Rummy Games is back in touch! In the new Dev Diary #28, let us remember how it all began. This was long before Saturated Outer Space. Still think that development, even in game development sphere, is not about creativity? The stories of our three colleagues can not only convince you of the opposite, but motivate you to do new stuff! How did it start? Spontaneously. How did you gain experience? It was a relatively long, getting a lot of “bumps” process, and, moreover, far from being only in the one “outer space”. We will talk about the pitfalls, working on other gamedev projects, and our first steps at the beginning of this journey. [h3]Dmitry (Lead Screenwriter and Game Designer): [/h3]I started programming solely because I wanted to create games. I wrote my first game when I was in the 8th grade thanks to school courses. I was very inspired by the process of working out the design of the game, writing the script and other things. There is such a game “Space Invaders”, in which the camera is placed on the top, and the field is divided into two parts: from the player’s side there is the ship moving left and right, and enemies approaching in parallel, which must be destroyed by this ship. There are many clones, you may have heard of one of the most popular: "Galaxian" for NES. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34771562/e7b697b4accdba6cc33217b441eef47832d2db97.jpg[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34771562/28768e5a83bf0254f9d12bfef81c0c0fe554bc04.jpg[/img] I also made another analogue, in which there are three levels with a huge number of cutscenes. I really wanted to make an awesome script 😀. All this was done in QBasic. And it was the biggest “code sheet” in my life. Of course, there was also a “beautiful” interface. This was my first creation at a local competition and I won 3rd place. Then there was experience with Visual Studio. I made the Tangram game: a puzzle, in fact. Then there was a long break, during which there were some projects, but none of them reached the game stage. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34771562/fcd6c92315eb4f1511d8145c484857cdc061b71c.jpg[/img] One of my favorite games that I am still very proud of is “Fart Fly”. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34771562/ff4e87bd68884d678b5707665df4de70869a1c48.png[/img] This was my first “serious” project where I tried to maintain the documentation and the backlog. In terms of the number of ideas and the result obtained, it was good, but the team not only met the deadline, but also managed to change some elements of the mechanics. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34771562/bf2712cdda96c1cc2cdcaddca3ea9e01b9b7e75a.png[/img] I was doing “Fart Fly” already when I worked on “Saturated Outer Space”. And I didn’t do it alone, but also with the guys from “S.O.S.”: Igor did the programming part, Aleksander Folomkin (already left the team) helped to set up the balance, Ivan Malykh (also left the team) drew and made the sound. It was basically a small side project within the Saturated Outer Space project. There were even thoughts of embedding it as a mini-game 😁. [h3]Ilya (UI/UX Designer): [/h3]It was not that interesting for my side. I was also taking part in Game Jam and made several games. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34771562/848dc97cc18978ab1513f59e205e0815b27be596.png[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34771562/9f0fcfca136b7aca789e6e8c907008055b917d97.png[/img] One of them is called “HandJob”: at the construction site, bricks are thrown up, and the “builder” player must arrange them according to the level. I was actively involved in game design, suggested mechanics, and I can also be considered responsible for the name of the project and partly for level design. The entire level design was created “by hand” on the GameMaker engine. What is remarkable: although it was a hyper-casual game, it was impassable at the same time: it had well-developed physics, and the gameplay becomes more complicated with each level. By the way, it is available for download on itch.io. The second game is much easier (called [url=https://progressor.itch.io/marsbase]Mars Base[/url]). I made this hyper-casual game with my friend, the idea of which was to assemble a space station in orbit of the rocket. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34771562/a1c62840b496b0634896416f71de327c39380f99.png[/img] During the Pokémon GO boom, my friend and me wanted to make our own one in 2017. It was playable, but the process of working on it was remembered by others. Thanks to him, I got my first experience of writing documentation. Before that, we did not conduct it, all issues were resolved on phone calls. Without documentation, the work was carried out “in a stream”: we sat down as a team and played the game for 5-6 hours in a row. After 2020, I came to “Saturated Outer Space” and I am working only on it up to this day. There are plans for other projects, but the implementation is not yet started. [h3]Igor (Game Designer, Lead Developer): [/h3]I have had many different attempts to create games since the university time, but all this was at the level of experiments. All the projects were made for “members only” and were not of a commercial nature. The mechanics of the games were very simple. For example, a text quest, in which the scenario, although it was “branchy”, was not very complicated. It was a JavaScript browser game, made just for myself. In 2019, I got to DevGAMM, thanks to which I learned that there are game developers in Russia. It was strange for me, because before that I did not consider myself as a possible game creator, and all the ideas about game developers in Russia ended with games like Vangers, Space Rangers, Allods and Paragraph 78. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34771562/b028734d1e0c102aa9498167d92c7e5961fa5416.png[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34771562/55abf7bbffb6eb7a9a661c0d3706b3227adc3fec.png[/img] An interesting fact: Nikita (the head of the “S.O.S.” project) and Dmitry (the lead screenwriter) were also in the hall at the time of the awards ceremony. We all had yet to get acquainted with Igor. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34771562/909d426faad5301532cc388ca19e0e598dff6d58.png[/img] In 2019-2020, started to actively take courses, create the first prototypes. The developments did not go beyond prototypes, but at the same time they looked good in my resume. There were many pen trials in Unreal Engine, GameMaker and Unity. Fart Fly, which Dmitry mentioned, was developed jointly. And below are examples of other surviving prototypes. 1. Prototype of Top-Down shooter (reference - [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/219150/Hotline_Miami/]Hotline Miami[/url]): [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34771562/58f9f95b393996bf6d1538b92a7616ae8d277914.png[/img] 2. Lanist manager (ref - [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/535230/Domina/]Domina[/url]): [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34771562/6b872f6b169174e4a90dc36eecd9151342113f5b.png[/img] 3. [url=https://ikonyaev.itch.io/dark-salsa]Narrative slasher [/url](Dark Souls + The Stanley Parable), you can download and play: [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34771562/4161d8f23c2414504e6e0960e078ea21d069f933.png [/img] At the moment, I highlight 2 technical areas that are most interesting to me: [list] [*] Artificial intelligence (AI). Design and programming of NPC behavior. [*] User interface (UI). Design and layout of interfaces in the engine. [/list] [h3]Another developer colleague:[/h3] In the gaming industry, I only made visual novels on the Ren'Py engine, but I didn't really finish them. Actively engaged in directing, was an actor, worked in the theater for 4 years. The first directing experience was very difficult, because at the age of 21 it is very difficult to hold such a position: you yourself have not yet been formed as a person, plus you constantly have to “fight” with your subordinates in the theater. The pain of the first experiments is when you do a general run and you already see that your studio does not like what you have done. The opposition between the “author's” vision and the commercial one began: people want to have fun, not everyone is ready to delve into complex thoughts and ideas. Since then, even when I write something for work, the thought is always in my head: “Don’t write like that, they won’t understand, don’t, you need to communicate in the same language with your “viewer””. But my soft skills and ability to smooth out conflicts often saved me, although there were still unpleasant situations that forced me to just accept. As you can see, many members of our team got into the project in different ways, but it cannot be said that it was by chance. Therefore, instead of a summary, it would be more logical to say that each of you can make a significant contribution to the development of the game too! "Saturated Outer Space" is looking for testers. [b]If you are passionate about games and are a fan of the RPG genre, then write us an email: mark.sosproject@gmail.com, or leave a request on the game website.[/b] Your work will be greatly appreciated.