What games do we at NeverMind Games play? (Part 2)
21/12/2011 by Kevin McGarry
1. What would you say is your recent or overall favourite game?
2. Explain the game.
3. What did you enjoy about it?
4. What would you change about it if you could?
5. Would you like to create a similar game with NeverMind Games?
So, this week we’re talking to Mark Lambe, programmer and C.E.O. of NeverMind Games.
What would you say is your recent or overall favourite game?
There’s a lot of games swirling around in my head for this one. I think if you asked someone who knows me, they’d probably guess at Ocarina of Time or Star Wars Galaxies, and not without reason. I love both of those titles but I fall back to X-Wing Alliance and Vice City just as often. For this, I’m going to pick Star Wars Galaxies (SWG), it was my first large scale online game, and it changed the way I view characters across all media.
Explain it for the uninitiated?
Star Wars Galaxies was an M.M.O.G. (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) released on the 15th April 2003, and discontinued on 15th December 2011. It consisted of ten planets, upon release, each representing about 225 square kilometres. The game events were set in the Star Wars universe, between episodes four and five. The player was invited to create a character using one of ten species from the Star Wars Universe, and learn a number of the many skills and abilities available.
It’s worth noting I played SWG from late 2003 until approximately December 2005, I’m basing all of my opinions on that time period. SWG was hugely successful in its early years, selling over one million copies, but overhauls to the game mechanics in mid to late 2005 saw subscription numbers plummet. During this time, reviews of the game drastically changed tone to represent the negative reactions of the player base to these changes.
What did you enjoy about it?
This is the question I was looking forward to, I’m going to talk about what happened between the day I bought the game and the 27th of April 2005, the day the Combat Upgrade was implemented. I loved almost everything about this game, its complexity was consistently praised in reviews and with good reason. In SWG you didn’t pick a “class” that dictated your character’s future, there were six base professions, Medic, Artisan, Entertainer, Marksman, Brawler and Scout, each subdivided into four skill trees. I’ll sidestep the intricacies for this interview, but mastering different aspects of these skill trees led to twenty six advanced professions, including everything from Rifleman and Pikeman to Chef, Dancer, Doctor or Creature Handler. The depth of each profession, and the unique skills that kept them interesting to play remains unmatched to anything I’ve ever seen.
As with all Star Wars games, movies, small toys and books, there was a war and two sides. I have to say that while all of my characters toyed around with this aspect of the game, I was never hugely involved in either faction, certainly not by comparison to the level of depth that was possible. I did always weigh in on the side of the Rebel Alliance though, my younger self saw good and evil as a dichotomy that allowed for easy decision making. One of the greatest aspects of the game design was the interdependencies of the, at times, hugely different in game classes. If you wanted to do some serious grinding you needed a doctor to buff you up, if you got wounded in certain ways you needed to watch an entertainer dance or play some music to get your head back on track. The social aspect of the game was unparalleled, I knew several players that spent days in a cantina on Tatooine playing music and dancing to heal fighters, talking to whoever showed up, meeting people, making friends.
I’ve crafted and mined for resources in many games, but nothing has ever come close to the system SWG had in place. The sheer number of resources that existed in the game for one, think the periodic table with funny names, there were gases, inert gasses, metals etc. The level of detail was extremely impressive. The player could plant machines to mine for them, and building up resources for different products could be quite challenging. The system in place meant that a piece of Composite Armour made by Mark was different to a piece made by Dave, based on the resources and equipment used. All equipment was tagged with your name and building a reputation as a great armour/weapon smith on a server was entirely possible, I know because I’ve done it. Having people send me in game e-mails complimenting Armour they’d seen someone in a space port wearing and asking for a pricelist was genuinely one of the most surprising and enjoyable experiences in the game. Once you could afford to produce large amounts of goods you could commission an architect to build you a house or shop, place it outside a city, create a vendor inside to sell your merchandise for a price you set. The system now had a middleman with overheads, and the realism became uncanny. The in game economy was developed to a level that it required large amount of thought to operate anything successfully.
Combat in SWG used a queue system. which I for one liked. This was the main focus of the first Combat Upgrade, and the beginning of the end, as the combat quickly became much closer to that seen in a F.P.S. (First Person Shooter). My most successful combination of combat professions was probably Rifleman/Pikeman with a bit of medic thrown in for good measure, or else Rifleman/Teras Kasi (Unarmed Combat)/Medic, I can’t quite remember. A lot has been written, said and shouted about game balancing but I was a massive advocate of the system in place. I found planning ahead was much more important than in some other games, but I always found that to be the fun part. I could talk about this all day, so I should probably end it here, just in case I think of another feature and ramble on some more.
What would you change about it?
Quite a bit, like a lot of M.M.O.G.s, SWG did not launch with a massive amount of missions, and unfortunately I don’t feel this was ever really fixed, ok maybe partially in later expansions, but the original game areas were still lacking all of the things that made grinding fun. Sure, spending a few hours in the Squill caves was great fun but I think the lack of instances, the lack of proper mechanics for group grinding, and the shortage in numbers of missions really hampered both the player’s trek through SWG and the endgame possibilities outside of PvP. The major overhauls of the game were needless, fearful and very frustrating. I say fearful because I have no doubt the changes to the skill/class system in particular were in reaction to the unprecedented growth in player numbers of World of Warcraft (WoW) , which only served to add fuel to the fire by pushing SWG fans towards what was now undoubtedly the best designed, high population M.M.O.G. available.
Overall I don’t think SWG was ever going to retain higher numbers than WoW, I think Fantasy will always trump Sci-Fi with regards to popularity in most media, I’m just not sure that it had to. This month sees the release of Old Republic, a new Star Wars M.M.O.G. There’s room in the online space for more than one giant, and the Star Wars brand is undoubtedly strong enough to push a game skyward, I suppose imitation was the highest form of flattery, and WoW didn’t need to return the compliment. I know some of these issues were addressed in later patches, expansions etc. However, the overall changes to the game in combat and class system completely destroyed it for me.
Would you like to create a similar game with NeverMind Games?
Any game we could make with the depth of mechanics and success of design seen in SWG would make me extremely proud.
What games do we at NeverMind Games play?
16/11/2011 by Kevin McGarry
1. What would you say is your recent or overall favourite game?
2. Explain the game.
3. What did you enjoy about it?
4. What would you change about it if you could?
5. Would you like to create a similar game with NeverMind Games?
So, this week I think I’ll start with myself, Kevin, artist of NeverMind Games.
What would you say is your recent or overall favourite game?
I have to say recently I have been singing the praises of Dark Souls by From Software. Overall it’s probably a draw between Final Fantasy VIII and The World Ends with You. But today I’ll talk about Dark Souls.
Explain it for the uninitiated?
It can be a bit difficult to exactly compare Dark Souls to anything recent. It doesn’t have the speed and flash of Bayonetta or God of War. It hasn’t got the depth of story that one would find in a Bioware game. It is open world, but not to the levels of Skyrim. Back to the question on hand, Dark Souls is a 3rd person action/RPG set in a fantastically realised world of doom and dread. Its’ interlinking, open structure lends itself to hours of exploration and death, lots of death. As half the worlds reviews quoted, its’ tagline is “Prepare to Die”. That’s exactly what you will be doing. You learn by doing in Dark Souls. It doesn’t really come with an in depth tutorial, beyond button controls. It has a fairly steep difficulty curve, but once the player learns patience, it becomes more manageable.
I, personally, almost gave up after spending a huge amount of time attempting to defeat a couple of early bosses that were blocking my progress. Souls are the currency and experience points of the game. You gain the by defeating enemies or from certain items throughout the game. Dying means you drop all souls you are carrying, but you are given one chance to retrieve them. However, dying before you retrieve those means they are lost forever. This is something that will happen to you more than you expect. It takes some willpower not to smash something when it does.
What did you enjoy about it?
It’s definitely nice to play a game that makes no pretensions as to what it is. It’s not flashy, it’s not chock full of character exposition, it’s not trying to be anything but a game. It has stunning vistas at every corner, but you only look if you choose to. Cut scenes are kept to short pre-boss slots, never lasting more than 20 seconds. Dark Souls is pure game. It’s just so refreshing given today’s industry. Also, from an art perspective, the world is incredibly well realised. Everywhere is dripping with texture and character that more than makes up for the paucity on the story front.
What would you change about it?
I think I would make some of the boss fights more interesting. There are a few standout fights, with some impressive looking creatures, but in some cases you can overcome the boss by just circling it and smacking it a lot.
Would you like to create a similar game with NeverMind Games?
In the future, hopefully.
So you want to work in the games industry?
16/11/2011 by Mark Lambe
The reasons good movies don’t necessarily make good games are many, long and for another day, but if we stick with the comparison of careers for a moment, we’ll see a stark difference in public perception between the breakdown of disciplines working in the industries. The list of roles to fill in order to produce, release and market a triple-A game is easily comparable with that of a Hollywood movie. Big games companies will have accountants, marketing specialists, H.R. managers, P.R. managers, and the rest. With this in mind, I usually assume that when someone asks about an entry point to the games industry, they’re really looking for an entry point to games development, and this is where confusion really seems to reign supreme. Wikipedia’s article on “Video Game Development”, under the “Roles” section, actually lays a pretty good foundation here. Three main areas need to be attended to during the development of any game, from a small iPhone title right up to the largest console releases, design, art and code. As a brief description, designers create the rules of a game, decide how the player will interact with the game world, and how the game will communicate with the player. The job of the artist, either in 2D or 3D, is to create the models, sprites, environments and everything else you see on screen. Finally, the programmer writes the game’s codebase and develops the software the game needs to run. Hopefully this makes entry to the industry seem like less of a mystery, figuring out which of these roles you might fit into should make it a lot easier to find out what career path you should take.
I should point out that there seems to be an attitude amongst second level education that students should be kept as far away from software development as possible, that it should be relegated to those who choose to take a chance on such a college course. I think the basics of software development being covered in schools would be incredibly beneficial, given that other industries are shrinking while programmers are consistently in demand. It seems wasteful at best to have access to students for five years and never show them the ladder to such a set of thriving industries, and that's without mentioning the glorious opportunity that is transition year. There are some great initiatives out there trying to supplement standard education with an introduction to the art of coding, check out Coder Dojo or Scratch if you’re interested.
One myth our artist Kev mentioned I should try and dispel is that the that guy we all have in our imaginations, the guy who comes up with the ideas for games and tells the rest of the development team what to do, doesn’t exist. Being a designer is probably the closest thing to this, but it’s still a very technical job. Balancing game mechanics and constructing features that will keep the player interested, as well as tweaking them to constantly stay in line with the feedback from testers, is not an easy job, and at times, it is not fun either.
This paragraph is where I’m going to become momentarily biased, almost all of the e-mails I get are from people in Ireland, and it’s worth addressing what someone can do to get into games design here, the details may be somewhat specific to Irish colleges and education. Ireland has seen a reasonable year on year increase in games related courses over the last seven or so years. There are several games programming courses around the country, a few art courses and unfortunately no design specific degree courses at all. The programming courses seem to come in between 300 and 330 points as regards requirements, but check the colleges’ websites for more information. One last thing worth mentioning is a quick guide to getting started from your own home / school / batcave. If you think the art lifestyle is for you, download Gimp (link provided for safety reasons(http://www.gimp.org/)) in order to start messing around in 2D, or Blender to do the same in 3D. Whichever you use try looking for tutorials on Google. Searching for “Blender tutorials” will net you some really nice guides for beginners. Look through forums and don’t be afraid to post and ask questions, you’ll always get a few redundant answers but someone will be able to help you, and no questions are stupid when you’re learning a completely new skill. If you think you’d be more interested in programming, try looking into Scratch, as mentioned above, and if you graduate beyond that or want a greater challenge with much greater possibilities, look into C# and XNA, probably using visual studio express edition. Everything I’ve mentioned here is free to use, has a huge tutorial base online, and is relatively user friendly, also it wouldn’t be the worst idea to play with all of them. Even outside of the games world, programming and graphic design are great careers.
Thanks for the time guys and girls, I'd appreciate the word bring spread, so a Facebook share or a Twitter mention would be fantastic. Also, don't forget you can follow me on Twitter @MarkJLambe and us @NeverMindGames
Talk again,
Mark
Back to School!
Posted Thursday 1/08/2011 by KevKev
Since our last update our Programming Team have been porting and testing. Educating ourselves through errors and triumphs, with the latter thankfully outweighing the former, in order to explore the prospect of getting our titles onto more of the population’s space-age devices. Mark has burdened himself with what he calls “The Boring Stuff,” which he insists is not at all worth mentioning here, at all, yet.
Myself and Veen, or The Super Awesome Atomic Chicken Roll+Pesto Art Team, are hard at work on creating pitch documents and numerous concepts for the next project while also educating ourselves with tutorials and what not that we can find on the internet and the various 3D Total and Imagine FX magazines we own.
So yeah, there wasn’t much concrete information there regarding what we, as a company, are doing. However I would like to talk about some of the excellent finds I have made over the last few weeks which have really helped with some of my recent NeverMind tasks.
The first is a massive set of brushes, gradients, palettes, patterns and tool-presets for GIMP called The GIMP Paint Studio. It took me a while to install, since things are in slightly different places in Windows 7 and I’m a moron, but once it was all in the right place I had access to so much new content. Chief among which is the Tool Presets. While GPS does come with a whole heap of new brushes, it also comes with a load of Tool Presets that utilize these brushes with very specific settings in order to simulate paint brushes, markers, pencils, special FX and a whole heap of other stuff.
So far my favorite Combination is a black Graphite Pencil and a Palette knife set to 20% opacity with a Grey or Black foreground colour. It makes for really quick tonal concept images for our future NeverMind Games and Merch.
We're pretty sure we need these.
I also found this Gimp Theme Switcher, it’s purely aesthetic but I'm really liking the “Aurora Steel” theme. Just makes the interface look less sterile and programmer-y.
I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of GIMP 2.8 and hoping that the rumors about it’s December release date are true, or wrong due to the fact that it’s coming out sooner.
Other then that I feel I must give a shout out to a chap called Oliver, as I’ve been looking at his set of excellent Blender Tutorials for the last while. The majority of his Tutorials are free with a few more in-debt offerings for a small fee, although each tutorial is presented incredibly well.
Of course there are plenty of tutorials out there for the program, the majority of which seem to bombard you with heaps of shortcut keys to remember, but Oliver cleverly starts off his tutorials by basically teaching you how to configure Blender to work and feel more like whatever software you may have migrated from, which in my case was 3D Max.
I’m no way near as proficient with Blender as I am with Max but I’m really enjoying learning more and more about it. The in-build sculpting tools and the Grease Pencil are particularly awesome at the time of writing.
Also, the tutorial on how to set up Blender to use images for materials in the same manner as ZBrush and Sculptris is really getting some ideas going!
So that’s all for this post, hope you all have a very happy and productive September although I can imagine that last year’s 6th years who are starting college now may trouble with the latter.
Take it easy.
KevKev
Redesign!
Posted Friday 1/07/2011 by KevKev
I'll give it about 3 weeks.
To talk a bit more about the website itself. Our new format boasts all of the pages our previous site contained along with this new blog page. As already stated we intend to have more frequent updates here, which could simply be ourselves talking about what we did this week, about something cool we did or something we found online that might help other aspiring developers.
On that note, I've been having a quick look at MyPaint this week. Which is a fantastic Open-Source painting software which seems to emulate some of the functionality of Sketchbook Pro or Corel Painter. It's well worth trying out and you can find cool time lapse videos on YouTube of the program being used to achieve some fantastic results.
I would very much like to post something I've painted in it but I only discovered the program while in the middle of trying to get a sticky CSS footer image working for the site. According to my spot of Google searches it's apparently a tricky thing to get right, often requiring a bit of unwieldy CSS to achieve. So it naturally took ages to find a solution that would work with the design I was in the middle of doing. In the end I owe my thanks to this method on Cre8tive Commando as it did the trick perfectly while working in every browser I tested, and hopefully browsers I didn't test.
Other then that we've been hard at work finishing TroubleSUM while simultaneously porting it to iPhone. Most of the tasks involved are very programmer heavy so the art team have been working on a number of different projects at the same time. We have some interesting ideas to further improve the website and have also come up with some fairly serious ideas for future NeverMind projects. So I can safely demand that you watch this space for further updates. You wont be disappointed.
Thanks for Reading.
KevKev
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