The Drunken Lizard Pub

Hello all,

I've been lurking here in the forums for a long time, but now seeing that Eschalon: Book 1 is complete; it’s time to step forward and say a few things.

Besides being your typical (as if there was one) single player, turn-based, RPG lover, I am also a professional game developer who has had a more successful career than many in the gaming industry. I say this not to beat my own chest, but to give context for some of the comments I will make - looking at Thomas's efforts from the eyes of someone who has made very successful commercial games.

First off, and I can't say this loud enough, Thomas's efforts - seeing this project through from conception to completion as an indie developer, are simply exceptional.

I've written game engines, game code and game tools. I've worked with artists, musicians, and designers to create and integrate their content. I've dealt with testers, marketing people, translators, contractors, budgets and even magazine writers on the way to making a finished product. I have more than a clue as to what it takes to make a game. Not just the tech, but the content, the planning, the logistics, the funding and the determination and support. It's my opinion that maybe one in a hundred who aspires to a project of Eschalon’s scope are able to fully succeed.

Many people who have worked in the game industry drop out and try their hand at making an indie game. Most try their luck in the now brutal causal game scene. Very few attempt such an ambitious effort as an RPG, much less a trilogy. Fewer still succeed.



So Thomas, take a bow, because here is a standing ovation from some people in the industry, proud to see, and even a bit envious of what have you accomplished.



I had a discussion a couple weeks ago with some co-workers about the state of the industry and the games we are making (triple SKU next gen UE3 stuff), and the conversation turned to some the great games we enjoyed in the '90s and the question of "could we make games like those (Darklands, X-Com, Syndicate, Warcraft 2, Fallout, etc) anymore. More specifically, could we make them with the speed and budget similar to mainstream games of the '90s instead of these 150+ man year, 8-digit budget, 75+ person team, bump mapped hi-res productions that seemed to be the only game in town.

Our conclusion to that conversation was that *we* as a publisher owned studio couldn't do it. Maybe we could get the ok for some Wii games, but not on the PC. We agreed that there is growing void in the games market between the small/simple casual/portable games and the high end games the big publishers are willing to fund today (and a shrinking of genres and variety in the high end). And in that gap lies opportunity for upstarts and indies to find unexpected success with the right product. We concluded that there still is demand for games, especially RPG and strategy games-- using content levels and tech that isn’t “cutting edge”, as long as the game play and the enjoyment is there. One of the more surprising things we acknowledged was that many of us would be happier if we could make games like those (like we used to) instead of how we develop games today.

I am sure I am preaching to the choir here, but I hope that Book I will be a success – both critically and financially. I plan on ordering the CD on the 19th, and am already spreading the word to those I know who really like turn-based RPGs to check it out.

Success will bring its own set of problems (Porsche or Ferrari? Just maybe ... ) but it will also bring the means to overcome them and see visions further realized. Will Basilisk Games grow and someday be bought out by EA? Who knows, but we will be watching the journey.


Now for something totally different: Will there be any combo pacs with multiple versions (Mac, Linux, Win32) of the game on them for those of us with Macs and PCs?


Whew, I’ve rambled on long enough for now…. Rock on, and we await the 19th.

Well, gosh! Thank you very, very much!

I can say that it has been a much more difficult venture than I ever thought it would be. There have been several times in the past 2 years where I was on the verge of quiting this project and getting a "real job"- but I didn't and here we are! Now I only have to worry that this game lives up to everyone's expectations!

As for the combo pack- perhaps! We will work with users at swapping licenses when the different versions come out if they want. I guess when all three versions are wrapped up we could offer some cool deluxe edition with all 3 platforms packed on a single CD. I'll keep it in mind.

Thanks again for the kind words and we're glad you decloaked from lurker mode.

Spaceman Spiff wrote:Hello all,

I've been lurking here in the forums for a long time, but now seeing that Eschalon: Book 1 is complete; it’s time to step forward and say a few things.

Besides being your typical (as if there was one) single player, turn-based, RPG lover, I am also a professional game developer who has had a more successful career than many in the gaming industry. I say this not to beat my own chest, but to give context for some of the comments I will make - looking at Thomas's efforts from the eyes of someone who has made very successful commercial games.

First off, and I can't say this loud enough, Thomas's efforts - seeing this project through from conception to completion as an indie developer, are simply exceptional.

I've written game engines, game code and game tools. I've worked with artists, musicians, and designers to create and integrate their content. I've dealt with testers, marketing people, translators, contractors, budgets and even magazine writers on the way to making a finished product. I have more than a clue as to what it takes to make a game. Not just the tech, but the content, the planning, the logistics, the funding and the determination and support. It's my opinion that maybe one in a hundred who aspires to a project of Eschalon’s scope are able to fully succeed.

Many people who have worked in the game industry drop out and try their hand at making an indie game. Most try their luck in the now brutal causal game scene. Very few attempt such an ambitious effort as an RPG, much less a trilogy. Fewer still succeed.



So Thomas, take a bow, because here is a standing ovation from some people in the industry, proud to see, and even a bit envious of what have you accomplished.



I had a discussion a couple weeks ago with some co-workers about the state of the industry and the games we are making (triple SKU next gen UE3 stuff), and the conversation turned to some the great games we enjoyed in the '90s and the question of "could we make games like those (Darklands, X-Com, Syndicate, Warcraft 2, Fallout, etc) anymore. More specifically, could we make them with the speed and budget similar to mainstream games of the '90s instead of these 150+ man year, 8-digit budget, 75+ person team, bump mapped hi-res productions that seemed to be the only game in town.

Our conclusion to that conversation was that *we* as a publisher owned studio couldn't do it. Maybe we could get the ok for some Wii games, but not on the PC. We agreed that there is growing void in the games market between the small/simple casual/portable games and the high end games the big publishers are willing to fund today (and a shrinking of genres and variety in the high end). And in that gap lies opportunity for upstarts and indies to find unexpected success with the right product. We concluded that there still is demand for games, especially RPG and strategy games-- using content levels and tech that isn’t “cutting edge”, as long as the game play and the enjoyment is there. One of the more surprising things we acknowledged was that many of us would be happier if we could make games like those (like we used to) instead of how we develop games today.

I am sure I am preaching to the choir here, but I hope that Book I will be a success – both critically and financially. I plan on ordering the CD on the 19th, and am already spreading the word to those I know who really like turn-based RPGs to check it out.

Success will bring its own set of problems (Porsche or Ferrari? Just maybe ... ) but it will also bring the means to overcome them and see visions further realized. Will Basilisk Games grow and someday be bought out by EA? Who knows, but we will be watching the journey.


Now for something totally different: Will there be any combo pacs with multiple versions (Mac, Linux, Win32) of the game on them for those of us with Macs and PCs?


Whew, I’ve rambled on long enough for now…. Rock on, and we await the 19th.

What I wanna know is when will enough of you guys that still want to make games in the "old school" style decide to break off and form your only smaller companies and make the kind of games you want? I personally hope that it happens here and there....I know it difficult when you have a standard of living, family to support etc.....

Saxon1974 wrote:What I wanna know is when will enough of you guys that still want to make games in the "old school" style decide to break off and form your only smaller companies and make the kind of games you want? I personally hope that it happens here and there....I know it difficult when you have a standard of living, family to support etc.....

Economic reasons are at the forefornt of my decisions. When I got into the modern games industry, by joining a startup, I was in my late 20's, recently married, childless and living in an apartment. Most of the people in the company I joined were of simliar ages and situations.

As of today, I am past 40, have 2 young children and my wife is a full-time stay-at-home mom, living in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. I am in the employ of a 200-person studio owned by a large publisher and making a 6-figure salary with excellent benefits. Because three other people are dependent upon me economically, I can't justify taking the risks I could when I joined a startup game studio and worked insane hours for a tiny salary all those years ago.

Having children tends to be a life changing event, both in the decisions and risks a person takes, as well as what they do with their time. I will not subject them to many risks that I, by myself, would be willing to take. My failing in such an effort would impact people that I am responsible for and who never had a say in the decision. Thomas, if I recall right, is about the same age as I am, but he has a supportive wife and no children, so his tolerance for risk and failure is different.

Now, all that doesn't mean that I will not ever strike out on my own or join a startup game studio full-time, as I may very well do that again someday. For now though, given my situation, I have chosen to try to develop some very cool tech in my spare time that may be of use for other indie developers to enhance their games. -- A much smaller project than the complete game(s) I wish I could make, but a good creative outlet for me, given the circumstances.

I can't speak for everyone else who is/was in the game industry. Some others have gone indie and are trying to make games like the ones we were waxing nostalgically about, but many of my age and experience are in the same boat as me - at a different point in their lives and with different priorities. (and honestly, most of the young pups who have joined the industry in the last several years do not understand, or have what it would take to make games like those we were discussing -- sort of a knowledge lost to the bright 3D lights situation.)

It sadden's me that the younger generation is not getting exposed to the types of games we used to enjoy.....I guess it means the end of the types that I like eventually, if it's not already the end.

The same thing has happened to the music industry as well.....oh well. I just have to hope that some really good indy series come out in the next few years.

I started working on my own game and got maybe 10% into development and realized how much work there really is to do. A game of this type is an overwhelmingly large project and I don't think you realize it until you really start working on one. I work a full time job, have a wife but no kids yet but we plan to have some in the next year or so. I only get a few hours here and there to work on my game now, so I know to make something like Basilisk has would probably take me 5 years plus to do.....so unfortunately I might not be able to make one either.....

I'm glad to hear that some people in the business of making games still want to play games of the "old style" even though they cant risk actually making them. Word of mouth advertising by knowledgeable people could go a long way in making this game a financial success and hopefully lead to more such games being made. From the forums I read I know there is a fan base for such games I just wonder how how big it actually is.

This has been one of the most interesting read in any forums in a long long time.

No one really knows the size of the potential fan base for a game like Eschelon, Like most games, it will need a good marketing push to get the word out, and a lot of little quality factors will influence the word of mouth and review buzz it gets.

One thing to note is the definition of "old school" games. I'd be inclined to say that what Thomas was shooting for with Eschalon is more of a "late 2D Era" (late 90s) tile based game with fully modern features. Perhaps we need a term ("Classic 2D"? help me here) to better describe the target.

Try going back and playing some true "old school" RPGs such as Ultima IV or the newer Wasteland, and you will realize that Eschalon is a generation ahead of them, not just in terms of input and visual, but content depth. Those games were constrained by memory size, storage, system speed and input devices.

As PCs advanced, we later got games like Diablo and Fallout to name a few. The visuals went from 2D block tile graphics to higher-resolution, animated 2d Sprites and a world with a 3D space shown in axonometric projection. The size of the maps, the NPC conversations, the visual and audio assets, and the underlying game systems were some of the many things about the games that grew compared to their predecessors. The mouse and GUI caused another gameplay revolution. I mentioned Ultima IV and Wasteland - both fantastic games of their times, but their characters (displayed as 16x16 icons) were moved in one tile increments by the press of arrow keys. Compare that to the mouse driven interfaces of the late 2d Games where travel across a map screen can be done with one click and you see the character smoothly walk or run; or how a right click can be used to examine the objects around your character without having to move to an adjacent tile. Those were advances in gameplay interaction.


PCs kept improving. And then... 3D Happened. And things got a lot more complicated. In many ways, games took a step back to accommodate the shift from 2D to 3D. The amount of work for each visual asset went up, so the number of assets went down. The focus on composition of the ingame world shifted from the combinations of tiles to the appearance of continues unique assets. As the memory required to express a single cubic volume of the game world went up, the overall size of the worlds came down. This in turn let to changes in the overall designs to compensate and re-balance. Epic scope was on the way out to make room for close-in immediacy.

With the development of 3D engines, major engineering effort was put into all sorts little issues of timing, animation, blending, collision, and so on -- things that were non-issues or ignored outright in the last 2D engines. The size of the development teams grew, meaning each developer was responsible for a much smaller sliver of the result, and they spent more time on tiny issues of implementation and less on the big picture that the end user would experience.

I could ramble on all day, but the point I am getting at - besides the history lesson you probably already know - is that last generation of 2D games makes a good target for ambitious indie developers. The effort needed can be an order of magnitude less than 3D engined game of the same type, but the conventions of isometric high-res visuals, mouse input and ambitious content scope using tile-based assets still have wide appeal.

Regarding my comments about the young people new to the game industry; don't let me paint them all with a simple brush. Some of them would excel at developing games like Eschalon. But they tend to be outnumbered by those who don't. When I got started making games, it was possible for one (or a couple) of people to make the whole game programming wise. That meant having an understanding of the diverse range of systems needed to make the complete product, including the "game engine". With the advent of 3D and larger systems, the scope got a lot larger. It was possible to spend all your time just specializing on a subset of 3D Graphics (such as lighting and shadows), or networking, or physics, or AI and scripting. And so, that is what many of the people new to the industry have done. When I got in, there were no schools such as Digipin or Guildhall where people go to be trained for the industry. And that training focuses on things like I just mentioned. The students work with engines like Unreal or Source, and study 3D rendering and AI theory, and usually can find a job in the industry when they are done. I have personally hired recent graduates from such places. And they are great if you are making an Xbox 360 game using the Unreal 3 Engine. And given that they are younger, the games that first influenced and inspired them are more likely to be Quake II and Super Mario 64 than Ultima V or Civilization 1. So the path they have taken never took the majority of them through the "old school" in games or development experience.

cubgrace: I'm glad you found this interesting. I didn't really expect that.

Yes, definitely interesting! Thanks for taking the time to opine.

I find this part of your post very interesting...


"PCs kept improving. And then... 3D Happened. And things got a lot more complicated. In many ways, games took a step back to accommodate the shift from 2D to 3D. The amount of work for each visual asset went up, so the number of assets went down. The focus on composition of the ingame world shifted from the combinations of tiles to the appearance of continues unique assets. As the memory required to express a single cubic volume of the game world went up, the overall size of the worlds came down. This in turn let to changes in the overall designs to compensate and re-balance. Epic scope was on the way out to make room for close-in immediacy."

This statement is so true, and I really believe that with 3D RPG gaming got alot worse, because as you said resources weren't being spent as much on world content as opposed to the 3D concepts. Granted I guess 3D can feel a bit more immersive and "real life' in a game, but I personally don't think its enough of a change to warrant the amount of resources allocated to it. Would I have a much better time playing Fallout if it had been done in 3D? I seriously doubt it. I can't think of very many 3D RPG's that I really liked come to think of it.

Im not saying progess is a bad thing, I just think the whole 3D content creation takes away too much of the resources and takes too long to implemenet to warrant creationg of really good world content, story, dialog etc.....

Unfortunatley we will probably never see another 2D RPG from a major studio...which I still would like to see....

This part of your post Im not sure I agree with, or I might be interpreting what you mean a bit differently.

"Epic scope was on the way out to make room for close-in immediacy."

If your talking about close-in immediacy in a realistic looking graphics and immersion point of view, I agree. However, I think that the last generation of 2D tile games had way more depth and interactivity than most of the current 3D titles. Take fallout 2 for example, there were many things you could interact with, you could open basically every container, use or at least examine everything on the screen, it seeemed like nothing was filler. Now in 3D games, most of the screen seems to be filler, there are tons of chest, containers etc....that cannot be opened. I think this a bad thing in gaming and I hope it continues to improve in the 3D style games.

That was a bit of a rant

Im glad someone finds this thread interesting. Or was that sarcasm?

Yes, very interesting and excellent post, Spiff.

I recently re-played Ultima 9, and it's probably the best illustration I can think of how 3D reduced other factors of gameplay. In many ways, I wish that Origin had stuck to a 2D engine. I think it would have been a better way to end the series, and would have matched the older games in style and characterization.

I started programming BASIC when I was 10, and my holy grail was assembly language for most of my teenage years. Unfortunately, it's somewhat marred my career in software engineering, as I don't think or conceive code in quite the same way as developers who started with C++ or Java.

But in some ways, I wonder if we've lost something from that old era. Recently, a friend of mine on a vintage enthusiast mailing site introduced his office-mates to an old BASIC game called "Camelot". A very simple game of rock-paper-scissors but with knights (and dragons) jousting. He said the whole office was consumed with playing, and one of the younger members was amazed he could break the program and actually see the programming logic running it.

It makes me wonder how anyone gets interested in programming nowadays; we're so far removed from the actual code.

Adam

Saxon1974 wrote:This part of your post Im not sure I agree with, or I might be interpreting what you mean a bit differently.

"Epic scope was on the way out to make room for close-in immediacy."

In this I was referring to the size and spacing of the game worlds (and to a lesser extend the number of complex units in them).

With the 2D engines, it didn't take that many bytes to store all the information for a single tile, or that much CPU/GPU to display them. With the transition to 3D, the memory requirements went up significantly, so the response was to shrink the world. (visual fidelity/texel density was also an issue - you didn't want huge planes of flat stretched-out textures, when the previous games got the most out of every single 2d pixel).

On the last commercial 2D Game of mine that shipped, you could scroll from one side of the world map to the other, and it could be Huge - dozens of screens wide. The next game I was involved with, a 3D game in the same genre, using the same scale, the world was much smaller in terms of how many screens it filled, even though it required more RAM to store the data for it. (just the terrain actually, I'm not counting the objects here).

So, to compensate, the designers reduced the effective/operating radius of most units to balance the fact the scale of things (moving to the next town over, etc) had changed.

In the 2D RPGs, having the option of big maps is part of the game play mechanic such as exploration and combat.

adamantyr wrote:I started programming BASIC when I was 10, and my holy grail was assembly language for most of my teenage years. Unfortunately, it's somewhat marred my career in software engineering, as I don't think or conceive code in quite the same way as developers who started with C++ or Java.

But in some ways, I wonder if we've lost something from that old era.

Adam. Things are defiantly different today in terms of programming. We have lost some things, but we have also gained some things. The question that decides if the change is good or bad is that of what matters to programmers today.

Game programming is very different from many other types of programming. It is one place where it can make a big difference to care about the low-level code and operations that take place. -- More so at least than many other types of programming. I took a look at leaving the industry this year, and found that C++ and assembly gurus have far fewer options than they did a decade ago. C#, SQL and many new things are making up the mainstream today.

But working on the Playstation 3 (I have a dev kit on my desk as I type this, a 360 dev kit too), every byte counts. There will never a ram or GPU upgrade for it, and the challenge is to get the most out of it in 1/60th of a second. So i worry about the quality of the code the compiler spits out, and the usage of every byte of memory. I come from a background where I learned all that.. (in fact, next spring will mark my 30th anniversary programming )

The young kids and newbies today can start out with a GUI environment where they use templates and meta-programming while calling huge APIs that do the real dirty work. They can write code without regard for the algorithms or the data format underneath. On the one hand they can get more done much quicker than we could back then... but on the other hand they pay for it with bloated code and a far distance from knowing what is really going on.

Most of the people who got into the game industry when I did had a background with the early 8-bit computers. They stood out from their peers in that they actively pursued learning programming on their own - there wasn't the alternatives that exist today (nor the legions of game players who dream of tightening up the graphics on level 3....)


Ok, I am just ranting without much of a point so best to end it now.

No problem on the ranting, Spiff. I know where you're coming from.

My personal peeve is how game companies want people with years of C++ programming experience, and yet they have NO entry-level positions whatsoever. I wonder what's going to happen when the majority of C++ programmers from the 80's and 90's retire. Software development in general tends to lack a process of building good employees.

Thing is, I spent a LOT of time as a teenager programming. I really don't want to be spending hours of my free time "practicing". For one thing, on your own, you tend to follow the path of least resistance. Secondly, I would like a life OUTSIDE of my career! So I'd much rather get that C++ experience through work.

Given that game jobs usually have huge numbers of applicants, game companies can afford to be picky. I knew one fellow who had a Masters degree (A Russian C.S. degree no less) and years of C++ experience. But he was not a gamer by nature, and had no interest in working for a game company. After all, the pay is substandard and they treat you like disposable tissue. The coding skills game companies want tend to get developed by other industries, like scientific computing or academia.

Still, now we got game programming schools. How useful are they? I was at a gaming conference two years ago in Seattle, and when one of the audience asked if a DigiPen degree would help them get hired, the speakers evaded the issue. The general gist I got from it was "A degree is nice, but we want to see practical examples of work."

And of course, the final problem is that you may be coding the game, but not designing it. The days of the "designer/coder" are fast disappearing. Unless you're part of a small start-up group, you're not going to have a say in what's going on with the game. Then again, designing has a different set of skills from coding, so it's probably for the best to differentiate them.

This is why I'm fully in support of independent development, and why I'll put down money without hesitation to buy Eschalon: Book I, but hesitate about buying the Witcher.

Adam

No sarcasm

I had a ton of questions but "Bill Watterson" is doing a good job of knocking them down with out me having to ask.