Friday, December 27, 2024

Selatria: A Retrospective/Post-Mortem - Part 0: Introduction

Selatria - A retrospective/post-mortem - This is a brand new blog series I've started over holiday break, and will continue into 2025, at least as long as I have topics to talk about. 

The development of Selatria was long and tumultuous. It became a long running joke from circles I was in on how long it was going to take to complete the game. It took 13 years, 6 months, and 29 days to complete the game, or 4959 days in total. 

Selatria changed my life, and opened up a lot of doors and networking opportunities into software and game development careers. But it was far from perfect, and I wanted to write this not only for others, who may have a dream game they're thinking of doing but not realize how difficult it may be for them, but for myself to see how far I've come. 

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A Retrospective(?)

I'm hesitant to call this series a "Retrospective", or at least the traditional definition of it. When I was talking through my outline for this series to others, I was bringing up points of things I wish I had done or design decisions I wish I had made, and was countered with "it wasn't in the game, so you shouldn't talk about it", which doesn't fit the traditional meaning of a retrospective, so please keep that in mind when I go into topics about my feelings and views on things, I will eventually tie it into how it affected Selatria's development, in one way or another. 

Some of the thoughts into these posts may be a bit unorganized, or I may bring up the same problem in different topics if it applies to both. This is more or less a longer-form draft of future talks/panels I plan to give at future conventions. For those who may be veterans in software or the game industry may look at some of these posts and topics and note how foolish I was, and at the same time some students or newer graduates wanting to make their own games or start a small indie game may find some of these tips incredibly helpful. 

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How did Selatria Start/Came to Be?

I have been making RPG Maker games for about 20 years. When I was in 8th grade, I saw a used copy of RPG Maker for the PS1 at an Electronics Boutique in Ontario Mills and was immediately hooked. It didn't have a way to program things in the general sense, you had to use a PS1 controller to go down a bunch of pre-scripted event commands and map things tile by tile with a D-Pad. You could save your creations on a memory card, but because the size of the memory cards were so small, you had to swap in multiple memory cards to be able to load entire games. I ended up getting one of those after-market memory cards, where you could push a button on the top to "swap" the memory card rather than changing out multiple memory cards. 


RPG Maker for PS1 (Not my copy)

I eventually got tired of using a controller to put in every single character of dialogue on the PS1/PS2 and found a download of RPG Maker XP for PC and started making small (note: really bad) games in high school. This was also the first time I was introduced to coding/programming, with the RGSS1 that was available. I would take a bunch of scripts from the internet and forums and plugged them in, not knowing exactly what anything did and not understanding how opposing systems would break one another. I took a Visual Basic course in my senior year of high school to try and learn programming, but Computer Science courses were in its infancy at the school district I was in and the teacher was a retired math teacher who was on his way to full retirement, which made it pretty much a self-study course, and didn't do much for me. I decided to drop the class after one semester and try it again in college. 

Fast forward a few years to early 2010. I was mid-way through college at this point, and with some knowledge of the C++/Java programming courses, I've started to tinker with some basic Ruby code. After struggling with a Java assignment, I met the professor for office hours, and saw a pamphlet for  the IGDA on his desk. The International Game Developers' Association. I decided to sneak down into these meetings in Orange County about 60-75 miles away without being a member, and clearly having no business being there (or so I thought, in retrospect this was silly - I'm sure they wanted to mentor students like me). Developers would host these monthly meetings at Obsidian Entertainment, on the Blizzard campus, and I was inspired, just for a glimpse to see people doing this as actual jobs, even though I sat in the back and was too scared to actually talk to or network with anybody. 

Around the same time, a friend of a friend wanted to make a small collective. Somewhere for creatives to have some kind of outlet. It took the form of making YouTube skits, making music or any art, and I wanted to bring up the idea of having my games being a part of this group. It was there I met Jon, who played my RPG Maker XP and immediately gave a lot of feedback on how this game could be improved. I ended up releasing this game over MegaUpload (RIP) in late 2010, and I wanted to start something new. Unfortunately this collective fell apart soon after this, and after getting inspired by showing another one of the people in this group the newest RPG Maker at the time, wanted to start a new project. After talking it over with Mizore, he suggested having a game with voice acting, as he was interested in it, and it would be an interesting challenge for an RPG Maker game. Mizore and Milo were asked to voice the two main characters, I contacted Jon to help me with balance and game design, an artist friend (the first of many changes to come...), and a friend from my FFXI/FFXIV linkshell to help write the story about two countries at war, and the basis for Codename: EPIC, or what would be Selatria, started on January 3, 2011 and would involve a lot more friends, associates, and professionals added to the project over the next 13 years. 

Selatria Part 1 - About Profit-Sharing vs Commissions, Game Production, and Scope Creep will be posted on Monday, December 30. 

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You can support Whim Indie by wishlisting or purchasing Selatria on Steam (Leaving a review would be extremely helpful. We're trying to reach 10!) 
Wishlist/Purchase Selatria on Steam 
Wishlist/Purchase Spellbearers on Steam 
Purchase Spellbearers on Nintendo eShop 

And/or you can support by joining the Whim Indie Discord


Monday, November 18, 2024

Changing the focus of the blog + A look back

It has been an extremely long time since I've last posted, and a lot has changed since then. 

Catching Up 

In my last post, I mentioned that it was time to really consider "new and alternative opportunities". I was unceremoniously laid off from my tech job earlier this February after 9 years on the job and decided to take some time and re-evaluate everything going on. Luckily I saw the writing on the wall right before the holidays when I had made that post and decided to pivot early. 

During the layoff, I took the time to sit down and work on Selatria full-time for 60 days, to finally try and complete the game. It reminded me of back when we started the studio right after college, but with all of the practical software experience gained over the past several years. I want to be clear that there was no time in the last 13 years that Selatria was ever not worked on, but the hurdles needed to complete the project were something that needed to just be completely focused on for a few months. Though I didn't complete the game as planned within that 60 day jam, it did untangle just enough problems to see it to the finish line. I also want to give a special shout out to Jon, Deborah, and Shadoe for sticking with this project until the very end. Jon and Shadoe were able to perform a miracle to get a game of this proportion running decently on the Steam Deck with all of the adjustments needed for programming and sound to make it work. (We even earned Verified status for that!) 

We finished the project on August 22 of this year. I hit the go button on 11:59pm on accident, so it will always show August 21 on Steam. Doh! 




During this period, we brought Spellbearers to a console for the first time. With Parker's help, we were able to get things packaged up and launched our first game on Nintendo.



I was able to do a panel for the first time at LVLUPEXPO alongside some award-winning game industry folks. (I was the not-award winner on stage!)

Forgive the sound and us shouting, had to make do without an AV person from the convention on site. Big shoutout to Wushensnake for filming what she could. 

A few months after LVLUPEXPO and the panel, I joined Nightdive Studios and the Atari family as a Project Manager/Producer and helped bring Killing Time: Resurrected to launch on October 17, 2024, wherever you play your modern games. 


And from there I got to talk with my friend and colleague Jason at Atari as well as with the Nightdive team for the official Atari podcast to talk about developing remasters. Worth a watch or listen!



To top it all off, we were able to finally have a much delayed Selatria launch party at Revival Arcade. I wanted this location because it was down the street from where it all started, in the heart of San Bernardino in the back offices and recording studio of Groove Time Records. (Also, support your local businesses!)



What now?

So now it comes to what to do with this blog. In the past, I've made development logs to talk about our games in development, but that's now a lot harder or impossible to do, the reach doesn't go far enough for a few viewers, and I'm admittedly more steps away from the trenches than I used to be. 

Instead of using this blog as a talking point for what I'm going to work on in the future, I'm going to work on blog entries that revolve around tips and guides for up and coming indie game developers and students so they don't make the same mistakes me or our team made. I'd also like to talk about post-mortems about past Whim Indie games, both still active and those we've had to take offline - I feel I can talk about it a bit more objectively now that enough time has passed. Some of these entries may read as rough drafts or scripts for future game development talks I plan to give to conventions, schools and the like. (They'll get the cleaned up/condensed/cut for time version) It will also save me some work and time down the line. 

I was inspired by Masahiro Sakurai's YouTube series about developing games, but I don't have that kind of money or time to do something as epic as that, and maybe people may want to read about a team who has been on the opposite end, using the majority of the last 12 years making games in spare hours before or after work and releasing games when they can. So you'll have to deal with this format for now, sorry about that! 

I'll end with this: Many friends and colleagues in the tech and game industry are in the situation similar to where I was at the beginning of the year, where funding was suddenly pulled, shareholders are not pleased, mergers and acquisitions made redundant, or pushed out by outsourcing or generative AI, and are currently out of work. It's been a really tough year, and it's not going to get any easier. With the incoming administration, I feel things are going to get a lot worse over the next four years before they get better. I really hope I'm wrong.

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Follow the Projects I've worked on below:

Wishlist/Purchase Selatria on Steam (Whim Indie)
Wishlist/Purchase Spellbearers on Steam (Whim Indie) 
Purchase Spellbearers on Nintendo eShop (Whim Indie) 
Killing Time: Resurrected - Steam - Nintendo eShop - PlayStation - Xbox (Nightdive) 

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