The troubled development continues.

How is it being an indie game developer?

At best it's a dream come true. When you really get into the flow... it's amazing.
Seriously, being inspired and seeing your art and audio combining feels awesome.
















But when the flow breaks it can get "ugly" so to speak. When I first started developing The Human Gallery, everything went smoothly. I remember creating the very first tech demo, and I saw the potential in it. Slowly I started adding more to it and I thought it looked incredible. I was so excited about everything.

I kept working, and it was a time to list on Steam Greenlight. I had a demo for press and YouTubers ready. I did send it out and was so excited to see what would come.

I noticed a few YouTubers playing it and saw that the game looked nothing like it was supposed to. It was squeezed and flickered way too much. I had to ask a few YouTubers to take down the videos, it was a painful thing to do. I felt horrible! I also instantly pulled the demo offline, meaning that the press and various YouTubers couldn't get it anymore.

Ouch, I had just started my Greenlight campaign back then, what a blow!
Well, even when THG didn't get a lot of attention, it still got Greenlit in just a week! That was extremely encouraging and I could rest for a while. I knew the potential is there.

I started looking what was causing the bug and found out it was my code with one of the shaders that took care of the aspect ratio. Well, I fixed it only to notice it broke something else. This went on for a few months! Seriously, it was driving me nuts. Good bye inspiration!


I had to make a decision, I would pause the development of The Human Gallery. Since I'm coding my game with Fusion 2.5 I did report the bugs and limitations I found for the developers of the Fusion 2.5. While I would work on something else, something a lot more simpler, hopefully they would fix these bugs.

That's when I started creating DISTRAINT. And damn I absolutely loved making that game! It was so easy, the art-style, the code... everything was so smooth it was incredible. Though towards the end I had a little stress as the time was running out, but I managed to do it in time.

After releasing DISTRAINT I took some time off from the development. A little while ago, I thought it would be time to pick up The Human Gallery again. I checked if the bugs I had reported earlier had been fixed and those were! Awesome, no more crashes or problems with the aspect ratio. I was excited!

I updated some of the code and decided to give THG demo a go on my wife's gaming laptop. I was excited to see its performance as THG is not the lightest of games.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
The performance was great, smooth 60fps, but the game was all messed up. The intro looked all bugged, it was filled with graphical bugs... Oh my not again.... This seems to happen with specific Nvidia cards, GTX 960m, GTX 750 etc.

This is a tough one. I don't know what causes this. It can be a problem with Fusion, shaders or even specific Nvidia cards (drivers). What I know for sure is that my code is not to blame here and that the development didn't pick up as I had hoped. This is highly frustrating as you can imagine. I've been fighting more with the problems than I've been able to develop the actual game! Well, I'll try to figure out where the problem lies this time.

One thing is sure though, I won't develop the game any further before this has been solved!

But yeah, being an indie game developer is awesome, but at times it can get extremely tricky and frustrating, especially if you're creating something ambitious! :)

I'm back! Some of my thoughts.

Hey! :)

It has been quite a while since I last wrote this blog. Why so? Well, around five months back I had so many technical difficulties with The Human Gallery I started loosing interest towards the development. I made so little progress and constantly had to fight with bugs. Since I've put so much effort into The Human Gallery I decided to take a break and work on something else while I load my batteries. When I decided this my wife suggested that I should create something for the next Halloween (2015). Back then, Halloween was only three months away, but I really liked the idea!
So I started designing a small horror adventure novel called DISTRAINT.

Since I didn't have much time, I thought I would design my game wisely, otherwise it wouldn't be possible within three months. DISTRAINT started coming together so quickly... after only a month I already had the game Greenlit on Steam. It was exactly the "break" I needed, though towards the Halloween I had quite a stress from DISTRAINT as well, but I managed to finish the game in time and I'm very, very happy how it turned out. I think it's a brilliant little game, and from what I can gather, so do the players!

Unfortunately though, I had so little time for the marketing that not many people are aware of the game and this reflects on sold copies, though I'm hoping this would change over the time. I'm not expecting DISTRAINT to sell a lot, but well, it would be awesome to get paid for your work, ha! :)

Anyways, with DISTRAINT I went with pixel-art in which I combined some of my own style to. The game actually looks pretty neat! The ease of creating pixel-art... it's so much easier than the art-style with The Human Gallery. At some point I thought if I just should keep creating my games in pixel-art since I'm not sure people can appreciate the art-style of The Human Gallery enough. Heck, I've even gotten a few comments saying that The Human Gallery looks like Lone Survivor. Seriously? And now don't get me wrong, Lone Survivor looks great but I hate it when people start comparing two games that looks totally different. I should probably just ignore them! :)

I think that DISTRAINT looks somewhat similar, but that's only natural with pixel art!



But yeah, after creating pixel-art I can understand why so many developers decides to do the same. It's easy to produce, it doesn't require expensive software, it's fast, it's light. It's ideal for small development teams! And well made pixel-art can look great, so there's that.

That said, just thinking how much work and effort The Human Gallery takes... It's difficult! And what makes it even more tough is the psychological side. I have no guarantee that people can appreciate the art-style. I can't know if the game will sell any more than DISTRAINT. Of course I have a better chances for that, but nothing is guaranteed. So should I just blindly trust that the prize will be there in the end?

I'm so happy that Silence of the Sleep is still selling a bit every now and then, it's enough to pay the rent and keep me developing, for now. But what happens in one year? If I take my chances and put everything I got on The Human Gallery and it fails...? I just need to trust in my own doing and try to market the game. Publisher would be one way... but I don't know. Decisions, decisions! :)

Five months. That's quite a break. The code is complicated, and I actually learned quite a deal from DISTRAINT, mainly organizing the code. I really hope to pick up The Human Gallery, but it's not easy. I think I need to take my time, look through the code, simplify and organize it. It's doable, but asks for patience.

One of the other things I'm a bit concerned about is the writing and the voice acting. This is a huge challenge for me! It's really difficult to write a good text if you can't write in your own language. Also in The Human Gallery the dialogue will be somewhat artistic, which will be a challenge for the voice actors. I feel that I'm okay in writing, at times I can produce awesome stuff and at times it fells a bit short. Also the balance is very difficult to get right, some times I should left things unsaid. Well, it's difficult but I'm sure I can pull it off. Gladly I have friends on the internet that are willing to proof-read my nonsense and make it better!

But what comes next?
I've had a break from the development since the release of DISTRAINT. That's around two months now and five months from The Human Gallery. Today I'll start working again... but exactly what?
I could finally start creating the trading cards for Silence of the Sleep as people have asked for those. It would be awesome to get DISTRAINT translated in more languages as well. But I'm eager to get back working with The Human Gallery! So much to do, maybe I'll start with the small stuff, maintaining etc. and move from there. One thing is for sure though, I won't take deadlines! That I learned with DISTRAINT, seriously, a whole game within three months... ugh! :)

Alright, in the sake of readability I should quite my nonsense for now! :)
But in the future you can expect me to write more often in this blog, so please do subscribe!

A day of a developer

Good day!

My wife suggested that I should write about my normal working day. I thought why not, could be interesting to some!

So, I wake up in the morning around 8-9 am, depending how long our kids are sleeping. This in summer time when they are not in the daycare. It's around hour or two earlier otherwise. Needless to say that is great, I get to sleep very well! So that's a huge plus being indie developer.

Alright, so, we wake up, the whole family. Me, my wife, my boy and my girl. And the dog, let's not forget the dog. She usually waits when I get up and so does she! Cute thing.

Once we are up we head to kitchen for some breakfast, well kids do. I settle for a large cup of damn good coffee. We eat and drink our coffees, it's one of my favorite moments of the day!


Once my cup is empty I'm starting to actually wake up which is good. After that I'll take the dog out.

It's around 10 am now, everything is set and my day can begin. I fetch myself a big glass of cold water, it's good to drink a lot. I noticed having some headaches before I started drinking more water, so, drink water people. It will do you good!

I sit down to my computer chair. This one:

Yeah... I will toss it and get a new one. I will at some point, it's killing my back anyways.

Alright, I begin my daily "check-round" which includes my emails, Twitter, Facebook. Google, Steam page, and my Steam statistic page to see how many copies I've sold. If Silence of the Sleep is not on sale then it's usually 0. Sometimes I get lucky and it has sold a few copies! Sounds a bit depressing but worry not, it sells okay when it's on sale so I can pay the rent!

Depending if anything is up I'll try my best to reply to emails and to community. This takes some time and focus too! So it's not like I wake up and start working, there are lots to do before that.

Once I have completed my so called "check-round" I can finally start developing.

Okay, being one-man-band I need to figure what to do. Will it be graphics, writing, audio design, music, coding or marketing? At times it feels overwhelming and I can't focus on anything. I try to pull my head together to get something done, but no matter what I do it's not quite "there". That easily leads to frustration and can really ruin the day. In these situations I just gotta keep my head cool and take the rest of the day off. If only it was that easy...!

Phew! Gladly that does not happen every day!
So when it doesn't I usually boot up the Fusion 2.5 (the software I code my game with), open The Human Gallery and see how it feels. Maybe it's missing audio, so I could compose, or maybe the background feels a bit barren so I could start painting props. Maybe I have scenario in mind and I'll start designing it further.

It's never quite the same. For example today, I did some monster design and code for it, tried to see how it would look in game. But I've been staring at it for too long so it's starting to look a bit distracting. I hate that feeling, is it any good...? "NO! That's horrible!" "Nah, that's actually pretty cool!" You know, one thing can look in so many different ways if you stare it for too long. So I thought I'll take a break from it and try to continue composing a theme song for a certain character. That worked out beautifully! I love the song! It's really my favorite part of the development: Composing.

Alright... what could I do next?
Tried lots of different stuff but nothing felt smooth. Trying to think if I could market the game, but I really don't want to show some of the stuff just yet. Argh! It's only around 1 pm, I need to do something!

Now that a small frustration is starting to grow it's worth mentioning that it does not help if the kids are at home as they can be quite noisy, trust me! That's easily one of the best ways to take away the focus. Usually I try listening to some music while working, but that's not ideal neither. Better than the noise though! :)

But hey! It's quiet now, so I fool around a bit, trying to do a bit this and that but nothing really comes together. So I thought I'll start writing a blog, so here I am typing my thoughts.

It's around 1 pm, usually around these times I'll take a coffee break, and if my wife is at home she asks if I want to eat something. I might or might not eat, but the coffee is good! I love eating, but I usually keep to it and then the food tastes even better. Not sure if it's healthy though, but works for me.

After the coffee break I get back to working, the usual stuff. Depending how smoothly everything goes I might work till the evening, or quit a bit early.

This is pretty much my normal day. I like what I'm doing, but it is by no means easy. It's the mental side that is the most difficult. You have no guarantee that the game will success, no guarantee of the income. You just need to blindly trust that what you're doing is worth, that the prize will be there in the end. But when you develop your game for... 1½ - 2 years, well, it is quite a long wait.

And even still I would not want to do anything else!

Graphics production

Hello readers! If there are any.

Long time, sorry!
Had a small "burnout" or something like that. Gladly nothing too serious.

Aaaanyways, back to business. Someone asked about graphics a little while ago. I thought I could write a little bit about the subject. So, today I'm going to share some of my SUPER-SECRET working methods!

Okay, I was already done with my graphic asset when I figured: "Oh darn, I could have taken some screenshots for the blog" So the "making of" is not perfect but should give the idea of my methods.


THE BOOTH?

I need this... what do you call it... restaurant booth? Not sure that is correct. Anyways, since it would be quite symmetric I thought I'll use Adobe Illustrator for the shape. This is totally optional, you can do this in Photoshop or even Paint. I decided to go with Illustrator for that so this is what I made:

Alright so there you can see the booth, the one you sit at, right? Does not look much yet, so I'll just copy and take it over to Photoshop. I would make the body wooden and the cushion would be fabric.

I select the center part and apply a pattern to it. Here I'm using my own wood pattern/texture.

TIP: Take your time to create amazing textures/patterns, I use them A LOT so it will reflect how your assets are going to look.

Okay it should look somewhat like this:

I think the texture is a bit too dark and has too much contrast in this case so once I apply the pattern I rasterize the layer and open the levels editor (ctrl+l). I adjust it a bit to make it not stand out too much. After I'm happy with the contrast I open the layer style panel and add a small inner shadow to it.

Once I'm done I repeat the steps for the wooden part at the bottom, but I'll make it horizontal instead of vertical.

Okay that's done! Let's move to so called cushion part of my beautiful to be booth.
I select the red area and apply a gradient to it:

After that I rasterize the layer again. (I know it's not very common practice and I usually avoid rasterizing. But if you know what you're doing then it's fine. I always keep a backup of my base assets so I won't alter them.) Or do I? Mmmm....

But let us continue!
It looks a bit... lifeless don't you think? It needs something, maybe a soft base-texture would liven it up a little? To do so I open the layer style panel again, go to "Pattern Overlay" and choose something that looks like a fabric. Photoshop has some cool default patterns, I'm using one of those here for the base. I select the pattern, drop it's opacity to around 40% and set the"Blend Mode" to "Color Dodge" and it looks something like this:

It is starting to shape up! Though it still needs something, really does.

By now you might figure what to do next: Rasterize and open the layer style panel again. It's time for round two. Add a small subtle "Inner Shadow" and select the "Pattern Overlay" again. I use my custom texture here, it gives this dirty feel to it. I want it to be subtle though so I play with opacity and try various blend modes.

This is how it looks now:

Not bad!
Since I'm going to keep this rather simple I'm not going to brush more details to it. This will appear in the background so I don't want it to bee too detailed... excuses! :D

Okay, let's give it some color. You can create adjustment layer or just bring up the "Color Balance" panel and start tweaking. In my current world, I create all the assets gray-scale and color them in game with colored mist and lights. Though in this case I want to have a little color for the cushion. So I pop up the "Color Balance" and start tweaking the colors.

Once I'm happy with the colors I might want to sharpen the asset a little bit. You can do this by going Filter -> Sharpen -> Smart Sharpen...

I don't use it always though, and be careful if you use it. It's a good way to ruin your assets making them too sharp. Usually it's a good idea to stay somewhere between, same goes with the contrast, colors and everything. Don't over-do them! They might look pretty for a little while but trust me, it is the long run that matters!

I also cook a normal map for the asset if it's near the lights in the game. But yeah, this is mainly how I work with the assets. I also do lots of drawing and painting, but for symmetric assets I rather go with Illustrator.

After some tweaking and adding normal map and shadow this is how it looks in the game:
















Overall being one man band, I need to produce everything quite fast as I'm responsible for coding, music, writing, marketing etc. Being aware of that is a strength and so you must plan your methods smartly. I'm personally very happy how everything looks. It's worth the effort, and hopefully people can appreciate that!

Thank you for reading! :)

The Human Gallery has been Greenlit!

Hello! :)

That was quick as The Human Gallery got Greenlit in only a week!

There are some things you might want to do when you list your game on Steam Greenlight. One of the most important things is animated .gif file.

Try to show the gameplay and the logo. This will generate a lot more clicks to your page than what still image probably would. When people enter your page make sure the first thing they see is the actual gameplay footage of the game. If you have Greenlight trailer or something like that, arrange your videos so that you show the gameplay footage first. Trailers are cool, but the gameplay is more important!

It's also a very good idea to use images in description. Though I did a small mistake here, and inserted an image before any text. So when people hovered their mouse over my game they did not see the short description but an img tag. To avoid that make sure to describe your game briefly before adding images.

Alright, Finnish Steam here, but this is how it went:

From top to down it tells your current position on your way to the top 100, unique visitors and how many days your game has been on Greenlight, 'Yes'-votes and followers.

THG had 2412 'Yes'-votes and was in the top 50 when it got Greenlit, but since I was away from home I could not take any screen captures, sorry about that!

Wait what!? It got through with only a 2412 'Yes'-votes?
Indeed! Steam Greenlight has surely changed a lot!

It's not long when I listed my first game, Silence of the Sleep on Greenlight. It was a lot more harder to get to the top 100. For example back then SotS had 2000 'Yes'-votes in 3 days, and was only 27% on it's way to the top 100. It had a lot more visitors on it's page and back then it needed around 5500 'Yes'-votes to get Greenlit.

But the change with the figures does not come from the game, I actually think The Human Gallery was presented a way better than Silence of the Sleep. From what I can tell, Greenlight is "fading" away. Something else will take it's place for sure, but at this rate it won't take long.

Sure getting Greenlit is not only about the votes. Steam surely checks the press coverage, Youtube etc. Also having released a game earlier surely helps too. So yeah, if you list on Greenlight, be active with the press, Twitter, Facebook etc. Do it daily!

Alright, so THG got Greenlit in only a week! That's incredible, especially when I screw up my press/Youtube LP demo. I had a bug with my aspect code and I had to pull down the playable demo. Thus the coverage from the various medias was nothing to get excited about. Anyways, luckily THG was able to get through. So even though THG has been Greenlit I'm slightly disappointed that it has not spread like I would have hoped. Though lots of this comes from the fact I had to pull down the demo. Hopefully I can fix it soon and send it out, maybe that generates some buzz! :)

Alright long post so I better stop for now, thanks for reading!

Oh yeah, my wife baked a cake, it is delicious! :)

The Human Gallery is finally on Steam Greenlight

Hey! :)

Sorry it has been quiet for a little while. There has been so much to do for the Greenlight. Some of the smallest things can be the ones that are the hardest. But, I've finally listed The Human Gallery on Steam Greenlight! I did it yesterday and already the comments and stats are looking very encouraging.
Though it will be tricky to keep up as there are lots of new projects added daily. But I'm confident, and hopefully some of the medias will play the demo and write about it.

But yeah! When I listed to Greenlight I uploaded the first gameplay footage of the game. So far all the comments are suggesting that people are truly liking the art-style and overall atmosphere which is exactly what I'm after. All good so far! :)

Ah, Finnish Steam here. Almost missed that bit, so what that image shows from top to down is your current position on your way to top 100. Unique visitors, "Yes" votes and followers.

This whole preparing for Steam Greenlight has been pretty stressful and I have not been able to work on game's length, but now that I've listed the game I can't wait to move on new scenarios with the game. I've something wicked in my mind, it will be awesome!

When I listed my previous game Silence of the Sleep you needed a lot more votes to reach the top 100. I can also see a huge difference on average stats when compared to times I listed SotS. I think Steam is closing the Greenlight at some point, and maybe this is part of it. But I'm hoping I still get the permission to release before that happens!

But yes, to keep up I've sent a lots of email to various medias, hopefully they will write about the game. I've also contacted a bunch of Youtube LP's and MathasGames already played the demo and seemed to enjoy it! Hopefully a few more LP's will play it as well, though getting through to them is very difficult. Can't even imagine the amount of email they receive every day. I've also been using Twitter to spread the word, something I did not use with my previous game too much.

Simply put, I've been working extremely hard with the demo and I want it to get a fair shot. Hopefully things will go well!

Alright, if you're reading this and have not yet voted over Greenlight, could you please consider doing it? Also spreading the word is one of the best possible ways. If you have any good ideas how to share the word please drop a comment!

Cheers!

Jesse

Preparing for Steam Greenlight - Part 2

Hello! :)

Alright, I've been polishing and fixing the press demo. I've been working with additional sounds, graphics and, well, everything that are needed in the demo. There are still a few things I need to do but I feel pretty confident it won't take too long. Everything looks good, by the end of this month I could list my game to Steam Greenlight. That is exciting but something I can't wait to do as that's when I will share the longer gameplay footage of the game. Yaikes!

Huh well that does not sound too bad, right...?

BUT!
Ah, the famous but.

Well, I still don't know what to do with the voice acting. My head is about to explode. I've been thinking it around and around. It would be ideal to hire someone, but it is quite expensive and honestly I don't think I want a publisher. Freedom is one of the greatest things of being indie! Crowdfunding... well, it would take a HUGE amount of time, really! I already feel like I don't have enough time so all the "extra", well it just won't cut. Not now at least.

But the Greenlight is approaching and I would be a fool to wait much longer. I need to make decisions. I've been trying to figure all the good and the bad sides of each of the possible solutions and at the moment finding volunteers, people that are trying to bounce to industry feels like my best bet.

In ideal situation I'd hire people. Now I can't pull it off. But that does not mean finding volunteers are necessarily a bad thing. Heck, I can only imagine how hard it is to build a name. So it could be a win/win situation. I've faith in The Human Gallery, who knows how far it can get? It could act as an outstanding showcase for your future work. Only downside is finding the right people but let's see how that goes!

This is the important bit!

I've created a small info/apply page. You can find the page HERE!

Okay, I'm not too fond of long posts so I will leave this as it is. Next time around I'll try to share something that is more interesting to read! :)