Look at all of this Office Space!

So, here we are. I’ve just finished putting my computer desk together and I have to say, I’m liking the looks of this place. Dank basement smell? Check. Rats running around through some kind of hodgepodge of crumpled news papers, mildew infested dry wall fragments, and tattered bits of bum clothing? Double check. Flickering lights that hang menacingly from cords that dangle precariously from cracked ceiling fixtures? You guessed it…check.

So atop my desk is my trusty laptop which looks laughably small compared to the large mahogany beast it’s sitting on. But hey, the way I figure it, if you’re going to sit somewhere, even if it’s in the dank basement of an old abandoned, probably condemned building in the industrial district of Philadelphia you may as well do it with some style. And here, amid puddles of fetid water, crumbling masonry, and questionable decision making, a new XNA game is being born.

Yes, this is the home of the development team working on the game Among the Silent Stars (a working title which is arguably better than the old title “Nebulon”). How long have we been here? Well, we’ve just moved into our new cozy dank crime scene waiting to happen, but we’ve been working on the game for about a month now and boy are we making progress.

Well…sort of. We’re in design and tech demo phase right now. It’s all about, “Can we do this?” and “How do we do that?” at the moment. And so far, the answer to both questions is a resounding yes. There’s a lot of user interface testing and mouse clicking and so forth going on right now. And there is design document writing. My goodness, there is nothing more boring to me than writing a design document. It’s necessary, despite what anyone tells you about “indy gaming.” Unless you’re making the next “breakout” or Space Invaders, a design document is going to be needed to keep all of your jumbled thoughts straight. And my friends, it’s not fun to write.

We are…wait…let me explain what I mean by “we.” There is me, Josh, and then there is Eric. Eric is our artist. I’m…everything else right now. Project leader, lead developer, story writer, UI designer, and so forth. These are the hats I’m wearing right now (along with a brown superman hat that I picked up a week ago that I really like a lot). So I’m having to decide which hat to wear at what time. There is a part of me that just wants to sit down, write the story of the game, get my characters all fleshed out, and start hitting up quests and dialog and all of that fun creative stuff.

But that’s just not how I’m going to go about this thing. The truth is, I’m a programmer in my day job, a VB.Net developer to be exact. I know how projects go, and I’ve watched how projects are managed. You don’t get a big project done by doing the fun parts first. OK, well, that’s only partly true. I really love laying out how a thing is going to work (architecting I believe it’s called) and if you spend the right amount of time doing that, a project runs much more smoothly than if you don’t. So for me at least, you do get a job done by doing the fun part first. But that’s because I’m strange. Here the fun part however would be the creative bits like characters and story. But games don’t just architect themselves and especially not RPG’s.

Yes friends, I said RPG. One developer, one artist. It’s crazy, I’m aware. I’m also realistic about it. Hence the design document. We are going to go about this thing the way that it should be gone about (or do this thing the way it should be done, whichever you like better). Right now we have twenty four independent game engine specs from an inventory system to the game interface customization screen. And we’re going to spec each of these pieces out like we imagine professional game developers do. Well, I’m going to spec them out and Eric will tell me where I’m right, and where I’m crazy.

As I’ve said, we’re about a month into development already and I’ve got a bunch of tech demos up and running on all manner of different pieces of the game. And at the moment, I’m building a fairly respectable game library of classes and enums and all sorts of happy programmer jargon.

The next phase, after I’m done fully specing out the project is writing up the project timeline. We’re hoping for a one year development cycle, though it could go past that.

Right now I have two fears. 1. That we won’t complete the game. 2. That if we do compete the game, the XNA initiative on the 360 will have fallen on its face, or that there will be so many games on it that ours will get lost in the mix.

I’m hoping to keep this developer’s blog up and running on this site so that you, dear reader(s) will get some small insight into the pitfalls and successes of making an independent game.

Welcome aboard…oh, and watch where you step, I’m not sure if that’s water or...something else.