NOVEMBER 24th, 2015
ASA: http://www.theblackcube.fr/asa
Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/329980
The Icehouse: http://www.theicehouse.fr/games-digital---asa-remastered-edition.html
Special thanks to all the participants of the ASA Community Playthrough on Adventure Gamers who made this article possible.
ASA: http://www.theblackcube.fr/asa
Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/329980
The Icehouse: http://www.theicehouse.fr/games-digital---asa-remastered-edition.html
Special thanks to all the participants of the ASA Community Playthrough on Adventure Gamers who made this article possible.
What is this page?
Hi! Like many other independent developers, I thought that it would be interesting to share my experience on the development of ASA: A Space Adventure. I had never had the time to write it before, but always wanted to tell more about this project, and tell the world that anyone can make a good game at home, as long as you don't expect massive sales, and work with enough passion and motivation. It was fun, despite making sacrifices in my daily life (because the project was self-funded). And if you asked me if I would be ready to do it again, I would answer yes, of course! After all I have been working on another game, CATYPH, under the same circumstances.
Recently I was lucky enough to be invited to a Community Playthrough about ASA on the forums of Adventure Gamers. There, I explained several "behind the scenes" things and replied to the questions, while the participants were playing ASA and shared their progress. It was very interesting, and allowed me to learn more about my own game: I discovered in details (and you could say "on live") how people were feeling while playing it, what they liked and disliked. I was like playing through their own eyes. It was a great moment for me, because a game developer never has the chance to play his game like anyone else.
I decided to gather the answers I gave there and put some order into them. Please forgive the mistakes and approximations in this text: my English is still far from perfect. The following lines explain how I created an old-school Myst-like game on my own, the difficulties I met during the development process, the great things that happened, and what went wrong and right after the release. I hope you'll have a nice time reading this article.
Simon Mesnard
Recently I was lucky enough to be invited to a Community Playthrough about ASA on the forums of Adventure Gamers. There, I explained several "behind the scenes" things and replied to the questions, while the participants were playing ASA and shared their progress. It was very interesting, and allowed me to learn more about my own game: I discovered in details (and you could say "on live") how people were feeling while playing it, what they liked and disliked. I was like playing through their own eyes. It was a great moment for me, because a game developer never has the chance to play his game like anyone else.
I decided to gather the answers I gave there and put some order into them. Please forgive the mistakes and approximations in this text: my English is still far from perfect. The following lines explain how I created an old-school Myst-like game on my own, the difficulties I met during the development process, the great things that happened, and what went wrong and right after the release. I hope you'll have a nice time reading this article.
Simon Mesnard
History
The birth of a space adventure
In 2011 I have written a sci-fi book at home, just like I had written the years before a series of short novels entitled Mon Village est Magique - for the fun of telling stories. This sci-fi novel (quite short then) was named La Tour de l'Espace (The Tower in the Space?), and was taking place on a planet named Terra. The heros, 2 generations of people from the Forte family, were simply discovering Space in their own ways, until they found a mysterious Black Cube with incredible powers. The original story was mainly focused on astronaut Philip Forté from the continent of Lutétia (an equivalent of France), but it quickly expanded with more and more characters and events. Finally the Cube would be in the center of many more stories, sometimes unrelated and on different planets, and all of these stories would create a kind of mythology around the Anterran civilization: the creators of the Cubes. Indeed there are several Cubes, protected inside a spaceship named the Ark. The Ark travels in the universe in an automated way since several millions of years, with the only purpose to gather knowledge…
An encouraging thing happened
These writings were kept private and were never published (by lack of self-confidence - I'm not a writer). But I liked my story and wanted to work on it with my usual tools: computer graphics. From this book, I have created a short animation film entitled 2011: A Space Adventure (because it was created in 2011). This film was more of an experiment, but also a tribute to Kubrick’s famous movie (to be more precise, it's a tribute to the book of Arthur C. Clarke, but I believe that the movie is much more famous, so I don't contradict when people compare with the work of Kubrick - which is a huge honor of course). My short film had a wonderful success on Vimeo with over 70k views in no time, and it became obvious that I should continue to develop this project in a more personal way. Several months later, following the opinion of my brother Yves (who also works on indie games), I decided to develop ASA. Thanks to him the project went so far. As a film director, I had no experience in game development, but happily, a very lot of experience in playing games. I chose to work on a genre that had more or less disapeared in 2011: the Myst-like genre. It seemed suited to me, because I was quite skilled in 3D rendering, and a Myst game is about creating beautiful environments.
From the original version…
ASA: A Space Adventure, original edition, was created incredibly quickly, in around 7-8 months (if you include the Beta-tests, marketing and other stuff). The production itself only took me 6 months, which I had never done before and I was surprised myself. Passion at work! It was only possible thanks to my skills with 3ds max and the flexibility of Adventure Maker. I did not have any specific plans for ASA while working on it, but I really wanted to revive the Myst genre, which was a bit forgotten in 2012.
ASA was more or less tinkered, because I was discovering and learning game development at the same time, and Adventure Maker was quite an old engine already (Visual Basic, resolution limited to 1024x720...). Yet I would have never been able to release my first game without it, and I still recommend this software to people who want to create adventure games at home. It's an efficient and reliable soft.
Unfortunately, there are several issues in the game as a result, such as technical limitations, or localization issues. Sometimes, planet Terra is named Earth, which is an error. Happily the whole game is logical and doesn’t suffer that much of these problems. It was really interesting to write the story of Philippe Forté from his own point of view in the diary, that is to say in a different way than what was said in the book.
Then ASA released in the very end of December 2012, but more officially on January 7th, 2013 on my own website (and in March on Desura). Launching the game has been tough, and a bit hazardous, but in the end I succeeded thanks to the great reviews of several sites such as Adventure Gamers, and the help of people who purchased it (thanks again).
...to the Remastered.
During all that time (since November 2012 to be exact), ASA was on Steam Greenlight, awaiting to receive enough votes to be released on Steam. I quickly abandoned the idea that it would happen someday despite my efforts (I had totally lost any hope, honestly) because one year after the release, in the end of 2013, the game was more or less forgotten, and it was far from having enough votes. However, surprisingly, it happened: the game was greenlit in April 2014. That was incredible, but also a big problem: I had already started working on my new game Catyph, which was receiving all my attention and efforts. I had 2 solutions:
Production process on the HD Remake
We started working on ASA: Remastered Edition with Visionaire Studio, that I was using at the same time for my new project. I provided a template created for Catyph to Andy, who used it as a basis of work. At that time, we wanted to release a game with a high resolution, but we had in mind to simply upscale the original pictures with a batch script (and add a few filters to improve the quality and hide the pixels and blurs). We knew that it really was a lot of work to re-render all the backgrounds into HD, and it seemed impossible, so our first idea was to avoid this stage… However I changed my mind, and I finally decided to stop the development of Catyph for a few months. I re-opened each scene of ASA created in 3ds max, reworked the textures and increased the output resolution, and re-rendered each background in 1920x800 instead of the original 1024x432. People who played the original game will probably see many differences, such as the new aspect of the rock on the Forte Islands. In the end, it’s over 900 pictures that I re-rendered from scratch (3dsmax + After Effects), before they were imported in Visionaire Studio by Andy (who did an impressive work). Several of the puzzles were rethought for the occasion. We had in mind that, maybe, it could be possible to release the game on iOS or Android, and that the puzzles needed to be thought for a tactile gameplay. That is why we have added an inventory button at the top right corner, and why we completely changed one of the puzzles with a “DOS” interface. Now I wonder if it was a good idea.
Anyway, after 6 months, ASA: Remastered was finished and finally released on Steam in March 2015. The sales were low but it allowed a few more people to discover the game. Since then I have restarted to work on Catyph, and I hope that you will like it as much as ASA (and even more).
In 2011 I have written a sci-fi book at home, just like I had written the years before a series of short novels entitled Mon Village est Magique - for the fun of telling stories. This sci-fi novel (quite short then) was named La Tour de l'Espace (The Tower in the Space?), and was taking place on a planet named Terra. The heros, 2 generations of people from the Forte family, were simply discovering Space in their own ways, until they found a mysterious Black Cube with incredible powers. The original story was mainly focused on astronaut Philip Forté from the continent of Lutétia (an equivalent of France), but it quickly expanded with more and more characters and events. Finally the Cube would be in the center of many more stories, sometimes unrelated and on different planets, and all of these stories would create a kind of mythology around the Anterran civilization: the creators of the Cubes. Indeed there are several Cubes, protected inside a spaceship named the Ark. The Ark travels in the universe in an automated way since several millions of years, with the only purpose to gather knowledge…
An encouraging thing happened
These writings were kept private and were never published (by lack of self-confidence - I'm not a writer). But I liked my story and wanted to work on it with my usual tools: computer graphics. From this book, I have created a short animation film entitled 2011: A Space Adventure (because it was created in 2011). This film was more of an experiment, but also a tribute to Kubrick’s famous movie (to be more precise, it's a tribute to the book of Arthur C. Clarke, but I believe that the movie is much more famous, so I don't contradict when people compare with the work of Kubrick - which is a huge honor of course). My short film had a wonderful success on Vimeo with over 70k views in no time, and it became obvious that I should continue to develop this project in a more personal way. Several months later, following the opinion of my brother Yves (who also works on indie games), I decided to develop ASA. Thanks to him the project went so far. As a film director, I had no experience in game development, but happily, a very lot of experience in playing games. I chose to work on a genre that had more or less disapeared in 2011: the Myst-like genre. It seemed suited to me, because I was quite skilled in 3D rendering, and a Myst game is about creating beautiful environments.
From the original version…
ASA: A Space Adventure, original edition, was created incredibly quickly, in around 7-8 months (if you include the Beta-tests, marketing and other stuff). The production itself only took me 6 months, which I had never done before and I was surprised myself. Passion at work! It was only possible thanks to my skills with 3ds max and the flexibility of Adventure Maker. I did not have any specific plans for ASA while working on it, but I really wanted to revive the Myst genre, which was a bit forgotten in 2012.
ASA was more or less tinkered, because I was discovering and learning game development at the same time, and Adventure Maker was quite an old engine already (Visual Basic, resolution limited to 1024x720...). Yet I would have never been able to release my first game without it, and I still recommend this software to people who want to create adventure games at home. It's an efficient and reliable soft.
Unfortunately, there are several issues in the game as a result, such as technical limitations, or localization issues. Sometimes, planet Terra is named Earth, which is an error. Happily the whole game is logical and doesn’t suffer that much of these problems. It was really interesting to write the story of Philippe Forté from his own point of view in the diary, that is to say in a different way than what was said in the book.
Then ASA released in the very end of December 2012, but more officially on January 7th, 2013 on my own website (and in March on Desura). Launching the game has been tough, and a bit hazardous, but in the end I succeeded thanks to the great reviews of several sites such as Adventure Gamers, and the help of people who purchased it (thanks again).
...to the Remastered.
During all that time (since November 2012 to be exact), ASA was on Steam Greenlight, awaiting to receive enough votes to be released on Steam. I quickly abandoned the idea that it would happen someday despite my efforts (I had totally lost any hope, honestly) because one year after the release, in the end of 2013, the game was more or less forgotten, and it was far from having enough votes. However, surprisingly, it happened: the game was greenlit in April 2014. That was incredible, but also a big problem: I had already started working on my new game Catyph, which was receiving all my attention and efforts. I had 2 solutions:
- release ASA "as is" (which was the most logical possibily) but a lot of people would probably complain that there was a patch to install manually - which would become a big issue on Steam
- release an updated version.
Production process on the HD Remake
We started working on ASA: Remastered Edition with Visionaire Studio, that I was using at the same time for my new project. I provided a template created for Catyph to Andy, who used it as a basis of work. At that time, we wanted to release a game with a high resolution, but we had in mind to simply upscale the original pictures with a batch script (and add a few filters to improve the quality and hide the pixels and blurs). We knew that it really was a lot of work to re-render all the backgrounds into HD, and it seemed impossible, so our first idea was to avoid this stage… However I changed my mind, and I finally decided to stop the development of Catyph for a few months. I re-opened each scene of ASA created in 3ds max, reworked the textures and increased the output resolution, and re-rendered each background in 1920x800 instead of the original 1024x432. People who played the original game will probably see many differences, such as the new aspect of the rock on the Forte Islands. In the end, it’s over 900 pictures that I re-rendered from scratch (3dsmax + After Effects), before they were imported in Visionaire Studio by Andy (who did an impressive work). Several of the puzzles were rethought for the occasion. We had in mind that, maybe, it could be possible to release the game on iOS or Android, and that the puzzles needed to be thought for a tactile gameplay. That is why we have added an inventory button at the top right corner, and why we completely changed one of the puzzles with a “DOS” interface. Now I wonder if it was a good idea.
Anyway, after 6 months, ASA: Remastered was finished and finally released on Steam in March 2015. The sales were low but it allowed a few more people to discover the game. Since then I have restarted to work on Catyph, and I hope that you will like it as much as ASA (and even more).
Production secrets
Photorealistic graphics?
Several people congratulated me for the quality of the photorealistic graphics of ASA, and I would like to thank them warmly (even if nowadays in 2015 we can reach the same level of quality in realtime 3D). Yes, thanks a lot, and of course I am very happy to read this. However I have to admit that ASA is far from being as realistic as Riven (Myst II), which is still a game that impresses me. When I look at the quality of the environments in Riven (water, rock, light, etc) I still find it amazing, so long after its release. It is of course a bit wasted by the low resolution of the game, but to think that they created it in 199x is incredible. Even Myst III and IV are not as beautiful (which is a very personal opinion). They give the feeling to be more beautiful because there are more details, have a higher resolution, but the realism itself is not as great.
When I started working on ASA I really (really!) wanted to do a game very beautiful, in tribute to Riven and other Myst games, but I didn’t fully reach my goal. You might say that I am hard with myself, but when you compare ASA with one of these games, obviously ASA is far below. On the other hand it needs to be balanced with the fact that, despite everything one could say about the quality, the game did release. Indeed the game could be better, but when analyse the development process, I realize that it could NOT be better. Let me explain: if I look back at the work I did alone, with no experience in indie video games, and just using my short film as a starting point, I did a good job. At the time I created ASA, the graphics resolution was 1024x432, which is a limitation of Adventure Maker. However I could not have done more even with a more modern software, because my PC was not powerful enough. ASA was self-funded, and my computer (a laptop) was already 6 years old. The problem of photorealistic graphics is that they need a powerful machine to be rendered correctly. If I had decided to render the game in 1280 or even more, it is more likely that ASA would never have been finished (and I mean never).
My laptop had a lot of troubles to render the animated sequences in 1024x432, because, you know, an animation contains 25 images/second, which in the end can represent a very long calculation time. If you add all the 3D animated sequences of ASA together, they reach around 20 or 25 minutes, which is really huge (the length of an episode of Naruto). My old laptop needed between 1 and 10 minutes to render 1 single image (let’s say 4 minutes in average). 20 minutes of animation at 25 fps correspond to 30 000 single images, that is to say in my case 2000 hours of render (80 days), which seems more or less realistic since my PC has been running 24h/24 7d/7, mainly at night for the rendering work, and thus during 6 months. The rest of the game is composed of 900+ backgrounds that also needed to be rendered at some point. Yet my poor laptop has survived and I am using it for internet things today, and writing to all of you right now using it!
Why not realtime 3D?
I tried to add as many details as possible in the background environments (there's still place for improvement, I agree). There are several things in the game that are not useful to the story or to the puzzles, but are for the eyes only: reflections of the hero, objects, landscapes… e.g. the greenhouse was nice to create, thanks to the flowers and plants (and the birds), and it must have been the most interesting room to create aboard the Ark. Making vegetation in 3D is always complex (it’s a real challenge) and doesn’t often give beautiful results if you don’t use expensive plugins, so I was quite reluctant first at the idea to create the greenhouse, but in the end it is more lively and warm than the other rooms - which was made on purpose according to the diary.
My only regret so far is that I didn’t anticipate the release of Unity 5, which allows the creation of amazing graphics in games, such as Obduction, Xing, Haven Moon, Quern… All these developers are amazing and I am a little jealous for not being able (yet?) to create such impressive games in realtime 3D!
On the other hand, I don’t know if that is what I want to do… I like the feeling of 2D games (pre-rendered 3D - or just 2D). They are the real point and click adventures, where people don’t suffer of motion sickness, where they do really point... and click on the pictures. I’m not sure if it is nostalgia, or if there really is something different between 2D and 3D Myst-like games (I mean pre-rendered vs realtime 3D), and so I am still unsure of the success that Catyph will have in 2016. It will probably look outdated to many people, which I totally understand. But if you think of it seriously, whatever I'd do alone would look necessarily outdated compared to AAA games, even if I used the latest softwares. I'm quite proud that I could push the Visionaire Studio engine to its limits (speaking of the current 4.2 version). What I know is that I am happy with what I created in terms of world (size, diversity), puzzles (some interesting ideas), and immersion (story, characters, etc).
There has been several polls on French forums about pre-rendered 3D VS realtime 3D in Myst-like games. Adventure fans seem to prefer 2D (slideshow, or omni 3D like in Myst IV), and realtime 3D comes after. It depends on the generation of people who play: if they are younger they usually seem to prefer realtime. But does it really make the game and immersion better? Oculus & VR will probably weigh a lot in this debate. I would probably try to defend pre-rendered 3D which I have always loved in games such as Final Fantasy PS1, Donkey Kong Country Snes, so far as I remember, or the Myst series of course. And The Longest Journey, and Grim Fandango... !
Softwares
Regarding the softwares themselves, ASA was mainly created with 3ds max, which I have been using for over 15 years now and could purchase for my professional use (the licence costs 5000€!). It was before Autodesk released the new payment system with a monthly subscription ($1300/year). At least I own it once and for all, but it has been a tough decision (why not buying a car instead?). On the other hand, so far I remember since I am creating 3D, I have always been using 3ds max. I started as self-taught with Discreet 3D Studio Max 2.5 at 15yo with my brother and my cousin. It was fun. We made a short film together in 2 weeks named “The Big Movie”, which is so horrible technically that I don’t want to show it to anyone, but we really learned a lot, and our life changed. My brother and I have founded The Icehouse collective, where we try to promote our indie games in our own way, with other developers that we support, and who support us. My cousin is a teacher in Special Effects, specialized in the Houdini software. In the end we all have a 3D related job now, just because of that horrible short film!
Along with 3ds max, I learned After Effects and realized that it was very powerful and could help me “improve” some of the 3D renders that contained minor bugs, without recalculating them (usually render processing is so slow that we try to render scenes only once, so if there’s a bug it sucks). After Effects is great thanks to its many plugins that allow to work on beautiful colors, add particles, and so many special effects that will make the difference between a raw 3D render and the final pic. That is how I could reach a nice result in ASA, by adding a more lively atmosphere, lens flares, particles, and all the small details that you might not always see but that make the difference. I also used to use After Effects a lot for my short films.
Music, A Space Journey
I love the work of Stélian Derenne on ASA. It is probably not perfect (does perfection exist?) and might not please everyone (tastes...), but he really worked hard. He now receives a % of the sales of the game, which is only a small reward compared to all the troubles he went through. It was probably very difficult for him to compose the soundtrack, because of his fulltime job, and because he had no idea what the game would look like in the end. Indeed during the creation process, I sent him a document with pictures of the game and descriptions, but he didn’t have the opportunity to play ASA while working on the OST. He had to rely on his imagination (and my explanations) to compose the tracks!Stélian is a music composer from Belgium who also works on sound design (he is behind the sound effects in ASA of course). He is part of the Karreo group who supports music-related artists (karreo.com).
I would like to invite everyone to listen to the full ASA OST in streaming on bandcamp:
http://karreo.bandcamp.com/album/a-space-adventure-asa
Please leave a comment if you like it! My favorite tracks in ASA are probably the main theme (A Space Journey) and Kepler's (Odd Arrival), but there are several other tracks that I find excellent in the game. The main issue with the soundtrack is the fact that the music loops endlessly, which is sometimes boring when you’re stuck on a puzzle. But this is a problem with ASA's programming, not with the work of Stélian. You can learn more about his other works on his website: http://www.stelian.be
Voice acting
Some people congratulated the work of the voice actor in the diary. I know that others were not happy with that voice and thought it would have been better with an option to disable it. Personally I'm totally satisfied. Steven Tidwell, the voice actor of Philip Forté, might not be a pro but he really did a great job. I’m glad it was possible to get in touch with him, I’ve been lucky. You know there could have been no voice at all, in fact… It came much later in the development, but originally I wanted it to be text only, a simple document. It would have been much easier to produce.
When I needed external resources for the game, I had no miraculous way to obtain them: the game being self-funded, I was making it at home, so it was impossible to hire a pro, and difficult to find a good voice actor for free (even if I accepted to give some money for reward as soon as the game would sell). I just asked on the forums of Adventure Maker (that I used to create ASA at the time) if someone would be interested to work on the voice for the diary. There were several people who were interested because the AM community is quite enthusiastic, but they had strong foreign accents from Macedonia or Spain for example. I could have recorded the voice myself (I made a few tests) but it was horrible, and my friends were not really interested in recording themselves either. Finally a person told me that he had been playing to an online game on Steam (with a microphone), where he had met a student with a calm voice, very interesting. We got in touch, it was Steven, and he accepted to get involved. That was quite an adventure in itself! If you read this Steven, thanks again.
The voice of the AI (MAID) was created in a very different way than the voice of the diary. There are probably several ways to do this, but I used a software named WavePad, which has a function to translate a text into a digital voice, using Microsoft Windows features. The voice of the AI in ASA is Microsoft Zira, which has been slightly modified. With funds and a real team, of course I would have chosen the ideal way: a real voice actress! The reason I chose to use a software instead, is that it was giving me full control over the texts. When you work with a real actor, the result is much better, but it is also more complicated when you are not English born and do mistakes in your texts: they have to be proofread and cannot be modified anymore. With the Microsoft voice, it was possible to update the comments of the AI (text and voice) until the very last minute.
Several people congratulated me for the quality of the photorealistic graphics of ASA, and I would like to thank them warmly (even if nowadays in 2015 we can reach the same level of quality in realtime 3D). Yes, thanks a lot, and of course I am very happy to read this. However I have to admit that ASA is far from being as realistic as Riven (Myst II), which is still a game that impresses me. When I look at the quality of the environments in Riven (water, rock, light, etc) I still find it amazing, so long after its release. It is of course a bit wasted by the low resolution of the game, but to think that they created it in 199x is incredible. Even Myst III and IV are not as beautiful (which is a very personal opinion). They give the feeling to be more beautiful because there are more details, have a higher resolution, but the realism itself is not as great.
When I started working on ASA I really (really!) wanted to do a game very beautiful, in tribute to Riven and other Myst games, but I didn’t fully reach my goal. You might say that I am hard with myself, but when you compare ASA with one of these games, obviously ASA is far below. On the other hand it needs to be balanced with the fact that, despite everything one could say about the quality, the game did release. Indeed the game could be better, but when analyse the development process, I realize that it could NOT be better. Let me explain: if I look back at the work I did alone, with no experience in indie video games, and just using my short film as a starting point, I did a good job. At the time I created ASA, the graphics resolution was 1024x432, which is a limitation of Adventure Maker. However I could not have done more even with a more modern software, because my PC was not powerful enough. ASA was self-funded, and my computer (a laptop) was already 6 years old. The problem of photorealistic graphics is that they need a powerful machine to be rendered correctly. If I had decided to render the game in 1280 or even more, it is more likely that ASA would never have been finished (and I mean never).
My laptop had a lot of troubles to render the animated sequences in 1024x432, because, you know, an animation contains 25 images/second, which in the end can represent a very long calculation time. If you add all the 3D animated sequences of ASA together, they reach around 20 or 25 minutes, which is really huge (the length of an episode of Naruto). My old laptop needed between 1 and 10 minutes to render 1 single image (let’s say 4 minutes in average). 20 minutes of animation at 25 fps correspond to 30 000 single images, that is to say in my case 2000 hours of render (80 days), which seems more or less realistic since my PC has been running 24h/24 7d/7, mainly at night for the rendering work, and thus during 6 months. The rest of the game is composed of 900+ backgrounds that also needed to be rendered at some point. Yet my poor laptop has survived and I am using it for internet things today, and writing to all of you right now using it!
Why not realtime 3D?
I tried to add as many details as possible in the background environments (there's still place for improvement, I agree). There are several things in the game that are not useful to the story or to the puzzles, but are for the eyes only: reflections of the hero, objects, landscapes… e.g. the greenhouse was nice to create, thanks to the flowers and plants (and the birds), and it must have been the most interesting room to create aboard the Ark. Making vegetation in 3D is always complex (it’s a real challenge) and doesn’t often give beautiful results if you don’t use expensive plugins, so I was quite reluctant first at the idea to create the greenhouse, but in the end it is more lively and warm than the other rooms - which was made on purpose according to the diary.
My only regret so far is that I didn’t anticipate the release of Unity 5, which allows the creation of amazing graphics in games, such as Obduction, Xing, Haven Moon, Quern… All these developers are amazing and I am a little jealous for not being able (yet?) to create such impressive games in realtime 3D!
On the other hand, I don’t know if that is what I want to do… I like the feeling of 2D games (pre-rendered 3D - or just 2D). They are the real point and click adventures, where people don’t suffer of motion sickness, where they do really point... and click on the pictures. I’m not sure if it is nostalgia, or if there really is something different between 2D and 3D Myst-like games (I mean pre-rendered vs realtime 3D), and so I am still unsure of the success that Catyph will have in 2016. It will probably look outdated to many people, which I totally understand. But if you think of it seriously, whatever I'd do alone would look necessarily outdated compared to AAA games, even if I used the latest softwares. I'm quite proud that I could push the Visionaire Studio engine to its limits (speaking of the current 4.2 version). What I know is that I am happy with what I created in terms of world (size, diversity), puzzles (some interesting ideas), and immersion (story, characters, etc).
There has been several polls on French forums about pre-rendered 3D VS realtime 3D in Myst-like games. Adventure fans seem to prefer 2D (slideshow, or omni 3D like in Myst IV), and realtime 3D comes after. It depends on the generation of people who play: if they are younger they usually seem to prefer realtime. But does it really make the game and immersion better? Oculus & VR will probably weigh a lot in this debate. I would probably try to defend pre-rendered 3D which I have always loved in games such as Final Fantasy PS1, Donkey Kong Country Snes, so far as I remember, or the Myst series of course. And The Longest Journey, and Grim Fandango... !
Softwares
Regarding the softwares themselves, ASA was mainly created with 3ds max, which I have been using for over 15 years now and could purchase for my professional use (the licence costs 5000€!). It was before Autodesk released the new payment system with a monthly subscription ($1300/year). At least I own it once and for all, but it has been a tough decision (why not buying a car instead?). On the other hand, so far I remember since I am creating 3D, I have always been using 3ds max. I started as self-taught with Discreet 3D Studio Max 2.5 at 15yo with my brother and my cousin. It was fun. We made a short film together in 2 weeks named “The Big Movie”, which is so horrible technically that I don’t want to show it to anyone, but we really learned a lot, and our life changed. My brother and I have founded The Icehouse collective, where we try to promote our indie games in our own way, with other developers that we support, and who support us. My cousin is a teacher in Special Effects, specialized in the Houdini software. In the end we all have a 3D related job now, just because of that horrible short film!
Along with 3ds max, I learned After Effects and realized that it was very powerful and could help me “improve” some of the 3D renders that contained minor bugs, without recalculating them (usually render processing is so slow that we try to render scenes only once, so if there’s a bug it sucks). After Effects is great thanks to its many plugins that allow to work on beautiful colors, add particles, and so many special effects that will make the difference between a raw 3D render and the final pic. That is how I could reach a nice result in ASA, by adding a more lively atmosphere, lens flares, particles, and all the small details that you might not always see but that make the difference. I also used to use After Effects a lot for my short films.
Music, A Space Journey
I love the work of Stélian Derenne on ASA. It is probably not perfect (does perfection exist?) and might not please everyone (tastes...), but he really worked hard. He now receives a % of the sales of the game, which is only a small reward compared to all the troubles he went through. It was probably very difficult for him to compose the soundtrack, because of his fulltime job, and because he had no idea what the game would look like in the end. Indeed during the creation process, I sent him a document with pictures of the game and descriptions, but he didn’t have the opportunity to play ASA while working on the OST. He had to rely on his imagination (and my explanations) to compose the tracks!Stélian is a music composer from Belgium who also works on sound design (he is behind the sound effects in ASA of course). He is part of the Karreo group who supports music-related artists (karreo.com).
I would like to invite everyone to listen to the full ASA OST in streaming on bandcamp:
http://karreo.bandcamp.com/album/a-space-adventure-asa
Please leave a comment if you like it! My favorite tracks in ASA are probably the main theme (A Space Journey) and Kepler's (Odd Arrival), but there are several other tracks that I find excellent in the game. The main issue with the soundtrack is the fact that the music loops endlessly, which is sometimes boring when you’re stuck on a puzzle. But this is a problem with ASA's programming, not with the work of Stélian. You can learn more about his other works on his website: http://www.stelian.be
Voice acting
Some people congratulated the work of the voice actor in the diary. I know that others were not happy with that voice and thought it would have been better with an option to disable it. Personally I'm totally satisfied. Steven Tidwell, the voice actor of Philip Forté, might not be a pro but he really did a great job. I’m glad it was possible to get in touch with him, I’ve been lucky. You know there could have been no voice at all, in fact… It came much later in the development, but originally I wanted it to be text only, a simple document. It would have been much easier to produce.
When I needed external resources for the game, I had no miraculous way to obtain them: the game being self-funded, I was making it at home, so it was impossible to hire a pro, and difficult to find a good voice actor for free (even if I accepted to give some money for reward as soon as the game would sell). I just asked on the forums of Adventure Maker (that I used to create ASA at the time) if someone would be interested to work on the voice for the diary. There were several people who were interested because the AM community is quite enthusiastic, but they had strong foreign accents from Macedonia or Spain for example. I could have recorded the voice myself (I made a few tests) but it was horrible, and my friends were not really interested in recording themselves either. Finally a person told me that he had been playing to an online game on Steam (with a microphone), where he had met a student with a calm voice, very interesting. We got in touch, it was Steven, and he accepted to get involved. That was quite an adventure in itself! If you read this Steven, thanks again.
The voice of the AI (MAID) was created in a very different way than the voice of the diary. There are probably several ways to do this, but I used a software named WavePad, which has a function to translate a text into a digital voice, using Microsoft Windows features. The voice of the AI in ASA is Microsoft Zira, which has been slightly modified. With funds and a real team, of course I would have chosen the ideal way: a real voice actress! The reason I chose to use a software instead, is that it was giving me full control over the texts. When you work with a real actor, the result is much better, but it is also more complicated when you are not English born and do mistakes in your texts: they have to be proofread and cannot be modified anymore. With the Microsoft voice, it was possible to update the comments of the AI (text and voice) until the very last minute.
Releasing an indie game
Now I would like to come back on some of the questions I was asked regarding the release of the game. Sometimes, people don't understand the choices made by smaller teams of developers. What I would like to say is that, in fact, we are usually doing our best to reach everyone, but it's not always easy. There are so many things that can stop us from selling our game when we lack of experience in marketing! From contacting the press to finding the good marketplace, it's really an obstacle course.
"There are some games out there, e.g. JULIA, that I will probably never play because they are only available on Steam"
This is an interesting comment because Steam has never been so popular, yet we (indie developers in general) are usually trying to please as many people as possible by releasing our games on several marketplaces. However you need to keep in mind that Steam is the place where indie devs are the most likely to reach a lot of people, so it's not a surprise if we all try to be greenlit there. However there are often alternative ways provided to purchase our games:
e.g. ASA is on the Adventure Gamers Shop, on the Zodiac Store, and more (check The Icehouse site for the complete list). I really wanted to release it on GOG too, but they refused the game (see below). There are other stores like Desura that offer a good alternative to Steam for smaller developers who release their first game - which was my first choice in 2013, with no regrets.
Regarding the example of JULIA, I personally purchased it on their own website (not on Steam). So I know for sure that it was possible during several months to buy and download the game directly from the developer’s store, and not only Steam. Then what happened? Why is it not possible anymore? They have been somehow forced to stop selling the game out of Steam because UE has created a new tax for internet transactions (something related to online sales), and the guys of JULIA could not manage it with their small team (which I fully understand). So they removed the game from their servers, and I am sure they didn't do it happily. As you can see, it's not always as easy as it seems to just put a game on a store!
"I too dislike Steam and try to avoid it if at all possible [so I prefer smaller stores]"
One of the problems that I have personally encountered with smaller stores is more an administrative issue, with the necessity to check the amount of sales, to make sure that everything is going correctly, and most of the time I have had to request the money from my account. It is not a big issue honestly (and there is a kind of proximity that is quite nice), but these tasks can take several hours if you have released your game on several stores (and if you don’t forget to check regularly). When you manage a small/individual society you can regret that you still have to deal with this on your own: sending an invoice is not an automatic process and has to be done by email, on the contrary of Steam where you have nothing to do at all. It is true that greenlighting a game and submitting the information about your society to Valve/Steam is a long and difficult process (it can be discouraging). But when it is finished and ready, Valve automatically sends the money to your bank by wire transfer, everytime you have made sales, on a monthly frequency. Nothing else to do! When you are alone to manage the development of the game, the marketing, and the sales, it’s always comfortable if you can save time, so you can understand why Steam is so appealing for developers. The more time we save with these things, the more time we spend on our games...
Another issue with smaller stores is that the amount of sales is usually low. You could have to request a payment of 10~50$, which is even lower after you removed the taxes and shared the revenue with your partners (e.g. the programmer or music composer). It's almost microtransactions. Also there are stores that won’t give your money due, unless it reaches a total of $500 or more (e.g. Desura). Since around 2 years, I have a bit more than $400 on Desura, and I don’t know if I will ever reach 500 someday, so it is not impossible that the money spent in my game by some of you would just stay stuck somewhere.
"No GOG release?"
People often ask me, and the answer is no, it was impossible. You need to know that GOG has quite an unusual policy regarding the choice of games they publish. They mainly want to keep control on their new releases and increase the marketing for these titles. So it means they accept less games than (let's say) Steam, but in return they provide more private support to the developers. I totally understand this and it's positive, so I am not particularly disapointed that ASA never released on GOG.
When I contacted GOG for the very first time, they looked interested in my game and I even added the GOG logo in a trailer. At that time, I had the feeling to be in touch with the guys of "Good Old Games". You know: the store where you find a lot of old games, very pixelated, and also a lot of point&click games (including Myst). I thought there would be some place for ASA on that kind of store and they didn't deny it. Despite having a low resolution (like many other GOG games), the Original Edition of ASA had quite a rich content and was even rated 4/5 on Adventure Gamers and 15/20 on JeuxVideo.com, so there was a lot of hope. But I was totally wrong regarding the policy of GOG. Among several reasons that would make a cooperation difficult (they were not fond of the puzzles and GUI in ASA), they mainly didn't like the low resolution, which was their first observation:
"Our tester was disappointed in the low resolution of the game and really felt like this should be improved, he really liked the artwork but thought it was too small (1024) and didn’t scale well."
I knew (and accepted) that ASA was far from perfect, but I was chocked that GOG had a problem with the graphics of the game in particular. I might have been a little frustrated by their message and I respectfully replied that their tester was probably not fond of the Myst series: it could have explained his feelings, because Myst-like games had always featured a low resolution (exactly because they are pre-rendered).
"Our tester was actually in fact a very big fan of 1st-person adventure games, especially the Myst series and even made a comment about how you both shared a love for Riven.
It’s great that other players have been enjoying the game but unfortunately our tester did not completely share their opinion. He enjoyed some parts of the game but generally he didn’t feel engaged by the puzzles and this in conjunction with some technical issues meant that we aren’t confident that the game will be strongly received on GOG."
I accepted and understood their position (I am open-minded and didn't want to complain. And why would I do such a thing?). And after all, there was still place for hope: if they didn't accept ASA Original Edition, maybe they would accept my new game Catyph someday? A few years later, with the release of ASA Remastered Edition, I contacted GOG again and proposed the HD remake. Unfortunately they refused one more time. They knew that ASA didn’t perform well on Steam (it's true), and as a result they believed that it would not perform well on GOG. They added that they were trying to limit the number of releases on GOG, in order to provide visibility to every game, and as a result they needed to be selective and focus on the best titles only.
So you know for sure that ASA will never release there, and I am sorry for the people who were interested in buying it on their favorite store.
"How many copies have you sold now?"
It is difficult to know exactly in the case of the Original Edition. If you include bundles (mainly Indie Royale Debut 4 Bundle), it’s probably around 2000 copies sold, but as you know bundles sell games for a very low price (often less than 1 euro/game) and it distorts reality a little bit. The regular sales (at the normal price) must have reached a total of 400 or 500 copies, I would say, during the past few years. This is without the Remastered.
The Remastered Edition has found around 2000 owners until today (November 2015), which is quite good in fact for a re-release, even if Steam games should do much better! However you need to remove 1000 of these Steam copies, that were given to people who already owned the game (I decided to give it for free to the owners of ASA Original who asked it - including Bundle owners - which is fair in my opinion).
You could say that the sales of ASA in totality are low compared to other games, and this is mainly due to (1) my lack of experience in marketing, and (2) ASA being a slideshow and challenging game, at the time of Unity, casual/shorter games, and incredible realtime graphics.
Or on the contrary you could think that these sales are high for a one-man game who worked with no funds, but in the end it is not true because Steam (and the others) keep 30%, there are taxes, and I bought expensive softwares.
High or low, it doesn’t matter: I am satisfied with these results. It was my first game after all! My main concern now is to be able to live from game development furthermore, because up to this day I spend more money than I earn, despite having a very simple life. I would like to continue on my own and in a very indie way as long as possible, but I really don’t know what will happen with Catyph next year. I am not very optimistic because there aren’t a lot of magazines that talked of the game until today, despite a lot of efforts with sharing screenshots, trailers and playable versions. I am having a lot of troubles with PR, so we’ll see.
Making ASA required a lot of sacrifices. I understand the devs who choose to go through Kickstarter, or work with a publisher. It’s probably much more comfortable, but also very difficult in a different way… It needs experience in business and management, and I don’t feel ready for that now. If I met the right people someday? For the moment, I prefer to keep a total independency at work.
"There are some games out there, e.g. JULIA, that I will probably never play because they are only available on Steam"
This is an interesting comment because Steam has never been so popular, yet we (indie developers in general) are usually trying to please as many people as possible by releasing our games on several marketplaces. However you need to keep in mind that Steam is the place where indie devs are the most likely to reach a lot of people, so it's not a surprise if we all try to be greenlit there. However there are often alternative ways provided to purchase our games:
e.g. ASA is on the Adventure Gamers Shop, on the Zodiac Store, and more (check The Icehouse site for the complete list). I really wanted to release it on GOG too, but they refused the game (see below). There are other stores like Desura that offer a good alternative to Steam for smaller developers who release their first game - which was my first choice in 2013, with no regrets.
Regarding the example of JULIA, I personally purchased it on their own website (not on Steam). So I know for sure that it was possible during several months to buy and download the game directly from the developer’s store, and not only Steam. Then what happened? Why is it not possible anymore? They have been somehow forced to stop selling the game out of Steam because UE has created a new tax for internet transactions (something related to online sales), and the guys of JULIA could not manage it with their small team (which I fully understand). So they removed the game from their servers, and I am sure they didn't do it happily. As you can see, it's not always as easy as it seems to just put a game on a store!
"I too dislike Steam and try to avoid it if at all possible [so I prefer smaller stores]"
One of the problems that I have personally encountered with smaller stores is more an administrative issue, with the necessity to check the amount of sales, to make sure that everything is going correctly, and most of the time I have had to request the money from my account. It is not a big issue honestly (and there is a kind of proximity that is quite nice), but these tasks can take several hours if you have released your game on several stores (and if you don’t forget to check regularly). When you manage a small/individual society you can regret that you still have to deal with this on your own: sending an invoice is not an automatic process and has to be done by email, on the contrary of Steam where you have nothing to do at all. It is true that greenlighting a game and submitting the information about your society to Valve/Steam is a long and difficult process (it can be discouraging). But when it is finished and ready, Valve automatically sends the money to your bank by wire transfer, everytime you have made sales, on a monthly frequency. Nothing else to do! When you are alone to manage the development of the game, the marketing, and the sales, it’s always comfortable if you can save time, so you can understand why Steam is so appealing for developers. The more time we save with these things, the more time we spend on our games...
Another issue with smaller stores is that the amount of sales is usually low. You could have to request a payment of 10~50$, which is even lower after you removed the taxes and shared the revenue with your partners (e.g. the programmer or music composer). It's almost microtransactions. Also there are stores that won’t give your money due, unless it reaches a total of $500 or more (e.g. Desura). Since around 2 years, I have a bit more than $400 on Desura, and I don’t know if I will ever reach 500 someday, so it is not impossible that the money spent in my game by some of you would just stay stuck somewhere.
"No GOG release?"
People often ask me, and the answer is no, it was impossible. You need to know that GOG has quite an unusual policy regarding the choice of games they publish. They mainly want to keep control on their new releases and increase the marketing for these titles. So it means they accept less games than (let's say) Steam, but in return they provide more private support to the developers. I totally understand this and it's positive, so I am not particularly disapointed that ASA never released on GOG.
When I contacted GOG for the very first time, they looked interested in my game and I even added the GOG logo in a trailer. At that time, I had the feeling to be in touch with the guys of "Good Old Games". You know: the store where you find a lot of old games, very pixelated, and also a lot of point&click games (including Myst). I thought there would be some place for ASA on that kind of store and they didn't deny it. Despite having a low resolution (like many other GOG games), the Original Edition of ASA had quite a rich content and was even rated 4/5 on Adventure Gamers and 15/20 on JeuxVideo.com, so there was a lot of hope. But I was totally wrong regarding the policy of GOG. Among several reasons that would make a cooperation difficult (they were not fond of the puzzles and GUI in ASA), they mainly didn't like the low resolution, which was their first observation:
"Our tester was disappointed in the low resolution of the game and really felt like this should be improved, he really liked the artwork but thought it was too small (1024) and didn’t scale well."
I knew (and accepted) that ASA was far from perfect, but I was chocked that GOG had a problem with the graphics of the game in particular. I might have been a little frustrated by their message and I respectfully replied that their tester was probably not fond of the Myst series: it could have explained his feelings, because Myst-like games had always featured a low resolution (exactly because they are pre-rendered).
"Our tester was actually in fact a very big fan of 1st-person adventure games, especially the Myst series and even made a comment about how you both shared a love for Riven.
It’s great that other players have been enjoying the game but unfortunately our tester did not completely share their opinion. He enjoyed some parts of the game but generally he didn’t feel engaged by the puzzles and this in conjunction with some technical issues meant that we aren’t confident that the game will be strongly received on GOG."
I accepted and understood their position (I am open-minded and didn't want to complain. And why would I do such a thing?). And after all, there was still place for hope: if they didn't accept ASA Original Edition, maybe they would accept my new game Catyph someday? A few years later, with the release of ASA Remastered Edition, I contacted GOG again and proposed the HD remake. Unfortunately they refused one more time. They knew that ASA didn’t perform well on Steam (it's true), and as a result they believed that it would not perform well on GOG. They added that they were trying to limit the number of releases on GOG, in order to provide visibility to every game, and as a result they needed to be selective and focus on the best titles only.
So you know for sure that ASA will never release there, and I am sorry for the people who were interested in buying it on their favorite store.
"How many copies have you sold now?"
It is difficult to know exactly in the case of the Original Edition. If you include bundles (mainly Indie Royale Debut 4 Bundle), it’s probably around 2000 copies sold, but as you know bundles sell games for a very low price (often less than 1 euro/game) and it distorts reality a little bit. The regular sales (at the normal price) must have reached a total of 400 or 500 copies, I would say, during the past few years. This is without the Remastered.
The Remastered Edition has found around 2000 owners until today (November 2015), which is quite good in fact for a re-release, even if Steam games should do much better! However you need to remove 1000 of these Steam copies, that were given to people who already owned the game (I decided to give it for free to the owners of ASA Original who asked it - including Bundle owners - which is fair in my opinion).
You could say that the sales of ASA in totality are low compared to other games, and this is mainly due to (1) my lack of experience in marketing, and (2) ASA being a slideshow and challenging game, at the time of Unity, casual/shorter games, and incredible realtime graphics.
Or on the contrary you could think that these sales are high for a one-man game who worked with no funds, but in the end it is not true because Steam (and the others) keep 30%, there are taxes, and I bought expensive softwares.
High or low, it doesn’t matter: I am satisfied with these results. It was my first game after all! My main concern now is to be able to live from game development furthermore, because up to this day I spend more money than I earn, despite having a very simple life. I would like to continue on my own and in a very indie way as long as possible, but I really don’t know what will happen with Catyph next year. I am not very optimistic because there aren’t a lot of magazines that talked of the game until today, despite a lot of efforts with sharing screenshots, trailers and playable versions. I am having a lot of troubles with PR, so we’ll see.
Making ASA required a lot of sacrifices. I understand the devs who choose to go through Kickstarter, or work with a publisher. It’s probably much more comfortable, but also very difficult in a different way… It needs experience in business and management, and I don’t feel ready for that now. If I met the right people someday? For the moment, I prefer to keep a total independency at work.
A comparison, for the fun
RIVEN (Myst II)
- Cyan began work on Riven in 1993 - Development spanned more than four years - Cyan’s Riven team: 30 employees - Riven had a budget of between US $5 and $10 million (source wikipedia) - The main 3D software used was Softimage, the work on textures was done in photoshop - The programmation/engine was entirely made by Cyan programmers - Most of the islands were modeled in B-Spline and NURBS. The large island objects were broken apart and created using polygonal geometry - Many of the textures were accumulated during a three-day trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico. - The game resolution is 640x480 - In total Riven has over three hours of video (including real actors) - And almost 5000 images - Rendering was a major bottleneck in production despite the use of 18 dedicated workstations - Publisher Brøderbund launched a $10 million marketing campaign - Riven sold 1.5 million copies in 1 year - The name of the game was undecided - the game’s world was to be called Equiquay or Chrysalis - Music: 20 tracks (54 minutes) - Riven was finally published on October 29, 1997 - Review score on Adventure Gamers: 4.5/5 |
ASA (Original Edition)
- My work on game ASA really began in Summer 2012 - There were 2 months of development for the short film, and around 6 months for the game - ASA team: 1 person + external contributors - The budget was nil. ASA was self-funded (personal money) - The 3D software used was 3dsmax, the raw 3D renders were improved with After Effects - The programmation/engine was Adventure Maker - The whole game was created with the well-known technique of Box Modeling (polygonal geometry) - Most textures came from CGtextures.com (premium access), the rest came from my house and garden - The game resolution is 1024x432 - In total ASA has around 25 minutes of video (3d animation FMV) - And almost 1000 images - Rendering has been the main limitation in production, with 1 single PC (laptop from 2008, core 2 duo, 2GB ram) - There was no publisher and no official marketing campaign - I worked on it with no experience - ASA sold ~300 copies in 1 year (+ ~1500 with bundles) - The name of the game could have been 2011: A Space Adventure, or The Black Cube - Music: 20 tracks (64 minutes) - ASA was self-published on January 7, 2013 - Review score on Adventure Gamers: 4/5 |