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!