Blog for Chris Labombard at GarageGames.com

leaving the independent games industry

Chris Labombard — 2008-05-01T20:47:38+00:00

I have shut down Spunky Games, my independent game business. I put a very large amount of time and effort into it and I just couldn't seem to make a profit off of the games I completed.

I am still planning to work in the games industry and am currently interviewing with several game development studios across Canada. If you know of any job openings that can be performed remotely or require relocation within Canada, please let me know about them :)

While Spunky Games is no longer running, I am still keeping myself busy with other projects. I recently launched a new website, Leisure Geek. It's a site with daily humor of a somewhat geekish nature. :) I'm sure a lot of you will greatly enjoy it, so please check it out and sign up for the newsletter if you enjoy the site.

Good luck to everyone in their endeavors,
Chris

My first drawing ever.

Chris Labombard — 2006-03-02T19:10:46+00:00

I'm trying to learn to draw, using Photoshop. I asked my girlfriend (who used to draw) and kevin Grove (ZeroG on irc) for some tips and a run down of how to make a character and following their steps I made this..

Disco Joe

Anyone have any tips to make the process smoother next time? or comments on what I could have done better?

Remember this is my first drawing ever (besides stick people) so don't tear into me too harshly.

Oh ya... This took about 5 1/2 hours or so.

Unanswered posts

Chris Labombard — 2006-02-15T17:27:17+00:00

I took a few hours yesterday and went through all the unanswered forum posts, looking for ones I could answer. I found probably 30 and answered them. In a few cases I didn't have an exact answer, just a tid bit, but I managed to attract other members to post a full solution.

There are quite a few left in there, so I thought I'd post this .plan to try and encourage people to read through them and answer the ones they can. I also noticed a few other people answering posts, specifically Anthony Rosenbaum and Donald Harris... I'm sure there's others. I just noticed these two and wanted to show my respect. Keep up the good work guys :)

What do you get for doing this? Well, you get to waste lots of time helping others (better helping other people then watching tv or whatever) and you get to learn things you wouldnt otherwise.

AND... you get a chance to win a special prize... I know I signed an NDA but I just had to leak it. :)

A new partner, a new game

Chris Labombard — 2006-02-08T18:53:54+00:00

First off, I found an artist to work with on future projects. His name's Levi Walton. His work was very impressive, as were all the other people who I was in contact with for the week and a half or so it took me to decide who I could work best with.

Ok, on to other things. The Funk has went from lightning fast to slow as a turtle. Waiting for things to be finalized with GarageGames, and waiting for new art to come in is taking forever and anyone who knows me, knows that I don't like to wait, and I definitely don't like to do nothing... so I started deving another game!!!

Yay for me! ... no wait. I kinda made a mistake with this one. Usually I only start a game after I've completed a design doc and finalized all the details... This game I just dove into out of pure and utter boredom. I still don't even have a design doc. I have a couple paragraphs in a doc file on my HD but I have no idea where it even came from. I don't remember writing it.

And to make matters worse, the further I get with the game, the less I think it's going to be fun. I would have trashed it already, but the game isn't even playable yet. Just under 2 weeks of coding to get it where it is. Every piece works, but I still need some art to make it fully functional as a whole. If worse comes to worse and the game really isn't all that fun, I will probably ask the T2D dev team if they want to include it in the T2D download and if they don't want it I'll just release the source to the T2D community.

Here's a pic. Levi has created all the art so far.

We decided on calling it Molecular Madness. You play as Fredward, a hunch-backed creepy kid enrolled in Professor VonCrazystein's chemistry class. In an attempt to become a mad scientist you decide to become Professor VonCrazystein's assistant, and the only way he'll let you is if you get perfect in his class.

The game consists of 50 molecules. You have to react base elements and molecules using Bunson Burners, shakers, and pressure tanks, along with a range of other equipment, to fill a large beaker with liquid. The purer the liquid you create, the higher your grade.

The tubes in that image are placeholders and the GUI is going to receive a slight rearrangement. There's also going to be a background image added or a chemistry lab.

Which brings me to another problem. I find I'm constantly waiting for art, in order to continue to move forward. Not that it's Levi's fault or anything. Right now I'm writing this because there's nothing I can really code for The Funk without art (Levi is not the artist for The Funk), and nothing I can really code for Molecular Madness without art.

So what am I going to do? I'm going to start coding two games at once, so if I'm waiting for art for one game, I should be good to go with the other. Not that art is really necessary for most code, but it is for some. That means I will be starting to code a new game sometime in the next 2 weeks, and as soon as The Funk is out the door, I will start coding a second. What this also means, is I'm going to be looking for an artist again. I'll assign one artist to one game and one to another. Since I code about twice as fast as it takes Levi to create the art I need, it should work perfectly.

I'm looking for a partner

Chris Labombard — 2006-01-23T17:18:56+00:00

Ok, here's the deal. I am an excellent coder and have, thus far, been a one man team. I basically have NO art talent and it's killing me. The cost of contracting out artwork is (in my opinion) rediculous and it has recently been made clear to me that my best artistic efforts will never pass as art.

What I'm looking for is an artist who's as dedicated and as efficient as I am. An individual who can do 2D and 3D art and has a huge imagination.

You'll have more then just creative freedom. You'll be in charge of the look, theme and art of the games we produce as well as helping to choose what game ideas we pursue.

I don't want to be anyones boss here. What I'm looking for (and really need) is a partner in crime.

If you have even the slightest incling to persue this then post in the forums and let me know. (Alternatively you can email me Chris at spunkygames dot com)

The first game that you'll be working on is The Funk (It's in need of a makeover). Check out my last .plans to get an idea what it's about.

The Funk has finally hit Beta

Chris Labombard — 2006-01-17T19:13:47+00:00

The Funk is a rythym based music game. You follow the waves of music beats on the screen to gather points.

These are Beta screenshots. That's all final art. The background images were done by Corey Ford. These are shots of most of the tracks (There's 10 tracks total).

After getting frustrated with finding artists and communicating my exact art needs I finally decided to take the bull by the horns and do the art myself. I have no idea how I actually managed to make it look decent but I think I did. Here's the final results:

Main Menu

Overview high score screen

Track high score screen

Nag screen

All the music for the game was done by David Wright. Well, all except 2 tracks which I did (they're the really simple ones) and Tom Bushby is working on the game website (hopefully this will inspire him to hurry up ;) )

There's a few things left to do. I have to create graphics for the website... And most importantly, the game needs to be ported to Mac. Not sure how Im going to swing that one yet. It shouldn't be too difficult, seeing as I only added one file to the engine code. I suppose I should do some more in-depth testing after I get the installer set up as well. So expect to see a plan from me soon looking for a few beta testers.

Also, each month I'm posting a new track (in track 10's position) and giving away a prize to the individual who gets the highest score at the end of the month. I want to give away a CD containing a free indie game (donated by a fellow indie developer) and demos for other indie games. So I'm currently looking for someone to donate a free copy of their game. Think of it as free advertising. :) Email me if you're interested. Chris at spunkygames dot com

Tuesday Nov 8 12:09

Chris Labombard — 2005-11-08T12:09:40+00:00

My design and development process

After my last .plan, Ajari Wilson and I began conversing through email. He asked me to detail my design an development process, so I did.

I wasn't going to put it in a .plan, but Ajari convinced me to. So here it is:

This is very difficult to put into words. It would be easier if I knew
exactly what you were interested in knowing. I'm thinking you want to know
how to design your game, so that's what I'm going to tell you.

Forget what you think you know about design documents. We're indies. We
don't need 150 page design doc's with table of contents and reference
tables.

My design doc for The Funk is ~ 2 pages. The design doc for Basic Bob was
about 2 1/2. It would have been 3 1/2 but I didn't plan out it's marketing
strategy.

The design Doc has the following headings:

Focus
Description
Details
Dev Stages
Marketing Strategy
Cost

After each step is filled out I determine if I can meet every section. Can
I cover the costs associated, if not can I find a way to reduce it. Is my
description something I would absolutely love working on? Can I code the
things outlined in the details section? How long is this going to take me?
Does that fit with my overall business plan?

First thing you do is write down your focuses. The constraint on your
design will actually make it 10 times better. As an example, for the funk
my initial focus was:

Trippy colours
Fast pace
Wild mouse sliding
2 month development cycle
Crazy music

After you have a strong focus, start writing down descriptions. Every time
you come up with a new one, put it in a seperate file. Dont brainstorm,
just let them come to you. Eventually you'll see one, or a trend, that
sticks out to you. Use that one.

Elaborate out some details. How you want it to play; What kind of themes
will be present; what types of weapons you want; etc.

If you need weapons, don't write down every weapon you need. Just write
down modern military weapons, or high powered explosives, or water guns,
etc.

After you've got some of the more crutial details hammered out, you have
to start on a basic set of milestones.

Your headings should look like this:

Milestone 1 (Prototype)
Milestone 2 (Game play)
Milestone 3 (Alpha)
Milestone 4 (Halfway)
Milestone 5 (Beta)
Milestone 6 (Marketing)

Under each heading list, with bullets, the bare bones that is needed to
complete that milestone. Don't include anyhting that you don't have to
have. After that, you need to elaborate on every thing. Fill out the
little details of everyhting you need to do. In the end, each bullet
should amount to a task that can be completed. You should continue to
elaborate on it until everyhting that needs to be done is on the list.

At this point you need to develop your marketing strategy. A lot of people
have asked me for my marketing strategy, and I never give it to them. Not
because I'm an ass, or because it's a secret... But because I haven't used
it, so don't know if it works or not.

Basically, you need to plan out target demographics, target groups (like
DDR centred webpages), plan to submit your game to every shareware site on
the net, targeted affiliates, publishers... Also plan to write a press
release and send it out to as many websites as you can find that will take
it. You also need to set up a reviewer pack and snail mail it to website
reviewers and magazine reviewers. It often helps to mail the same pack to
publishers.

After that, assess what the costs will be. What will you pay for art, or a
specific piece of art. Or a code modification that you need, but know you
won't be able to do. No matter how much you try.... there WILL be a cost.
There is really no way around it. If you don't beileve me, just trust me.

After you've completed all that, try and figure out how long each
milestone will take you. Add them up, and multiply by 2.5 ... That is
about how long it will take you if you work very diligantly. For Basic
Bob, I estimated 3 months, and I worked very fast, though not efficiently,
since I didnt know TGE and had no idea what was needed to get the game out
the door. It took me 8 months in the end, partially due to lack of
funds... Had I multipled my 3 months by 2.5 I would have known it would
take me about 7 1/2 months to finish it. (It actually took 8 months)

Now, go through your design and highlight everyhting with red that you are
going to cut. To figure out if you're going to cut it, ask yourself "Does
this make the game funner?"... If your answer is no, then cut it. We, as
indies, can't afford to add content for the sake of adding content. If the
cost of adding the feature signifigantly out weighs it's benefits then cut
it.

Unless you kept that in mind while designing the game, you will probably
find that you just cut half the game. In which case, you are now much
closer to hitting the dev cycle you originally predicted.

A lot of people have trouble cutting features. Trust me, your players
aren't going to complain, as long as they're having fun.

At this point you should asses the game's potential (again). Figure out if
you can meet the monetary costs. Is the dev cycle short enough for you?
Are you in love with the idea? In other words, are you going to love every
second you spend working on it? Does the game have a signifigant enough
market to warrent development? Is it going to be catchy enough to attract
a large audience?

If you find you want to continue developing it, for all the right reasons,
then you need to prototype the idea. Keep it simple, but make sure it
stays true to the game play. Put your prototype up on GG, let the other
dev's tell you if it's fun or not. If it's not fun, throw the design out.
If it's sorta fun, asses wether you think it would be fun with X feature or
whatever. Throw that feature in and get opinions again. If it's still not
a lot of fun throw it out. If it is, move on to MS1.

With your milestones, you want to work fast. You want to pick a feature,
complete it, test it for an hour or so (or longer if it warrents it) and
move on to the next task. In this way, you might think you're wasting time
testing everything, but you're going to save a TON of time in the end.
You're also going to have a much better product, with less bugs, and less
cluttery code to debug in the future.

With this method, youre also compartmentalizing your tasks. You can take a
weekend, or a day and complete a task without having to delve into other
tasks, or half work on several tasks. It allows you to know exactly where
you are in development.

Ok, I think I've rambled on enough. I hope this helps you. I think I might
throw this into a .plan ... I dunno

Let me know if that's actually what you wanted or not.

Things that weren't in the email

Just a few things I thought might interest people.

When I came up with the focus that ended up being the funk.... It was out of pure anger. I was angry at myself and wanted my game ot get noticed at the next IGC. You can tell if you look at the focuses :)

Another thing is. In the end... I'm not trying to make a game. I'm trying to sell one. My business plan accounts for that, and is reflected in my design and dev process.

I hope someone liked it :)

Monday Oct 31 15:23

Chris Labombard — 2005-10-31T15:23:25+00:00

The Funk is moving along at light speed

Well, The Funk is coming along at light speed so I figured I'd update my .plan.

I know this is kinda long... But at least there's pictures

What's New?

- Add hint beats
- Add coloured particle effects that tell you how well you're doing
- Integrate an online high score system that connects Torque GUI's with php scripts and MySQL databases.
- Complete an auto updater that polls a web server for needed files and updates your current version
- Improve menus
- Thoroughly test everything.

It doesn't seem like much at first, but when you look at the details it becomes apparent what all is there.

Hint beats and coloured particles

This screenshot displays both the hinting beats and particles.

The amount of time the hint beats is present for is proportional to difficulty. The more difficult the setting, the less time the hints appear for.

The coloured particles (I hate the T2D particle editor) are dependent on how close you are to the centre of the beat and how far off you are from the actual sound.

The high score system

The online high scores system isn't your everyday webpage high scores list. There is a gui that displays the top 10 high scores for all 10 tracks, the top 3 scores for the last 7 days, and your personal high score.

When you complete a track it encrypts you score and name and populates the scores database on my web server. I rolled the encryption and decryption in torquescript and Tom Bushby and I converted the decrypt to php.

Along the way I wrote several string manipulation and conversion functions. Torquescript has dynamic variable types, allowing me to treat strings as numbers and numbers as strings. Php doesn't. Since I don't know php very well, I wrote the functions in Torquescript, and Tom converted them all into php.

The high scores gui is automatically populated through a php script on the web server, so scores are always up to the minute. I'm having issues with gui controls drifting (which is super annoying) but it works entirely.

We are still cleaning up the last bit of this mess. It would seem the SQL syntax on my server doesn't like to play nice. Queries that work fine for Tom in phpMyAdmin, didn't work at all when set up as a query in a php script, so there is still an error with the submission script.

Auto update system

The auto update system submits it's version number to the web server, grabs the names of any files that need updating, downloads them, replaces them, and continues on it's way.... All while displaying a neat little updating gui that informs the user of progress. The next time you boot the game it is totally updated to the newest version.

This was a huge pain in the ass. The resource it is based off of (TCPObject Binary transfer) had bugs which took me a good 10 hours to solve. Everything from MIME types that wouldn't download properly, to faulty script logic provided with the resource.

But... now it works, including support for dso files, and jpg files. I will add png support tomorrow. I just couldn't bring myself to deal with it anymore.

Menus

This is what the new menu looks like. I've added some things to make the game easier to understand, as well as the beginnings of building the community.

What Now?

With all of this, the framework for the game is in place. The underlying structure will allow for rapid and efficient addition of tracks and art. In fact, if you were to download the demo of the game, you wouldn't have to download anything again. Well, other then the file downloads that the updater performs.

It's time to continue adding music tracks, which presents a problem. I don't DO music. Music and I just don't get along. I can't build a good track to save my life.

Which presents an additional problem.... The track creation process is complex. Tracks accumulate with additional beats, but the time period of a set increases. Beats need to nudge in time by slight amounts, allowing for new beats to be squeezed in. Maybe it's my ignorance when it comes to music creation tools, but I don't think this is track creation 101... It seems to me it will take a slick music composer to pull this one off. If anyone knows someone who's up to the challenge, let me know.

And then there's art. I can handle small doses of art, usually with poor results. I need an innovative artist who can develop a style and feel for this game. I am having issues creating a consistent... well, anything... for the game, and really need help in this area (with both art and music). So, once again, if you know a way to create ripply music waves please tell me how :)

Marketing Strategy

I decided I was going to plan out my entire marketing strategy for the game. I want to know where Im going before I need to start heading there. I ran into some bumps.

Most importantly is... What is my target demographic?. I wrote down the main demographics I could think of, but failed to comfortably wedge this game into any of them.

This is what I came up with:
- Soccer moms
- Young males. Action game players
- Kids
- Ex-hardcore players

I know there's more. I just can't think of them.

Next major problem was trying to figure out where I'm going to sell the game from. Obviously I will sell it from my website.

What's the issue? I browsed around 15 portal sites, taking a look at there structure and types of games. This game really doesn't fit into any of the general categories found on those sites. It's the right size and genre of game... but it just seems out of place because of it's theme.

Third issue... Platforms. I want my game on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I'm sure I can get the game running on Linux by setting Linux up as a dual OS on my harddrive. But the most important thing is Mac. I don't have a Mac (or access to one) and I don't think it'd be wise to purchase a Mac just for porting. However, I'd much rather handle porting and testing of the score and updater systems myself. They are large and intricate, and need to be thoroughly gone over. Kind of a catch-22 I guess.

Contracting

I've begun taking on contract work again. Most recently of which is for Chris "C2" Byars completing some modifications for Project Shadow

If you need contract work done, and the task is small (I don't want to eat up too much of my dev time) send me an email (Chris [AT] spunkygames [dot] com)

Special thanks

Tom Bushby has helped me immensely. He's the most reliable individual I've ever worked with. He set up all the php side workings of this game, as well as working on the Basic Bob site. He's a machine. I work extremely fast, and a ton of hours... and somehow he's managing to keep up ;)

I hope he sticks around when I tell him what's next for him :) I have a feeling he's going to run away.

Closing

If anyone read the whole thing please post... Even if you have nothing to say, I just want to know if anyone actually read this :)

Saturday Oct 22 18:03

Chris Labombard — 2005-10-22T18:03:22+00:00

Try out my new prototype

I just finished building a prototype, but I dont know if the game is fun or not...

Follow the music with your mouse.
Collect points to add another beat
If you dont collect enough points you lose
If you do then the music gets funkier

Collect more points for:
1. Being close to the center
2. Being on the beat when the sound plays

Please download it and check it out. Let me know what you think.

Only the first 2 tracks are playable.

Its all programmer art, obviously. The green bubbles are supposed to be wave ripples.

It's 2.0 MB

Tuesday Oct 18 10:44

Chris Labombard — 2005-10-18T10:44:54+00:00

Basic Bob is out

Basic Bob is done. and its out...

You can download the demo here. It's 15.1 MB.

And ...

I experienced the greatest high of my life today!

I made my first sale

Not to a friend or family member. Just some random person who found the site, tried it, liked it, and bought it.

This is the best feeling in the world.

You guys have no idea (well, some of you do I'm sure) how amazing this feels. All this hard work as definately worth it.

I suppose I should link to the website :)

UPDATE: The installer is now an exe file, instead of msi. The download link has been updated.