expository coding: April 2010 Archives

This is Episode 2 of our podcast where we talk about the development of Ebenezer, my Old Testament adventure game. You can leave comments using the Facebook widget at the bottom of the entry page for this blog post. Episode 1 can be found here.

The show is about 55 minutes long.

Show Notes

Environment Concept Art

• Andy recently sent out some of my new concept artwork to the mailing list (sign up now!)
• We discuss the challenge of turning concept art into 3D content, particularly given the cartoony style we're seeking
• The cancelled LucasArts project "Sam & Max: Freelance Police" had amazing (2D) concept art but ugly (3D) screenshots, and that's frustrating
• Andy is on the look out for 3D Blender artists to model the environments - get in touch if that's you!
• We discuss various 2D/3D hybrid approaches, such as limiting the camera angles or using 3D models but rendering them as 2D images
• A good example of one approach is the Monkey Island Uber Edition tech demo (here and here)
• The original motivation for going 3D was from "Simon the Sorceror 3D": despite being unbelievably ugly it demonstrated the superior potential for drama from a 3D game

Character Design

• Work is now underway to design the characters
• Though 1 Samuel 8-12 makes excellent game material, it features all Israel gathering, which means a large number of characters
• Part of the process involved writing a description of each character
• It revealed how shallow and ill-defined most of those characters are at the moment. They exist to serve a function within the story but as yet have no clear personality.
• Great quote from Ron Gilbert on adventure game design: "World, character, and story. In that order. Create a compelling place people want to visit, populate it with compelling characters, and then tell a good story." (read it here)
• When developing Psychonauts, Tim Schafer apparently wrote Facebook profile pages for each of his characters to help him give them personalities (podcast here)

Anachronism

• The game used to be much longer than it is now, since a lot has been cut out
• The original story had a lot of anachronism in it, like the complicated nation-wide communication system: Quail Mail, and related internet cafes
• Andy's approach to anachronism is similar to Terry Pratchett's Discworld books: reimplementing modern concepts with the technology available to them
• As part of all that, there is a coffee shop in the game, despite the many centuries between when the game is set and when coffee first started being drunk.
• However, so much has now been cut out that coffee has become the only anachronism left.
• Should we remove the coffee or add in more anachronisms elsewhere?

Marketing

• How do you describe a Point & Click adventure game to people who have never played one? How do you explain the concept of a "puzzle"?
• We discuss what the target audience is and what kind of devices they'll have: do we need to worry about the game working on the early versions of the iPhone / iPod Touch, given that it will probably be another 18 months or so before release?
• Given we're targetting a niche market, we don't want to make it any smaller than necessary by requiring cutting edge hardware.
• Using the Unity engine to target the iPhone has also become a potentially risky venture due to Apple's recent Terms of Service changes. We discuss the pros and cons.

A reminder that you should sign up for the mailing list for all of the latest news

Over the last couple of months I've hired the fine folks from Timbuk2 Studios to do some environment concepts for Ebenezer, my Old Testament adventure game. I'm thrilled with the results, and hugely excited to finally be able to share a few of them with you all!

I'm just posting these small thumbnails for now, I may decide to post some bigger versions at a later stage. The best stuff will definitely be reserved for those who have signed up for my Old Testament Adventures mailing list.

These images are just concepts, the next stage is to find some talented Blender artists willing to help turn these into 3D models so that they can be incorporated into the actual game. If you'd be interested in lending a hand, do contact me.

This week, Kotaku have been running a fascinating series of articles on religion in video games, a subject which is naturally close to my heart. I was particularly interested when the author expressed their sense of how unfulfilling it ultimately proved to "play God", and how the genre of 'the God-game' (such as Populous or Black & White) was a much less satisfying experience for them than playing the role of a creature in amongst the rest of the world.

"I had found that, for me, playing as god was not an attraction. Being removed was chilling and, of course, distancing."

How should the Christian think about 'playing God' in a video game? Instinctively, I want to dismiss it as a bad thing; after all, the very essence of sin is to play God: to shake our fists at our creator and say "I'd rather run my life my way". We want to call the shots. We want to decide which way our life will go. The great power struggle between man and God is what led to Adam & Eve being ejected from Eden, and continues to haunt the human race til this day. No wonder it is so unfulfilling to play God, when that is the root of our greatest problem.

And yet I think I would be wrong to reject the idea so quickly. The author of the article points out that one of the side-effects of so many games that allow you to play God is to let you "discover, through video games, the various types of God I might be". In attempting to play God myself, I get to see how hard it is. I get to see all of the ways in which I fail to be God satisfactorily. In many ways it provides a mirror onto my own soul - give a man ultimate power and authority, and see how he behaves towards those in his care. Surely there is great potential in such an experience to show people the depths of their hearts, and point them towards the one true God who rules with justice and mercy. "We do not engage directly; we do not drop down to say hi." - and yet He did, stepping in to his world in the form of Jesus Christ to sort out the problem of human sin brought about by our god complex.