There is a part of every game development project that is a little disheartening. It is the point around Alpha, where the game is starting to take shape, but isn’t quite complete enough to be in full test.

Sure there is the positive morale boost from seeing new stuff appear in the game but it is also the point at which people start noticing bugs and errors in the game. The bug database starts to fill up and, because the team aren’t in full Beta test mode, there isn’t an all out effort to clear bugs. The result is that the bug count starts to climb…. and keeps climbing. Sure some (lots) get fixed during this phase but the general trend is upwards.

So far we have 160 closed bugs on Space Ark and only 92 active ones. Somehow I think it will get worse before it gets better. Luckily it will get better in the end

Meeting with Microsoft in Seattle today to go through the latest build of Space Ark. The team have been busting a gut to get a whole bunch of features working so the game was really starting to look good. Then, as of a week ago they came up with an extra new combo feature, which make the game way more addictive. I am really looking forward to sitting down with our Account Manager and going through the new stuff with him.

We should have a new game play video showing the latest progress any day now.

In addition to meeting with Microsoft I am visit an old friend Colin Gordon, who runs Valcon Games (ever so slightly smaller than Microsoft) in Redmond, Washington.

Following the release of our iPhone game Turbo Duck we wanted to develop another small project in parallel with our XBLA game Space Ark. The project we chose to develop was Soup. and we thought we would share this post-mortem with you which details what went right and what went wrong with the development.

The high concept for Soup was to create something that gave the gamer a warm happy feeling. We knew from the start that very little of our existing tech would be suitable for the project so Simon (our Technical Director) was tasked with designing a new set of tools for the project. The following image shows what was needed to create Soup.

The tools included 1 large onion, two potatoes, one sweet potato, a clove of garlic, one cup of chicken stock (you can use vegetable), one cup of white wine, 2 tablespoons of oil and some herbs (Basil, Thyme and Oregano). In addition we built the levels using a large knife and a wok (a large saucepan is also fine) and a blender.

Our knife tool was left over from a previous project and was only version 1.1 (blunt). Simon upgraded it to version 2.0 (cutting edge). Once the tools were ready he passed them to Derek (Production Director) who, would be responsible for the game play programming on Soup. While he was preparing the game engine the designers were creating assets for the levels.

The oil was added to the wok and the finely chopped onion was fried over a medium heat until it started to turn translucent. While this was happening the potato, sweet potato and the garlic were all peeled. The garlic was finely chopped while the potato and sweet potato were cut into roughly one inch squares. The stock cube was added to a cup full of hot water and the designer had a glass of the white wine.

The potato, sweet potato, garlic and stock were all added to onions in the pan, the designer took another swig of wine and then added one cup full to the pan.

Note: Don’t add too much wine (one cup will do) – you want plenty left for yourself.

Next half a teaspoon each of dried Basil, Thyme and Oregano were added and the soup was brought to the boil then turned down and left to simmer for 15 minutes, or until the potato and sweet potato become soft.

With most of the levels assembled Soup was then put through an intensive testing phase to get the lumps out (1-2 minutes in the blender should do fine). Soup was then returned to a large pan to simmer. The designer tested it and added a little salt and pepper to taste. Soup seemed a little too thick at this point so a little extra wine and stock was added.

What went wrong during development?

Our version of knife was out of date and needed to be upgraded. This caused some problems for the designers at the beginning. There wasn’t quite enough wine for both the designer and Soup. In hindsight we should have made sure more wine was available before starting the project.

What went well during development?

Soup was quite a short project, scheduled for just 30 minutes development. Once our version of knife had been upgraded asset production was very quick and easy so the project came in on time.

The taste was excellent and Soup was filling and warming, thus meeting the project original design specifications.

Soup is best served with some crusty bread and yet more wine.

Warning: Soup is not compatible with Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii, PC, iPhone or any other gaming hardware. If you get Soup on your console or PC immediately turn off your console and wipe off the Soup with a damp cloth.

Strawdog Studios are releasing Soup as freeware and hope that users will take the tools and create their own user generated Soup.

Coming soon: Lettuce wrapped Chinese chicken with cashew nuts

When it’s on the iPhone App Store. Apples original app rating/reveiew system was rather flawed in its implementation. It only prompted a user to rate an application when they were removing it and, by default, had the user rating set to one star. Users who weren’t really interested in rating an app would automatically accept the default rating, leading to apps with a large number of one star reviews – and a lot of unhappy developers.

Of  course some of these users may have actually wanted to assign one star – after all they are uninstalling the app so it probably isn’t their favorite game of all time. Hoever many were almost certainly just hitting a button to accept the default as the quickest way to get through the process. Now, according to reports the version 3.0 update has the default set to no stars and the user must select a rating from one to five stars.

Users are still being prompted to rate the game while uninstalling it, which is far from ideal. It would be much better to prompt for a review after they have played the game 5 or ten times – or to not prompt at all. Leaving it to people who feel strongly about a to go and rate it. Still at least now there is a better chance that users will pause for thought and select a more meaningful rating instead of just accepting the default one star.

Gamasutra posted a story about forthcoming changes to Xbox Live Community Games and (importantly for us) Xbox Live Arcade.

“…..Microsoft also revealed that, in response to user feedback, it would add user ratings to both community games and much of the Xbox Live marketplace content, including Xbox Live Arcade and game add-ons. Ultimately, the company will add the ability for users to sort content by rating.”

A more in-depth filtering and recommendation system would be a big plus but user ratings are at least a step in the right direction.

The full piece is at http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24008

We are currently preparing to post our latest Space Ark video which should be ready in a few days. Just so you have something to compare to I thought I would post the very first Space Ark visualisation trailer to our Youtube channel. This video was created when the game had the working title Bounce.

This video was produced as part of the Microsoft pitching process. The video, along with various documentation, was submitted to MS in order to get approval to publish Space Ark on Xbox360 Live Arcade.

So our brand new best friends over at wonderwallweb have uploaded their first thoughts on Geon, and it certainly seems to have created the right emotion with them anyway! We’re really pleased to read that they have enjoyed the game, and taken the time to note some of the things we hoped would get recognition: the new tutorial, the new strategy behind the emotions and level designs, and the refined competition in the various game modes.

So for this review, www, we salute you!

http://wonderwallweb.com/article-481-Geon-.html

So we’ve all been playing Geon this weekend, and having a great time. It’s strange how different it can feel to actually play the game you’ve spent a year working on, and it’s hard to remember all of the small discussions and design decisions that helped to shape the final mix. After 3 months of QA and TRC checks it’s also hard to convince yourself that there’s really no bugs left in it! (well that we know of anyway!)

Overall I think we are all really pleased with how well this version of the game has turned out, and the improvements we’ve made since the XBLA version really have gone a long way to making the game purer, and more addictive. The AI in league mode plays really well (thanks to Jack) – some of the bots seem to keep coming up with some brilliant strategies that Jack claims he’s not coded! Emergent behaviour? Hmmm…. who knows!

The online game mode got some testing this weekend too, and seems to be holding up pretty well (I promise that one day we’ll post up an article about all the machinery we had to build to make a twitch game like Geon play reasonably well over the internet!), we all had a bunch of good games – particularly Dan who’s clearly been playing online all weekend to earn his place in the top 100.

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed it too, if you haven’t already downloaded it – get to it! It’s a steal for $10…

So we have the official release dates – Geon is going up onto PlayStation Network state-side on Thursday 25 September, with the European release to follow the week after.

Since the guys over at ps3trophies.co.uk were asking about trophies and stuff, I kind of spilt the beans over on their forums, and now their scoop has been broadcast all over the net!

Life moves pretty fast in the land of digital distribution….

Hooray! We made it through the long orderly queue of developers waiting for iPhone developer status, and we are now officially iPhone developers. So this should let us have direct access to the hardware – now we can find out what we really can do with it. First test ? Let’s see how many rubber ducks can we render at 60Hz!