Personal | Milkstone Studios

Postmortem: Wool

Note: This is a personal post written by me. I’m not talking in the name of the Milkstone Studios team, their opinions about the project could be different.

Introduction

Wool has been our second project since the birth of Milkstone Studios, and we got the development process, and the engine, much more streamlined. Our hopes about the game were high, but they haven’t been fulfilled (only 750 sales in 4 months).

What went Right

Overall polish
We think Wool is one of the most polished games of the channel. We did extensive betatesting to achieve a fun and challenging gameplay and level designs. We listened from other user’s opinions on the early phases and decided to focus on improving the overall experience instead of adding content “with no soul”.
An example of this can be found in the sound and music department, with lots of different and well-placed sounds (special mention to the “stampede” sound effect when many sheeps run at once).
GUI
Using what we learned from Little Racers’ GUI system, we redid from scratch the entire GUI system… Twice. It was a high amount of work, but it paid off in the end. The GUI system is very centric on gamepad UI interaction, and the usual structure of a game menu, with a largely customizable visual design.
All of our later games to date have been using the same GUI without almost any change, so we can say it’s powerful enough for our goals.
Level editor
During Wool development (and other projects that didn’t see the light…yet) we developed a map editor which enabled us to create and edits levels from scratch fairly easily.
The editor was designed to be very flexible, so it will come handy when developing other 2D games in the future.
Paving the way for future games
Between the release of Little Racers and Wool, most of the time was spent in improving our game engine to easen the task of creating new games, so our future projects wouldn’t take that much to be developed.
Things such as game menus, loading/saving, game records, etc. can now be reused on our future games with almost no effort, so we should reduce our development time a lot from now on.

What went wrong

Product placement
Since we created a high quality game and released it at a low price, we expected the game to be very successful. What really happened was: By default, not much people like sheep herding games, no matter how polished or fun they are.
So, despite a rather high trials/sales conversion ratio, the game rapidly dropped of top charts with low sales numbers.
Little to no feedback
Consequence of the first fact, we didn’t get much feedback, good or bad, about the game, which meant that we didn’t even know what the problem was with the game.
Graphics
As in Little Racers, we’ve done our best to compensate our lack of graphic skills, with a fair success. Graphics variety is low, but everything fits and it looks good when in movement (can’t say the same for static screenshots…)

How the game did

In sales terms, Wool has been officially a failure. Although ratings and the few comments about the game are positive, it’s a genre which nobody likes.
We can consider it as a niche game that’s really fun in coop sessions and can give a really fun experience for some hours for just one dollar.

Feel free to comment on the article!

Tags: postmortem, Wool

Thursday, May 13th, 2010 Games, News, Personal, WaaghMan, Wool 2 Comments

Postmortem: Little Racers

Note: This is a personal post written by me. I’m not talking in the name of the Milkstone Studios team, their opinions about the project could be different.

Introduction

I’ve had a lot of fun developing and marketing Little Racers, but it’s time to move on and focus on our next project. Before doing it, I have written this Postmortem about the game. A Postmortem is a document written once the game has been completed, to point out the things done good and the things done wrong, so they can be improved for the next product.

What went Right

Technology
Although Little Racers will not be remembered for using top-notch technology on the Xbox 360, I think the technical quality achieved is above average on Xbox Live Indie Games. Moreover, our creative use of shader techniques allowed us to give a 3D look to some graphics to the point that some people believed they really were 3D!. Also, the use of Farseer physics engine was the right thing to do, most things we’ve needed to do worked like a charm, allowing us to focus on the handling schemes instead of collision detection etc.
Online mode
Networking for games has never been an easy task. It usually takes a lot of time to develop and test, due to the complexity of the topic (the need of more than one machine for testing, latency issues, different server/client behavior…). We managed to get a fairly good online mode in one month, which works fine even in the worst lag conditions.
Also, the online mode enabled us to play with other people over the world, so we could know how people performed in terms of handling.
This topic had also some things to note that could be improved, they’re treated in a further point.
Patches
We’ve done 5 updates for the game after its release in Indie Games (The last one is currently in review process at the moment of writing this). 3 of them were mostly patches, and the other two included new features and improvements.
As an example of our dedication with these patches, the number of tracks available in the full version increased from 16 tracks in v1.0 to 24 tracks in v1.5. I think we owe that much to the users that reported the bugs in the earlier versions of the game, and we wanted to thank their patience with new content.
All these fixes of course were also included in the demo version of the game, which also saw increased the number of tracks from 3 to 6, so they helped a bit with sales.
Price
I think 400 points was the right point tier for the game when the game came out. Maybe the value for the game was a little below that point, I’d say about 350 points, but more than 200 for sure. When the online mode was added in v1.2, for sure the game’s value was 400 points.
When the ratings system was implemented in Xbox Live (what we could name as “The second coming” for Indie Games), we decided to drop the price to the new 240 points tier, in order to get a little more popularity and also to compete with the new 80 points games and apps. It really didn’t meant an important boost in sales, but it helped a bit, that’s for sure.
Feedback
Receiving a mail in your inbox with an user thoughts about your game is one of the best things of being a developer, even when the mail is just to let you know of a crash issue. Also website reviews are welcome, even when the reviewer thinks the game isn’t that good.
Many users wanted to share their thoughts with us when the game came out, and we’ve read all of them. Some of their suggestions have been added as updates to the current game. Many other have been added as possible features for a future game sequel.
Also, since my gamertag can be seen on one of the loading tips, some people have sent me messages and friend requests over the Xbox messaging system. That’s another good thing, you can see people that bought your game and still play it from time to time.
AI
Little Racers was originally developed as a multiplayer-only experience with a single player time trial mode. The reason for that was the technical challenge of getting a competitive AI working. The knowledge an AI could get of the track was very limited, and it didn’t seem easy to get an AI that could take corners precisely at both high and low speeds.
In the end, the core system for AI was surprisingly done in a single afternoon, some of our ideas for the AI performed rather fine.
In fact, it was so good that some people thought the AI cheats by driving faster or getting more grip: Well it’s not, it’s just accelerating, braking and turning as every player does!

What went wrong

GUI
We’ve not received much feedback regarding the usability of the menu, but I think it’s still one of the places where there’s much room for improvement. Since the game appearance, we’ve redesigned the GUI system on our game engine, but it would take too much time to design a new interface for Little Racers.
Anyway, we’ve learned from our errors and next time we’ll make a more console-like and user-friendly menu interface.
Handling
Car handling has been a tricky thing since the first point. The main difference between Little Racers and other 2D racing games is in the handling. Since we decided not to add gameplay elements such as power-ups or weapons, it had to be really enjoyable.
This is were a problem for having too few people developing a game arises. On the first versions, the game had a too unforgiving handling scheme: You had to be really good to complete a clean lap. We were so good at the game that we just didn’t notice.
We’ve been making the control scheme easier and easier update after update, trying to balance speed and grip to allow players to take corners more easily, without making it too boring.
Although I like the current scheme (as I’ve liked all the previous ones), it still is one of the most hated things of the game. Maybe the problem is more related to track design than to handling.
Track design
Due to design decisions related with the local multiplayer mode (cars were too fast to make split screen useful), all the tracks had to fit in a single screen. The first version of the game included many tracks that tried to deal with this by using all the space available, with lot of corners and crosses.
After some feedback, the new tracks added were a lot more wide and open, giving more room to players in a crowded race. Also these new tracks made braking a lot less necessary (Braking doesn’t fit well with arcade racers), and have more high speed crosses, a really fun thing when 12 players are racing at the same time.
Still, the old tracks are still available, to ensure nobody asks to bring them back. Maybe the right decision would have been to remove them, some tracks such as SouthPeak could be removed to improve the overall quality.
Graphics
Despite our best efforts to show the game graphics in a different and credible way, they were still programmer art. That means many in-game icons, the tracks, etc. have a graphic quality that could be much better.
Since we didn’t have the resources to get a proper artist to do the work, there was no other way, but it’s still a thing to improve for our next projects.
Long-term replayability
When playing alone, Little Racers is usually a good game for short sessions, of around 15-20 minutes. It just doesn’t offer enough content to warrant fun for much more time than that.
The game was developed with multiplayer in mind, and that’s why we didn’t really care about it. After all, this problem is inherent to almost any racing game: The fun you can get from racing alone the same track again and again is limited, the only way to get around it is offering some kind of campaign mode, or racing against other people.
We went with the second option. The game really shines when three or more players are competing. Sadly, this isn’t the usual case with Xbox Live Indie games, that you usually try when you’re bored at home and have some extra points on your account.
Network
Although the networking system went out pretty well, not everything was as good as it should. The network mode was reduced to make development and use easier: Only the championship game mode can be used, and it’s mostly automatic.
Also, I’m not sure the time invested in adding the online mode was really worth it: since an Indie game is played by very few people, the chances of finding other people playing at the same moment are reduced.
The whole system could have been better, that’s for sure.
HD
The game was designed to work on HD displays, and it works at a native resolution of 1280×720, with the Xbox 360 doing the scaling when it doesn’t fit the display resolution.
It seems that lots of people still have a non-HD display, and while Little Racers can be played on one of those, it sure isn’t the same experience: Cars are too tiny to see the colors and details well, and some text and icons are just to small to read (the GUI font doesn’t help). It also happens on low-quality HD displays.
We’ve learned the lesson and we’ll try to do bigger icons and clearer texts on our next games.

How the game did

In sales terms, I can say the game success was over our expectatives, but not for much. The initial download count was really incredible, getting 100 sales per day during the first week, but after the game dropped of the new releases tab, downloads rapidly dropped to the point of 0-5 sales per day.
This number increased again in two points: When Xbox Live indie games were made available in Germany and Japan, and when the rating system was added to the dashboard. The price change didn’t have much effect on sales numbers, they increased but overall the earned amount was about the same.
In terms of reception, the game could have done much better. Aside from reviews that we directly asked for, the game hasn’t gotten much public reception.
We really wished more people talked about the game on forums and blogs, since we think the thing the game needs now is players available to compete online.
It also seems the same on the Xbox dashboard, the number of ratings of the game is around the 180 mark, when other games on the same level got about twice that amount.

Well, that’s all of it. I’d like to thank everyone who has tested and rated the game on the Xbox dashboard, and also the XNA Team and Creators Club members. Without their help, Little Racers would have never been come out.

Tags: postmortem

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 Little Racers, Personal, WaaghMan 4 Comments

Other Community Games worth checking

Lately I’ve been playing some Community Games made by other developers. I’ve found many of them to be original and pretty polished, but also find that most of them lack something I reallycan’t describe. I’m putting here a list with mini-reviews.

Biology Battle

The first Community Game I bought, also one of the most polished CG out there. With a gameplay very similar to Geometry Wars, the game features one single-player mode and many Vs. modes. It has a very interesting life/death scheme: You start the game in life mode, in which a combo meter goes up for staying alive. After some time and defeating three rather easy bosses, you are given the option to enter death mode whenever you like. When entering this mode, the combo you got multiplies by ten and stays there.

So, it’s very important to stay alive for a while in life mode to ensure a good score later in death mode, but if you change too late you won’t have enough lives left to get a good score. Also there’s a text telling you on which position are you on the global scoreboard while you play, it’s very interesting and challenging.

I was able to reach Top 5 when the game came out, now I barely reach the Top 100. Now the game is sold at 400MP, so it’s worth checking out.

Halfbrick Echoes

First of all: Halfbrick is the name of the company, the name of the game is just “Echoes”.

This game came out pretty recently, with nice art design and production values. The gameplay is interesting: You need to get to all the specified points on a level by walking to them. When walking you leave a trail. When touching one point of the level, an “echo” appears and travels by the path you left. If you touch them you lose one life. So basically it gets harder when you’ve touched most points of the level.

Although interesting, I didn’t find the gameplay fun enough so I’ve not bought it. Anyway I recommend trying it.

Sol Invasion

A game where you control a fleet and have to survive as much time as possible.By killing you get resources that enables you to improve your fleet or your own ship, so the trick is to kill lots of aliens and spend resources to ensure your fleet survives.

Although I find it rather easy and can get boring after a while, I found it interesting and funny. I don’t know why, but I kept playing for 30 minutes, even it’s the same all the time. Also I don’t know if the game gets harder on each attack wave, I got to a point where it seemed all the waves were more or less the same.

Air Legends

I recently downloaded the trial version of this game. Although small, the game is pretty polished, with simple yet good-looking visuals. The gameplay is fun, basically a 2D arcade shooter where you control a plane which only can shoot forward, and turning takes some time. You can do some maneouvers to avoid fire and get into other plane’s tails.

I think the game has great potential, and personally have bought it, but still it seems uncomplete. It has four game modes, but three of them are almost essentially a deathmatch: Team deathmatch, 2vs2 and 1vs1. The fourth is a mode where you paint into the sky with no defined goal.

In my opinion, the game cries for more long modes, some sort of campaign, or maybe a survival mode where you face waves of increasing difficulty, etc. Also, the game is rather easy, and you can’t set difficulty although you can set the game speed to a higher value.

It would improve a lot with a online multiplayer mode or a 4-player split screen mode.

Rabid Gophers

The most annoying game I’ve found on XBLCG so far. I’ve faced about 4 or 5 upsell screens for a simple 3 minutes play. Really. And only one mode is enabled on the trial mode, one mode you’ll probably get tired of before the demo finishes.

The more you insist, the less I want to buy the game.

Jonny Crush

This game reminds me a lot to Serious Sam, even the name of the game is somewhat similar. Anyway, I found the game not very good. The visuals are weird. There are some good effects, like the blood (red and green) splat on the screen when you kill a nearby enemy or you get hit by them, but the 3d visuals look like they could get an improvement. I’m not talking about more detailed models, I find them OK, it’s just the textures seem way too simple, also the scenario is just formed by textured cubes. Also the weapons on your hand doesn’t move at all when you shoot or move.

And finally, I found it rather strange that, even when Xbox 360 thumbsticks are analogic, the movement in the game isn’t: You only can move in 8 directions, and you’re either moving or not moving. I find that really disappointing.

If you can live with these things, the gameplay is based on getting combos for killing enemies in a row and getting a high score. There are many weapons to choose from.

Tags: other_reviews

Thursday, May 21st, 2009 Personal, WaaghMan 1 Comment

IGN XNA Communal Shower

So IGN has “reviewed” Little Racers demo, and their conclusions are that the game is a Rip Off from Ironman Stewarts’ Off Road… well, I don’t really know where to start.

I could understand if they said it was a clone of Super Sprint, it’s obviously based on the game perspective and track layouts, but Off road? Come on, for god’s sake…

Apart from that, they scold the game for not having power-ups. I’ve told it many times, the game doesn’t have power-ups because it’s a RACING game. I do not recall Need for speed, Colin Mc rae, GRID, etc. having any kind of power-ups during race. This is no Mario Kart. Why should LR have them?

They obviously started the game hoping it was Super Sprint, and were disappointed when they found it wasn’t, but anyway they attacked us for being based on its layout.

If you think the game is similar, I encourage you to play Super Sprint again, you’ll probably change your opinion.

Friday, April 10th, 2009 Personal, WaaghMan 6 Comments

Games i’m currently playing

Although lately i’m finding myself busier than usual, I still try to enjoy as much as I can my free time with videogames.

Here are some games that I’ve been playing these days:

Counter-Strike Source: Although a bit old today, there are still plenty of players and servers to play on. I find myself this game a really good choice to burn stress, and in my humble opinion, it has the best network code ever made for a game.
Conan: I bought this game not too much ago, and I found the game more enjoying that I though it would be. The combo system is varied and fun, combined with 3 different weapon styles. It could have more kinds of enemies, but anyway is a fun game.
Midnight Club Los Angeles: Another gem that suprised me for good. Much better than nowadays Need for Speed games, MC is a very fast street race arcade with good-looking visuals, good difficulty level and really fun. If you like racing games I totally recommend this one.
Miner Dig Deep: In this community game you take the role of a miner with the objective of going deeper and deeper into the soil to gather minerals, and sell them at the local shop to earn money that enables you to purchase better equipment, that makes it easier to goo even deeper, etc. The game is fun and it looks very polished. If i had to tell one bad thing about it, it would be that when you get to very deep stages, you still have to go down from the base after selling items, and it can take some minutes even using the fastest elevators. There are teleporters, but they are used only to teleport back to base, not in the other way. Anyway, I recommend buying it, for only 200MP it’s really a good choice.

I still have a list of pending games with more than 7 titles on it, I’m starting to get a little stressed about it. It seems I need more spare time to relax a bit .