Hmm, I find this very interesting. Nexon (developer/publisher of Maple Story, et al) is apparently looking to fund games by indies (judging by the budget).
We are interested in finding original, unique and promising projects at an early stage of development in order to sponsor (and in cases co-develop) and later on publish through our global network.
I’m certainly considering what this could mean for Lila Dreams. But, I’m also hesitant because of what happens when you accept other people’s money, be it development funding, venture capital, etc. Usually, you lose IP rights and a huge chunk of your revenue. (Kongregate’s Premium Games Program was a rare exception and a beautiful thing).
In the short term, that could mean Lila would get made sooner. I would do a happy dance, and that would be amazing.
In the long term, that could mean I would lose rights to my own creation. I don’t really mind to share the money, because a company like Nexon could really help market the game, and you would definitely learn from working with them.
But, I don’t want to give up my intellectual property rights for short term gains. I think of my works as franchises, not just fire and forget projects. What about the graphic novels? The spin-off games in various genres? The epic TV series? The Lila Dreams movies?! *pant, puff*
Well, I am only assuming the worst here. I guess nobody is forcing me to do anything, right? I might submit the game and, if they like it, find out what their terms are like. You never know. It might be peachy like Kongregate!
Very nice to look at, and I’ve heard that it’s a fun game, too. More evidence of great looking side-scrolling in 3d!
Now I’ll Tell You a Secret…
In case you wonder what was the outcome of all that MUD and server coding I did, well, I’m officially (but quietly) announcing that I have a new game in production! I have put up a minimal site and blog to get things rolling, but it’ll all be getting better over time.
This new game is a lot different from Lila Dreams, but I hope that you will like it. The type of game it is and my plans for it are all based on lessons learned and my constant research about the online game business. It’s also shaped by the fact that I have to keep things small because I’m the only one working on the game. That’s ok with me, though, because I want my games to be personal creations. I hope that some of the flavor of my imagination will show in all of these games, and more than that–I hope that you enjoy the flavor!
Plans are still in place to get Lila Dreams back on its feet as a project, but not until some time in 2010. I need to launch this new game, learn a lot more lessons, get cash flow going, and then I can bring Lila to life. I really want to do it right and have the means to give it the production values I envision for it.
The first time we tried to make Lila Dreams (I write that with a cringe and a smile at the same time), we used a server technology called SmartFox Server. It’s a nice bit of software, though it can be pricey for a lone indie. SmartFox offers some nice pre-built features like a buddy system and so on.
Recently, I was looking at another server tech called Project Darkstar. It’s got more advanced (but different) features than SmartFox and, yay!, it’s free and open source. I’ve been poking around with it for a few days, and I’m really liking it. But with these kinds of middleware technologies, you can’t really know how good it is until you use it for something that isn’t a demo.
SmartFox isn’t complex. That’s one of its strengths, really, because you can jump in quickly and go without a lot to learn. It gives you some high level features that you can use without any fuss.
Darkstar’s power can really only be utilized after you understand how it works. It’s designed to be built onto rather than providing ready-made features for you. So you have to know enough to be able to build your own features. It’s not beginner friendly. But that’s its strength, really, because once you get it, there’s a lot of power at your disposal for the problems that it solves.
Anyway, there is a tutorial from a 2008 JavaOne conference, and it’s based on working with a simple MUD engine built on Darkstar. You follow along and add to and change small bits here and there as a way to learn. It’s a really great thing, because you need every ounce of documentation you can squeeze out of the stone that is the Internet. (Translation: there is not much being written out there about Darkstar.)
It turns out, the code used in the tutorial is old and actually doesn’t totally work with the latest version of Darkstar. Instead of patching up the holes, I figured I’d just rewrite the whole tutorial server from scratch! No–really–this is fun! I need to learn about Darkstar, and I need to deepen my experience with Java.
But also I’m learning about how to build a multi-user game. (You may think that a game without fancy graphics isn’t like a game with, but that’s not true. With graphics or without, it has the same networking, data management, and multiplayer game logic issues.) The idea hadn’t dawned on me that making a MUD would be a great way to cut my teeth on client/server coding and technical design for an MMO. It’s loads of fun, and I’m going through all of this with Lila Dreams in the back of my mind. Lots of lights are coming on in my attic.
And, of course, my little test MUD is set in Lila’s wurld. But this isn’t something I will be releasing. It’s only a prototype from which to learn. If it all goes well, I’ll be working on a real game next, but not Lila Dreams. This is a step in that direction, though.
To anyone who visits this blog regularly, above all, I thank you! But also, I hope you will keep Lila Dreams on your radar. The project is at a standstill, but it’s not dead.
Cave Story took five years to be created, and it’s not even an online game. I’m not saying expect that kind of epic time frame, just that the previously planned release date worked on the assumption that there would be funding and a team. Well, it’s just me and my pocket lint now.
Lila Dreams is no longer slated to appear on Kongregate as a premium game. In fact, Remnants of Skystone is the only premium game which will be released in the future. Kongregate will not be green lighting any more games. The economy is bad, so certain things had to give, I’m told.
[Correction: I was under the impression that Skystone was the only other game to be released after Zenning, but it sounds like I may have misunderstood what I was told. My apologies. I didn't mean to confuse or misrepresent anything/anyone. I wish the best for all the developers who will release their premium games with Kongregate!]
This is actually not a bad thing! Since I retain all the intellectual property rights, I am now free to pursue other ways of getting the game off the ground.
The Project
The current circumstances are that I can’t continue the project immediately. I have to build my way up, starting with some other projects which are all designed to get me to the point to where I can work on Lila Dreams again. I need backend infrastructure. I need client code. I need art. And so on. That’s all coming, but being one person, I can only do it in stages.
The Technology Platform
I am pretty sure that I will be using Unity for the client. Lila Dreams will be a 3d game. Being web-embeddable or downloadable is also a nice option to keep open. Plus, there’s a fast growing number of people working with Unity, so I think the pool of talent will be rich enough to tap into later.
The Game Design
I am going to make some fairly big revisions to the design as described in this blog. The game has to be scaled down to a size I can manage alone. I have some ideas for directions I want to go, but I’m still contemplating several different possibilities that I like equally. The difficulty is to choose which one best fits this setting and what I want the game to be about in terms of multiplayer activities.
The Future
My plan is to keep quiet about the project for a while. I don’t want to raise any expectations until I have something tangible to show for it. I don’t want to reveal anything until it’s a certainty, be that gameplay, art, or business model. I will post here from time to time, but there won’t be a lot of noise until significant progress is being made.
This is indie game making, and this is reality. I am sorry to those I have disappointed, but I hope you will give me another chance later. This is a game that I won’t stop working on.
So, some time from now, when you see that Lila Dreams is back in production, it will really be back in production!
I’m generally an optimist. I try to see the good side of bad things. Sometimes, bad things turn out to not be bad things after all.
Something bad: we’re waiting for Lila Dreams to get back into production. The good thing: I get a lot of time to think more deeply about the game design while I’m working on smaller projects.
Right now I am working on a game design which isn’t Lila Dreams, but it is actually revealing a lot about some fundamentals that I hadn’t considered enough. Eventually, I would have, but with constant financial pressure bearing down on you when working on a game someone else is paying for, things just get skimmed and even skipped. It’s actually really nice to just think about the game and not have that constant nagging in my head to “hurry, hurry up!”
So this other game design has as its core mechanics a competitive combat system (which I hope to make into a multiplayer Flash game). In the course of studying other games and reading articles and all that, I am improving my process for developing a combat system. I don’t think that I would have seen some of the dimensions of the design that I see now without the “leisure” afforded by putting Lila Dreams on hold which has allowed me to marinate the ideas in my subconscious for a while.
This will undoubtedly lead to some changes in my ideas for classes and combat in general for Lila Dreams–especially if the combat is not in the context of side-scrolling control mechanics.
The more I think about it, the less I want combat to be restricted to the twitchy, 2d-plane of a side-scrolling game. It would not only open up some possibilities otherwise absent, making encounters a lot more tactical, it would also reduce technical hurdles. Action gameplay (even the more plodding sort I have planned) is a lot more demanding in terms of technical design as well as from physical resources, that is, the servers. (If combat isn’t from a side view, that change cascades to a bunch of others, but I won’t be talking about that for a while.)
The real thing I’m wrestling with at the moment is how my new insights will affect the nature of classes and skills in Lila Dreams. The old debate arises: classes or skills? There will be some of both, as I’ve always planned. There are a lot of ways to make those two play nicely together, and by exploring various approaches in some smaller projects, that will lead to a stronger design for Lila Dreams.
In this game, you are a wind spirit, and you use the Wii-mote to gesture and help a boy past obstacles and dangers. I haven’t played it, but it seems pretty novel in its mechanics and definitely has nice production values.
I love the background elements and how they make the game world feel like it has some depth. NPCs, houses, and distant hills all add to the sense that there’s more “out there” than you see in the gameplay. The soundtrack is really good, too.
I found this inspiring, so I thought I would post it in case you missed it.
I am actually pretty interested in playing Free Realms. It’s maybe the first honest attempt by a big studio to create a solid F2P game. That’s both encouraging (hey, there must be viable income there) and discouraging (big studios drown out us little guys).
But it’s got some good ideas, and it diverges from the hardcore conventions quite a bit in some ways. For example, you can explore without having to fight unless you want to. I definitely find that sort of choice appealing.
So I was watching this video of the game, and noticed that you can change “jobs” at any time. Sound familiar? And they level up independently. Well, I hadn’t really mentioned that part about Roles, but there are skills for each one that you can improve independently.
I guess I shouldn’t feel disappointed, but I do. Well, at least now I know that the idea is solid, and I’m on the right track. There’s a positive spin.
Meanwhile, I’m continually working on refining my game engine technologies, coming up with new concepts to launch that are small enough to finish quickly and will inch me closer and closer to getting Lila Dreams back in production.
This is maybe not a comprehensive plan, but I wanted to at least state publicly what I intend to do about this project. There are a lot of people interested in this game–that motivates me a lot. And it’s also very helpful that I just plain old really want to play it, too! So here’s what’s going to happen.
It’s a holiday, so that slows everyone down, I think. But also I’m crunching for a deadline and so the Flash game I’m working on for that is consuming all (like 12 hours a day) of my time. The upshot, of course, is that all that effort will have multiple payoffs, one of which is building a starting point for Lila Dreams’ client and tools. I’ve implemented some things that had only been hopeful thinking in the past, so it’s really a good thing in the long term.
Once this small project is wrapped up (at the end of December), I can start to put some part-time effort into Lila Dreams again. This will involve building up more code libraries and refining all the stuff I’m doing right now.
One way I want to do this is to create some small multiplayer games. I have a basic server implementation, but it’s not tested and is still incomplete. The best way to get this into shape to handle a full MMO is to use small games to refine it. So, you can expect some progress in that area. Those little games would also help refine the code behind Lila’s client. And, heck, maybe I could make some money on these other games, too. That would really help!
Obviously, then, Lila Dreams will not be in full production for a while. But, in the mean time, I will be releasing games and polishing up the code libraries that Lila Dreams will be constructed upon.
Let me put this in perspective: I’m so anxious to continue work on Lila Dreams that sometimes, after a 12 or 15 hour day of coding my other game, I get in bed with my laptop and just browse the source code as I drift off to sleep. No, that won’t get anything accomplished, but it keeps everything fresh in my mind so my subconscious can crank away on it.
It might be a snail’s pace for a while, but I am going to finish this game.
P.S. I’ve had some offers to help, and I will be contacting folks about this when the time comes. So, if you are one of them: I haven’t forgotten!
Just a quick post to announce that I’ve started another little blog specifically about game programming (with some business stuff in there too). It’s called “Game Geek Speak.” If you’re into Flash and/or Java programming, you might like it.
So there I was. This huge, volcanic Mount Doom of work lay before me. It was dark, grim, and the trees looked taller and meaner than usual. Programming knapsack in hand, I pursed my lips and intrepidly lifted my foot for the first steps up that steep climb…
…then I realized that I was going to need more money. Hmm. Ok, so now I’m working on that problem first. And I haven’t gone up the mountain very far in the mean time.
I guess, to keep with the metaphor, I actually left the mountain and went into town for supplies. One of my goals is to make some small games. I’m building a Flash (Flex) game engine for that, and I’m finding that a lot of the things being built are directly applicable to my beloved MMO (pardon the tech-dork spew I’m about to force upon you):
Game state system with stackable rendering layers? Check.
Component architecture for fabulous flexibility in game object creation? Got that.
Plans for more shiny game engine geek stuff? Hell yeah.
I don’t expect any of that to mean much to anybody. But it felt good, because I am making progress here! Maybe not directly, but this is all stuff that Lila Dreams has to have, so I will eventually pick it up and toss it into the existing MMO chassis–and have one hot ride!! Wooooh, yeah!
But it’s also exciting to me because this is groundwork for a bunch of small games that keep kicking around in my head. I think maybe the Universe has routed me down this path for my own good. I’m learning, I’m doing, I’ve almost got a nice little base of operations to work from so I can build up, up, up. And–eventually–that big, scary mountain won’t be quite so big anymore.
While I’m here in this self-aggrandizing reverie, I will mention (against my better judgment) that I might even start a Flash game portal site. No, not like any you have ever seen. It’ll be… er, I’d better not say anything more. Mmmyeahok.
In summary: Bad news, no progress on Lila Dreams lately. Good news, some progress on Lila Dreams lately (albeit indirectly).
Stay with me here, I’m coming back to the foot of the mountain as soon as I get a chance. Only this time, I’ll be more ready than ever.
But this isn’t something I will be releasing. It’s only a prototype from which to learn. If it all goes well, I’ll be working on a real game next, but not Lila Dreams. This is a step in that direction, though.
So this other game design has as its core mechanics a competitive combat system (which I hope to make into a multiplayer Flash game). In the course of studying other games and reading articles and all that, I am improving my process for developing a combat system. I don’t think that I would have seen some of the dimensions of the design that I see now without the “leisure” afforded by putting Lila Dreams on hold which has allowed me to marinate the ideas in my subconscious for a while.
…then I realized that I was going to need more money. Hmm. Ok, so now I’m working on that problem first. And I haven’t gone up the mountain very far in the mean time.