Pre-Alpha footage: A team in action

Almost five months ago now, Rickard Edén posted the first of many development updates following his upcoming Applet based game, Hostile Sector. He has since become a core contributor to jMonkeyEngine, freely sharing useful experience and code. Yesterday we had an extensive talk about Rickard’s on-going project and the challenges it presents. Considering I’m in Norway and he’s in Sweden we could have practically carried out this interview with two cans and a string, but then I wouldn’t have this handy transcript to share with y’all.

I already know you’ve got an impressive background in games. But why don’t we start by recapping that for the reading monkeys

Rickard: Ok, not sure where to start… Yes. I’ve been in the industry for a while, mostly working with level design and later game design and production on some of the scandinavian developers

Erlend: In one of my favorite game companies, DICE!

Rickard: Yes, it’s one of my favorites too

But now you’re doing your own thing, making Hostile Sector. Can you elaborate on that decision just a little bit?

Rickard: I took that decision long before starting on Hostile Sector. It was one of those famous “crossroads” where I felt I wanted to try doing things on my own. Even then, the plan was not to become an indie developer full time, but rather to use my past experience to be part time game design consultant, while working up my programmer skills.

And is this your first foray into indie game development?

Rickard: Actually no. I have a couple of titles in the trunk. One is Room Boom: Suburbia. A board game/puzzle hybrid (inspired by games like Carcassonne). Another is Blockstacker, a puzzle game originally made for browsers, that has been ported to android recently. None which has been exceedingly profitable, though

So one could say indie development is something you know you want to come back to, rather than something new “just for the kicks”?

Rickard: Yes, certainly. Although I wouldn’t mind going back to the regular industry either. They both have their charm, and it’s the creation I enjoy. But I like being able to do a little bit of everything.

Erlend: Right. Creation is king! Now we know where you’re coming from, time to get gamey!

So I’ve played, hmm, would you call it an “early tech demo” of Hostile Sector?

Pre-Alpha footage: Snapshot of an urban setting.

Rickard: Yes. It was a while ago, and it was quite rough around the edges then. Still some things to weed out, but it’s getting there.

I gotta say, I can’t come up with an easy category to put it in. Could be that the genre as a whole has just slipped by me, but if I had to put a label on it I’d say “Commandos-ish” I guess. What does a short version of your elevator pitch sound like?

Rickard: Basically, what I’m aiming for, is taking the core from classic tactical games, like “Jagged Alliance” and the “UFO: Enemy Unknown” series, to a new multiplayer format, which is easily accessible online through your browser. Add some strategic elements and soldier customization, plus social functions, and there you have it.

‘Browser-based’ – oh it’s on now! So this is a pretty big one. Did the choice of making a browser based game come before or after the design itself?

Rickard: The concept of a persistent, multiplayer, online, tactical game (long one) has been with me for several years, originally being RTS, I ditched it for networking reasons. “Hostile Sector” was conceived as an android exclusive 2D game, but realizing I would miss out of a prominent chunk of users, I decided to go the browser path first, and port it to android later.

I’m guessing the idea of Android is what prompted you to code it in Java. Was that the only reason?

Rickard: Well, java is what I know best, and knowing its cross-platform capabilities led me in that direction. Now, only the “tactical” client is java, which makes it trickier to port it, but since jME aims to have full Android support, I would want it to show up on Android in some form later on.

3D games played in Applets is not a common thing. Has the Applet route presented any challenges worth speaking of? Any cautionary tales for developers on the fence?

Rickard: Any games at all played in applets is not a common thing I think it does pose a couple of challenges. One is the sandbox in which it operates, it’s quite strict, if you don’t want to use a certificate, you need to know what you can and can’t do (like accessing anything that is not on the server from where the applet is launched).

Erlend: Making an applet with jME3 was simple enough though?

Rickard: Yes. About a year and a half ago, I was prototyping another game, and took my first steps into 3d programming with jme2. I remember setting up an applet was a real hassle. In jME3 (jMPThe jMonkeyPlatform, a full-fledged IDE with plugins for editing jME3 content and assets. Integral part of the jME3 SDK.), you just check a box, and upload the results.

In your own words, “the art [assets] are currently a mix of stock art and my own creations” – what will your final art pipeline look like?

Rickard: for this project, the plan has been to utilize stock assets and contractors as much as possible to keep overhead low. Since I’m going for a fairly common/realistic style, there are plenty of assets made already. So I buy art assets (although lately I’ve been doing more of my own), take them into Blender/Gimp, and modify them. Then into jMPThe jMonkeyPlatform, a full-fledged IDE with plugins for editing jME3 content and assets. Integral part of the jME3 SDK. to create/assign materials.

Erlend: Hmmm yeah. Following up on that a little; we’ve seen many people on the forum having trouble with stock assets, often times because they’re not optimized for games or have gone through odd export/import schemes. Have you pretty much dodged the bullet so far?

Rickard: It’s something I’ve noticed as well. On many of the larger sites, you don’t always know what you’ll end up with, but there are smaller companies out there, focusing on game assets, albeit being a bit more expensive. In some cases, I’ve come to realize I could have done the model myself in the same time it took me to optimize it. This is one of the reasons I’m doing more myself nowadays

Well then, let’s round this up! jME3: The good vs the bad?

Rickard: I really like the focus on tools in jme3. Having worked a lot with content, I know the importance of good tools. I also think it’s what can make a difference in todays middleware market. I also think it’s a good move to utilize other open source libraries (like nifty gui, and bullet). As a developer, it means I have access to more documentation (since they’re more widely spread). jME3 is still in alpha, and thus there are still issues and API changes. Things break. But, engines break in professional environments as well (and it’s equally frustrating )

Erlend: well, let me put it like this. when you were getting to grips with the new jME3, did you encounter something that made you think “hum, I see what you did there, but why?..”

Rickard: I’m not really “low level” enough to reflect on engine architecture. If I looked into the core, I would probably ask that question all the time For me, jME3 is a tool I use, like an electric screwdriver. I don’t need to open it to see how it works, as long as it does what I expect it to… Well, not entirely true, but true enough.

Thanks again for the interview Rickard! For more information on Hostile Sector, here’s the link again: http://www.mindemia.com/hostilesector/info.php

If you want to help test the game as it progresses, check out the frequent development updates on our forum.

Please make a brief introduction of yourself. -What’s your background in programming / game development? -When and how did you start your journey with jME?

My Name is Dennis Franke, 21 years old and I’m currently living in Braunschweig, Germany, and I study Computer Science at the TU Braunschweig. I started programming when I was about 13 years old with HTML and PHP and continued programming with PHP for about 5 years. After learning C++ and Visual Basic for a short period of time I switched to Java and stayed with it until now. Besides some small 2D Games with Java I made my first small 3D-Game with Java3D, but since Java3D is pretty much dead and there weren’t that many people that could help me, I decided to use JMonkeyEngine instead.
My first Game with JMonkeyEngine 2 was a small Game about the TV-Series Scrubs where you could walk around in the hospital and do a few Missions.
When I saw jME3 come out I decided to do another Game with the JME and so I started working on Return of the Warlord, but I never really finished it, since the Basis of RotW was a little messed up and after a short break I started with the first Prototype of Marble Mania.

By itself an impressive one-man effort, Marble Mania is the first complete game powered by jMonkeyEngine 3. What possessed you make a game with early alpha software?

Since I already knew from my experience with jME2 that the Community is really friendly and always helps I figured why not do some testing with jME3 and after the first few tests I really liked jME3 and so I also used it for Return of the Warlord and Marble Mania and until now I didn’t regret my Decision to use jME3. Most of the time there were only small changes to the API and so I never really had trouble after updating my Source with the SVN. Only a couple of times it took some time to fix some Issues I had after updating.
In my Opinion jMonkeyEngine 3 is already really stable and there are only minor changes to the API, so I can advice everyone thinking about using jME3 to do so.

How many hours do you reckon you’ve put into this game? When did the initial design stage begin?

I had the initial Idea for Marble Mania at the end of last Semester, which would be somewhere around July. During the Semester break I wrote the first small Prototype and collected some Ideas, for example the Skills were actually not planned in my first Prototype. Since then I’ve spent a LOT of time working on Marble Mania. I don’t have an exact number, but if I would have to guess I would say I spent at least 100 Hours working on Marble Mania.

What are your plans for the game?

For now my Plan is to get a stable Version ready and online and do some Marketing for Marble Mania, so that some People are actually playing it. My Goal is, that there are most of the time a few People playing so that you can just start the Game and there are already People online and you can just start playing against someone else, without having to wait until somebody else joins the Game.
Everything more than this goal is just a bonus for me.

I’m also planning some fun stuff for the Release of Marble Mania, but I’ll let you know more about that later.

What kind of work took up the majority of your time; toolsets, graphics, game logic or something else entirely?

Most of my time I spend working on the game logic and creating the game design of Marble Mania and right now I’m spending most of my time working on the Network-Layer for Marble Mania, because there are a couple of bugs left in SpiderMonkey that are holding me back from releasing a (hopefully) stable Version. But the Bugs should be fixed pretty soon and then I should be able to get a stable Version out there.

The graphics for Marble Mania were actually done pretty quick, because I’m really bad at designing graphics and I thought I would just create some placeholders for now and change them later, but after I saw the graphics in the Game I enjoyed the look of it and so I decided to keep them.

Along with being an early jME3 adopter, you were maybe the first developer to adopt SpiderMonkey. How would you say SM matched up against your initial networking implementation, and what pros and cons are there to speak of?

Compared to my own network implementation, which was still in a really early state, SpiderMonkey is much faster and SpiderMonkey also has some nice Features that make working with it much easier. Most of the time they are only some small Features, e.g. I enjoyed that I could add a Message-Listener for an specific Message.

SM also needs much less Heap Space than my own Implementation, which was based on Threads and java.io instead of java.nio. Thus I had to create a Thread for each Client which needed a lot of Heap Space.

Based on my experience with SpiderMonkey it is going to be a really cool feature of jMonkeyEngine.

You used NiftyGUI for your interface. Any constructive feedback to offer the library’s author?

I really enjoyed working with Nifty GUI, because in my Opinion it is really intuitive, but I had some trouble getting used to the layout in Nifty GUI.
I’m not quite sure wether there is some new Documentation online, but when I started working with Nifty GUI there wasn’t that much documentation about the layout in Nifty GUI.

Another thing is, that I find it kind of complicated to change for example the Images for a button or a textfield, so I would really appreciate it if the author could change it, so that it’s easier to change the Image, for example by defining the image in the XML-File.

Other than that I had lots of fun working with Nifty GUI and was impressed how easy it is to create a good-looking Menu with Nifty GUI.

Could you go into some detail about your art pipeline?

I’m not quite sure wether you really want to call it an art pipeline, because I didn’t really do that much art for Marble Mania, but I did some Prototypes to test the gameplay and see what it looks like and if it could be fun to play.

I also made some drawings of the different menus and for the Level-Design I did some paper-prototypes to check wether they could be fun or not and since they only contain basic shapes I decided to code the levels directly into the Source instead of importing them, which gives me much more possibilities than having to write everything into the importer.

All other art in Marble Mania was created pretty much on the fly when I needed them, so there isn’t really an art pipeline.

Best and worst parts of jMonkeyEngine 3.0?

Best parts:
- Already pretty stable (only minor changes to the API)
- Easy to start with
- Great Physics-Implementation
- Easy to create a GUI with Nifty GUI
- Great Network-Layer

Worst parts:
- The new Material-System is kind of confusing in the beginning

A big thanks to Dennis Franke for taking the time aside to answer the questions for this interview.

Go check out the Marble Mania project listing here on jmonkeyengine.org to keep up with the latest tweets and blogposts from the developer site Bazinga Productions.

Erlend: Better just start with that brief introduction!

Christian: I’m Christian an independent game developer living in Hamburg, Germany. I’ve developed Grappling Hook in the last 8 months. Before that I worked on Velvet Assassin as a game coder.

Erlend: Then you worked on at least one larger project in a big company prior to this indie endeavor. Did this experience have anything to do with your move to an entirely independent environment, or is it a long-lived ambition perhaps?

Christian: Working at Replay Studios was a great experience. We were around 30 developers and it was great to see the daily progress. I learned a lot there. But working only on a small aspect of a game does not fulfill me.
So I decided to try it. I don’t have much to loose right now.

it got too specialized?

In a company you have to do stuff you don’t like, and sometimes you are not allowed the things you like. Of course, as an indie I have to do everything I don’t like. But i can also do all the fun stuff.

Erlend: So when you got cracking at it for real, you must have had something inside you saying ‘I can really do this’, right? Which do you think was the strongest contributing factor to that? Professional experience, unmoving personal pursuit and ambition; plain gut feeling perhaps?

Christian: I’ve worked on many game projects since 2001, so I thought I had enough experience and skills to do the project. There are multiple important points for the decision:

1. I thought Grappling Hook was the best game idea I ever had (even after a few months). And after I prototyped it, I was even more convinced.
2. With my experience at Replay and the other projects, I felt prepared to handle this.
3. I wanted to prove, that I can create a cool game alone within a short time.

I think, that are the main reasons. Oh… one other point: I’m convinced that a few people can be much more effective than many, because there are less politics and other problems.

you believe that, you being in the situation that you were, you had the needed edge to succeed?

Yes, I never had a doubt that this could fail. The support from friends and other developers was very important, of course.

one could say you felt your life was in a ‘ready state’?

Regarding skills and experience, yes.

Erlend: Alright let’s get gamey

Erlend: First I’m just a tad curious about your choice of art style. Was it a direct result of you flying solo, and as such you knew you’d have to restrict the style to your capabilities, or was it very much in line with what your core concept defined to begin with?

Christian: I knew, that I would not be able to create much content, so I thought many days about how to reduce the amount of content. There were many ideas for other settings before, like a mine, for example.vBut I dropped them and picked a quite simple solution with the blocks. But the game was quite ugly in the first months, because I focused on the gameplay.

The block-style is a level design decision, not an art decision.

and then came the aesthetic overhaul would that fall into the ‘joyful work’ category?

I’m not very good at creating art and creating something with GIMP or Blender takes quite a long time. It takes even longer, when it should look at least “good”. So, there is work that is a lot more joyful for me. But creating art is not as bad as struggling with broken stacks in C++

For the next project I would definitely like to outsource the art creation.

Erlend: You clearly went with a common and widely successful indie approach to your game play: “Find one really cool game mechanic that works, and work the heck out of it!” Were there ever any really cool feature creeps that got close to bogging you down?

Christian: In most cases it was the other way around with Grappling Hook. I’ve started with the core idea and while I created new levels I explored new ways how to use the hook. I mean, they were already possible. “Hidden “features”. The “Jump off”-feature was born, when I figured out, that it is possible to bounce of walls.

so you actually confined yourself to that core feature from the start?

Yes, a strong and focused game design was very important to me. I thought that this is the only way to finish this game within a few months. There were many other ideas, what could be done, especially for the story, but most of them never passed the “test of time”.

When I got a new idea, I can be very exited about it and think, yeayyy, thats awesome. But most of these ideas are not that awesome anymore, when i write them down and read them again after one or two weeks. That’s my test of time. I tried to “fight” against feature creep from the first day on.

Erlend: let’s talk puzzles! I don’t know if you are familiar with Gamasutra’s Ernest Adams and his ‘Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!’ ..?

Christian: I read a lot of artices about game design, so I think i know this one, but not the exact content.

Erlend: Well, he scorned bad level- and puzzle designers in many of his articles. I believe you circumvented all of his warnings with top marks though. So, I guess, how!? One of Adams’ remarks was that some puzzles just require too extreme lateral thinking, or none at all, but ‘fair’ puzzles are hard, even the article ultimately acknowledges that.

Christian: I think the best method to create fair puzzles is testing. No level in Grappling Hook was good in its initial version. It is an iterative process and the length of an iteration is around 2-5 minutes. The levels I like most start with an idea for a cool move or combination of tricks, and then I just build them, test it, tweak it. This takes around around two to four hours. With this version I go to other players, let them play, and watch how they play

Erlend: But it must have still been quite a challenge to come up with puzzles of this quantity. have you worked specifically with puzzles of some sort in the past?

Christian: No, this was the first time that I’ve created puzzles, but I think my sptial imagination helped a lot.

To be best honest, in most cases I’m to impatient to play regular puzzle games. But I’ve played Braid, Picross, Portal, Quake3, Cold Ice, Mirrors Edge… and they are great inspiration.

Erlend: Instead of dangling from a rope, your grappling mechanic has more of a magnetic feel to it. Feedback has been inconsistent. Some seem to have made up their mind about what a grappling hook is and isn’t. Clearly the game as-is would not work with a different mechanic, but was it always meant to be this way?

Christian: Yes, I never thought about a rope-like grappling hook. There was a mod for Half Life 1.0 called Cold Ice and I loved the magnetic grappling hook in this game. The acceleration and velocity is something I really enjoyed in this mod. And I wanted this feeling again. But there where some other/additional ideas for the grappling hook. Different types of hooks. one grappling hook per hand….

Erlend: Speaking of acceleration.., sometimes the player must leverage momentum to get through levels. Is my momentum is handled by an actual physics simulation, or are you just telling the game ‘while this block is moving, add +10 to player’s jump’?

Christian: When the player is standing on a moving block his acceleration will be relative to the block. And there is some inertia. So the jump-height is the same, but when the player uses the inertia he gained on the block, he can jump quite far, depending on the block-speed of course.

Erlend: Let’s continue on with the technicalities Couple standard ones:
Erlend: Did you make use of many other free coding resources (or otherwise) besides jME?

Christian: jME is the third engine I have used for Grappling Hook. Before jME I have worked for around one month with Ogre and two weeks with the Irrlicht Engine. But it was the right decision to switch to jME, finally.

Erlend: Two quick ones:

• Greatest experience with JME
• Worst experience with JME

Christian: It wouldn’t have been impossible to create the game with a c++ engine in that time. jME is a Java engine, and Java is great for game development. The performance is good, I can develop very fast with it, no compilation time, awesome memory profiler, great library… jME is also very intuitive for me, and the community is great.

The worst experience was the physics integration. I have used jmephysics and ODEJava for around three months. First it worked quite well. Adding multi threading was easy. but then i realized, that there are some memory leaks and random crash bugs deep in ODEJava. and no one will ever fix it, because the ODEJava project has been dead for years. So i had to rip out the entire physics out of an already good working game.

how did you resolve it?

Fortunately the decision to use only blocks in an octree for the level design made it really easy to write the physics code from scratch. There are only collisions between axis aligned bounding boxes.

Erlend: You have already given a lot back to the community with help in the forum, but that has note quite soothed the itch for raw code. I’ve come by hopeful talks about your octree implementation among others. Any chance we’ll get to see a grappling-hook related commit of any kind?

Christian: Most of the time I write code just for the current project, because I want to be a game developer and not a library programmer. So there are no modular subsystems that can be pluged in without effort in the engine. But i will think about releasing some classes that might be useful for other developers in the forum.

any wishes? (seriously guys, any wishes?)

Erlend: Well your game has been out for a month now, so let’s wrap up with a little business. How’s the past month been treatin’ ya?

Christian: I’m an experienced game developer but a business newbie. Getting attention and selling a game is harder than I’ve expected. I also made a big mistake. I started to care to late about business and public relations. It would have been much better, when i would have spend 5% of my time during development for this. Now there are days when I don’t have time to do anything else than writing emails, talking with people… But I also enjoy this work. It makes me really happy to read the reviews and comments by the players and to talk with other developers or journalist about the game.

Erlend: So if you don’t mind me asking, what has your income been like? does it meet your expectations?

Christian: I have to do a lot a PR work for Grappling Hook, until I can start the other project without having another part-time job. My expectations were not realistic, because i thought selling a game would be a lot easier. But now I’m wiser and that is worth a lot.

Erlend: Have you entered your game to any contests?

Christian: Yes. the European Innovative Games Award, and tomorrow i will submit grappling hook to the IGF

Erlend: Very nice I might have to cheer for both you and a friend’s game then

Christian: I hope you will!

Erlend: Well Christian, it’s been a delight talking to you!

Christian: For me, too!

Erlend: I’m sure the JME community will find great joy in this second installment of our spotlight interviews. The best of luck to you. May your sales and contest entries peak to the top!

Christian: Thank you, Erlend. I hope the community will also enjoy the eight new levels and the level editor!

SpeedRunGames.com – Christian Teister’s blog.

Grappling Hook Homepage

Grappling Hook is an innovative first-person action puzzle / jump ‘n’ run indie game, which uses the jMonkeyEngine. You use the Grappling Hook as a mighty high-tech tool to overcome various challenging obstacles by performing incredible moves and fast combinations of daring tricks. The dynamic and surprising levels open opportunities to use the Grappling Hook in unique ways never seen before in a game. Making your way through the levels requires both skill and creativity, while the increasing difficulty pushes you to become a real master of the Grappling Hook.
All this comes together to create an intense, challenging, and rewarding gameplay experience:

• Perform daring moves and tricks with the Grappling Hook.
• Solve challenging gameplay and action puzzles.
• Beat 22 dynamic, animated, and unique levels.
• Earn 30 cool achievements and master 176 challenges.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAn9mw5wPNo

Erlend: well, you’ve been a member of the community longer than I have, but maybe you could make a very brief introduction of yourself?

Tobias: Certainly. My name is Tobias. I’m 30 years old. Been abusing computers for a long time. I live in Sweden. I’m not much of an Internet community person, so even though I have been a member for a long time I haven’t posted much.

Erlend: pleasure! so, Turborilla.com, what is it exactly? or rather, what do you want to see it become?

Tobias: My vision for Turborilla is fairly modest. I want us to be 6 people in 4 years, a mix of programmers, game designers, and artists. I want to do almost everything in-house, to be able to be innovative with both technology, game-play, and art (visual and audial). I want us to be innovative but still grounded in reality (fun above all else). We are currently two people, me and one employee.

Erlend: to my understanding, you also had work that provided a set monthly salary while working on MSM, right? was this work still done under the Turborilla name, or personally?

Tobias: In the beginning of 2007, I did some work for a former employer of mine. That took roughly 60% of my time, which was too much really. This carried on for about half a year, and I am thankful for that opportunity since that money gave Turborilla a very nice start.

Tobias: However, nicer opportunities emerged and I were able to work almost 100% on Mad Skills Motocross for about one year due to my employee taking on work that provided some money for me also. We are currently in negotiations about an even longer contract with the same client.
This work is on a game that will be released soonish, under the Turborilla brand.

Erlend: you can say that Turborilla has been juggling indie development and contracting at the same time then?

Tobias: Yep, correct.

Erlend: quite the challenge for a family man I am sure

Tobias: Yeah, don’t get me started. I was without any salary at all from October 2007 to October 2008… Then I got it all back at once. Which was nerve-wrecking but interesting.

Erlend: when did it dawn on you that you wanted to make a fully polished proprietary game? you could have looked for other job opportunities. why this, why now?

Tobias: I lived in another town before 2007 working at a comfy, well-paying job. Then my girlfriend got a really nice job in this town, and I was kind of fed up so I just moved with her. Unemployed I started dabbling on my own physics engine, which turned out really nice. One of the ‘tests’ was a motorcycle. The movement and fluidity of it blew me away, it was fun. Showed it to a friend and he said “You should take that and make Excite Bike on steriods!”.
That’s the moment

Erlend: makes perfect sense so the idea of making a commercial game did not actually prelude the game conception itself?

Tobias: Correct. I did have that dream in the back of my head since way back. But it was when I had that embryo I started to research the viability of making a business out of it.

Erlend: so once you realized what you wanted to do, where did you go from there? straight to pre-planning, business inquiries maybe, or just consulting with know-a-lots in your network?

Tobias: Lots and lots of research on the net about independent game businesses. There is so much info out there as long as you are willing to wade through the endless piles of verbal crap produced. Also, I started taking evening-courses on business-stuff. Boring stuff…

Erlend: he he. so you felt a lot less prepared for the business side of things than the actual design and development then.

Tobias: Yeah, that’s how I felt. But it was the other way around, in reality.

Erlend: you probably knew already you were a capable programmer, but what about the design? did you also do a lot of reading or consulting on that, or did you feel confident enough with it already?

Tobias: I felt confident. As I suspect everyone and their grandma do.

Erlend: so, sorry, I got ahead of myself here. In reality, other way around? business is easy and development is hard?

Tobias: Yes. Well not development, I have a strong background of large, finished project. Game design, on the other hand, is very hard. I have done a lot of studying on that the last year. Mad Skills Motocross has really grown in both scope and appeal during the last year.

Erlend: bringing in a small tightly knit group of alpha testers certainly points to that you have experience in the software process
was there a defining moment when you decided it was time to bring in the first alpha testers?

Tobias: Yes, I had just started rethinking the whole design and purpose of Mad Skills Motocross. At first it was this incredibly hard game/simulation, then I made an Arcade Mode. I decided to test which one was more fun by bringing in testers. Arcade Mode won

Erlend: so alpha testing started when the real fun began

Tobias: Yep.

Erlend: one of the most important lessons I’ve learned about game design is that if the game does not feel like it’s got something already in the prototype, you scrap it right there and then and get back to the whiteboard.
Considering this game made it to finish, I assume you felt that way throughout your process?

Tobias: Yeah, I always felt it had that little extra sparkle of pure fun. But, alas, it steered more and more towards a project for scratching my own ego. In a moment of clarity, I wrote down on a piece of paper: “Fun above all else” (in Swedish) … Everything went great after that

Erlend: please, in Swedish, if just for me (Norwegian!)
Tobias: Kul före allt annat
Erlend: hør, hør!
Tobias:

Erlend: let’s not get deep into what your development schedule has looked like for these past years (certain memories best forgot I am sure), but could you give an example of a couple months of your work, inconveniences included?

Tobias: Sure. For the past two years I have had some sort of inflammation in my arms, got it from working too much when doing contracts on the side. For the first 3 months I could only work about 3-4 hours a day, which really slowed down progress. Now it’s not so bad. I bought me two mice, one for the left hand and one for the right. Ergonomically correct and everything. And a proper keyboard. Kids, don’t fool around with your health!

Erlend: living the life that you did, do you still think any of these inconveniences could have been avoided by choosing differently; more rationally?

Tobias: Certainly. I could have stayed on the bloody trodden path like sane people. Earning more and more money, keeping my arms in health, and becoming a duke of a county of office-modules with minions working hard in every one of them.

I didn’t, and sometimes I regretted it. But then I just think back on the boredom that could dawn on me while programming web-systems for large industries. That boredom is mind-numbing, and it takes a god damned sledgehammer to the head to wake up from it. An epiphany of what could be.

Erlend: I think you’ll find the majority of the JME community is with ya all the way. The hard boiled industry will have a hard time in the years to come if our generation lives up to its big words =P
now, let’s get down and dirty with your GAME!

Tobias: Finally

Erlend: Mad Skills Motocross, wow, all you right?

Tobias: Yep

Erlend: just to get it straight right away, what I am looking at here: the track itself, the drivers and the motorcycles, those are all actual 3d objects? and the rest is 2d layers?

Tobias: The track is 3D, the rest is 2D. Unless you call the parallax scrolling 3D, but I guess you don’t

Erlend: did you ever consider a plain 2D engine? why JME?

Tobias: Oh, I did. Several times, but only after I had invested too much code into a jME-based game. In the beginning, all I knew was that I wanted the track to be 3D. So I chose a 3D engine. In hindsight it would have been nice with a plain 2D engine, with a bit more features for that.

I chose jME after carefully researching 3D-engines for Java. It was the most user-friendly and stable engine in my opinion. I did not care about performance, but it turns out jME is very good in that area also

Erlend: did you make use of many other free coding resources (or otherwise) besides jME?

Tobias: Yes. LWJGL deserves a special mention even though it is “included” in jME. Joone for neural networks. JOPS for particle effects. JZipUpdate for the auto-updater. Pauls Sound System for sound and music playback (the sound system in jME needs a lot of fixing, btw)
I think that’s it. Sorry if I forgot to mention anyone. It’s all in the credits of the game.

Erlend: two quick ones:
- greatest experience with jme
- worst experience with jme

Tobias: The greatest was when I implemented JOPS rendering in jME. I just did it, and it was fast as a motherf****r. Great, cause I had learned jME enough to actually make something usable and reusable for it, with great performance.

Worst: Every time I find myself searching for that bloody object I just put in the game and it just won’t show up. Usually I just forgot to call updateRenderStates() , we’ve all been there. Don’t deny it.

Erlend: eherm, moving on!
I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say, the (ragdoll-) physics in this game is one of its biggest selling points. is it so that it is made completely from scratch? there were really no free, open alternatives around?

Tobias: It is made completely from scratch. I’m sure there are alternatives, but I had never felt anything like this when I first ran that motorcycle test. My engine is specialized on intra-object constraints, and not on solid-body collision like so many others. Now, before I sound too full of myself I should mention that it is based on Jakobssens work, but creatively used.

Erlend: sorry, Jakobssen who?

Tobias: The guy who made the physics for the game Hitman. Google it and you can write a physics engine in two hours. Great stuff, and easily expanded into more interesting features.

Erlend: ah I see. negative 10 on me for mandatory names to know as a game designer…

Tobias: Hehe… yes.

Erlend: you also mentioned ‘neural networks’. this is fairly unexplored territory for me and many others in the community as well, so let’s not get in too deep. But first off, it is for the AI, right?

Tobias: Yes, it was. Now it’s ripped out for the time being. It will make a comeback though. It is too interesting to leave out.

Erlend: oh, it’s not there yet?

Tobias: It was. Until the power-ups screwed it up.

Erlend: correct me if I’m wrong, but neural networks is about the AI being “teachable”?

Tobias: Yes, but only off-line. You teach a brain, and then ship it with the product. It doesn’t learn while the player is playing, sadly.

Erlend: 2010 is right around the corner mate

Tobias: Yeah, it takes so much data and time to teach a brain we have to wait a while for real-time learning NN’s.

Erlend: I think I’ve read more than one statement of yours saying this game will still enjoy the comfort of your care and support for quite some time to come. I suppose more research on the AI will be part of this
are you doing this for plain technical or marketing reasons, or is it more sentimental?

Tobias: Both. It is sentimental, but at the moment it stops selling I can’t keep adding features. Gotta have some bread on the table.

Erlend: with the ability to build your own tracks, the editor for which looks like an absolute thrill btw, the game is clearly built for longevity through customization, so there is no way around the question: are you planning to add integrated online features of any sort? be it for competitive, social or sharing purposes

Tobias: Absolutely. That is where the fun will be. And that is when sales will really pick up. Imagine players sending their profiles to friends telling them to try to beat their best time, showing off a crazy replay with flips and wheelies all over the place. That is so viral it will basically constipate the whole Internet.

Erlend: I quote: “if enough buyers request it, it will be made.” – getting close?

Tobias: Hehe… yep. All who bought will be getting emails soon, asking them which feature they would prefer be implemented first.
And that will be a continuous process, for several years to come I hope.
I have got some great multiplayer ideas also, but will have to ask the buyers first.

Erlend: pfft, and you said you weren’t much of an online community person. sounds to me like you got some great ideas for interacting with your target audience at least, even giving them the opportunity of initiative

Tobias: Hehe, you got me

Erlend: I suppose it’s the small talk you’re no big fan of

Tobias: I like to be king of the hill

Erlend: so to close this off, let’s talk about the final step in your development – distribution & revenue
it seems you settled on an online e-commerce service called ‘http://bmtmicro.com/’. Was this part of an extensive process of elimination, or did you just go by recommendations or first best find?

Tobias: Recommendations. I heard their customer service is excellent, which is very important.

Erlend: was it a complicated process to set it up?

Tobias: No. Doesn’t cost you a dime, either. They take a precentage of your revenue, if any.

Erlend: nice. a safe recommendation for fellow indies?

Tobias: Yep. Easy and convenient.

Erlend: will you be taxed for income made off of this game?

Tobias: Yes. I run a business, and this is revenue into the company. Then the Swedish government takes about 50% before it gets to my pocket. But most is reinvested in development and marketing.

Erlend: does this registered business also play into protecting your game as a trademarked IP and software?

Tobias: No, I haven’t had the time to think about those issues yet. Copyright is automatic and fairly extensive protection. I probably should trademark the name though.

Erlend: I’ve made it through the demo, and it seems someone, somehow, is trying to tell me I would have a lot more fun with the full game! Anything you might have to add to pondering souls as myself to ease the decision-making? feel free to play on indie, jme or open source(Sentiments…

Tobias: Hehe. We support Linux, and I know for a fact that several buyers just bought to support us in return. Don’t do that, but instead think of all the fun you’ll have with the nitro, the glider, the rocket-boots and last but not least the Turbo. Turbo and nitro at the same time is a winning combination by the way.

Seriously though, the demo is pretty bad at showing off the depth of the game. I got the advice from a more experienced indie to change it a bit.

Erlend: we get to see a little piece of nitro sweetness in the feature-clip included with the demo don’t we? My mouth went wide open!

Tobias: Yeah, that clip gets that reaction a lot. I need to keep your mouths open the whole time through the demo. That should not be just a moment, it should be the whole experience of the demo. Because the full version is jaw-droppingly awesome

Erlend: well put!
well my man, on behalf of the Java Monkey Engine community and certainly for myself as well, I sincerely thank you for your time and answers!

Tobias: No problemo

Erlend: I was almost going to pop the question of whether you’ll eventually be jumping on a new project or not, but I am sure this is inevitable no matter how much rationale you inject yourself with. So the best of luck to you for whatever else comes up along the way, and I hope this is not the last we have seen of you and JME hand in hand

Tobias: Thanks. And thanks for listening to my ramblings. Hope you can drum up some interest for this among the jME community, maybe I can inspire someone else to finish and sell a game. It’s a fulfilling experience.

Erlend: there is certainly no shortage of aspiring developers, I can tell you that

This online interview was carried out via Google Talk and lasted for 1h 30m. I hope you enjoyed this talk with an up-and-coming indie professional as much as I did. There is certainly many nuggets of wisdom to pick up here, and may I just remind you that Tobias is a member of the JME community, so say if you want to get more technical you might be able to get a forum encore going if you play your cards right.