Conversely, it’s the most awesome thing in the world when somebody writes a good review. So, you can imagine my delight when I read a review of Star Hammer Tactics last week on PSPenguin.net that gave the game 4-stars. Most importantly, I think the reviewer really got what Star Hammer Tactics was intended to be – a short-burst pick-up-and-play strategy game. I like when that happens!

You can read it here.

Most of my Black Lab Games-related focus over the last few months has been on minis – small, single-player games for PSP, which also work on PlayStation 3. I’ve got a few things on the go and I’ll talk about that (in length!!) in other posts in the future.

Whilst most gamers are excited about NGP because of Call of Duty, or Metal Gear Solid 4, I’m excited for another reason. The NGP will play minis! So, the games I’m working on now will/should run on the new portable, as soon as it comes out. Whenever that is.

At the same press event, Sony also announced PlayStation Suite – a gaming platform for Android devices (phones, tablets, etc). It was stated that PlayStation Suite will support PSP games. So, assuming that includes minis, BLG games will be playable on a number of Android devices too.

Wow, support for two new platforms on the same day, and I’m guessing without much (if any) extra work on my part.

Awesome. Just Awesome.

The Good

1. Star Hammer Tactics released on Xbox 360

On June 13, after 3 or 4 attempts at getting the game through peer review, Star Hammer Tactics was approved for sale, via Xbox Live Indie Games. This was pretty exciting for a number of reasons. It was the first game of my own design that I’d released for quite a few years, and it was the first console game I’d every released.

2. Star Hammer Tactics released on PlayStation® platforms

On July 14, Star Hammer Tactics was released as a “mini” for PSP and PS3. This was actually more exciting for me than the Xbox 360 release. See, to be “approved” as an Xbox Live Indie Games developer just requires that you pay Microsoft some money – then you can made and release pretty much anything, will little quality control. It’s all very “hands off”. However to release minis requires an application to be submitted to Sony and approved, and for the game(s), once developed, to pass through Sony’s QA process. I feel like minis is a more “professional” platform. So to release a game on this platform, to me at least, felt like I’d leveled up as a game developer.

3. A New Look

Late in the year, I asked a former colleague (from when I was at Interzone Games) to design a new logo for Black Lab Games. The old logo was designed at a time when I was still working out what I wanted Black Lab Games to be – what direction the company would take, and the way it would present itself to the world. I didn’t give Darren much to work with, and he did a fine job considering. A year or so down the track and I’ve got a much better idea, and by working with Simon, was able to get a new look that I think really works well for where I want the company to go.

The Less Good

1. Star Hammer Tactics review scores

A lot of effort was made to get Star Hammer Tactics reviewed widely. None of the larger sites, like IGN or Gamespot picked it up, and in hindsight maybe that’s a good thing. The review scores ranged from 40% to around 70%. Whilst I certainly wouldn’t expect all perfect 10s, 50% and below is disappointing.

I think perhaps I misjudged a few aspects of the game design. Also, I probably underestimated the level that needed to be reached in terms of aesthetics, ever for a handheld, turn-based strategy game.

The silver lining of these reviews is that I’ve got a bullet point list of things to work on for future games.

2. Only One Game

Star Hammer Tactics was the only game that Black Lab Games release in 2010. When it was released mid-year, I had hopes of getting another game out before the end of the year. That didn’t pan out for a number of reasons. One of these was focus – I started several games in the second half of 2010, and none are finished yet. I guess you could call them all prototypes, and say some were aborted when it became apparent they wouldn’t fly.

Lessons Learned

There are a couple of important lessons I’ve learned in 2010 that I’ll be carrying into 2011. In no particular order:

Get more external feedback. I only got feedback from a handful of people during the development of Star Hammer Tactics. It was good feedback, but probably not enough.

Despite what some people say, art is important. I’ve read articles and posts where people say that gameplay is king. It probably is, but art is what sells a game to a potential player. I’ve already taken some steps to ensure that future Black Lab Games games look at a lot better than Star Hammer Tactics did.

Plan better in the early stages of a project. It’s ok to abandon a project that doesn’t look like it’s going to work out, but it’s better to think really carefully before starting it in the first place.

So, 2010 was a year of some cool achievements, and some mild disappointments. I’m pretty excited at the prospects for 2011, but more on that in another post.

L8r, Paul

This blog has been pretty quiet lately, because most of my time since the release of Star Hammer Tactics on PSP/PS3 has been spent on a non-Black Lab Games project. I’m not really in a position to discuss it, but it’s a project that I think has a lot of merit and I’m very happy to be involved with it. (And, one of the awesome things about being an independent game developer is that when a friend comes along and says they’ve got a really cool project, ‘wanna be in on it?’, you’re in a position to say ‘yessir!’ )

I’m also working on a new game as much as I can. (Well, not totally new.) Part of the reason for releasing Star Hammer Tactics on both Xbox LIVE Indies Games, and PlayStation miniS was to see which would be the best platform for me to focus on. Well people, we have a winner….and it’s miniS.

Development of Star Hammer Tactics was quite interesting from a technical viewpoint. I started on the Xbox, using XNA and the C# language. Porting it to be a native PSP application was interesting, given that their is no C# compiler for the PSP (C++ only), the hardware is a lot less powerful, the screen a lot smaller, etc.

Obviously it’s all doable, and I got a pretty good codebase out of it, but it wasn’t really designed with the PSP in mind from the start. A key focus over the last months has been redesigning the core game engine to be more PSP-targeted, and use the available hardware a bit better. That process is coming along nicely, and I think I’m putting together an excellent foundation to create a decent number of games over the next year or two.

Good times!

L8r, Paul

Presently, it’s out in Europe and Oceania (meaning Australia and New Zealand basically). (A full list of countries can be found here)

If you’ve been looking for a easy-to-learn strategy game that can be played in short bursts, (or extended sessions if your in the mood!), maybe consider checking it out. (If you have Media Go installed, click here)

Oh, and here is a video I made for the miniS release last week:

Coolio.

L8r, Paul

I’m excited to announce that Star Hammer Tactics for PSP and PS3 will be available in Europe and Oceania from July 14th. That’s next week!

The complete list of countries is:

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Czech Republic
• Denmark
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Ireland
• Italy
• Luxembourg
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Norway
• Poland
• Russia
• Saudi Arabia
• South Africa
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• United Arab Emirates
• United Kingdom.

Star Hammer Tactics will be available via the PlayStation Store, which can be accessed by anyone with a free PlayStation Network account from your PSP, PS3, or via Sony Media Go.

Cool!

]]> http://blacklabgames.com.au/blog/2010/07/star-hammer-tactics-for-psp-and-ps3-available-in-europe-and-oceania-from-july-14th/feed/ 7 http://blacklabgames.com.au/blog/2010/06/using-ai-to-find-bugs/ http://blacklabgames.com.au/blog/2010/06/using-ai-to-find-bugs/#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 02:16:35 +0000 Black Lab Games http://blacklabgames.com.au/blog/?p=332 Continue reading →]]> I wanted to share a technique I recently used in developing Star Hammer Tactics to find crash bugs. (BTW, this post will probably be more interesting to developers, especially programmers.)

A few weeks ago, I thought the game was finished. All of the tasks on the task list were complete, and I’d tested the game extensively. I tried all sorts of crazy things to try and crash it, or make it misbehave, and it always worked just fine. Convinced that it was ready to release, I submitted the game to Sony for acceptance. A few days later, I get the acceptance testing report, and to my disappointment found that the game had failed. Apparently it was unstable and crashed a lot. What!?!?

Now, being a small company, I don’t have access to a huge QA department. Whilst I make every effort to ensure that my code is as robust as possible, I’m only human, and I guess a few bugs had crept in. I got some friends to try the game, and after quite a few rounds of combat, the game froze. Awesome!

The problem was that it took at least 30-45 minutes to find *one* instance of the game failing. Furthermore, there was no way at all to tell what might have caused the game code to freeze. I needed a way to test the game in such a way as to find problems more quickly. At this point, I remembered that earlier in development, I’d used two competing AI players to tune the gameplay and balance the power of the various types of ship. Hmmm, competing AI…

What I was able to do was configure the game to play itself, non-stop, for hours at a time. Doing this through the debugger meant that if a problem occurred, I’d know were the problem was, and would  have a better chance of finding the cause. The good news is that it didn’t take long to find a couple of bugs that only occurred in rare circumstances, but had caused the previously reported “instability”.

So, if you’re working on a game, consider a mode in which the game plays itself. It’s a great way to find bugs!

Since I’m working on PSP miniS lately, I’ve been keeping tabs on new releases via pspminis.com and the Sony PlayStation Blog. And one title that’s been getting some attention is Coconut Dodge.

In Coconut Dodge, you play as Clawrence, a treasure hungry crab. You collect falling treasure whilst dodging falling coconuts. It’s addictive, and a really easy game to learn to play which is something I think is underrated these days. I think the most awesome thing about Coconut Dodge though, is that after it was released the developers solicited feedback from players and then made changes and released a free update that addressed issues that player had. 360 degree feedback….excellent!

Coconut Dodge is good, simple fun, and worthwhile looking into if you’re a PSP or PS3 owner.

L8r, Paul

So, what now? Well, testing and publishing.

I’ve come to realize over the last few years just how important the publishing part is. As a young plucky coder, I thought that developers did all of the work. We make the games. What else could there possible be to it? Step 1, Game idea. Step 2, Code, Step 3, Release game on unsuspecting public. Right?

Well, not quite.

Publishers in the games industry are generally seen as lumbering giants of organizations, corporate fat cats preying on developers and milking them for all they are worth. (Or at least that’s the view of many developers). Deals are done often in a skewed way that ensures that the publisher takes the least amount of risk, and seemly gets the greatest reward if a game is a hit. (This post I read last week was quite interesting!)

Whether this view is correct or true or fair, I’ve decided that for now at least, Black Lab Games will self-publish through digital distribution outlets. Services such as Xbox Live and the PlayStation Store are moderately accessible to smaller developers, compared with the various retail outlets on offer for boxed games.

Lately I’ve been getting Star Hammer Tactics ready for release on the PlayStation® Store – soon it will be available for anybody with a PlayStation Network account, and a PSP or a PS3. All games on the PS Store require an age rating. That means PEGI in Europe, and ESRB in the US, so I’ve been signing up Black Lab Games to these various organisations, and I’ll have to spend time submitting the game to get is age rated.

At the start of a project, when you’re designing game systems, code systems, presentations of the game etc, tasks like getting the game classified aren’t really on your mind. However such tasks are part of the broad ranging area of “publishing”, and without completing them, the game will never be played by anyone (other than the developers).

There is a lot more to be an independent game developer that just writing code and doing art!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to plan an advertising campaign.

L8r, Paul

• Star Hammer Tactics for PSP/PS3 minis has been the main development focus of BLG over the last few weeks. It’s progressing really well. I have to say, working on the PSP is awesomely good fun! Kinda like old times, back in the ’90s when I was in my prime Most of a re-usable game “framework” has been developed, and most of the game is playable. I’m hopeful that it will be finished in a few weeks.
• Star Hammer Tactics for Xbox 360 is “complete”, minus some minor tweaks. It’s been to peer review (a process in which it’s reviewed for technical and content problems) a couple of times, but hasn’t passed yet. Generally the issues have been pretty obscure and minor, but still valid enough reasons not to release the game.  When the “minis” version is done, I’ll get back to fixing the handful of review  issues and putting it back into the review queue.
• Star Hammer. This project is currently on hold. As the project has developed, the scope and ideas for what I’d like to do with the game has increased a lot. I have a pretty clear vision for what I want the game to be, but I don’t have the resources at my disposal to make it at the moment. Rather than build and release something I’m not completely happy with, I’d rather hold off a bit and tackle it again when the time is right. The project is not cancelled, just “delayed until further notice”.

I don’t like committing to release timeframes, because as a lone developer it’s so easy to miss deadlines when things go wrong or change. It’s not like I can delegate work to somebody else on the team. That said, I’m hoping to have both versions of Star Hammer Tactics out in June. But that’s not a commitment, ok!. Then probably on to something without “Star” in the name for a while.

Oh, and I’ve also been working on a special project with a friend that I’ll probably be able to talk more about in a few months. Good times!

L8r! Paul