with spare textures and limited art. Next week we’ll be testing more builds with added playability, I can’t wait for more interactivity to be coded in. That’s pretty much a wrap for the week; I’m going home to wring out a thesis from more research than I know what to do with. I can’t wait for next week at at Helios Interactive Inc. and to play with a new build of our game. Man I love this business!

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Another week of internship work at Helios Interactive Inc. is in the past. I can’t believe how fast time is moving. Then again I shouldn’t be too surprised; this is Full Sail University after all. At work the majority of my time this week was spent on either doing research for a couple of new game design proposals or performing research in the form of play-testing games. I’m really not allowed to discuss the game proposals with any revealing details, but I can say that one of the proposals is being developed as a tech demo and I’m very excited for it.

The week started with the delivery of a couple of projects that I’d been working on previously; one was the production of quick-start game development guides for Gamecore 3D. It seems that these are ready for publishing; it feels good to change the status of projects to complete. The other project was a more recent interactive demo done with our game engine. Although this demo was geared more towards visualization, it still felt like we were producing a cinematic sequence, or cut-scene, in a video game. I may have mentioned this in previous posts, but the range of work that we undertake at Helios really does require that our employees be multi-talented and skilled in more than one area of development. As an example, a person working on creating content such as graphics may end up having to edit or splice audio tracks. Or a web developer may have to perform video re-coding. My favorite is our Art Director who typically jumps from modeling, to scripting, to writing, to animating, and everything else that is related to graphics or interactivity. For my part I’ve had to perform a wide range of work as well. The associate producer related tasks I do happen without thought, meaning I do them robotically and routinely. However, I’ve been using all my other skills as well; writing, design, video editing, and even some web dev.

However the bulk of this week was really fun, I spent most of my time surfing the web for games that are near or similar to what we are producing. It still makes me feel a bit weird that I have to play games while I’m at work, but it is an essential part of staying abreast of what your competitors are doing. According to my time sheets, I may have spent nearly 10hrs simply downloading, installing, and testing (playing) various types of casual and competitive types of games. I also brought in my Xbox 360 to the office, hooked it up to the projector in the conference room, and played some Xbox LIVE Arcade games. Again this was all with the intent of surveying games we consider to use interesting gameplay mechanics. Research and testing are quite important in game development; seriously does this even have to be said? You need to play games from your competitors to see what the public has accepted and what they expect, at the same time you need to find ways to improve or innovate on existing designs.

As for the research I’ve been doing, I have many sites I visit on a regular basis and after taking a class with Full Sail University Professor Susan Gold, I realized just how much of a time saving tool using a reader can be. Now I have all my RSS feeds categorized on my reader and it is growing like wildfire. The following are some links worth sharing, I came across them while performing specific research; I’m sure you can figure out what type of research I was doing from the links. Not all the research this week was related to this subject, but sharing the other links would be to blatant a signal as to what we have up our sleeves.

www.xmarks.com
www.appdata.com
www.checkfacebook.com
www.insidesocialgames.com

These links may be useful to others who need to find info on the subject of social gaming information. Next week I will start creating a couple of game design documents for a pitch and a proposal, looks like more writing and research is on tap. That’s it for now; I’m off to the Ale House for their Friday special, Tequila!

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Is it really week 14 already? This marks another month completed in my game design and production internship experience at Helios Interactive Inc.. By now I’m fully adjusted to a routine in which I come into work every day and start my day off with a mug of coffee, reading emails, and updating Google Doc spreadsheets.

Afterwards I’ll meet with the team and chat about the progress of their current tasks and short term projects. These meetings tend to be anywhere from 5-10min, I'm purposefully trying to keep them short so that we don't get bogged down with superfluous discussions. Since we work in an open spaced office, we can discuss games and other topics all day. We also have projects with longer deadlines, so I’ll typically discuss those with my boss and find out if any requirements have changed. Even as a small development studio we have to juggle multiple projects all the time. This is probably where I’ve made my biggest contribution as an associate producer intern; assisting the team to manage their shifting workload.

Project tracking is not all my days consist of, this week I became involved in some of our interactive projects by using some of my video editing skills. Working with our development team on a couple of simulation projects meant that I switched hats from the associate producer to the After Effects guy. It really is a nice change of pace to be able to employ some of the skills that I’ve built up over time. Aside from editing and exporting videos for presentations, I also compressed and optimized exports for web pages. This is work I’ve done before and as such was able to do it quickly and efficiently. At the same time it gave me an opportunity to appreciate the high quality work we do with our Gamecore 3D game engine. Good stuff!


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Mods are a great way to enhance the re-playability of a game you have already created; or shipped, if you're a big time producer. The idea is simple. You already created a game and perhaps you’ve played it long enough to tweak the game-play mechanics. Perhaps you find that you are at a point where you are happy with your game and you’ve done about all that you can do with it. You liked it so much… maybe there is some way to extend the pleasures you felt playing the game. There are indeed many options and ways to prolong the experience. Modding your game, or a game that allows it, will be one of those options. This could mean that as a gamer, you may be able to swap models and replace graphics throughout the game levels. If you made the game, you will obviously have much more control over swapping assets, modifying game-play values, and levels.

All of this came to mind when I read a post that released info on a DLC (down-loadable content) pack for Red Dead Redemption which would add zombies to the game. I wasn’t sure what was going on. Yet if you think about it from the standpoint of a developer; why not? You already have the player base; they may have already downloaded some of the free content, so they may very well want to play a variation of Red Dead Redemption. By creating new missions with new assets, a developer can basically skin their own game and create a new user experience. The pluses are too many to ignore. So, why not make a themed DLC pack? It could be another means of increasing returns on investment from development costs. If you think about it, the players will understand that for $15 bucks or so, you won’t be getting a whole new game.

However, the replay value does come through for everyone involved. For the developer it becomes a more feasible commitment which may potentially produce another revenue stream. Players benefit from re-using the same control scheme and available assets. I mean hey, you already know how to play right? Another plus could come from the second hand market. If you hadn’t bought Red Dead Redemption before, you can rent it, get the new themed DLC, and play what would be a new-to-you game. Or you could buy the game used, or on sale, and pay what you would have paid for one game ($40 game + $15 themed DLC). In theory, this sounds like a good plan. We’ll have to wait it out and see how the numbers speak once this is all said and done. In the meantime we should consider developing our games with future modding capabilities in mind. It can only help.

Below is a teaser trailer for the zombie DLC in Red Dead Redemption, looks like fun to me!


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Labels: game design