GDC aftermath - 4 games in 4 days

This post-mortem will probably be incoherent and unreadable, but I have a few minutes so want to punch it out and get back to working for the Man. Read on for a semi-detailed, half-assed recollection of the past week's events at GDC 2007. I plead the fifth on why I chose the timeline format for this post-mortem.

February 10th, 2007 - Eric Fritz contacts me to see my level of interest in some "XNA showcase" that Microsoft wanted to do at the conference. I don't really remember most of the email except the important words: Microsoft, XNA, GDC. I immediately said "hell yea" to get the ball rolling. OK. I thought "hell yea" and replied (I hope) with something a little less "geek in a comic book store."

February 13th, 2007 - Dave Mitchell, a director at Microsoft, shoots me an email to call him about the opportunity. Apparently he had just sent the email a few seconds before I called him. I don't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but it was unplanned either way. I find out on the phone that Microsoft wants me to come and participate in a 4 team challenge to build a game using XNA and TorqueX in 4 days while on display at GDC. This time I did reply with the "hell yea", but screw it, I'm excited. I shoot off some requested screenshots from Fowl Prowl and sealed the deal.

February 15th, 2007 - Microsoft sends the official notice that my Indie studio Last Straw Productions CTO Patrick Glanville and myself have been accepted into the challenge as team 4! We're told we'll have art provided at the conference and to come up with a game idea to build while we are there. Patrick and I immediately start brainstorming ideas.

February 20th, 2007 - After several days of decent and semi-decent game ideas, Patrick and I settle on a solid game idea. We decide the player would be a prehistoric human that was more ape than man. The idea is that the ape man notices an extremely large meteor heading for earth and he tries to escape the area he believes it's going to land. We planned a 3D photo-realistic art style for the 2D game involving antagonists such as saber tooth tigers, velociraptors, snakes, alligators and prehistoric bears oh my. The player would need to jump over lava spills and tar pits on his way to survival.

Ape man would collect fruit to increase a constantly decreasing stamina bar. The game would be a side scroller with nearly all the screen consisting of the ground layer and a tiny bit of sky layer to see the meteor and show the trees the player would need to jump up and pull fruit from. We would only have time for one level, so we decide to make it take about two minutes to traverse. If time permits, we plan on making a boss level after successfully completing the two minute level. To make things more interesting, we come up with what we deemed "monkey sense." Monkey Sense basically was what would happen if the player ever reached 100% stamina. If this happens, a matrix-style slow-motion would come into effect for a few seconds allowing ape man to easily dodge and jump over obstacles.

February 23rd, 2007 - We send off a list of ambitious art assets to Microsoft for review. Our list includes several enemies, types of fruit (good fruit to increase stamina and bad fruit to decrease it), several GUI screens both for telling the story as well as for functionality. We have decided to allow the player to pick up rocks to throw at the enemies for more game play options and 3 different rock sizes make the list.

March 1st, 2007 - Microsoft lets us know our art list is a bit ambitious and to only list absolutely required items as only 1 artist will be on-site to support all 4 teams. We find out all the final details of the travel info and accommodations. We have met several times over the last few days to plan our attack and flesh out our game play a bit more. We come up with a 'to-do' list and job assignments so we don't waste time at the conference with planning.

March 3d, 2007 - After two de-icings, two hours of delay and several "holy shit we're about to crash" feelings, we touch down in San Francisco at around 2am SF time. I'm too tired to kiss the ground when I get off the plane that must have had a first time pilot behind the wheel. We hail a cab and head into town. I'm hungry, tired and excited. This is a pretty bad combination. We arrive at the Argent hotel just a block and a half from the conference location just before 3am. After several trips to the back room which started to make me wonder if the FBI was about to jump on me from behind, we're told our reserved rooms have been rented out.

We're told reservations have been made at the Hilton a few blocks away and we're given $20 each for a cab trip there. After putting the Paris Hilton puns out of my head, I decide this is probably a good thing since the Hilton is a high class hotel chain. The new cab driver is just as bad as the last and makes Minnesota drivers look like old women. Is it just me or do cab drivers like farting just before someone gets in knowing that they aren't going to say anything? Ah well, his tip reflected his stench.

We arrive at the Hilton and I feel like I should be told "deliveries are in back." I've never seen such a lavish lobby outside of TV. Impressive. Patrick and I decide we're too damn hungry to go to sleep, so we should check in and drop our stuff off in our rooms then head to an all-night cafe or diner for some food. It's now after 3am and I can't believe how many people are still out and about. Several people in costumes are coming and going in the lobby. I've been in night clubs with fewer attractive drunk women. I head up the elevator to my room which takes quite some time despite being on the 6th floor considering the incredibly drunk and rowdy group of women in front of me. I'm not sure if I would even want to pass them if the hall was wide enough to permit.

I finally get into my room. After a few minutes of cursing the hotel gods, I decide to not complain about the fact that my room is the size of a closet. I was on the very end of the hall next to emergency steps which must have made my room one of the only rooms in the entire building that was so small. I head back down to the lobby to find Patrick already back, but with all his luggage. It's amazing how some people can lie really badly when it's obvious they are busted. I guess the check-in person didn't see the "this room has an irate chick trying to sleep in it already, so don't book it out" symbol and decides to put Patrick in an already occupied room.

Patrick finally gets an unoccupied room and it puts my room to shame. You could probably have fit my room in his bathroom. Way to kick me while I'm down! Bah, I'm still too hungry and tired to care so we head to a cafe a block or so away. I think it was called "Cafe Mason" but don't quote me on that. It appeared to be run by a family of very attractive Russian women. All the drunks were filtering in as bar-close was not long ago. The view is great, the menu is good and food is fantastic. We'll be eating here a few times before the end of the trip.

March 4th, 2007 - We have our first official meeting with Microsoft to see the spot at GDC where we'll be and meet the people who'll be helping us over the next 4 days. I'm amazed that several of the top players in the XNA field are attending. It's impressive and intimidating to be among the people who not only BUILT XNA, but also control it's future and direction. We find out that we will not in fact be provided art and that the Microsoft artist is simply here to help if technical issues come up with the art tools. Ah crap. Our game is art-heavy and we're a little worried about what to do at this point. We're told if we find something on the web, MS will foot the bill to get it into the game.

March 5th, 2007 - Day 1 of GDC and things are off and running. We immediately ran into technical issues with TGBX running on Vista. GarageGames is quick to respond and tries to help me solve the issue over the phone. Apparently some crazy person at GG thinks 'setres' should be 'setres' instead of what I assumed would be "setrez." OK. So there is no damn 'z' in resolution, but hey, it sounds like a 'z'! We spend most of today building the level in TGBX and stripping out the tankbuster template we started from.

We are interrupted many times by reporters and attendees asking questions about the "contest" (For some reason everyone thought this was a contest instead of a challenge. Just to clarify, we weren't competing against other teams; we were all competing against the clock.). Overall it was an interesting and exciting day. We spent roughly 12 - 13 hours on the game today.

(I'm not sleeping here, I swear)

(background look familiar?)

March 6th, 2007 - Today was the worst day of the entire trip. Patrick and I were a bit burned out from the day before and overall in a bad mood. We were much more worried about art today as the game looked pretty crappy so far with no consistency in what we were finding on the web. We fleshed out more game play and found a few more images on the web to use, but the game was still not playable and looked horrible. Far less interruptions today, this wasn't a good thing. I wanted a break from what I was doing. It was very hard to stay focused and on-task today.

We decide to dump the jumping feature and make the entire screen be ground instead of having sky. The game mechanics are around 60% complete at this point and we've found art for everything, but nothing looks very good. A company from France who builds graphical tools such as ProFX for editing materials offers to help us with building the background. They build a pretty fantastic ground layer, which again isn't consistent with any of the rest of the art. We're in deep shit if we don't figure something out with this art problem. We put in around 14 - 15 hours today.

(holy crap this art looks bad all together!)

(can you tell we were having a good day?)


March 7th, 2007 - Patrick and I are feeling much better today and we're far more productive. We put out a plea to GarageGames about the art problems we have and they put a few guys on building some consistent art for our game, which we now call "Simian Escape" (a Simian is a prehistoric human.) We're sent a couple samples of a 'caveman art' style GG basically said would be the only thing they'd have time to build considering we had less than 2 days left.

When Patrick and I first looked at the sample work, we were very worried that it wouldn't fit into our photo-realistic world whatsoever. Disheartened by the fact that we still didn't have an art solution, we decided to put art out of mind and focus on getting the game play completed. We had very few interruptions today and really cranked out over 95% of the game play. Late in the day, we get an email from GG with the first round of art. We're given the ground layer, a few GUI screens, a splash screen, our simian, and a few requested items such as fruit and enemies. I'm absolutely blown away by the art style and how it all fit together so well.

What they sent sparked an immediate change in the entire premise of the game. We scrapped the previous story and art, modifying it to be that you are caveman drawings on a cave wall trying to stay in the torch light reflection on the wall. If you go outside the light, you fade into nothing. If you touch any of the enemies, you are faded into nothing as well. We do away with the 'levels' theory and instead the game simply speeds up every so often and the object is to get the highest score.

The game is playable for the first time. Our morale is greatly increased and we pump out a few more hours trying to get a fully playable game by morning. We find out today that although we were originally told 7pm on the 8th as the deadline, it was shortened to 5pm. We put in another 14 or 15 hours before calling it quits for the night.

(things are looking UP!)

(fantastic new art!)


March 8th, 2007 - It's the final day of the challenge and we're in overdrive pumping out new gameplay we came up with the night before and remaining art and screens we needed. GG provides nearly everything we request and does so quickly. I've always been impressed with the staff at GG, but I have a new level of respect for the artists especially. They really came through for us in a huge way. Simian Escape would not be what it is today without the help of GG's fantastic art staff.

We're wiring in final touches to the game and fixing bugs as they pop up. We test out different AI and random spawning to make sure the game is challenging and different every time you play it. We have a lot more interest in the game with the new look and feel. CNBC interviews us and outside of the semi-frequent cursing of Patrick, I believe it was a pretty good interview. Thus far the major players we've had direct interviews with include MTV News, Wired, CNBC, Official Xbox Magazine, 1up, and a few others I'm too spent to remember.

It's just after four and Microsoft shows up to get our final builds. Ug! We still have 35 minutes! We start deploying to the Xbox to test performance and functionality. It's a nightmare. The game has horrible FPS and the top scores screen isn't showing. After some VERY high level tech guys from Microsoft help with trying to solve the issues, we decide we're just going to have to debut the game on the PC. Perfect. I have more room to work with and our boxes are some insanely fast Alienware PC's with Athlon FX processors. I don't have time to change the level in TGBX back to PC size, so will have to do it at the Microsoft party that starts at 9:00 tonight.

It's now a few minutes before doors open and we finally get to where the game is setup. I open the level and edit it quickly to fit the new larger display size. I run the game and the Simian immediately dies, ending the game. My jaw drops and I wont bother to repeat the words I spoke shortly after. I ran it a few more times and sure enough I got the same result. Perfect. In a few minutes 1500 of some of the best game developers and Microsoft employees will be pouring in to get drunk and play our games and I can't even get mine to run.

We struggle for a few minutes trying to find the problem and with probably 60 seconds left to go, Patrick says "did you check the world limit after you moved the player?" Ding Ding Ding. We have a winner. When I moved the simian, I assumed the world limit was relative to him, but it wasn't. If you touch any of the sides of the screen, you die, so since he was outside the world limit, he was being killed instantly and hence our problem.

I quickly adjusted the world limit and as people started coming in and seeing the games, we ran it and everything looked great. It was surreal to see our game running on the enormous screens all over the club. The screens looped through the games and whichever was currently up had its sound piped into the speaker system which made it that much better.

We had very few times that night where people weren't playing our game. I held the top 4 scores in the game all night, but many were determined to knock me down. One Microsoft XBLA guy said 'I don't know who this Jonathon is, but damnit I'm not leaving till I knock one of those 4 down!"

It was a great time and a great ending to the competition. Over the next few days we relaxed, did a few more press interviews and wrapped up publish builds for the game. This has been one of the most tedious, fun, and educational weeks of my life. I pushed my technical and creative abilities to the limit and pulled out what I believe is a fantastic game.

We are planning on finishing Simian Escape with some more polish, art, and sounds and then we are going to attempt to publish the game on XBLA. You can download and play the 4-day version by clicking here.



We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. We only had 4 days, so bear with the limited instructions. Post if you have any questions or comments.

Here's a list of links to us building the game in the news:

creators.xna.com/forums/ShowThread.aspx?PostID=1292
blog.wired.com/games/2007/03/the_xna_challen.html
blog.wired.com/games/2007/03/the_xna_challen_1.html
blog.wired.com/games/2007/03/the_xna_challen_2.html
www.joystiq.com/2007/03/07/xna-challenge-simian-escape/
www.progamenews.com/?p=3558
www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38042
www.progamenews.com/?p=3719
xbox360.ign.com/articles/772/772005p1.html
www.progamenews.com/?p=3580
www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=14585
bhandler.spaces.live.com/
www.xbox-scene.com/index.php
www.mtv.com/news/articles/1553938/20070306/index.jhtml
www.gamershell.com/download_18188.shtml
www.cinemablend.com/games/Microsoft-XNA-4-Games-By-4-Developers-In-4-Days-3211.h...
gaygamer.net/2007/03/gdc_xna_build_a_game_in_four_d.html
xbox360.qj.net/GDC-2007-XNA-games-made-in-four-days/pg/49/aid/85660
www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=74037

Ok. I'm tired of pasting in links, so I'll just leave it at that and the tiny youtube video below. We are to be aired on CNBC and 1up sometime in the not too distant future. We did four or five video interviews, but other than the above two, things were too crazy to remember them all.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dEA8WAKnKs