Since November, I’ve been getting up at 5am to do game development work, and it’s led to great progress on both my current projects.  Nothing like if I were working on things 8 hours a day in terms of code output, but I’ve actually found myself doing a better job of game design in this kind of format.  My hunch is that only being able to apply myself for an hour or two a day to design problems leaves my subconscious a lot more time to more thoroughly sort things out.

The workstation.

I ended up spending a lot of time through the end of 2012 working on an iPad game for my son about driving a bus.  It’s at a point now where the basic features are there – driving the bus around in 2d, picking up passengers, and dropping them off.  Now I’m working here and there with an artist friend on turning the game into something we could release in the app store.

Me and my associate designer.

In 2013, I’ve turned my attention mostly to Project Quigley.  I pulled together a paper prototype of the game and started showing it around to some developer friends.  Without getting into what the game is about and where it’s going, I got some great feedback that has helped hone its focus and direction.  Currently, I’m working on a revision to the high-level design of the thing.  After that, I’ll move into doing a code-based prototype in Unity.

The paper prototype for Project Quigley.

As I noted, I’ve been talking a lot about doing my 5am development sessions on Twitter and Facebook.  It’s been surprising – a lot of folks have told me they’ve found it inspirational and a bit of a kick in the ass.  Makes me happy to know that.

These mornings look like this:

• ~5am: Our younger of the two children, Tamsin, wakes up and starts fussing.
• I get up, get dressed, and take her into the living room.  She gets toys and a playmat, I get a Macbook Pro.  We both get to work.
• Between 6am and 7am: Peter wakes up.  I get him set up with something he can do with minimal supervision, and get some more work in.
• 7am: I wake up my wife, and we get going on the day.

This usually has me off and at work between 9 and 9:30am.

There are also the odd evenings where I work, but this arrangement allows me to mostly reserve that time for everything else – spending time with my wife, household responsibilities, and whatever else comes along.  It’s a big relief not being forced to decide between those things and game development on a regular basis.

During these sessions, I’ve been working on two projects – Project Quigley, and a small game I’m making for Peter for Christmas.  Peter is a big fan of double decker busses, and I’m making him a simple Unity game where a tap will move the bus, and it loads and unloads passengers.  Since that is coming along well, I’ll soon be switching the majority of my attention back to Quigley.  I’ll have more to say about the bus game soon – there’s a chance it will get proper art and sound and go up in the App Store.

Quigley is at a point where I’m putting out the short vision doc I have for it out to some designer friends and soliciting feedback.  Simultaneously, I’m starting work on some low-level level features I’ll need for the game.  First up is the 2d map, which we’ll be coating in Angband tiles.

• I’m in the pre-production phase for Macguffin Games’ next project, which for now we’ll call Project Quigly.  It’s not quite a direct successor to All Heroes Die, but it incorporates a couple of the elements I really liked about it – namely heredity and the AI-picked game events.  As well as a couple other smaller things.
• The design is proceeding slowly right now, in large part because life is busy, in small part because XCOM: Enemy Unknown is an incredibly compelling game.
• I’m looking at creating the game in Unity, and it is definitely a top-down tile based map setup.  I recently found David Gervais’ collection of creative commons tile art for his Angband variant, and I’m likely going to use some of that for the prototype versions.  That art will be swapped out further down the road.

One lesson I learned from AHD’s development is to really nail my design vision, the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics of it, and to get lots of feedback on it.  I’ve gotten a first round of feedback from my good friend Ichiro Lambe of Dejobaan Games, and have other folks lined up to poke holes in it once I’m set.

A big issue with doing this while employed full-time and being the father of two is – as you might guess – carving out time to work on it.  So far, I’ve tried working in the evenings on it.  While that can work, there are a lot of things that can get in the way there.  If my son doesn’t fall asleep for an extra forty minutes, it can cut my working time down a great deal.  Summoning the will and focus to work at eight, nine, or ten at night can also be daunting.

I’m going to try a new plan of attack, starting next week: get my ass up at the crack of dawn, and work then.  The chance of interruptions is a lot lower, once I’ve sucked down some coffee I’m likely to be as focused as I’ll get, and it’s nicely bounded by my needing to get to work.  We’ll see how it goes.

I hope you’re all doing well, and I’ll be posting more updates as I go.

I’m taking a stab at restarting All Heroes Die.  The first step will be to take an honest look at the game and see what will be possible for me to achieve as a solo, part-time developer.  This could include taking the game in a different direction (tactical RPG, anyone?).  One issue that will definitely need to get resolved is the issue of scope with content creation.  It’s going to be impossible for me to do enough art and game content alone… I might need to get creative here.

My plan is to recode the game from scratch in Unity.  Support for Linux is coming with Unity’s 4.0 release, and it does a ton of stuff out of the box that we had to struggle with mightily using BlitzMax.

In terms of timelines – I have no idea.  These days, I’m a father of two and my family’s main breadwinner; AHD has to fit in amongst a lot of other things.  I’m also planning to do some very small scope, free games over the next year or so… those will take some of what time remains.  I do, however, plan to post here with how things are progressing.

We’ll see how it goes!

They may not make a ton of sense if you weren’t there, since I used the slides as visuals to highlight or counterpoint what I was saying.  I plan to do the talk again at Boston Post Mortem at some point, and when I do, I’ll either get it recorded or update my notes to high enough quality that I can post them.

Death of an Indie Studio
Wyvern Theatre
Friday, 3:00pm – 4:00pm

This year, Boston area indie studio Macguffin Games closed its doors. In three years, Scott Macmillan took the studio from a one-man shop to a 4-person startup with paid employees, launched two games (one of them for Facebook), and then finally shut the whole thing down with no regrets. At this talk, he’ll discuss the big lessons he learned, what worked and what didn’t, and take lots of questions from the audience.

Just Because You Have an Idea, You Are Not a Game Designer
Wyvern Theatre
Saturday, 10:30am – 11:30am

Many of us have worked with some amazing designers over the years, and they are much more than walking idea factories. Passion for concepts is great, but don’t confuse passion for skill. In this panel we’ll talk about the characteristics that make a good game designer, and specific skills we look for when hiring on new talent. We’ll also spend some time to point out the differences between good ideas for projects, theoretically good ideas, and bad ideas that you think are good.

Panelists include: Ichiro Lambe [President, Dejobaan Games], Chris Oltyan [Producer, Dire Wolf Digital], Eitan Glinert [President, Fire Hose Games], Scott Macmillan [President, Macguffin Games]

Start Your Own Damned Company
Cat Theatre
Sunday, 4:30pm – 5:30pm

Sometimes, people have great ideas for games. We’re happy for you, we are. But you know what? Our studio isn’t gonna help you realize your vision, and chances are no other company will. It’s shocking, but the reason we dove headfirst into the start-up ocean full of shattered dreams and razor blades was because WE ACTUALLY HAVE A GREAT IDEA FOR A GAME TOO! If you really feel passionately about your idea and want nothing more than to see it live then go make it your own damn self, we’re busy. But we’ll throw you a bone with this helpful panel full of tidbits on how to get started. Let us regale you with tales of wonder and woe, led by our fearless moderator Ichiro Lambe. Only the brave will survive, no refunds.

Panelists include: Chris Oltyan [Producer, Dire Wolf Digital], Eitan Glinert [President, Fire Hose Games], Scott Macmillan [President, Macguffin Games], Ichiro Lambe [President, Dejobaan Games], Damian Isla [Director of Technology, Moonshot Games]

In essence, Macguffin as it was previously – a four-person full time team of developers – is no more.  But after looking at ways to wind things down, and taking some time to evaluate what I want to do with my spare time once I have a job, I’ve decided to keep Macguffin around for my future gaming projects.

One of the big things I’ve learned in doing the past three or so years of game development is that I really do love creating games, doing the coding and game design.  Since shutting things down and starting to look for a job, I’ve begun coding and designing again on my own – and I’ve been having a blast.  Regardless of where I land I fully plan to keep working on games and blogging about it.  Who knows, perhaps I’ll even have something for the market someday.

Right now I do not have plans to return directly to All Heroes Die.  I say this for Therlun’s benefit (I know you’re out there!).  The two big problems with AHD are the limitations of BlitzMax, and the sheer scope of the endeavor.  Neither of those gets solved by me working on it nights.  The most likely path forward is that at some point I do a game inspired by chunks of AHD, or redo the game with a slimmed down design in another language.

In the meantime, I’ve been working in Unity using C#, and may have some upcoming posts about how that’s  been.  It’s also near time for the IGDA to begin its elections, and if I can get some help, I plan to cover the candidates again.  More on that shortly.

Although we gave it a great try with Mustache Mercenaries, we weren’t able to turn things around fast enough to keep the company going.  We knew that was a risk when we started, and I’m not unhappy at all with what we accomplished with the time we had.  I’m thinking about doing some post mortem blog posts over the next couple weeks, and if I do, I’ll delve into some of what went right and wrong.

We’ll be leaving the Mustache Mercenaries servers up for now, but they’ll most likely come down in the next week or two.  So play now!

In regards to the Kickstarter – thank you to everyone that contributed.  In the end, even if we had hit our goal, that alone would not have been enough.  In order to keep the company going, we needed a couple things to break our way on the business side.  Sadly, they did not.

I started Macguffin Games because I love game development and although this company is going away, the people that  brought it to life are not.  We’re still here and will still be making games.  On my part, I’m looking forward to having more time to devote to various game projects, as well as to the excellent Boston indie community.  The experience of starting the company and of working on All Heroes Die and Mustache Mercenaries has been an amazing one; I have learned more in three years of doing this than I would have in 10 working at my old job.  I wouldn’t trade this for anything.

So, to our friends, two things.  One – thank you.  You’ve all been fantastic, and we wouldn’t have accomplished what we did without you.  Two – don’t be sad.  There is more and better to come for all of us.

In the meantime, don’t worry about Macguffin Games.  It was, after all, only a plot device.

We now have our first limited-time only item in the store, the amazing Turkey Cannon!  Available for for the paltry price of 35 coal.

It’s a fowl wind that blows turkeys your way.  Feather or not you like it, the Turkey Cannon is here!