Jun
10th
2010
Life as An Independent Game Developer on a Shoestring Budget
We’re an independent game developer. We’re working on our first “real” title. We are Space Time Foam, and this is post offers some insights to our experiences with this…
Making games is difficult and involves a lot of time consuming and complex tasks. Making money from these games is really hard too. You’ll have to have a really good product, really good distribution and marketing partners, get good reviews, get your timing right and get lucky… Then you MIGHT make money on your game.
So, in other words; we’ve chosen a pretty silly direction for our business, provided we would want to get really rich, really fast and real easy.
The reason for doing this anyway, is that we love making games, we love being our own bosses and we love to make our own decisions. Even if this means that we from time to time will have to live on a dime.
They way we do it we have to juggle ourselves and our efforts between paid consultancy work and work on our own stuff. The paid consultancy stuff pays the bills so we can work on our game, until we’ve almost spent all we’ve earned, and have to repeat the cycle.
In the good times, when we have a well-paid consultancy gig, we can have one of us working on paid stuff while the other guys work on the game. Other times we all have to run around like crazies to find paid work and get it done.
In May 2009 we received a support grant from the Danish Film Institute (New Danish Screen, NDS). This grant kept us going for quite some time last year. The grant involves that we complete development of a publisher demo. This is the project that we’re working on now, and have been for almost three years (on and off).
Work on the demo is going really well, we’re really happy with what we got, and we’re looking forward to be able to show it to publishers. First however, we have to meet our obligations with NDS.
During the time we’ve been working on our demo, we have built our own technology, we have learned a lot about the business and we’ve had a lot of detours doing paid work. This also means, that the game we set out to do, has evolved, and our ideas have changed along the way.
Now our strategy involves a lot of years, a lot of steps and a lot of releases. All very exciting.
But first thing’s first:
- Complete the NDS demo
- Pitch demo to publishers
- Secure funding to complete game
Before we have completed step 1 and 2 we cannot say anything about when to expect the Alpha release. Sorry!
May
4th
2010
New Offices
Yesterday we moved up a floor in the building so now we have an office about twice the size of the one we used to have. Nice! In the back of the room you can see Julian on the left and Joen, who sits in the office next to us.
Carsten’s desk, complete with styrofoam art, Akira comic books, Wacom digitizer and cool biker sunglasses…
LEGO cars and our good old Independent Games Festival award from 2001… Tobias with his back turned, working on the game.
Mar
10th
2010
Analog 3D Concept Art
Carsten has been busy with hot melt glue, styrofoam and cardboard in the weekend.
Mar
5th
2010
Early Concept Doodles
While we’re waiting for news about the Alpha test, here are some concept doodles from Carsten’s sketchbook and pocket.
A lot of choices are made like this. A quick doodle on an envelope, a heated debate at someone’s desk, resulting in a sheet of illegible scribbles. Later Tobias codes it the way he remembers it, Carsten designs it the way he remembers it, and then finally Peter shows up with an opinion when it’s too late. – Luckily, most of the time, the result is just what we dreamed of…
Jan
4th
2010
Happy New Year
Since it’s a New Year and all, why not celebrate with a little fireworks? Below is a few screens from the game as it looks now. Nothing final yet, all work in progress…
Nov
13th
2009
Work in Progress In-Game Video
Here is a little footage from Chase Ace – Off-World Leagues as it looks today. Both single- and multiplayer action is shown as well as a few of the weapons. Nothing final yet though…
Nov
10th
2009
New Web Site
Yay! We have a new web site! Bits and pieces here and there may still be borked on mediocre browsers – I’m looking at you Internet Explorer – so please bear with us for a bit.
- Oh, and news on the game will follow eventually…
Sep
30th
2009
How Games Are Made
We’re getting a lot of work done on the game these weeks. That’s great! A lot of the work is taking place behind the scenes deep in the bowels of the mean machine that is our game engine Spatifo.
Carsten is working on the level elements, and they’re looking awesome. We still need to do tons of work on the editor, game logic, physics, weapons, dynamic objects, enemies and stuff. Below is a couple of screenshots from the Chase Ace level editor.
Aug
10th
2009
User Generated Content:
Introducing our Game Editor
One of the cool things about Chase Ace 2 / Chase Ace Deluxe is the editor. The editor that ships with the game is the exact same thing as we built the in-game content with.
The game editor offers all the options we as developers had at hand when designing levels. Trigger logic, dynamic objects, gun turrets, power-ups and enemies. Yes, it is buggy, yes, it is crufty – But hey, I can’t think of many games that offer the same kind of flexibility.
We were literally flooded in user generated levels (a small selection of which remain available). You guys invented spectacular level designs that none of us had dreamed of. You used our tool to create stuff that we would never have thought of in a million years.
That, was the single-most rewarding thing about making Chase Ace 2 – Seeing all that stuff that you guys made with it.
A golden rule of thumb is: “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. This – obviously – means that Chase Ace – Off-World Leagues will ship with a full-featured level editor, just like its ancestors.
Now we have reached a point where the editor works for our design and development purposes. It is however far from being finished to a degree where we would like to release it to the public. Never the less we think that you should have a little preview: