Issue Two The Independent Games Development Magazine

Transcription

Issue Two
Spring, 2014
The Independent Games Development Magazine
The Kano, the new computer kit based on
the Raspberry Pi, is used and reviewed
exclusively before it’s summer release...
The Oculus
Rift and
virtual reality
explored inside.
From initial
experiences,
the GDC 2014,
and to the
8-bit efforts.
PLUS
“Time to engage” say Rancon,
the indie games studio
Relive the 80s scene with David
Rowe, games artist
Explore the 8-bit world of 3D
in the Retro Corner
Meet Ian, the nine-year old
games developer
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EDITORIAL
Introduction
we are
Hello and welcome to IND13 (Indie), the magazine
sound effect artistry to retro arcades – we’ll take a
that champions independent game development.
look at anything that grabs our interest.
Maybe you’re a developer, or a hardcore gamer,
We’re a small core team of just six members – so
or someone new to the concept of indie games
we’re always looking for new angles and fresh
wanting to learn more – we’ve got something for
writing. If you think you’ve got something that’ll
you all.
make indie game developers step away from their
consoles for a few minutes, get in touch by emailing
Just like the games we love, we’re independent:
us at editorial@ind13.com.
this means no editorial agenda except good, solid
reporting on all aspects of indie gaming. From
Enjoy,
veteran developers to crowdfunding campaigns,
ind13
INSIDE THE
KARVAH GAME
STUDIO
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We chat to UK
Games studio Racon
Pages 12 - 15
Get to grips with
line drawing...
Pages 36 - 39
The Game Developers
Conference 2014
Pages 38 - 39
Alan Vader and the
Retro Corner
Pages 54 - 60
Alfie and Steam Greenlight
Pages 48 - 49
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Q&A with the IND13 team
Pages 6 - 9
Explore the early gaming expriences of
the IND13 team
Virtual Reality, is it really
the future?
Pages 36 - 37
Richard Hoffman looks at the virtual
reality trend from his own experiences
Lucky 13
Pages 10 - 11
Where the IND13 team look at the stories
that piqued their interest this month
Game Developers Conference 2014
Pages 38 - 39
The pictures from Richard’s exhausting trip,
spanning from the Train Jam to GDC itself
Engage, entertain and reward
Pages 12 - 15
IND13 caught up with UK developer
Rancon for an exclusive interview and to
discuss their creative processes
The Evolution of Gaming 2014
Kano: code the future
The game thieves
Pages 17 - 19
An in-depth look at the Kano, the new
computer kit based on the Raspberry Pi,
and the philosophy behind it
Pages 42 - 43
Ophelia looks at why so many games are
just clones of others...
My visit to the Kano office
Pages 20 - 21
Ophelia, our next gen gamer, paid a visit
to the Kano office to meet the makers
and try out the kit
Pages 40 - 41
Our very own Gary Mee shares his views
on the Evolution of Gaming 2014 Event
Meet Ian, the nine-year old
developer...
Pages 44 - 46
What were you doing at the age of nine?
This kid is creating games...
Alfie and Steam Greenlight
From Speedball to Populous
Pages 22 - 27
We had a chat to David Rowe, legendary
artist from the early days of gaming,
about what inspired him and how he got
into games
Pages 48 - 49
Steam Greenlight! What is it good for?
Pixel Press
Pages 50 - 53
A preview of the app that helps you to
easily create a game, in a fun-for-kids way
Art corner
Pages 28 - 31
Rokas demonstrates some techniques to
improve your line drawing skills
If music be the food of love...
Pages 32 - 35
Music in games. Often overlooked, but
very essential.
The world of 8-bit 3D
Pages 54 - 60
Alan Vader takes you back in time to
experience the magical world of the third
dimension as experienced in the 80s.
IND13: Who we are?
Page 62
Just who are we, why do we publish
this magazine, and do you want to get
involved?
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EDITORIAL
Q&A with the ind13 team
What were the first
gaming experiences
of the ind13 team?
HARRY
ALAN
ROKAS
RICHARD
SOPHIE
LEE
Harry
absolutely awful but a staple at everyone’s house to convince parents to get
What was the first game you remember playing?
a computer. There were these arcade machines that would play a video of
The first games I remember playing were: Street Fighter 2, Barbarians,
someone driving, giving you the impression that you were controlling a car,
Cannon Fodder, Sensible Soccer, Streets of Rage, Double Dragon. And an
but when you realised what was going on, it was really disappointing.
arcade game with Punisher in. I also remember playing games on tapes,
Things have changed in terms of the way we play games, if you could
vaguely, a Star Wars game.
change your experiences as a young gamer, would you?
I don’t think I would. Young people have access to such advanced tech,
which is great for them. But I enjoyed my experiences of growing up as
games came on so rapidly, I wouldn’t swap those times for anything. Mario, Sonic, Zelda; why have these characters have stood the test of time?
I think great character design and that people grew up with these characters
are factors. Really people bought a Game Boy for Mario not to own a Game
Boy; great characters are the poster boys for their hardware.
Who did you play your early games with?
Mainly me and my brothers, we’ve always got in trouble for playing video
games from an early age, consoles were banned in my house and we had
There are now so many tools for young people to learn about games
to play on the IBM without my mum’s knowledge. I also used to play with
creation, what were the first tools you used?
family friends and neighbours.
I don’t strictly work in design, so the first tools I have used are actually for
my tablet and online.
Can you describe some of your early gaming experiences?
I remember they were totally addictive and that we played them way too
When did you decide you wanted to work in the games industry?
much (apparently). I remember taking turns and how even one-player
I very much fell in to the games industry, just like everyone else it seems. But
become two-player titles as you played with friends and family, one playing
once you are in, you are hooked. From a young age I loved gaming but never
and the other giving guidance. Side scrolling beat-em-ups and platformers
thought it would be my area of business. I was always a film fan so started
were great with friends. I remember playing Aladdin and Sonic on the Sega,
working in Entertainment PR. When an opportunity came up to try gaming I
and an awesome title called Tales Of Mana. And that Championship manager
went for it, and I’ve never looked back.
cost me my education.
Who are your favourite gaming characters of all time?
What did you enjoy most about gaming as a child? What do you remember
not liking?
Blanka, Travis Touchdown and Trevor from GTA.
The sharing of game play was incredible, as was controlling what was on
Alan
screen for the first time. It was great dreaming up what would be possible
with games in the future, that one day we’d be able to control and be
Munch Man on the Zx Spectrum, just one of the hundreds of clones that
part of what was happening on screen. I recall educational games were
were available at that time, but this was my first. I spent hours trying to load
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EDITORIAL
the game from a cassette, not realising that the volume level had to be ‘just
Zx Spectrum basic! The other day my brother pulled out a Raspberry pi with
so’.
some emulators on and we did some coding, I still know all the keypresses
that the Speccy used to produce the various lines of code, good times!
My family, my Mother had the high score on Munch Man for ages, I could
never beat it. Later on it was my friends, spending hours on Street Fighter
‘Work’ is kind of a strong word but, always! I can’t imagine what I would have
and the like.
done if I’d been born before games!
What work do you try to emulate?
I didn’t actually start playing until I got my own computer at the age of 7, but
It’s best to be original of course, but the people and companies that inspire
until then I was always begging my family to take me to the funfair where I
me are Taito, Namco, Capcom, Matthew Smith and Hideo Kojima.
would watch people playing arcade games. Maybe I was just studying before
I went pro! Horace, from the Horace games on the Speccy, does he have eyes? Or are
those just holes? Miner Willy, Bob from Bubble Bobble, (Not Bub! He’s bad
not liking?
news!) Tiki the Kiwi from New Zealand Story, Sodom from Street Fighter,
I loved the arcades! The stale smoky smell and strangely ornate carpeting!
Most of the cast of the Phoenix Wright games, Albatross from Rolling
I feel very lucky to have been around at that time and enjoying the arcade
Thunder, Pac Man, Bomberman, Megaman, and then and then and then! How
culture we had back then, seeing a Dragon’s Lair cabinet for the first time
much space do we have here? Games have the best characters....period!
blew my mind! The thing I disliked was a real double-edged sword - the
licensed games. As a kid I was hungry for the perfect Transformers game,
Rockas
and I was constantly disappointed, I double dog dare you to try the Ocean
made Transformers game on the Speccy... ugggh! But sometimes it worked
It’s all coming back to me. I believe that was Hugo. I remember switching
out well, I remember enjoying the M.A.S.K. game. It was that throw of the
between 12 or so floppy discs to play it. dice that annoyed me, the games in my mind I created on Saturday mornings
were just so amazing! The reality rarely met the expectation.
When I moved to the UK I would spend a lot of time with our family friends.
They had two sons, who were much older than me. They loved technology,
were the first people I knew who had a PC, but also would bring back some
great old consoles from car boot sales. I would really have to thank them for
introducing me to that world at such a young age. Can you describe some of your early gaming experiences?
Like mentioned above we spent a lot of time playing on machines my two
friends would get from car boot sales. I would spend ages, watching them
program on these awesome gadgets. When my school friends were playing
Absolutely not! I was very lucky to bear witness to the early days of an entire
on SNES and Gameboy, we would be rockin’ out on pong. We couldn’t afford
type of media, Every month there was a new innovation, today the business
the new stuff so I started playing games before my time and eventually
is so staid and cynical.
caught up to the curve when I got my first Gameboy. Mario, Sonic, Zelda; why have these characters have stood the test of time?
To say that they stood the test of time would be debatable. If you look at
Mario in a vacuum, without any of the history behind him, as a character he’s
as appealing as a bucket of old sick! That’s kind of the point, these names
mean something because of the memories we have connected to them,
and the quality of the games they fronted. If you showed a kid a picture of
the original Sonic the Hedgehog they’d probably think it was a mascot for
some third world road safety campaign! These faces remain the same, but
the games are different, which is most important? It’s always the games,
not liking?
that’s why when you see Mario on a game it’s like Nintendo’s seal of quality
I didn’t understand gaming as a child, everything was magic. Games were
and when you see Sonic...well...I’m still amazed when I see they have a
really difficult and I loved the challenge of it all. What I didn’t like was losing
section for him in Toys R us! Still, it’ll be interesting to see how much longer
and passing the controller over. Nintendo can milk their franchises for, Nintendo fans really are a stoic bunch,
I have to give them credit! It just shows that quality games produce the most
memorable characters, otherwise we’d all be wearing Bubsy the Bobcat and
Thing on a Spring t-shirts! Boy, great characters are the poster boys for their
No way, I think I was really lucky with my experiences with games. I had a
hardware.
chance to look behind the curtain as well as grow up with some classics that
have shaped gaming as we know it. There are now so many tools for young people to learn about games
Mario, Sonic, Zelda; why have these characters have stood the test of time?
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They gave us some of the best gaming experiences which were simple and
Westwood Studios fixed that in Command & Conquer, but then replaced
very addictive. Also some good branding decisions I guess :) soldiers with Robots and green blood in the German version. Argh!
Pencil and paper, we created our own top trump card games, also drew loads
I would start playing Minecraft and see what the fuss is all about. I would
of board games. Later on when this became a bit more serious I started using
probably go back to my Solid Lego bricks instead, just have to find the bricks
Flash.
I misplaced last time...
I was really bad at making serious decisions... It took me ages to decide
Did they? I thought we have Flappy Bird for that now?! The last time I
anything. I was at Uni doing a Game Design course and even then was
played Mario was on a Gameboy, the very first one! Jokes aside, I think the
unsure of what I wanted to do in life. I knew I wanted to draw and design
characters are strong, so is the game play.
but that was about it. During the course I became engaged with the process
of making games and then I saw the concept art. That was it, never had I
seen anything as amazing as the collection of ideas from a concept artist, it
became my goal in life. Lego bricks and then later (Q)Basic on DOS. I tried to use Assembler, in the old
days, but it fried my brain. For Basic we had those coding magazines, where
you type up the code from 10 or more pages and crossed your fingers when
All of it. Need to stay flexible! There are a lot of artists I have become a fan of
hitting Enter to compile and run it. In most cases there was a compiler error
and the list is endless, I find new pieces that I love every day. due to a typo somewhere. Argh...
Link, Duke Nukem, Dante, Cloud, Master Chief and Conker. How much space
As a teenager of 16, but at that time I was working at IBM and they told me I
do we have here? Games have the best characters....period!
can not make money from making games. Unfortunately I believed this until
the news about video game sales overtook Hollywood movies. Actually I
Richard
remember developing a game in Java at my Uni time and I had so much fun
coding a transparency effect for beaming our character from one place to
Pong on a Color TV with my cousins. We all gathered together close in front
another one. There was literally a wow coming from the Students at our
of the TV and used this terrible controller wheel to move the long white
presentation. That feedback was nice, but most of all I had fun going it. I
bar (or Racket) up and down. Interesting what we could imagine with a few
think having fun, trying things out and the creativity as a driving energy
chunky white pixels in those days!
helped me to start coding apps and games for iPhones around 5 years ago.
In a fish and chip shop in my Hometown and later with friends. I remember
Ideally the same what Apple did for the Computer and Software industry.
playing Bomberman on an Amiga 500 with 5 people. We had a Joystick
I love the work of Chris Roberts/Erin Roberts, Jordan Weisman’s, Peter
splitter and connected 4 Competition Pro’s - anyone remembers those ugly
Molyneux/Gary Carr, Sid Meier/Bill Stealey, Tim Schafer/Ron Gilbert/David
black ones with a red stick and 2 chunky buttons? The poor guy who had to
Fox. There are probably more, but this is all I can remember now.
play with the keyboard as the 5th player never won a round.
Duke Nukem, Guybrush Threepwood & Kane from C&C
Sophie
Spelunx on an old Mac. Learning whimsy and wonder to which there has
been no rival, even after all these years.
Same as as above. In addition, my first own home computer Commodore
My sister, we made a great team. 16 (or plus 4) and Datasette. Each game’s loading time was between 3 and 5
minutes long. Sometimes even infinite, argh!
Taking turns on Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
with my sister. One would play while the other shouted out frustrated
not liking?
instructions!
The school summer breaks where I could spend day and night playing all
the games to the end. For example; Wing Commander, Dune 1 & 2 and
Monkey Island or Zak Mckracken on a hot sunny summer day, while everyone
not liking?
was outside climbing trees or something. I did that as well, but moved on
Most enjoyable: laughing and having fun with friends and family, and having
quickly to playing games indoors. In Dune 2 you could not select multiple
great memories and game-related stories to talk about at school.
units at a time. It was just a whole point-and-click orgy at that time. Luckily
Not liked: fighting over the console or being told to stop playing and clean
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EDITORIAL
my room!
at the seaside. I wasn’t interested in the sandcastles, just the arcades…
not liking?
Absolutely not, those experiences have shaped these new ones. If anything,
Gaming was more innocent in those days. I know, it is a massive cliche but
we seem to be trending towards reviving the nostalgic notion of great
they were. No big acts of violence, no scenes of mutilation. Just a case of
gameplay over shiny graphics, as people start to realise what’s really
trying to kick people in Kung Fu to get across the screen. There were such
important again.
a wealth of different games too. Man, getting free games on cassettes
cello-taped to the cover of game magazines. The graphics didn’t have to be
brilliant, it wasn’t the main thing. The cover gave you a sense of that (see
Their games captivated us with their juicy and exciting moment-to-moment
the David Rowe article for more on that…). Then of course it was onto the
gameplay. Simply running, rolling and jumping creates so much enjoyment,
Nintendo. No more loading times, amazing graphics, but expensive games.
even playing as an adult now. Not to mention Nintendo keeping the IP alive
No more just copying my friends cassettes (see, piracy existed then too…)
with titles of consistently highy quality. The generation who grew up loving
What I didn’t like? Loading times... that was painful...
them now have the chance to introduce them to their children, sharing
similar experiences on awesome next-gen technologies.
No. One of the hardest things then was that there was no save button. You
couldn’t just continue. Lose your three lives and you were out of the game.
“Get yourself back to the beginning young gamer and start again…” It really
was more of a test of skill. Now, just carry on hitting that continue button as
many times as you want. You will get through eventually…
It is quite amazing really isn’t it. From Mario’s first appearance on the games
I used Adobe Flash in school, but we used to make paper board games too,
scene as a bit-part player in Donkey Kong, He is still going now. My kids love
which is a really good exercise in paper prototyping (an important step in all
the Mario games, and have been lucky enough not to have had it soured a
good game design).
little by his being portrayed by Bob Hoskins in the movie. But why have they
survived? If I knew the formulae, I would be doing it myself, but essentially
they were all in really freaking great games…
When I discovered it was offered by Universities. I could pursue what I loved
while still convincing my parents I was doing something legit! creation, what were the first tools you used?
Ok, I have a confession to make, I have never made a full game. Most of us
I draw inspiration from new discoveries every day, so I try to emulate the
have mucked around a little, but I haven’t made one from start to finish. I am
practices of those who know how to constantly adapt.
aiming to rectify that though.
Garrus from the Mass Effect series . GLaDOS (needs no introduction). The
I have always wanted to work in the game industry, who wouldn’t, what
whole Nintendo crew, with special mentions going out to Link, Luigi and Boo.
game player would say no. So when the chance came up to be involved in
ind13 I was the happiest bunny in Bunnyville.
Lee
Ok, so I remember the Atari and games such as Pong, Centipede and Pitfall. I
You should never emulate. Take inspiration from, yes, but never emulate…
also had a friend who, in the early 80s, had a Coleco Vision. Man, for graphics
this was amazing. Almost arcade quality for it’s time, especially with Zaxxon.
A kind of 3D, isometric shoot-em-up which was pretty awesome.
Wow, again a bit of a cliche, but really too many to mention. Obviously
Mario, and Bob and his younger brother Bub from the aforementioned
Bubble Bobble, and loads and loads of others. Simon Belmont, the guy who
I was lucky that where I lived there were two newsagents, almost next to
fearlessly hunts down that naughty Dracula in the Castlevania games. See,
each other, that had arcade machines. Three in one shop, two in another.
too many…
Again this was in the 80s as was very unusual. Then as now. So, of course, me
and my friends would spend hours on the Saturday, with our skateboards
and footballs, or our BMX parked outside, playing games such as BombJack
and Bubble Bobble. 10 pence pieces would go flying into the slots and we all
gathered around to see if we could get the top score.
Pretty much as above. Plus the Commordore 16 that I had. Arcade machines
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03
Project Morpheus - It came as a bit
of a surprice that Sony (confidently)
announced their Oculus Rift killer
HMD and showed it of at the GDC
2014. I expected a few Powerpoint
slideshows instead. RH
02
The Daily Mail has
released a story that
violent videogames don’t
cause players to become
aggressive - It’s got to
be a small victory for the
games industry that for once
newspapers are not claiming
games are responsible for all
the world’s atrocities. HC
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04
Goat Simulator - Yeah seriously.
A goat simulator? It’s a bit of an
internet craze which has appeared
from nowhere really. You control
a goat in third person, and walk it
through a small open-world area
butting things from people to gas
canisters. Apparently it was created
as a joke, but it now available on
Steam for £6.99. LS
$2 Billion Dollar Man - The second shock
err surprise last month was that Palmer
Luckey just got lucky again with Facebook
throwing $2 Billion towards the Oculus Rift.
Will we see Zuckerberg Productions presents
splash screens before we can start playing
EVE Valkyrie? Well my VE relationship status
just changed to ‘its complicated’ until further
notice. RH
06
Amazon Fire TV
bringing gaming to the
living room, seems to be
the news that no one is
talking about HC
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07
The Virtuix Omni available to pre order
at a base rate of $500.
Here’s hoping it lives up to
expectations… and then gets
bought by Facebook... HC
Minecraft pulling the plug on
its Oculus Rift version - Its
founder, Markus Alexej “Notch”
Persson, was so distressed by the
Facebook buyout he immediately
abadoned plans for Minecraft
appearing on Zuckerburg’s new
toy. LS
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01
Tax breaks for games studios - Big or small, you just have
to prove you’re ‘British enough’ to qualify. UKIE and TIGA can
help you out too :) SR
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Huge thanks to gaming charity
SpecialEffect for amusing us on
April Fool’s Day - The team ran a
story that they would be entering a
Brands Hatch to Les Man rally… in a
tank! HC
Lucky 13
Where we take a look at the
stories that piqued our interest
this month.
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Flappy Bird - Love
it or hate it, you can’t
deny it happened, and
maybe we’ll never be
the same... SR
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Train Jam 2014- Nothing is more
exciting than a quiet train journey
through North America. Well,
except hacking together a game
on a Train Jam obviously. The
only 2 nightmares were the laggy
(Karma) WiFi on a regular basis and
the daylight with too-beautiful
sightseeing. RH
09
EGX Rezzed 2014 - A magical place
where Indies and Triple A titles got to
show their wares side by side, brothers
in arms amidst a sea of enthusiastic
and encouraging punters. I’m still
a little shocked at how much of a
success it was! SR
11
South Park: The Stick of
Truth - South Park finally
made it onto a game and,
big shocker, it was actually
good... LS
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INTERVIEW
Rancon
Rancon
Rancon specialise in apps and games for
entertainment, lifestyle, technology, and
increasingly financial sectors.
Engage,
entertain,
and reward...
IND13 caught up with UK Developer: Rancon. In this exclusive interview,
we hear about the creative design process and best practice project
management. The team also give advice based on their experiences of
making games and how to make games and apps effectively.
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INTERVIEW
Rancon
Could you tell us about the history of Rancon, what are the
company’s roots?
Rancon was founded in 2000, with offices in London and
Cheltenham. We specialise in Apps and Games for entertainment,
lifestyle, technology, and increasingly financial sectors. During
the past 10 years we’ve developed over 100 online games and have
over 50 Apps currently in the AppStore. We offer creative and
production services. We design and build digital products that
promote and enhance brands, across multiple platforms. These
include online, tablet, mobile, exhibition, Kinect and Wii.
We have worked a lot in the children’s education and broadcasting
sectors with experience producing Apps and games for Disney,
ITV, BBC Labs, The History Channel and Channel 4. Rancon has
also produced some very complex, data driven apps for financial
institutions and global companies such as Kraft Foods, Wonga and
Sony; and we have designed and built content for exhibitions for
Pfizer, NPower and Zurich.
Where does the name come from?
Rancon comes from 2 words: Random and Control. We wanted
a company that kind of sounded like one of those megalomaniac
institutions you would find in an old Bond film!
What is the ethos of the team, what sort of games and Apps do
you strive to create?
Our digital content reflects three core values: engage, entertain and
reward. We’re passionate about adding value to brands we love. We
pro-actively seek brands and products with whom we would like to
work. We feel that the motivation to create a brilliant app or game
comes from a great relationship and an admiration and respect of
the product or service we are working with.
How does the dynamic of the team work, what is your creative
process?
The design and programming teams work closely together to
make sure we all have input at every step of the project. When
relevant, we work closely with the client directly which gives us
an opportunity to explain technical aspects of their product first
hand. We don’t encourage a job position hierarchy in the creative
process. Inside the team everyone contributes ideas and bounces
opinions off of each other at an equal level which helps us produce
strong, creative code.
with them every day. A lot of mobile game playtime comes from
opportunity; a person is on the tube or a bus on their commute
or they have five minutes to wait for something. While they have
their device with them being able to dip into a game for a small
amount of time is very appealing.
You work a lot with financial Apps that use large amounts of
data and require accuracy. Is that exciting?
Every project, no matter what genre, will contain some features
which are challenging and exciting. Starting work on financial
apps posed new opportunities for us to develop our programming
skills in a new direction. It can also impact how you think about
other aspects of your programming. For example the way you
tackle a development challenge for a financial app most of the
time will, surprisingly, change how to you go about and approach
a problem you face for an action game.
Aesthetics are now key to a good game. How much focus is on
the ‘look’ of an App and it’s ‘usability’?
A lot, but it also depends on who we’re working with. We’re a
character-driven games agency. We have in-house designers and
illustrators. When somebody buys a game, a lot of their purchase
decision is based on the look and feel. These visual cues have
direct influence on the perceived quality of the product. Of course
though, a game only gains social momentum when it looks great
and plays great too. You can’t have one without the other for a
successful product.
There are exceptions. Sometimes an app or game is initiated purely
to draw people in and gain data. In this scenario focus is on the
initial impact and the data collection. It still has to function well
but the visual experience and gameplay is less key. It can also be a
USP for the apps we work on in other sectors. For example most
big data apps don’t look too pretty but we apply the same energy
to design for our financial apps as we do our games, as it’s just as
(if not more) important to get it right.
You have a very diverse business, has that been key to the
success as a company?
Yes. With experience comes the ability to be diverse. We can
take lessons learned and even code written and apply it to other
products within other categories. Having a lateral and creative
attitude to our product enables us to approach businesses outside
of the expected norm.
You build a lot of games for mobile and Apps, are these trends in
development that you see continuing into the future?
We hope so and think it will continue while people carry devices
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Inside the Rancon studio...
INTERVIEW
Rancon
What advice would you give to aspiring games makers?
There are a lot of free tools out there which you can use to play
around with and create your masterpieces, just dig in and create
something for fun, it doesn’t have to cost you a penny! Play lots of
games. It’s really useful to have wide knowledge of different games
to help you brainstorm and explain your ideas about how your
game will work. You can draw small elements from different games
together to create ideas for your own game.
Don’t be put off a project by thinking you need to know
everything before building your game. Break your project down
into manageable chunks and roughly plan the order you will work
on these chunks. You won’t ever know exactly how you will end up
doing everything, so don’t worry about this, embrace it.
When creating a game, research multiple ways of approaching
a problem and try lots of different routes. Even if you solve a
problem first time round, spend a little more time making sure
you have found the best approach. Every blind alleyway you go
down will prove useful at some point, it’s always a good thing and
will prove valuable learning and exploring new techniques.
Can you tell us about any sharp learning curves that you have
had creating games and Apps?
Many years ago, we were working on a four month project for
Disney. We built five web games in a few intense months which
introduced us to new project management techniques (Agile),
new ways to organise, review and improve our approach to
programming. Ultimately, it started our research into how we
can continually develop our internal processes and not just our
programming knowledge from project to project. This project
had to be (what became known as) ‘Disney perfect’, we started
paying more attention to details that we might have let slide
before. This attention to detail is something we have continued
to refine since then.
When we built Smashing Robots (our own IP) we budgeted 6
months of development time to build a pretty strong beta version.
What we quickly learned however, was that because we hadn’t
scoped the game initially, and left every factor of the workings
within the game up for discussion (which was intentional as we
didn’t know what we wanted to build at the start other than the
best possible game we could), we ended up spending over a year
Pros and cons
of being an indie
developer...
As an Indie you have the freedom to express your own creativity and allow yourself to be ruled by the
passion you develop for the project. You get much more attached to your own indie game than any client
project, and there is nothing worse than a client insisting on something done their way when you can see
a better way. This doesn’t happen with your own indie projects which can result in much lower frustration
levels. The problem with this is you will, unless you’re very strict with yourself, never finish your game.
There will always be something you can do to improve your product and when you are so invested in your
game, you feel obliged to keep going until you can tell yourself its 100% complete. Our advice is to pick a
date to ‘launch’ your game while in the planning stages. A great way to enforce this launch date is to sign
yourself up to an expo or event where you will be exhibiting your game.
The technologies and support available to indie developers now is fantastic and means you can tap into the
same level of quality a AAA games company does but from your bedroom. Developing platforms such as
Unity3D give you a massive amount of power when building your games, and it’s great to see the general
shift in attitude towards indie games changing for the better. The next generation of consoles (Xbox one +
PS4) are much more geared up to give indie developers the best opportunities to make their game shine as
much as possible. Indie developers are now treated exactly the same as AAA developers when it comes to
game advertising and placement on the consoles and online stores.
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prototyping and developing completely new ideas, constantly
changing what the game was until we decided we needed to
definitively scope the project in order for us to ever finish it.
What are you working on now?
We’re working on a diverse range of apps at the moment. We’re
also working on some amazing content for an exhibition in the
Middle East, creating some fairly unique interactive applications
for visitors to play with. This has involved creating a large library
of code to target all the different features, handling applications
across multiple screens (nine screens at the largest!) and creating
some stunning visual content.
We’re also building a game based on Micro Machines!
What do you see as the future of development for your studio?
Using the code base we have been building up, we plan to look
at building app products to support businesses and increase
their efficiency as well as continuing to develop our in-house
productivity to improve the services we offer for clients when
building their apps. «
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“We don’t encourage a job
position hierarchy in the creative
process. Inside the team everyone
contributes ideas and bounces
opinions off of each other...”
Bundle Mania
Indie Games for Charity
Get cool games in a bundle and support charities in needs.
Road Rush 66
Man Alive
Drive down the Route 66!
Quirky & immortal
platform fun!
Julian Campbell
Foundation
Get your Game
Bundle now!
Support a selected Charity
to make a difference for
kids and teenagers!
Scan QR Code to go straight
to the site!
www.bundle-mania.com
16
@Indie Game developers: Contact us if you
want to get your games on future bundles!
ind13.com
FEATURE
Kano
Lee Smith
Lee Smith is a lifelong fan of Bubble Bobble
(amongst other games), and the Creative Director
and Co-Founder of IND13.
Kano: seize the
initiative, code
the future
Kano creates computer and coding kits for all ages, with a mission to give young people – and the young at heart – a simple, fun way
to make and play with technology, and take control of the world around them.
I recently went to a Tech Talk at Cass Business School which
featured an interview with Alex Klein. The reason for this talk
taking place was an insanely succesful Kickstarter campaign for
a project called the Kano. With an initial goal of $100,000, over
13,000 backers raised over $1,500,000 in a mere 30 days. Yep, it
was that succesful.
The idea for the Kano is so simple, which is why it is such a great
idea. The basic premise? Take one Raspberry Pi, package it up into
an easy to assemble kit that includes everything you need (with the
Raspberry Pi, you have to source and buy the various bits of kit),
and load it up with a new, Linux based, operating system that aids
children, specifically, in learning code.
It has a plug-and-play design which the Raspberry Pi, for all it’s
brilliance (and it is brilliant... without it the Kano wouldn’t exist),
just doesn’t have. The Pi is completely back to basics, so takes
much more effort.
And the reason for this: Code. Whilst not exactly being the new
tool for rock stars that some would have you believe,
it is most definitely one of the
more important things
to get a grasp of in this
new digital age and
is no longer just
the perserve of
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FEATURE
Kano
Debian Linux) and easy tools to learn the code, to the easy to
follow and clean looking instruction manuals, everything about
the Kano has been prefectly designed to be informative, to
encourage learning and to appeal to kids.
a few bedroom geeks. And that’s where the Kano comes in and
makes it one of the more must-have learning tools in this new
era. Although, of course, it is for fun too...
Because you see, games are great. Amazing fun. And playing
games is one of the biggest past times amongst the young of the
everywhere, especially with the paranoia that exists in the minds
of all parents everywhere about letting their children out to play
in the outside world.
Gaming is an ever growing industry. One of the few. So why not
teach kids how games work, teach kids the fundementals of every
game, and that is in the code.
And that’s where it gets interesting. As
mentioned before code is becoming more
and more important in this digital age, to
such an extent that schools in the UK are
starting to make a half-arsed attempt to
add coding to the curriculum in this year,
the Year of Code.
This is what Alex and the other founders of
the Kano, Yonatan Raz-Fridman and Saul
Klein, understand. They also knew how
difficult it can be to sell that idea. More
learning, more time spent trying to figure
things out. After school and at the weekends
the last thing that most kids want to do is sit
at a computer and try to work on something
that seems so alien to them, with the parents
standing in the background treating it like
another lesson in life to be learned. Along
with the dreaded violin and gymnastic
lessons. Although both are great things to
learn, of course, a lot of people are pretty
much forced into it from an early age and
drop it as soon as they leave the bosom of
parental care.
When I say half-arsed I don’t wish to be
negative, I don’t wish to belittle the good
intentions of the schools or the teachers, or
the many other organisations that exist to
help educate the next generation. It is just
that the ICT curriculum currently exists to
teach kids how to use PowerPoint, Word
and Excel. To show how you can Google
something (or Bing something if you so
wish). It doesn’t, at the moment, have the
infrastructure to provide proper learning to
its pupils. To do that you would also have
to educate the teachers, to provide funding for dedicated teaching
resources, not to have a teacher who is fairly IT proficient to teach
on all matters related to computing, as well as their core lessons.
So the founders took the unprecendented
step of enlisting the help of a 7 year old child. Alex’s cousin.
What better way to make a computer kit to hold a child’s
attention than by asking for the opinons of a child. And that
child provided some invaluable feedback.
First and foremost the kit had to be as fun as Lego, he said. Also,
there was to be no lecturing; he wanted to be able to figure it out as
he went. The Kano kit had to be fun, it had to feel like a toy, but act
like a teacher. More Mr. Miyagi, less Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.
From the simple to navigate Kano OS (which is on top of
But what does it do? Well, you start off by actually making the
computer, with all the tools to do so provided. From there you
go through the processes set out in the booklet to make, hack,
and upgrade games such as Snake and Pong, to create and adapt
your own Minecraft world, and even make your own music.
From there, once the basics of programming have been learned
the only limitations really are in your imagination.
For all David Cameron’s well intentioned words about Tech
City in Shoreditch, the funding and the money also needs to be
found. Words need to be backed-up with action.
You see from the apps in every day use, to the games that
we play, to the sites that we design, to... well, pretty much
everything, a basic understanding of code and computing can
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kid in Sierra Leone who had built and set up a radio transmitter,
plus a generator to power it, which he uses to run his own
community radio station under the handle DJ Focus. This very
same kid built his own battery out of acid, soda, and metal parts
scavenged from trash bins that he now uses to light up homes in
the area and to help him work on his own inventions.
help you in almost everything that you do, and also make it
easier to naviagate and understand the world around us.
And this is what the Kano does, and does brilliantly. This isn’t
merely a tool for the middle-class western kids to explore new job
opportunities. This is something that can inspire some of the future
generation and provide an understanding of how things work. From
adapting and changing the world of Minecraft to how you would
like it, way beyond the normal limitations, to modding a robot arm
so that you can control it using an XBox controller (something that
was demostrated when I visted the Kano office with my daughters
recently), kids can have fun by learning and exploring.
With all the resources and education that has been afforded me
in the UK, I cannot do that. But this 16-year old has, with far,
far less.
So with the Kano dueto be released this summer, and having
seen my daughters try out a development kit, having heard them
enthuse about it all the way home afterwards, I can pretty much
guarantee that it is going to be on my shopping list when it is
released.
But it is also about helping to give people from disadvantaged
parts of the world the tools to better their life. This is was a
serious point that Alex was also trying to make.
There is, though, a chance to check it outself before deciding if
you want to buy one of them when it is released, as Kano has
released a free online app that anyone can use to build a Pong
game, hack it with Moshi Monsters characters and powers, and
learn the fundementals: http://moshi.kano.me
Children’s brains contain the most amazing imaginations that
just need the guidence and tools to enable them to bring their
ideas to life, and the Kano can help in this. Indeed, the company
is very much about getting its product, via charitable means,
into the hands of people that wouldn’t normally have access to
it. Something which is very much a part of the ethos of Alex and
the rest of the founders.
So show it to your children, show it to your pupils if you are a
teacher, and see your kids create. Hey, even have a go yourself as,
you never know, you might even enjoy it. «
During the talk Alex chatted enthusiastically about a 16-year old
WHAT YOU GET
IN THE BOX:
1. Beautifully illustrated
books
2. New case-mounted GPIO
powered speaker
3. Super flat cables, colour
coded for easy use
4. Cool stickers
3
5. Customisable case slide
cards for top + bottom of
case
2
1
4
5
7. Raspberry Pi Model B
8. Nano Wi-Fi Dongle with
seamless configuration
8
6
11
10
9
6. Modular side slotting case
with clamshell clip
7
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9. 8GB SDHC Class 10 Memory
Card with Kano OS
10.New wireless keyboard
with multi-touch trackpad
11.Ultra high quality USB
power supply
FEATURE
Kano
Ophelia Matthews-Smith
A young gamer with only a few years
games experience, Ophelia approaches
the industry with a fresh new eye.
My visit to the
Kano office...
I went to the Kano office. You don’t know what the Kano is? Let me explain, it is an exciting new computer kit that allows you to build
a computer and change and create games...
It is not in stores yet but we were lucky enough to use the
development kit. Anyway, when we got in, the office was colourful
and it had lots of computers. We got taken into their meeting
room and one of the staff gave me a kit and started the interview.
I love the way they made sure it didn’t look dull. Unfortunately it
took me a while to find out what goes where, and the instructions
didn’t have much writing; but once I studied the the pictures, I
realised it was simple.
Once the Kano was made and plugged into the television it asked
me my name, and automatically I had a profile! It’s a shame that
once you’ve created a profile you can’t make another one but I’m
guessing they may add it soon.
I went to the office to interview the staff, and I’m glad I did as the
people there were fun. The staff were young and energetic. The
only thing that wasn’t business-like was that they had a Nerf Gun
but I thought that was cool.
that most won’t get.
It was incredibly fun. I’d rather use the Kano than play my
favourite game on a giant computer like an XBox sometimes. This
is not a joke. I was addicted to the Kano. I really want one, but
the only problem with that is that if I got one I wouldn’t be doing
anything else other than playing with it.
When I played on the Kano the first game I tested was Snake
Editor. It said all the commands that were on there and let you
change it. Afterwards I played Pong and although I wasn’t very
good at it, I made my very own game. Next was Minecraft. This
was so fun! It was based around Minecraft Pocket Edition. I
created a big lava block, the whole world was filled with lava.
The thing I liked most about Minecraft was that the staff who
interviewed me built a giant statue of the Karate Kid, Kano
version. Then my sister, Satori helped me do the music game,
where you create songs. I must admit, she is slightly better than
me with the music... But that’s it... Hopefully.
Building the Kano was really fun. It had a keyboard, wires, and a
Raspberry Pi which is the computer chip. The moment I saw the
Kano kit my face lit up, it felt like a never ending love spell was
put onto me as long as I’m with the Kano. The design was really
simple. Orange with a few different coloured wires, though I guess
it isn’t all about looks.
After they got me off of the Kano I got a chance to have a look
of another creation of the Kano. It was a robot arm... controlled
by an XBox 360 controller! Truly amazing, don’t you agree? They
haven’t got the snippers working yet so it can’t pick anything up
but apparently you can easily make it at home!
To use the Kano was a dream come true. There wasn’t anything
about using the Kano that would put me off. It had all the details
and although it had a lot of writing on the screen and not too
many games, to be able to look at games and change them to the
way you like them was probably a once in a lifetime opportunity
Going back to the Kano, I think it would be perfect for schools
and big gaming companies. If Goverments take a moment to
test this I think their problem of trying to teach children to code
would be easy to complete. I would definitely recommend this for
ages 4-5+ and I would love to buy this as soon as it comes out. «
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All the pictures were taken by Satori MatthewsSmith, who is to the right typing on the Kano
INTERVIEW
David Rowe
David Rowe
David Rowe is a artist who, in the 80s and
90s, was a part of the early explosion of
the games scene.
From Speedball
to Populous... the 80s
games scene...
From working on the artwork for games as diverse as Speedball, The Chess Player, and the classic Populous, David has a unique
perspective on the gaming community that has now now come full circle in terms of the bedroom game developers. He also did the
artwork for the classic Knightmare TV Series, which has recently been adapted into a stageshow.
I finished Brighton Art School in 1975, and moved back to
the Southampton area in ’76 and got straight into teaching life
drawing part time in Southampton Art School, where I had done
my foundation. I did that part-time which funded my seeking
illustration work. I would also do things like cycle round all the local
pubs and say that I would do a pub front drawing for 150 quid.
They would laugh at me until I explained that the deal was that
they got a number of limited signed edition of prints to sale,
so that the they more than made their money back and got the
original artwork. So you start to get the deals then.
But then I bumped into a couple of people that I had met some
years before, Nick Lambert and John Holliss. They had founded
QuickSilva, which is one of the earliest game companies and
certainly one of the first to use full colour inlays for the cassettes.
They just wanted some imaginative and inventive covers and the
first commision I had was for The Chess Player, which they loved,
and it sort of went from there. I then went on to do Ant Attack for
QuickSilva and work for other studios.
In those days I would just plough through sketch books. We had
to draw and use actual paint then. Obviously now Photoshop (and
other software) is far more flexible as you can have an idea and go
back three stages, scrub stuff out and carry on… It’s pretty hard if
you have finished artwork that needs changing, and you need to
then get out the air brush…
The other difference is that you get some magnificent illustrations
now that games have gone really high-end and big business, but
there seems a sterility about them. There is usually some grunting
sweating soldier, in grey and khaki. The colours are always dull, but
the perspiration is so realistic. It just doesn’t have the fun.
The movie poster artist Drew Struzan, who did the artwork for
the Indiana Jones series, Back to the Future, Star Wars etc. is a
hero of mine, a legend. Someone showed him a photo-realistic
poster and asked him what he thought of it. He said “it was very
accomplished, but where’s the love?”. Because that’s what you get,
and there is a warmth and energy with a hand-drawn piece of
artwork.
What I tied into at the time, which was born out of exhilaration,
was a whole new medium. The guys who were inventing the
games… ok, it was clusters of pixels and sprites, but what you were
getting engaged in when you played was some fantastic gameplay
that have never really been seen before.
The illustration really had to give you some idea of the games
inside, as what you were looking at on box in a shop was the buzz
that you were going to get as you were playing it.
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The artwork for Speed Ball by The Bitmap
Brothers. David Rowe himself posed for this
picture, proving his dedication to his art...
The cover for Ant Attack! One of many games that he worked on for
the 80s British games studio QuickSilver, one of the first to emerge
The artwork for a Lemmings advert, for the Apple Mac, including a
self-portrait of David, showing his real addiction to the game
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I was often asked if I thought I was cheating people as all you got
when you played the game was a bunch of pixels but it wasn’t like
that to me.
What I really loved to do was really throw artwork ‘through the
screen’ at people. There was a cover I did for Acorn User, which
doubled its sales that issue. It had a blue steam engine smashing
out of a green screen at you. A magazine or game cover is a point
of sale really. It’s got high impact work to do.
A great push forward in game graphics was Speedball, which I was
involved with. The Bitmap Brothers artwork was incredible. They
pushed the envelope with all the graphics and the top down view
with the shadows following. There was a lot of care and love that
went into that, they really wanted it to be convincing.
Also there were games like Shadow of the Beast 3. In those days
they just gave you the game, and you had to come up with an idea.
You showed them the rough and they either liked it or they didn’t
and then you just went ahead and did it. For this I was excited
about the idea of getting a fireball coming up out of a swamp and
How I got involved in Knightmare
was that I had been doing masses
of computer games for the likes of
QuickSilva and magazine covers for
Sinclair User and Acorn User, amongst
others and it was snowballing. I went
to see Melbourne House (an 80s games
developer) to drop off a commission
for them and they said that there was
someone at Anglia TV who has been
trying to track me down.
So I called them from their office in
Richmond, then grabbed my folder and
went straight up there.
I was the artist that they wanted and
the first commission was for thirty
dungeon rooms to be used in the first
series. It was a vert short deadline and
really hard graft.
getting the space and reality coming out of the trees that were
being ripped out of the ground. To get the depth of vision.
But I suppose the biggest game that I was involved with was
Populous, which was designed by Peter Molyneux for Bullfrog. It
was something I really enjoyed because it was quite an adventure.
I was introduced to four guys in a tenement building, in the middle
of Guildford. A bit of a dump with computer carcasses everywhere.
All the original Bullfrog boys were there like Peter Molyneux. It
was all top secret really and when Joss Ellis from EA called me in,
to get briefed, we went to a room inside a room so to speak, with a
keypad and all the blinds down and nobody else was allowed in. All
top secret. He then showed me this god game, the alpha if you like,
and I thought “wow, this is amazing”… They gave me a tape to take
away to come up with some roughs, which I did.
Everyone liked it when I showed them, apart from one sales guy
who thought that it looked like a golf divot. After it had been
manufactured and had sold about 6 million copies worldwide, the
sales guy said “my mistake…” and admitted that he was wrong. «
Also I had just cracked Telecomsoft (the
computer software division of British
telecommunications company British
Telecom which is now BT) with all their
work, their double page spreads, their
adverts and so I had to get someone in
to help me.
an A3 fax machine that could send A3
drawings in half tone. It cost about 2
grand in 1986, which was a lot of money.
Then I would go to the full drawing,
transfer it by rubbing the back with
chalk onto illustration board and then
start masking and painting.
I gave them direction while I spent every
day, all day and most of the night, on the
Knightmare work for their shows. It was
tight. I was doing 20 hours a day, 7 days
a week for three weeks. It was tough.
After a while the deadline got so tight
I would just grab the tracing paper and
draw straight onto there. And cut it into
four and fax it and stick it back together.
Flying by the seat of your pants. But it
was a great feeling of really being in the
zone you know, breathtaking.
The backdrops were massive, huge,
bigger than A2. I had 48 of them still all
going into the book and all the sketches,
rough drawings, tracings, because what
I used to do was a colour rough.
Then I used to fax it up, as I had acquired
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Go to www.davidrowe.net where you
can find out details about David Rowe’s
forthcoming Art of Knightmare, which
is too be released following a very
successful Indiegogo campaign.
Making Work Play
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The Chess
Player
I marvel at coders with their ordered approach to their tasks,
which made me think about what I enjoy about making
artwork.
I love the thought of tackling a blank canvas and dreaming
up concepts with a brief to put energy into a portrayal of
everything that is exciting about the game in question.
To me, an artist has a chaotic mind with influences,
impressions and emotions crowding in from every angle. The
act of creating a game cover is ordering all that chaos into an
image that captures the essence of all that is compelling about
the gameplay.
The Chess player was my first game cover commission. In order
to do it justice I toyed with a number of ideas, but kept coming
back to the fact that a human was competing with a machine.
I mused that the contest would take place in the mind and
whatever mind that a Spectrum had. I scribbled furiously in my
sketchbook kicking around ideas, imagining the match taking
place in space or on a cloud with futuristic chess pieces and a
‘wired up’ robot.
I struggled with a number of portrayals and finally settled on
the last sketch, adding paint swatches and some colour.
The process of refining the chess pieces was a similar struggle
as a quickly scribbled ‘hooray’ greeted finally nailing what I was
after.
The drawings were transferred to CS10 illustration board at
approximately 300mm square. I went on to produce larger
artwork, but this one was made to be reduced to cassette inlay
size. The composition had to take into account: a space for the
logo/title; a clear strip for the spine and small back-flap which
accommodate the description and company logos, etc.
The basic colours and gradients on the image were produced
using Olympos airbrushes, Frisk masking film and Magiclour
liquid acrylics. I added brush work using the acrylics,
sometimes mixed with white gouache for more opacity and
coloured pencils for light retouching.
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ART CORNER
Rokas Butkus
Example of line work from Rokas Butkus personal work
Rokas Butkus
Rokas is an artist for games, with a bachelors
in game design. Recently working with
GlobalEmpireSoft and freelancing.
Get in Line...
So line art! We’ve all done it before, scribbles on random bits of paper when you’re bored in class. But how do we utilise this in design
to convey an idea?
Greetings, good day and hello again! In the last issue we looked
at creating designs quickly using the silhouette method. To recap,
this is creating designs by blocking in large values then adding and
deducting from those forms to create appealing designs.
I did mention that we would get onto some rendering but I think
it would be better to cover another approach first, one which is
preferred by most people, line art. Then in the next art segment,
I can tackle both methods and show you how I would go about
rendering both types of images.
So line art! We’ve all done it before, scribbles on random bits of
paper when you’re bored in class. But how do we utilise this in
design to convey an idea? Line art is difficult, requiring lots of
patience. Why? If you think about it, everything we see is in value;
light bouncing off objects to create forms that our eyes pick up.
When we draw in line, we are drawing something which does not
exist directly in front of us, but happens to be the format we use
when expressing an idea naturally. It is good at breaking down
visuals into more manageable chunks.
Where to begin?! Practice. Simply practice making lines and forms,
really basic shapes. Draw parallel lines, do some crosshatching,
draw a few curves and do this always and forever.
Think about your hand placement, if you want to draw a straight
line don’t draw from the wrist, move your arm. Your wrist is on a
curved pivot, it does not allow you to draw lengthy straight lines
without getting that elbow off the table.
I used to adore drawing the line below (highlighted by the red
arrow). It was a pattern I was obsessed by and would always
draw it when my brain wondered off but my hand kept going.
Essentially this really helped me to get a nice curve shape in
my line art and in one swooping motion. I have added some
additional patterns that I enjoy and have fun drawing. All lines in
this image are drawn freehand on an Intous4 tablet.
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ART CORNER
Rokas Butkus
The Retro Computer Museum in Leicestershire, UK
The Retro Computer Museum is a registered charity dedicated to the benefit
of the public for the preservation, display and public experience of computer and
console systems from the 1960's onwards. Our charity registration no. is 1146912.
Our main focus is on systems that were in use in the home and schools rather than big
computer systems and mainframes of early computer development. We have systems ranging
from the early Pong consoles through to the Sega and Nintendo console
wars and the home computers of the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64s and Amigas.
Our aim is to provide Retro Gaming and Computing events. We also offer
educational visit / tours for Year 6 students upwards - these visits comprise of a talk
about the history and the massive rise and fall of home computing mixed in with hands
on use of the very early 8 bit systems and eventually up to the ‘newer’ 32 bit systems.
We can tailor these visits to suit the individual needs of your school - these can be held
at your school or at our HQ in Leicester - please do get in touch with your exact requirements.
We also offer Retro Gaming Birthday Parties for any age group - young or old!
The Retro Computer Museum has held many Retro Gaming events of its own
to date, including partnership events with Snibston Discovery Museum.
The Museum has also made appearances at the 2010 Vintage Computer Festival
at Bletchley Park, at Abbey Pumping Station Hobbies and Pastimes Day,
at BBC Radio Leicester for the Sparks Childrens Charity, at the 2010 EuroCon event
with a line up of British Computers, at Revival 2013 hosting part of the gaming area,
at the Silicon Dreams event hosting a small part of the gaming area and more recently
at the fantastic SuperByte Festival in Manchester where we hosted the gaming area.
The Retro Computer Museum relies mainly on donations from its
members and visitors. We have had over 200 systems donated as part of
our collection, along with numerous books, software titles, peripherals,
magazines and brochures etc.
We appreciate any and all donations, no matter how small. We also accept
broken machines and peripherals as these can be used to repair existing systems.
Please contact us if you feel you have something we may be interested in.
Retro Computer Museum
Unit S1, Troon Way Business Centre,
Humberstone Lane, Leicester LE4 9HA
T: 07519 816 283 E: info@retrocomputermuseum.co.uk
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ART CORNER
Rokas Butkus
A bit more fun on paper in my opinion, but also get used to doing
it in the medium you have chosen (see image one).
the lines, the further apart you put them, the lighter the value will
come out (see image three).
Start slow and try to get these drawn using only one swooping
motion of the hand. What I have noticed is that so much of the
time, someone will spend ages trying to build one perfect line by
making it out of lots of smaller lines. However this just makes a
mess in my opinion, the breaks in the line lose all solidarity in the
shape you are trying to create.
If you squint your eyes while looking at the scale chart above, your
brain starts to merge the lines together creating values. Use this
technique to give your line art depth and the illusion of light.
If you are drawing a tree, then sure this kind of texturing might
work, but not for anything with a hard surface.
Finally. Master the basic shapes, this goes for both methods I have
shown you. Learn and practice using basic shapes as guidelines for
drawing everything. Once you understand how objects are situated
in 3D space then you realise that this can be applied to any subject
matter. I will go into more depth on the next article, where I will
cover rendering images created using lines and blocking values. «
Experiment, but keep in mind the properties of the shapes you
are making, is it solid, is it made from lots of solids, does it reflect
light well? How is it positioned in contrast to another object,
do they overlap etc. Spend the time to be analytical about your
subject, don’t just emulate it, try to understand what is going on
(see image two).
Line weight. I’m sure you’ve heard this term pop up many times
before. Line weight means combining thick and thin lines logically
to better express the shapes on the canvas. It can be used to outline
key features and focal points. Or even to show the darkest areas
of an image. When used properly this will make your images read
better. I hate to use this term but it will make your images…
“Pop”.
Image One
Subject matter is again your choice, just like the other methods of
mark making, you can draw whatever you like with line. I would
suggest finding something you like and drawing it, but move on
to other subjects. If you focus on one image that you like, yes you
will get better at drawing that one thing. However that is due to
memory rather than skill, so challenge yourself!
If it doesn’t come out great, that’s fine, it becomes another image
to look back at to see how far you’ve come once you have figured
it out.
This isn’t easy (especially if you are just starting out or are a
student) and you will have to start again many times over. Just be
persistent and don’t beat yourself up over mistakes, patience will
pay off.
Image Two
So you have a subject in front of you and I know what you’re
thinking now. How the hell do I shade with line?! Well you cross
hatch. If you are using a pen then you have two options. You’re
either putting ink down on the page or you are not, there is no in
between. This is where we get tricky and start to fool the brain into
believing that more is happening on the page than it actually is.
By creating juxtaposed parallel lines with spaces in between
you create the illusion of grey values. These can be darkened by
layering another set of lines going in a contrasting direction. Also
if you wish to create a lighter value, then play with the spacing of
Image Three
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ART CORNER
Rokas Butkus
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Example of line work from Rokas Butkus personal work
FEATURE
Music
Lee Smith
Lee Smith is a lifelong fan of Bubble
Bobble (amongst other games), and the
Creative Director of a design agency.
“If music be the food
of love, play on…”
It was Shakespeare, the good old bard of Elizabethan England, who wrote that famous line in his play Twelfth Night. It was uttered by
Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, who was asking for more music to be played to help him forget about his frustrating relationship with the
Countess Olivia.
the finish line quickly, so to speak.
Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be an article about English
Literature, you are not going to be tested on your knowledge of
Shakespeare, it is mearly a good way to start this article. It has
relevance, you see, as Shakespeare often used music as a tool to
help move the plot on. It is an important and often overlooked
device from his plays and also one that continued when theatre
and plays evolved and, of course, continued into first films and
then televsion. You only have to think about the scores of John
Williams for films such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones to know
this; the music drives on the action.
The same applies to video games. From the early beeps of Pac-Man
to the sonic experiences that have been in the GTA series, music
has been integral in games and yet is still something that is very
much overlooked when a game is eulogised in reviews. But turn
the sound down, take the music away, and it just isn’t the same.
Take the music away from the Mario games and, yes, they are
still great but they will be missing something. It just doesn’t feel
complete and feels just a little bit empty.
Sounds are important to us and music has an emotional wave that
can change how we think and how we act. You can try playing a
high-speed driving game with the voice of Vera Lynn singing “we’ll
meet again” which will be slow and relaxing, and you will probably
find yourself driving along like an octogenarian Sergeant Major
with leather driving gloves chugging down the motorway in an
Armstrong Siddeley. Or you can play it to the fury of The Prodigy
bursting it’s way out of the speakers and suddenly you are the boy
racer with the hot chick next to you in the passenger seat urging
you to get to the finish line quickly so that she can, er, get you to
In the early days, of course, the music couldn’t involve complex
arrangements. They had a specific chip for the sounds and these
sounds were normally monophonic and looped constantly due to
memory space, so short catchy loops were the order of the day.
If you think about the aforementioned Pac-Man, composed by
Toshio Kai in 1980, or Tomohiro Nishikado’s Space Invaders,
which was released earlier in 1978, they were simple but got into
your brain. You remembered the sounds in your subconscious,
which helped you make the decision to go back to the arcade to
pour more of your coins into the machines.
It has been said often that these games and tunes helped pave the
way for the rave generations, with the simple electronic sounds
and bright, fast-moving, lights. No meaningful violins and lyrics
needed, just fast moving graphics and beeps!
And just as the technology and graphics in games evolved, so did
the music. Yamaha sound chips and decent speakers in televisions,
and PCs, meant that the sound arrangements could become more
complex and richer.
It may not sound it but the initial Mario Bros theme was a leap
forward, and so was the brooding and dark music used in games
such as Castlevania and Metroid. With a thematic and movielike atmosphere, the music from those games helped provide
an unparalleled gaming experience at that time. Far beyond
anything that had gone before. And when we got onto eight
channels of sound with the Super Nintendo then, wow, it was a
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FEATURE
Music
full-on stereo experience. Maybe, just maybe, there could even
be an argument to suggest that the work of the game studios and
hardware manufactures were inspiring the music industry at large.
Certainly, the use of digital file formats and sampling really did
push boundaries, especially with the PC Engine in Japan, and the
Sega-CD/Mega-CD.
But that’s another article altogether, and I will leave it up to some
one far more technically minded than me to talk about that.
More of what I really want to talk about now is how, with games
such as Final Fantasy and The Elder Scrolls, game music became
grown-up; it became respectable to such an extent where there are
bands who do cover versions of the songs that they listen to while
playing games on their tour bus (I imagine…).
Also games became a thing that bands and artists wanted to be
a part of; wanted their music and name to be associated with. I
am not sure when this started to happen, and I haven’t done the
research that deep into it (bad journalist) because I want this to be
about me, my own personal experiences of gaming and music.
One that instantly jumps out though is ‘All I Want’ by The
Offspring in Crazy Taxi, which played as I was driving my yellow
taxi, ferociously, around a fictional rendition of somewhere in
America (L.A.?). Freaking the hell out of my passengers who, in
real life, would be be leaving suspicious brown marks over the faux
leather seats.
See, music and driving. It just wouldn’t have been the same with
the banal tones of Coldplay or Keane, but The Offspring? Yeah,
that worked becuase it rocked...
Another game, Loaded by Gremlin Interactive, was a blood thirsty
and action-packed shoot-em up back in the mid-nineties. Set in a
futuristic prison, from which six convicts attempt to escape killing
anyone who gets in their way. Released on both the PlayStation
and the Sega Saturn, it sold well, with comic book origins and
artwork by Garth Ennis and Greg Staples, but it’s soundtrack is
where it really excelled.
It was designed especially so that you could use it as an audio
CD… Yep, you could just listen to the music if you wanted to
without playing the game. Track 1 would have been skipped
(that contained the code for the game) and then you could enjoy
the soundtrack, as loud as you want, at a party of your choice.
Remember this was before the days of iTunes. This was before the
iPod and Spotify. You just were not downloading music in digital
formats then, so it was groundbreaking.
Pop Will Eat Itself, the alternative-rap-industrial band of the
age, even had a couple of tracks on this, Kick to Kill and RSVP,
to make it the soundtrack album of choice in those heady days.
And believe me I did go to parties where it was played. PWEI,
as they are also known, had, at that stage, had a number of hits
such as ‘Wise Up! Sucker’, ‘Bulletproof ’ and ‘Get The Girl! Kill
The Baddies!’ They had also toured with Nine Inch Nails and
had been a truly ground breaking band (and are still going by the
way, so you should check them out if you can). Since then, also,
Clint Mansell from PWEI has also now carved out a career in film
scores, with Black Swan and Filth being just two of the many films
that he has worked on.
As you might have noticed I am quite a fan of the band, but that
isn’t the reason why I am mentioning this. It is because that this
Pop Will Eat Itself, who appeared on
the soundtrack to the game Loaded
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Created primarily for amateur, pro or semi-pro composers, from
any musical background or industry, Game Music Connect’s
second event takes place in September this year. Featuring the
composers of games such as BioShock, Dante’s Inferno, Assassin’s
Creed IV and Alone In The Dark this will be a place to get an
invaluable insight into how to break into the industry.
highlights the esteem that games were starting to be held in by
serious bands and this has continued.
Trent Reznor, the man who is, effectively, Nine Inch Nails, has
scored the music for Quake and also recently composed and
performed the theme song for Call of Duty II: Black Ops. As
well as for films such as The Social Network, and the American
adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
From Pac-Man to Nine Inch Nails, the leap isn’t that incredible is
it? Music for charts, for films and for games. Not a bad career and
covers the three biggest mediums to get your music heard in now.
Also, try to hook up with some indie game studios. Send them
your Soundcloud links, let them know the music that you like
to make. Try and connect with someone that you know might
be making a game. Seriously, just put yourself out there and you
never know. It will take a lot of had work, and a lot of luck, but
hopefully you can make it, or at least have some fun trying. «
But what of those who purely make music for games? Those whose
career of choice isn’t films, or 3 minute catchy tunes, but rather the
scores for those new game hits. How do you get into producing
music for these?
Also, do you go with the catchy tunes for the latest puzzling
‘killing time’ offering, or are your ambitions urging you towards
being the composer for the next Legend of Zelda? We hear often
of the bedroom coders, the guys working at home on their ideas
for games, but what of those sitting at home working on those
completely essential tunes?
Well there is a game event that is solely focused on the music,
Game Music Connect in the UK, which has been set-up by the
multi-award winning composer James Hannigan (Harry Potter,
the Command and Conquer series, Dead Space 3, Transformers
Universe) and the acclaimed game audio director & composer
John Broomhall (Forza Motorsport 5, X-COM, Transport
Tycoon).
Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails
Tips to get you started
Be Passionate
Be Prepared
As with everything in life, if you have a passion for something
then that comes across in your work and your personality. It will
make a difference.
Ha see this is a tricky one. Whether you are a designer, a
developer or a musician, there are always going to be people
out there who will want to change what you have done. A few
tweaks here, a few tweaks there… it happens, it’s a fact of life,
and it’s a part of the job. Are you too precious? Then be prepared
not to make it. At the same time, don’t bend over too easily if it is
something that you feel passionate about.
Skills and Education
Study. Hey, being musically talented is obviously the first thing
that comes to mind when looking for a career in music, but also
the software. e.g. Logic, Digital Performer, Protools etc
Market Yourself
Which is what I mentioned before. Use Soundcloud (and other
sharing sites) to help get your music out into the wider world.
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FEATURE
Virtual Reality
Richard Hoffman
Richard Hoffmann is an VR Evangelist, Indie Game Developer & IT Consultant
with over 1 5 years of experience in the IT and games industry. He has worked for
the likes of IBM, Penguin, Ricoh, Continental AG as well as SME’s and Start-ups.
He has been involved in mobile apps and games since 2009.
Virtual Reality,
it’s here at last...
VR is an important technology in the history of mankind ... well, definitely for the gaming world as we know it at least...
If virtual reality gives you the thrills with those little things, then
how will we cope with the big ones?
According to Palmer Luckey’s speech at the last DICE in Las
Vegas, VR “is one of the most important technologies in the
history of mankind...”.
From my experience with VR so far I have to agree with him, and
the reactions are almost the same when I show people the Tuscany
Oculus Rift demo.
With this you can walk around a virtual house in Tuscany, and also
its garden. Never before have men so often commented on sun
flowers than in this demo. Walking inside and out and around a
sun flower for minutes seems to be the normal thing that they do,
although it is something that most wouldn’t do in the real ‘nonvirtual’ world. It is all such a strange experience.
However it has its downsides. Because of this complete immersion
into another world there can be the occasional VR hiccup called
nausea. It can be quite a nasty one for some people, but it depends
on the game genre and the individual person also. Like travel
sickness, some people are more succeptible than others, but also
if, for example, you are plugged into a rollercoaster, then your
stomach really can ‘go-over’ as it would on a real fairground or
theme park ride.
I also found found out at a Microsoft Accelerator event that
More than the sun flowers, though, I enjoy the beautiful sea view
and the ambient sound. The 3D sound makes a huge difference in
the VR immersive experience, that’s for sure.
A friend of mine tried to walk up the stairs inside the virtual house
and literally almost fell over while trying. I had to push her with
both hands from the back to keep her orthogonally stable. Then
when she was finally upstairs she could not walk downstairs as it
was too high.
She had to stop and my other friend took over, but it took her
a lot of courage to make it slowly down to the ground floor.
Although you are effectively standing still, wearing the headset
really does give you a completely false sense of reality.
The Tuscany demo
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FEATURE
Virtual Reality
people with a certain amount of alcohol should avoid VR. So don’t
drink and VR! That is a cocktail that is best left alone (I am not
going to mention how and why I discovered this...).
With the new Oculus HD and cave add-on, plus other additional
gadgets like the Omni and the STEM we might be able to share
experiences like never before.
But back to Tuscany. Some people liked the holiday shortcut so
much that they refused to come back, they said they felt much
more calm and relaxed afterwards, like they have been on holiday.
The demo The Deep from London Studios is a big
(atmospherical) improvement over the very first
version I remember playing in a pub after
a LUUG meetup in London last year.
Could this VR thing finally become the first way into the
Holodeck every Star Trek fan dreams about? Could this be used in
offices/businesses to relieve the stress of a busy life?
Denny Crane err William Shatner would be impressed, Leonard
Nimoy maybe not so much.
The only issue I had was having a flare
gun in my virtual right hand and a PS4
controller in both of my real hands.
That felt a bit strange and not quite
right.
If you like it more spacey and want to boldly go where no real
astronauts like Wolowitz have gone before then try Titans of Space...
A great educational VR Experiance which shows every earthling
how pathetically small they are. Welcome Hitchhiker of this Galaxy
and don’t forget your Towel! It might give you the thrill of travelling
and exploring space safely without any cosmic radioactive sunburns!
Playing EVE Valkyrie on both systems
(Oculus Rift DK2 and PS4) with the position
tracker was a lot of fun. Especially shooting
one enemy ship in-front of me
while tracking another ship on
top of my space cockpit.
It really is hard to comprehend how big things are out there, but
this app makes a good attempt to demonstrate it. I wish that in
my school days this technology would have been available. If only
we had had the technology to explore time and space from the
comfort and relative safety of out classrooms.
And with Sony announcing
their own VR headset
Project Morpheus at the
GDC 2014 it seems
another big player
knows the importance
of future VR games
in the living room,
combined with their
move controller
or PS4 controller
(depending on the
game). «
Maybe I would have stayed more alive and awake and more
excited at the prospect of going to school if we would have had
virtual reality helmets.
These are only a few glimpses of the future that are going to
possibly be available with the release of the new virtual reality
technology, but essentially the possibilities are only limited by our
imaginations.
Titans of Space app
Eve Valkyire
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PHOTO FEATURE
Train Jam and the GDC 14
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PHOTO FEATURE
Train Jam and the GDC 14
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FEATURE
Evolution of Gaming Event 2014
Gary Mee
Evolution of Gaming
and hands-on with
Zuckerberg’s $2bn toy
Recently myself, as well as the executive team at IND13, attended the annual Evolution of Gaming event held at BL-NK, 37 East Road
N1, hosted by many elements of the digital community, 3beards (3-beards.com) and Cube Space (cube-space.co.uk) to name a couple.
The event was made up of many high profile figures from all over
the gaming and tech sector who came along, not to plug any
advertising spots, but to hold an open forum; discussing tips on
indie start-ups to the ever-growing corporate gaming world.
As a first time gaming journalist I found it a refreshing insight into
the industry. The event offered hands-on concept projects, such as
the classic first person shooter Doom which was here on a monitor
attached to a piano (yes a piano) and you had to play the keys in
order to control the character to progress through the game. This
really opened my mind to the possibilities of the art and design
elements surrounding the gaming industry and its importance to
the ‘end user’.
As I put on the headset I realised first of all that it was quite light and
comfortable, not what I expected at all. The developer then handed
me an iPhone, which he explained controlled my movement: drag
thumb forward and back for walk forward and back and tilt left and
right for, you guessed it, turning, leaving thumb left and right to
strife. It was a little dazing for the first minute or so, as your eyes are
adjusting, but once you get it, you’re off.
Graphically, I’d say it’s on par with the likes of the early Xbox 360
games. In this simulation, you walked round a garden in Tuscany with
There was also a mobile trailer in the car park area, where a group
of tech developers had created a ‘Red dwarf ’ style space ship
simulator. In this we were briefed on our separate ‘workstation of
responsibility’ before we entered (I was engineering), and we then
had to work together as a team in order to escape an entity which
was trying to board the ship (trailer).
We did pretty well for a first go, although Lee ended up crashing
into a star... yes folks a star! To having a hands-on, or should I
say an eyes-on, go of the Oculus Rift, now dubbed ‘Zuckerberg’s
£2Bn toy’(it even had a £2bn mock-up price tag attached to its
outer packaging), as an insider joke. As experiences go, let me tell
you, it really is as exiting as it’s being dubbed.
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Doom... on a piano...
FEATURE
Evolution of Gaming Event 2014
a manor house in the middle, which was open plan and had two
floors and very vivid colours. It seemed to be situated on a high hill.
I walked to the edge, looked out over the shrub ‘fence’ and in the
distance there were amazing looking mountains, which were really
immersing and detailed. A flock of birds came flashing across my
vision, I tracked them to almost a 180 degree angle, they moved
extremely fast, but with as much elegance as a real flock, I was then
amazed! Call me a a bit of a noob to VR, but the fact that I could
actually track the birds with just my eyes and head movement alone
sold me. I then went inside the house, breezing through it like a
natural by this point.
Before this, while waiting to check out ‘The Rift’, I was talking to
someone who said to me: “if you’re gonna do anything mate, go
up and down the staircase, it feels like your actually ascending/
descending a real flight”.
I laughed at this. During the simulation though I walked into the
lobby of the house and I did it, lined myself up with a big wooden
staircase, looked up at the top, which would have been about 1520ft up (you felt the distance too) and proceeded up it. My body
tensed up as it felt like I was ascending a real flight, I span myself
round and went down them... IT FELT REAL.
This technology is going to re-invent what gaming means and
although the developer told me that ‘The Rift’ will be used
mainly for social purposes, (Facebook or the sort, obviously) the
potential is breathtaking.
The presentation was relaxed and seemed open to adaptation
(not what I’m used to in these sorts of exhibitions, where it’s
normally extremely time-bound and has a solid agenda, with
little or nothing open to its audience).
Michael Hobson from 3Beards was the facilitator and asked
questions to the panel as well as opened up key points, which
were mainly focused on the inner workings of the industry
as well as the evolution of gaming over the years and where
its future lies. The panel were a mash up of roles across the
industry, Julia Hardy, a video games & tech journalist; Dan
Maher, a journalist and 13-year industry veteran/victim;
Haitham Rowley IT Director at Square Enix and Louise
Shannon, Curator of Digital, Victoria & Albert Museum.
I found the presentation extremely informative. It opened my eyes
up to the amazingly diverse world of gaming; from the design,
artwork, writing data and code, project management within
indie start-ups, to the advertising, production and retailing of
the big corporations, the skills needed as well as skills picked up
during working for various companies and holding different roles.
I believe everything was covered, including the still prevalent
demographics of gaming, whereby the industry still has a stigma
attached to it. ‘Only kids/teens play games’ type of thing, which
is no doubt a lot to do with its mainly negative coverage in
mainstream media which suggests kids are killing others solely
because they found a copy of GTA in their bedrooms, which
is seldom backed up by hard scientific data. But, hopefully,
especially thanks to events like these, the gaming industry is
moving forward in tackling these issues.
To sum up I would urge everyone to check these sorts of events
out, whether you’re a developer, artist, indie company, coder,
gamer, scriptwriter or a noob like me, there is always something
to be learned from them. A first hand, hands-on look into the
future, which at some point will affect everyone. The way I see
it; the more people that can get involved and connected, the
brighter and more diverse the industry will become. I met so
many people, from so many different backgrounds.
I’ve been to massive corporate events in my time, but never
swapped so many business cards and had so many thought
provoking conversations than I had at this event.
It has completely changed my mind about the video games
genre, I’m no longer just an end user, I’m involved and going to
contribute to it in anyway I can moving forward. «
The $2bn Oculus Rift...
Yep, we crashed a spaceship...
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A young gamer with only a few years
games experience, Ophelia approaches
the industry with a fresh new eye.
The game thieves...
There once was a girl named Ophelia. She loved games and her dad had given her a chance to express her love for them by playing them
on her new tablet. So she started looking for a game in the Google Play Store, which was different to every other game, but couldn’t find
one, and became quite downhearted.
I know this, you see, because that girl is me, and quite often I get
asked why I’m on the app store a lot and the answer is: because I
am looking for a game, that is different to others.
Yes! You read right. I am annoyed at all of the companies and a lot
of their games. Everyday I ask myself the same question… Why do
they copy games? All night long I am dreaming of the same thing.
Do you notice a majority of the games are just a copy of other
successful games that were released before them?
They all have things in common with each other but they change
a few things to make them slightly different. For example, the
subject and the title of the game… Jelly Splash and Candy
Crush, anyone? Notice the subtle difference and also the striking
similarities.
In order to play Candy Crush you need to get a pair of three,
and in order to play Jelly Splash you need to get a pair of three.
Also, what I have noticed while getting further in inspecting the
similarities is that they both have a few levels where you need to
clear jelly to get pass them. In order to remove the jelly you need
to match a three in the jelly.
Another thing which is similar is the graphics on all games like
it. The graphics are simple but eye-catching because of all of the
mixtures of colours.
I reckon if you try one of the games and then try another you’ll see
what I mean.
The reason why these companies do this is because of the money
and popularity. They can’t be bothered to get off their lazy butts
and create anything new so they steal from others. I call them
‘Game Thief ’s’’.
We all know Flappy Bird, don’t we? As soon as Flappy Bird came
out and got really popular, there was suddenly over 100 clones of
it. I can name at least five off the top of my head. Flappy Cyrus,
Tappy Bieber, Flying Duckie, Scrappy Bird and My Fat Flying
Dragon.
So, my message to all you developers out there is stop copying
games! If you have any new ideas don’t keep them inside, let them
out. Ask for help, set up a group… Do what you can. And to all
you kids out there, if they just make boring games don’t just sit
and moan, get out there and make your own. Start coding, be
inspired, don’t let the adults tell you how games should be. We are
the Next Gen after all… «
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NEXT GEN GAMER
Candy Crush Clones
Fish Epic
Doodle Find
Puzzle Quest 2
Mystic Marbles
Dots: A Game About Connecting
The Treasures of Montezuma 3
10000000 (Ten Million)
Frozen Free Fall
Triple Town
Dungeon Raid
Jelly Splash
Zookeeper Battle
Cruel Jewels
Fruit Splash Mania
Puzzle & Dragons
Juice Cubes
Jewel Mania
Cavemania
Jewel World Candy Edition
Diamond Dash
Puzzle Craft
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NEXT GEN GAMER
Ian Steiner
Ian Steiner
Ian Steiner is a 9 year old game developer
from Vienna, Austria
Everyone knows
games are for kids...
Everyone knows that gaming is just for kids but with the widespread availability of basic development tools and inexpensive distribution
platforms, pre-teen game developers have started to produce full games. Young game developers are growing up with the technology
to code and create games, but just what does this opportunity mean for young people? How are they making games at such a young age?
And what are they producing? We caught up with nine year old Ian Steiner and his father Thomas. They’ve created Meteor Kids together
and have now released it in on the Apple App Store. They created the game as a way of bonding while doing something educational and
fun together. IND13 posed them a few questions about the design process and what it’s like to be making games together.
Ian Steiner – Nine years old
What made you want to create a game?
Can you describe your game and tell us what it is about?
My father told me around Christmas to stop playing games and
instead do something. That’s when I told him that I wanted to
make a game.
Meteor Kids is about saving earth from falling rocks and meteors.
It’s your duty as a rocket pilot to destroy blue and brown meteors
but avoid the dreaded fire meteors. Meteors must not touch earth.
You gain a bonus life by catching the alien flying saucer.
Did you find it difficult?
No not really. Waiting for Apple to approve it was the hardest part.
Can you explain how you made your game?
After finishing the programming course on Khanacademy.org I
did a first version of Meteor Kids in ProcessingJS. When I was
finished, I was not satisfied and wanted an iPhone version. My
father told me to draw the game design first, which I did on an
iPad using Sketchbook Pro. At this point I needed help from my
father as dealing with Xcode and everything that comes with it on
my own was still a bit too hard.
Do you play it yourself?
Yes of course, and all my classmates do. My record is 369 meteors.
The new update has recently come out, which will it make even
harder to get a good score. But overall it will be a much cooler
game.
What are your favourite games to play?
I love Minecraft, Pokemon Y and Pokemon Black 2.
What did you like about making a game?
To learn something new and draw all the game designs. I also like
that my friends at school do like to play it.
Was it enjoyable making a game, did you feel you learned
something?
I have learned a lot about programming like drawing objects,
variables, animation basics, functions, ‘if ’ statements, looping and
arrays.
What would you say to anyone wanted to make games?
How did you come up with the idea?
I love space, rockets and meteors. Also moving circles around was
not hard because I did it during the programming course.
Anyone can do it in ProcessingJS! Khanacademy.org is a great
starting point and it is free. Doing an iPhone version maybe is a
little bit too hard.
NEXT GEN GAMER
Ian Steiner
Thomas Steiner
Ian’s very proud dad
few weeks. That’s not easy for kids, as they usually lose interest
in things quite fast. Still I am convinced that every kid using the
information on the internet with a little help from an adult can
do something like that.
Are you pleased with your son creating games?
I am very pleased because it is my conviction that kids should
learn at young age that creating any kind of content can be even
more fun than consuming it. Creating things is more enjoyable
and fulfilling than being just a consumer of art. It’s also a great
way to realize how practical math is in many areas of life. I wish
someone had told me at young age why it is so important to be
good at it. There’s no games without math!
Can you tell me a little about how the game was created?
What software did you use?
Would you encourage Ian to choose games development as his
career path?
Right now I would just love to see him stay with it and work on
his skills. I encouraged him to go back to ProcessingJS so he can
do projects all by himself again. He plays guitar and does sports,
so this is just one more activity he loves to do.
Will you be making more games together in the future?
I would love to do that. We had so much fun. In fact this project
was omnipresent in our family in the last few weeks. Even Ian’s
little sister had a role as the official game tester. I really loved
to spend that much time with Ian. We are even contemplating
starting a coding club for kids in Vienna. Unlike the UK there
are none at the moment. With all the press response we get in
Austria we really feel that we have to give something back to the
community.
After Ian finished his first version of “Meteor Kids” in
ProcessingJS and I put it on a website for friends and family
to play, Ians only comment was: “I want to make an iPhone
version!” So after Ian finished the game artwork using
Sketchbook Pro on an iPad we got ourselves some iOS books
from RayWenderlich.com, signed up for the Lynda.com
Objective-C Essential Training course from Simon Allardice
and dug in. Ian’s passion and interest over the coming weeks
kept us going because I swear I would have given up without his
enthusiasm. I am a dad with interest in programming but have
only basic programming skills myself. For the iOS version we
used plain Xcode, meaning Objective-C as language and the new
Sprite Kit framework from Apple.
How did Ian come up with the idea?
The basic game mechanic was something he did when he was
working through the course. He loves everything space so I
think meteors were the first thing that came into his mind when
he saw moving circles.
Are you proud to see what your son has made?
Of course I am. He stuck with the course and the project over a
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FEATURE
Crystalline Green
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NEXT GEN GAMER
Alfie Brian Taylor
Alfie Brian Taylor
Alfie is a Next Gen Gamer who has a
passion for indie games. You can follow
him on his YouTube channel
www.youtube.com/AlfredPlays
Steam
Greenlight
– Success or
misfit?
As many as 50 games are being ‘Greenlit’ what seems like every other day. Is
this too many?
For those who don’t know, Steam Greenlight is a system which requires the
Steam community’s help in picking new games to be released on Steam.
Developers post information, screenshots and video content for their game
and seek a critical mass of community support in order to get selected for
distribution. Doing this helps the developer get feedback from potential
customers and start creating an active community around their game during the
development process.
A common opinion is that Steam Greenlightis an innovative method of gathering
the mass’ views in a quick and easy fashion. However, others argue that the voting
system is biased due to the fact that the creator of the game could spam social media
for forced support in the same way that small YouTubers do with their videos.
Personally, I think it’s an effective method for gaining critical feedback from a
driven community and creating an initial hype for your game for when (and if )
your game makes it through to the distribution stage.
Overall, Steam Greenlight seems more of a success than a misfit. Although a small
minority of Greenlit games are just poor attempts at game design by some misfit
who thinks he is a developer, the vast majority are created by people who believe
that they have a unique idea. They share a burning passion along with other
developers to create the greatest game possible for the community to enjoy. «
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Pros
Cons
Gives the developer a chance to
seek support and feedback from
the community.
The developer could spam
substantial feedback in order to
make it to the distribution stage.
The ability to begin building an
audience around the game in
development process.
Anybody could have their game
Greenlit, not just good developers.
Some of the Greenlit games could
be critically received as terrible due
to lack of skill.
The community has a say in which
games they would like to see in the
future.
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Lee Smith
Lee Smith is a lifelong fan of Bubble
Bobble (amongst other games), and the
Creative Director of a design agency.
Pixel Press:
Draw your own
video game...
Don’t just play a video game, start creating your own! And to make it easier with Pixel Press
you can draw, sketch, create your own games with no coding involved.
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Pixel Press Preview
So the idea is that with just a few simple tools and a piece of paper,
you can draw and create your own simple games. That’s right,
using pencils, paper, erasers, all those things from a bygone age.
Pixel Press allows people of any age to create using the core
principles of video game design ie. sketching, designing, playing
(obviously), and to be able to share it with their friends or, if they
are brave enough, the big wide gaming world. Also, and this is the
bit to have many hard core coders choking on their cans of Red
Bull, the difficult coding bit is all done for you.
How it works is that you download a PDF of a pre-formatted
grid (designed specifically for Pixel Press), print this out (heavy
card stock recommended apaprently), draw your level on it and
then take a picture with your iPad and iPhone. It’s then converted
into a digital level. It sounds really simple, too simple really, but
essentially that is all that there really is to it.
There is an instruction sheet informing you of all the physics rules,
symbols and shapes etc. For example, drawing a cross will tell the
app to put in some spikes.
Once this has been uploaded there is, of course, a design editor so
that you can customise things like the colour/texture of elements
like terrain and hazards, customise the backgrounds, pick the
character, and finally choose sound effects and music.
For the design of a good old fashioned platform game, this could
prove to be a great simple solution. Especially to encourage kids to
create their own games in a fun and tactile manner.
Pixel Press is the creation of Robin Rath, founder of Roundthird,
a software creation company based in St. Louis. Robin grew up in
the 80’s and was an avid fan of platformer video games, and as a
child he used to beat video games and then draw the ‘next’ level.
And this is most definitely aimed at creating the Mario/Donkey
Kong/Metroid type games that we all still love.
Ultimately, also, Robin wants it to be child-friendly, to encourage
creativity, stating, “we also feel that the level designer process is kid
friendly starting around age 10, depending on the child’s motor
skills and patience level. The idea of this being used in classrooms,
and at home with parents, to develop hard skills, as well as interest
in the industry, and finally building team-working skills - these are
all things we’re pretty excited about.”
It might also have tie-ins to certain franchises, so that you can
design a level layout, and then skin it with various Marvel
characters and their related “world”; Iron Man, Hulk, Captain
America, etc.
It is more than that, it also wants to create a community where
kids (and adults of course), can share their ideas. This is going to
be a level sharing community - the “Arcade” - and it will let you
share levels you create with other players. This concept sounds
pretty cool, as with the Pixel Press Arcade, you will not only be
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FEATURE
Pixel Press Preview
able to share your levels with family and friends, but anyone in the
world - on top of that you will be able to track how many times
your level has been played, view leaderboards, and much more as
the community grows.
For teachers it can be a great education tool, something that
even the most rambunctious student will want to get involved
with. They will need to follow directions, concentrate, use their
imagination... hell, even work as a team to get the best results.
It could be just the beginning of an entire video game creation
eco-system full of different types of games (i.e. Floors, Quest,
Tracks, etc), different categories, and different leaderboards.
For games artists, you can just draw, upload & test, design, play &
share. Again, it is the simplicity which is the selling point. The ease
of creating something unique , something different, and sharing it
with a whole community built up around Pixel Press.
Ok, so strictly speaking this isn’t teaching you the fundementals of
game design in terms of the programming that is needed etc, but
what this is doing, in an affordable and easy to use way, is teaching
you about visual communication, level design, basic physics, and
how games are constructed from the bottom up.
It is also, and this is unfortunately all too rare, encouraging
children to get out those old dusty pencils and start putting them
to paper. With Pixel Press technology, ambition and design come
together to bring to life something that most of us wouldn’t even
think about creating.
And for the gamer. The person that we all are really. Well this is
fairly straightforward really. For many of us, games like Donkey
Kong & Super Mario Brothers reeled us in. As technology
improved and games became more sophisticated, we still loved to
game but we never forgot the classics. The addictive game play that
provided hours (days, weeks, months) of fun.
Now, you can make your own version. All those ideas that you had
and never got around to making, well, give it a go with this. Also,
try out others’ efforts too.
On it’s site, it advertises itself as something that is built for parents,
teachers, artists and gamers. For parents, you can create a family
tournament to see who can build the best level or work together to
build the ‘perfect’ level. Bonding with your kids over game design
(beats fishing for me..).
Currently it’s only available for Pre-Order with the release coming
soon, after it had a successful Kickstarter project, but it is worth
giving it a go when you can! Whether you are a parent, teacher,
kids, artist, or just a gold old fashioned gamer, it would be a shame
not to. «
Sketching out a level...
How the level looks on an iPad
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FEATURE
Pixel Press Preview
R
500 MILLION PLAYS
WITHIN 3 YEARS
WE PUT SOME OF THIS SUCCESS DOWN TO OUR
MINIWORLDGAMES IS A
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GAMES STUDIO
POWERED BY
RETRO CORNER
Alan Vader
Alan Vader
Invader, Vader, avid gamer...
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RETRO CORNER
Alan Vader
The world
of 8-bit 3D
In this issue I’ll be taking you back in time to experience the magical
world of the third dimension as experienced in the 80s.
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RETRO CORNER
Alan Vader
3D media as a concept has been knocking around for a long time,
since the 1840s, when the first stereoscopic camera was created.
In 20 years such items were common in upper class households,
no doubt spurred on, as all media is, by risqué pictures of naked
ankles and somesuch. According to wikipedia, the First World War
killed off 3D photography, not sure how that happened exactly,
I’m pretty sure Kodak didn’t kill Franz Ferdinand, but I could be
wrong, you humings are a wacky bunch!
The next resurgence of note was in 1953, with the release of the
3D movie ‘House of Wax’ starring creepy old uncle Vincent Price.
Also sporting some of the first stereo sound, this movie was a big
hit for Warner Bros, and drew in customers who had recently
been lured away by the cathode glow of televisions. It spurred on
a massive resurgence of 3D movies, which lasted up until the mid50s, when customers complained of sickness caused by problems
with the effect. This was brought on by the overly complex
arrangement the system used, with 2 projectors that had to run
perfectly in sync. Later 1970s solutions put all the footage on to
one strip of film, preventing this nausea-inducing problem.
And with that we’re up to where retro gaming comes into play, the
first example of which was on the Vectrex.
Now, you may or may not know what a Vectrex is, and I can’t
blame you, I had no idea of its existence until the web of the mid
noughties introduced me to it. So to say that it hardly made a
splash in the summer of 83 would be quite the understatement! A
cutting edge console at the time, the Vectrex was a console with a
built in vertical CRT vector screen, and outside of finding an Atari
Battlezone, Star Wars or Tempest cabinet out there in the arcades
that no longer exist, the best way to enjoy real vector graphics
today.
In the 60s movies were produced using the anaglyph technique
(those cheap red and blue glasses). Which obviously prevented
using natural colour in your movie, customers wouldn’t tolerate a
return to black and white, so back to the drawing board!
The Vectrex also had an ingenious way of delivering
colour to your optics. Being blessed of a humble
black and white screen, games
came with an overlay sheet of
plastic that clips into the frame
of the screen and gives you a
vaguely colour like feeling for
your eyeballs. This system has
been used since Space Invaders
to produce colour on a budget,
and was even used on Magnavox’s
Odyssey, the first ever console.
However the Vectrex has the advantage
of having a default screen size, allowing
the ‘colours’ to line up perfectly every
time.
In the 70s the Stereovision system came in, using the same light
wavelength manipulating polarised glasses of the 50s, but with a
special lens to allow all the footage to come from one projector,
thereby avoiding the synchronisation problems that had dogged
it before. The problem at this time was the quality of the movies
themselves, with the 3D being used as a gimmick to spice up adult
and low budget horror movies.
But enough of overcoming the limitations
of mere colour! This is about adding a whole
new dimension, and cover it it did. In fact, the
Vectrex 3D glasses even managed to add full
colour as standard! And it did it in an extremely
ingenious manner. Here comes the science part,
concentrate!
Again and again brave little 3D has taken a run up and attempted
to make the hurdle into the mainstream standard of media
viewing, and every decade since the 50s it has failed.
In the 80s, Hollywood decided to repurpose the Western, releasing
‘Comin’ at Ya!’. With people realising how well the system
actually worked, there was yet another small resurgence, with
bigger budget horror movies leading the way. Fortunately a lot
of popular movie series were just entering their trilogy phase, so
we were blessed with such classics as Jaws 3D, Amityville 3D and
the 3-filled Friday the 13th Part III 3D! I remember at that time
seeing the animated feature ‘Starchaser: The Legend of Orin’ and
being amazed at the effect.
It was at this time that 3D finally penetrated the home market, in
Japan the relatively unknown VHD (Video High Density) system,
a bizarre mixture of CD and vinyl record which also had a 3D
system available. This used a LCD shutter glass system, which was
an important step in the process toward a fully digital single screen
solution for 3D.
Atari Battlezone
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Alan Vader
The Vectrex, as a vector producing machine uses the light gun
inside the TV tube to draw one continuous line, rather than the
many horizontal lines a normal CRT uses. Imagine it as a sort
of ‘dot to dot’ picture, the gun knows where the points are, and
draws from point to point, building up the image. The gun can
only go so far in a set amount of time though. It’s like having a
set amount of ink for each 10th of a second, so a more complex
display produces flicker, as the gun can’t draw everything on screen
in one go.
This was a limitation in the ‘more affordable’ screen used on
the Vectrex. But knowing how long things are on screen for
so exactly, having a set standard for the display, allowed
the wizards at Smith Engineering to come up with a
maths based solution to the 3D problem. With Shutter
glasses being prohibitively expensive the solution was
thus. The welding-goggle-like glasses contain an
interchangeable disc with a set of colours printed
on them. In use, the disc spins and alternately
shows each eye the screen and also shows
the correct colour for the current piece
of graphics the machine has produced,
this happens so quickly as to be
imperceptible to the human eye,
tricking it into seeing not only
a colour, but a 3D image! It’s
like electronic magic! The
tight synchronisation between
console, screen and piece of
spinning plastic allows this, and
it’s maths that makes it happen.
Study hard at school kids!
Unfortunately this peripheral was not enough to save
the Vectrex from oblivion. The games crash in the USA and
the growing home computer market in the UK had no place for
it, and most of all it was hella’ expensive! And that’s true today as
well, a complete Vectrex 3D glasses set runs to well over the £300
mark these days, and that’s if you can find one on your online
auction site of choice. Right now there’s one of the games available
and that’s just shy of £150 alone!
So it’s not something everyone can experience, but there are people
out there who want to live the dream. Online at madtronix.com
there’s a fleshling that produces his own peripherals, the 3d glasses
are especially interesting as they use a slightly modified CD drive
to produce the effect. Ingenuity recreating past ingenuity, it’s an
amazing thing!
But let’s talk about more mainstream climes, what of the big two
of that period? In the land of the rising Sun it was Sega who cast
the first stone into the 3D pond. By 1987 consoles were back on
the menu worldwide, so Sega took their Master System console
and tried their hand with ‘The Sega 3D Glasses’. These used the
more modern (and now more affordable!) LCD shutter system as
seen on the VHD systems earlier that decade. LCD shutter glasses
use electronic signals from the console to alternately turn off and
on LCD shutters. The display in turn shows the left and right
images, feeding them to the correct eye. This synchronisation will
cause problems for the modern game collector, so you should be
forewarned if you decide to try out this technology. At the time,
televisions pretty much only came in one flavour, CRT and 60
frames per second. (Or 50 for us in euro PAL land!) As a result,
only a display of this type will do, and when was the last time
you saw a nice big square CRT television in your local branch
of Rumbelows eh? Some late 90s televisions sport 100 frames
per second displays, these also are 3D unfriendly, so it’s a bit of a
minefield.
A good cheap way of testing is by trying to use a lightgun with
your display of choice. The glasses are pricey, but a lightgun can be
had for a tenner or so. If it works with that, then you’re probably
‘3D ready’ as they call it these days.
It should go without saying that flatscreen displays are a no-no. As
time goes on, the refresh rates of these displays are improving, but
the people making them are hardly spending time coming up with
ways to make 30 year old games look good and work on them.
Maybe one day some company will spot this gap in the market
and give us the dream retro gaming TV, but until that time, try
and find a cheap old TV. Thankfully they’re still out there, so give
one a good home eh?
Design-wise the Sega glasses have an Arnold Schwarzenvartzen
in Terminator vibe, but beneath their smooth exterior, there’s
a common or garden set of LCD shutters hidden away. They
are alarmingly small though. Those with an adult size head or
helmet could easily damage them, and most examples found on
the second hand market bear the scars, with cracked bridges and
broken off arms being a common occurence.
The Vectrox 3D Imager
The Master System was a curious beast region-wise. In Japan it was
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RETRO CORNER
Alan Vader
initially released as the SG-1000 way back in 83 on the same day
as the Famicom (NES), unfortunately it was inferior to Nintendo’s
offering, so it was upgraded a year later to the Mark II, and again
2 years later to the Mark III. Finally in 1986 it was redesigned into
the Master System model and released to the West. In 1987 this
model was released in Japan with all the add-on components that
had been released thus far for the Mark III. This made it superior
to our own Master System, with improved sound, built in autofire
and a plug socket for the 3D glasses. But Sega had to make the
glasses compatible with the Mark III, so included a card that
plugged into the card game slot on that model.
Importers beware, this card is NOT compatible with Western
models. A black Western version must be used, although the
glasses themselves are region-free so to speak. Since the Western
Master System was released before the glasses, no such convenient
port was included, so the card is the de facto way of using it. This
also means that owners of the Master System II are not in the 3D
funclub. Since it has no card slot, the format was abandoned at
that point.
So after all that if you’re feeling up for it, you can take a look at
the cost of a set of these glasses. Currently they hover around the
£70-£100 mark for a complete set, although variances in quality
and completeness can cause it to rise and fall.
And what of the games? In all 8 were released and on average you
should expect to pay around £20 or less for each of them with one
singular exception.
OutRun 3D, this title was only released in Europe and Brazil, so
expect to pay over the odds (£70!) to compete against the rabid
OutRun fanbase online. For that money you get a solid OutRun
game, with a slightly choppy framerate and some extra songs to
choose on the ingame radio.
Blade Eagle 3D is a simplistic shoot em’ up with very agressive
3D depth effects.
lightgun based arcade version.
Poseiden Wars 3D is a FPS where the ‘P’ stands for periscope,
you take on an enemy fleet and well, shoot a lot.
Finally there’s Space Harrier 3D, we all know Space Harrier, but
this version doesn’t really do it justice, with weak 3D effects, it’s a
shame it wasn’t released on more capable hardware.
Which was another problem with the way Sega made the
glasses. By using the card port to control the glasses, they were
incompatible with future Sega consoles. By using a more common
one such as the controller port, even when Sega gave up on it,
some clever coders could have added support to future Megadrive
releases, and it’s a darn shame. The technology was there, but
gaming hardware wasn’t. Polygons were in their infancy and
buttery smooth gameplay was only in the arcades, choppy 3D is
never good on the eyes. With the right processing power behind it,
3D could have been a great success.
At almost the same time, and unbeknownst to us in the West,
Nintendo took their first stab at 3D with the Famicom 3D
System. Personally I had no knowledge of this item until recently,
and it was a real surprise. To us in the West, we consider Sega to
be the de facto 3D guys, since they actually released their device
here in Blighty. But it existed for a short moment in the land of
the rising sun, and as such is an interesting history piece, since
most people consider Nintendo’s first and most famous 3D flop
to be the ill-fated Virtual Boy. But there was another flop, and this
was it.
Outwardly, the glasses have that spot welder vibe that the Vectrex
glasses sported. But that said, this style of design allows for a lot
more flexibility, accommodating larger heads and even glasses
if required. But beneath is nearly exactly the same shutters and
cabling as seen on the Sega glasses, so much so that you can
actually use them with each other, or at the same time if you want
Zaxxon 3D is surprisingly not actually like original Zaxxon, which
would have looked great in 3D, but would have been hard to do
with Master System hardware. What you do get is a rear view 3D
shooter with some fantastic trench run segments.
Missile Defence 3D (No relation to Missile Command!) is a nice
looking lightgun game where you act as peacemaker between two
thermonuclear warfaring cities. Yes, another peripheral will be
required!
Maze Hunter 3D is a multi-plane romp through (You guessed it!)
mazes where you hit abstract monsters with a stick, but the 3D is
really nice.
Line of Fire is a military themed shoot em’ up with a relaxed pace
and a different vehicle for each stage, drastically different from the
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The Famicon 3D System Glasses
RETRO CORNER
Alan Vader
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RETRO CORNER
to share the 3D world with a friend or loved one. All you need is
an average everyday stereo headphone splitter.
The Famicom glasses use the controller port for synchronisation,
which would have been great if it wasn’t for Nintendo’s hobby
of never reusing the same connector twice. If they had, and if
this peripheral had taken off, what might have been? A fully 3D
Starfox? We can only imagine!
For anyone interested in owning such hardware, you should be
warned that there are some pretty huge barriers to actually using
them here in the West. Firstly you will need Japanese Famicom
hardware; the controller port that is required for the glasses is
completely different from the ones on Western NES consoles.
Secondly you will need a television that can support an entirely
NTSC RF signal, which could be a real challenge to most of us
here in Euro land. There is the slightly more pricey AV Famicom
model if you can find it though. Then the next hurdle, some of
the titles were only released on Nintendo’s proprietary ‘Famicom
Disk System’, a bulky add-on that sat beneath the console and read
specially designed magnetic floppy disks. This allowed Nintendo
to basically provide downloadable games, although you had to visit
your local game emporium to use a special kiosk to pay for and
install the software. The disks are still out there, but of course, with
magnetic media having a shorter shelf life than most, being certain
of getting a working copy can be hit and miss.
Nintendo had a problem compared to Sega when it came to
3D. Sega, as arcade game makers were already striving out into
the world of scaling graphics, and titles like OutRun and Space
Harrier lent themselves perfectly to 3D conversion. Nintendo
didn’t have such titles to rely on and unfortunately didn’t exactly
come up with a new spin on things, in fact, they let their third
party companies pretty much copy Sega’s titles, some for the
better, some for the worse.
We’ll start with the better. Falsion (Disk System) is basically the
same as Zaxxon 3D minus the snazzy trench runs, but that said,
being coded by the geniuses at Konami certainly helped drag this
game up beyond the aforementioned title. It’s smoother, with great
music and gameplay, which is to be expected from a company with
such a legendary shooter pedigree.
Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally (Disk System) is a sequel
to an earlier racer. This was a disk based title, although being such
a thing also allowed it to use another of Nintendo’s inventions,
the ‘Disk Fax’. This kiosk allowed you to upload high scores to
Nintendo so you could compare your abilities with players all over
the worl...ummm...Japan? It’s a nippy little racer with multiple
routes, and apparently it has a historically important first on its
cover; it’s the first time Luigi was depicted as taller and slimmer
than Mario.
Tobidase Daisakusen (Disk System) is blatant Space Harrier
knock off, with a shameless dragon boss and checkerboard floor.
Although it was kinda’ impossible to do a working 3D floor any
other way with the hardware available at the time. To differentiate
itself, the player character didn’t fly and shoot until the boss
battles, so you had to run all the way to the boss avoiding enemies
and jumping huge pits. It’s hard to imagine that this cheeky piece
of gaming was made by none other than Square, which went on to
make the Final Fantasy series just a few years later.
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RETRO CORNER
This game was also released in the West, with the slightly more
pronounceable name of ‘The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner’ (I
said pronounceable, I didn’t say shorter!) The 3D problem for this
version was solved with a cheap pair of card red/blue anaglyph
glasses and the game was rewritten to support them. This wasn’t a
great solution, since you lost the colour in the game.
Square repeated this with Highway Star, another Sega knock off.
This time OutRun was their target, later released in the West as
‘Rad Racer’, with card glasses natch.
Square rounded all of this off with JJ: Tobidase Daisakusen Part
II which was a cartridge remake of the first game, with changed
graphics, music and greater difficulty. It was at that time that they
finally left Sega alone to pursue fantasies of their own!
2 other titles round out the 7 that were ever released for this
peripheral, Attack Animal Gakuen is an even more shameless
Space Harrier clone, with the player character replaced with a
School girl (Oh Japan!) who changes her dress between stages and
fights against some pretty bizarre bosses.
Cosmic Epsilon rounds out the Space Harrier game party, but
it’s by far the best of the lot. With an incredibly inventive (For the
time!) 3D floor that portrays seas, roads and much more than just
a checkerboard pattern, it’s really quite impressive. Unfortunately
neither system was a success, with price and a lack of games killing
them off far too soon.
And here we are now in the present, with 3D making its latest
attempt at a comeback, and so far...it’s not so good. The Nintendo
3DS seems to be floundering as far as 3D is concerned, with
Nintendo releasing a 2D model, which seems bizarre considering
the biggest selling point of the console was its fancy 3D screen.
3D television has slowly died off, and 3D movies are becoming
rarer, with the promised 3D Star Wars remakes disappearing in a
puff of midochlorins. (Shouldn’t have started with the prequels Mr
Lucas!)
Maybe it’s that the technology just isn’t quite there yet as far as
displays are concerned. You humans live your whole lives viewing
3D, so why wouldn’t you want it for your games?
For the first time in memory, there’s a second wave this decade.
Oculus Rift is impressing most people who use it, and as I write
this Sony has just announced its own 3D headset, with rumblings
that Microsoft may have something in the works for us as well.
Could this finally be the decade of 3D? The 90s taught us that the
Lawnmower Man virtual reality future was still a good while away,
is 20 years enough?
This one’s really up to the game makers and shakers out there. If
you look at the 3D gaming world of the past, apathy and a lack of
processing power and inventiveness stymied it’s progress. There’s
no such excuse for it this time, and us bedroom coders are at the
forefront of what will really sell these items. So when your children
ask you ‘Where were you when 3D failed in the 10s?’ what will
you tell them? And what did you say in your head when you read
‘10s’? What ARE we supposed to be calling this decade anyway?
Until next time! Alan Vader «
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Who we are...
IND13 is a games magazine dedicated to independent games
development. The team is made up of voluntary contributors
from different areas of independent games development.
We’ve created a magazine which discusses topics we think
are important to, and cater to the fans of, independent games
development.
The Team:
Richard Hoffmann, Editor-in-Chief
Our aim is to create interesting news, reviews and articles, all
focusing on independent games development. The nucleus
of our team is based in the UK but we hope to have a team
stretching the globe. We aim to have independent gaming
news from the UK, US, Europe and Asia, but also from all other
gaming territories.
Rokas Butkus, Design, Features
The team behind IND13 are all volunteers, and we are giving up
our time because we are passionate about independent games
development. The content of the magazine will be made up
of articles created by the IND13 team but also by voluntary
contributors from the games industry.
Advertising is available in the magazine, at this time all
proceeds will go into the development and stability of IND13’s
production. Paying for advertising will also mean we can cover
paying clients’ titles with editorial as well as with traditional
advertising placements in the magazine. We also give pro
bono ad placements to the companies the team work for, in
exchange for our time spent contributing to the magazine and
to keep our employers happy.
We hope you enjoyed the magazine and please do get in touch
with questions and comments.
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Harry Cole, Publisher
Lee Smith, Creative Director, Features
Alan Vader, Retro Corner, Features
Sophie Rossetti, Copy Editor
Website:
www.ind13.com
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/ind13
Twitter:
@official_Ind13
To contribute articles and editorial enquires:
editorial@ind13.com
For advertising enquires:
advertising@ind13.com
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Issue Two The Independent Games Development Magazine

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