Blogs - Sprixelsoft

I've had some people contact me recently regarding Super Hematoma. We were clear about it on our website but had neglected to make an update on IndieDB. Unfortunately a number of circumstances evolved to result in us abandoning Super Hematoma in April of 2014.

All rights to the project currently reside with Stephen Tucker.

Cheers!

Something just felt right when we started working together on our own game. The idea of forging ahead and creating something new was kind of magical. The wheels were always spinning, and there was a lot of talk about “wouldn’t this be cool”, and “we should totally do that”. Bit by bit, we have been working to make things happen: making snippets of code to allow the display of sprites, creating characters to go on those sprites, and making those characters capable of fighting against each other.

Planning is of course something that’s very easy in the early stages. This has to happen for that to happen, and so on and so forth. We try to plan and make schedules, and quickly realize that we’ve got no idea what we’re doing. Well… “no idea” is a bit of an exaggeration, but still… we’re not veteran game developers. My point is, we had no idea going in how to estimate the amount of time anything would take. We did our best, but we really didn’t have any benchmarks to work with. I’ve always wanted the “progress reports” to remain frequent, and positive. We’ve missed doing a few of them recently, and while I don’t have any new work to show off I feel that maybe that in itself is something that is worth discussing.

Just Go For It

Recently we released a rather detailed account of how our first year has gone on Super Hematoma. But unfortunately we’ve had very little meaningful news since then for you, which brings me down a little. I like to put on a face of confidence, but sometimes that’s tough. Working on a project of this scope is not just technically and artistically challenging, but of course financially, socially, and emotionally challenging.

I felt early in that things were working pretty smoothly, and so we discussed long term goals. We were both on board with making a game regardless of how long it would take, and trying to make a career out of this. We tried to get input from other people who had gone through the process already, and one piece of advice that was thrown at us over and over was to “just go for it”. It was suggested that we quit our jobs and make it happen. Neither of us saw this as viable. We’ve each got families we would like to grow, and living in Vancouver is not exactly conducive of being wage-less. We did however try to get as involved in the development as our time would allow. This often means that when friends want to hang out, we say “sorry, gotta work on my game”. Work/life/personal project is a tough thing to balance.

Life

So… I’m not sure that I’ve gotten too personal under the Sprixelsoft name before. I’ve wanted to make things a little more professional and “about the project” here… but when you’re a two-person team, the personal lives of the team really has an effect of the project. When I was living in Vancouver, my wife and I were living apart. She was in San Francisco for work, and I was in Vancouver for work. This was originally supposed to be a four month thing as I had a short contract… but when that contract ended I ended up getting an extension. I wasn’t able to find work in San Francisco, and this ended up turning into over a year that we kept up this long distance relationship. Let me tell you, it’s tough being away from the one you love. I tried to make the most of it by pouring myself into pass-times and the game, but it’s not good for a relationship to live apart like that. I don’t recommend you go through this yourself if you can avoid it.

Professionally, things got awkward for me when the company I was working at went through bankruptcy and employees were either let go or given pay cuts. The stress of this on top of my already stressful long distance situation led me to finally resign. I consoled myself that this would be better for the game as I’d have time to work on just it, better for my personal life as I’d once again be with my wife, and better for me as I’d be able to just focus for a bit on relaxing. That readjustment period was tough for me, but I eventually felt like I was getting into the swing of things. Productivity began to increase on the game.

Part-Time/Full-Time

Realistically, there’s so much to do when developing a game that it was good to have some extra time to dedicate. I was able to work on the website, schedule things, create and music. There’s no shortage of things to do at this early stage, and so I was happy with letting Matt just concentrate on getting programming done. After all, he didn’t have the luxury of taking time off from work, and still could only commit part-time hours. This means that it was valuable to free up as much of his time as possible to get the real backbone of the project assembled.

I’m not sure of the best way to say this, but I have to say that this arrangement isn’t ideal for the long term. When our advisors were suggesting that we just quit our jobs and dive in, I don’t think they had in mind for only half of the team to do so. I think that my having more available time has created a little bit of stress for the team. We try to be conscious of our personalities… we try not to impose pressure on ourselves for teammates to be equally prolific regardless of available time. But the reality is, my funemployment has created some stress that wasn’t present when we both had the same amount of time each week to devote to the project.

Efficiency is something I like. I find it stressful to “waste” time making art that won’t get used. I’ve always been that way and will think about things and then try to get projects right in the first or second try. So if I suspect that an upcoming change in the code may mean that my artwork will become obsolete, I prefer to wait to see how that code will work out before I do artwork at all. This unfortunately means that at this point, I have less art to show than I’d originally hoped for. Matt has been tasked with coming up with code that he’s never had to do before in his spare time which is scarcely available. This code isn’t ready as soon as either of us had anticipated. It’s always progressing and so part of me wants to jump in and just do some work for the sake of having something to show; but there’s also huge internal struggle in my brain that wants to wait so that I can be 100% sure that what I’ve already done will work. I dread having to rework even more than I may already potentially have to rework just because I was impatient… and so I continue to procrastinate.

Staying Focused

xkcd‘s got a great strip about how excitement can wane over a project. Working on a project for a long term makes it difficult to remain enthusiastic. The longer the project, the more I imagine this to be true. It starts innocently enough. You first start feeling like you’ve got so many little updates that it’s not worth talking about them all. Then you start realizing that your schedule was wrong and you eventually stop updating it. Maybe I find the news less worth getting excited about, so it gets harder to maintain a regular blog schedule. It’s easy for things to slide over time and you find yourself not quite where you’d hoped to be. Especially when you can rationalize that you don’t have any firm deadlines.

I’ve unfortunately had some health problems this year. I had some knee issues this year (my tendons suck) and went to physiotherapy to get better. During this time, I also had some problems with a locked jaw (did I mention that my tendons suck?), and a kidney stone (If you get a locked jaw, don’t resort to high sodium soup as a diet plan). After PAX I got a cold that had me congested and coughing for a month. Sneezing with a locked jaw is actually kind of painful. On the plus side, my jaw is slowly getting better and feels somewhat normal these days, but during this sick phase… when I felt like crap and was a bit ahead of Matt on game development, I found myself getting hooked on gaming, particularly King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Guild Wars, and Guild Wars 2.

One thing I’ll say is that I’ve got a lot of respect for any of you folk out there that have started a project, and have seen it through to completion. It’s a really tough slog sometimes, even when you love what you’re doing. There’s so much to try to stay on top of, and it’s really easy for self-discipline to waver. Obviously I want to make a game because I love playing games, and one thing that’s really difficult about making a game is how little time you might find yourself having to enjoy your favourite hobby. I’ve played relatively few games the past few years compared to what I would do in my youth and college days, so in one way it’s great to have had a chance to do that again. But I also have been a let down to the team by failing to be as productive as I could be over the past couple of months. That’s something I hope to correct.

There hasn’t been much to report on the business end of things here at Sprixelsoft in a while. Since incorporating in May, Matt and Steve have both been working diligently in trying to get progress made on their upcoming retro beat-em-up inspired multiplayer fighting game, Super Hematoma. To say the least, this means that they’ve just been flat out like a lizard drinking.

We’re still a ways off over here from having a playable demo ready, but we do hope to have something (more along the lines of play testing) later this year.

We’ve created a mailing list to help facilitate us in getting important info out to all you awesome people out there. We understand that you may follow us on Twitter or Facebook already, but it’s quite easy to miss updates on social media. This mailing list exists so that we can send out special updates, announcements, or even information about contests and give-aways. We understand that no one wants their in-boxes cluttered unnecessarily; so we promise that we will keep mail to a minimum. After all, there’s still plenty of ways for you to get your Sprixelsoft fix… but you might just miss out on something special if you don’t sign up.

To sign up check out our sidebar on our website: Sprixelsoft.com

Ever get so caught up in tasks that you do something pretty big, and then immediately sigh a breath of relief that it’s done with and then just move onto the next item on your to-do list? Well that happened to us here last month, and it’s high time we pause for a moment to reflect back, because it just wouldn’t be right to continue neglecting what was a pretty big milestone for us!

On 12 February 2011, Steve got the following Facebook message from Matt:

lets make a game. you have no choice. you have to write the music. then ill put it on my site and we’ll be totally awesome. im throwing ideas around right now and trying to think of something that will be really awesome. this shit is fun.

Looking back, this was in the same message where Matt let Steve know that he was getting married. Makes a little bit of sense that the idea of working on a game got ignored at the moment, and so it wasn’t until 20 December, when we both happened to be living in Vancouver that we actually met up and started talking about this stuff for realsies. February 2012 we started keeping track of our ideas for our first game, a Tactical RPG in a Google Document… which by May was growing so big that we decided to port it all over to a wiki system. We started looking at founder’s agreements and such and came to a basic understanding with each other of what we’d like to accomplish in the future, and how we’d like to go about making it happen.

In early June 2012 we came up the name Sprixelsoft, and then got a domain and made the wiki happen. Through the rest of the summer we worked pretty hard at fleshing out the world and story of our RPG and by September we realized that this was just too epic of a project to do by ourselves. Unable to pay other people to work on the game, and unwilling to get free labour, we made the decision to start working on a second project instead that we could develop our workflow on and get out the door in a more reasonable amount of time.

Steve took an online business course through University of Waterloo to get a better sense of what needed to be done in the world outside of art generation, and Matt and him spent a long time reading books like Canadian Businesses for Dummies before they were able to level up.

Once 2013 started, we knew we had to start cracking down on the actual development of our game, and got out of concept stage and into production on Super Hematoma. That’s where a lot of our time has gone. As you know Matt’s making the engine from scratch, and Steve has been dealing with music and graphics. So in May, after we reached our first milestone of having a playable prototype, we switched gears a little and got back into business mode.

We bit the bullet and incorporated. Now, while familiarizing ourselves with our legal options, making sure we understood the BC Business Corporations Act, coming to an agreement that we felt would work, filing the paperwork, and opening a business bank account took a heap of effort; we’re generally on the same page with each other and were able to sort it all out with very little stress.

So there you have it! Sprixelsoft Sudio Limited is an official entity!

Let me take a moment to shamelessly plug the Bundle In a Box contest that we're currently part of: there's a new indie game bundle for sale right now over at Bundle In A Box. Anyone who buys a bundle (bundles start at $2) can vote on which nominee they would like to receive the Indie Dev Grant... money which accumulates based on the number of Bundles sold. Note that our game is not for sale, but we are nominees for this Dev Grant. The prize money won't be much, but if you're interested in the bundle in a box, we'd sure appreciate it if you voted for Super Hematoma to receive the grant!

My series of articles that were done for Young Web Builder have also come to an end. If you feel like reading through the series, you can find them here:

• Are Games *More* Than Art?
• Indie Game Development Part 1: Educate Yourself
• Indie Game Development Part 2: Set Your Goals
• Indie Game Development Part 3: Make Your Game
• Indie Game Development Part 4: Stress Management

So we've now got a Game page set-up here for Super Hematoma where I've posted a couple of videos, a description of the game, and have now made the first update that includes some of the conceptual designs for our initial characters.

Be sure to go and check it out!

And on a side note, I've recently been asked to write some articles on how to get into indie game development for Young Web Builder. Here's part one: Youngwebbuilder.com

Since I'm new here, rather than just diving in, I'll bring you a up-to-date on the project that we're working on!

Matt and I started working on Super Hematoma in late 2012, and as we're first-timers to the world of game making, it's taking a little longer than we'd hoped. But we're happy with where we're at right now and hopefully will have a playable demo soon.

Super Hematoma is a beat-em-up inspired retro multiplayer fighting game which will have you pitted against your friends (or random jerks from the "internet") in brutal street fights. Whether you decide to go it solo or with a group of friends, your Bruiser will be able to bash, bludgeon, and break your opponents using a variety of weapons or even your bare fists. With a variety of arenas and game play modes to choose from, you'll be knocking knuckles with the best of them for hours on end.

This is project, which is in early development, hopes to bring classic retro pixels and music into a modern multiplayer brawler setting. We're a small team of two independent developers that are working hard to bring something fresh to the table.

We aim to:
*provide a sense of immersion by providing players the ability to tweak their Bruiser's appearance
*offer fun and varied environments to wage all-out fist fights in
*provide an aggressive arsenal of weaponry to wreak havoc with
*have multiple modes for scoring so that players can choose to play a more traditional last-man-standing contest, point based scoring, or even capture the flag match.

I'm about to start on the animation for the first Bruiser and have a first pass at the background for our first arena along with a chip-tune for the level. Matt's been making our game engine from scratch and is now at a point where he can have characters running and jumping around.

Check out our blog: Sprixelsoft.com where we've been making updates every Friday, or stay tuned here, where I'll try to bring y'all up to speed one day at a time 'til both blogs are in sync.

My name is Steve, and I'm still very new to the indie scene. I've worked for several years as a feature film visual effects artist, and am currently on sabbatical while I try and work on my own indie game with a partner who will be doing the programming (Matt Langille). We've got a website up which I try to blog on frequently, so I'm not sure how much use I'll be getting out of the blogs here, but I thought it'd be worth saying a brief "hello" nonetheless.

If you're interested in learning more about what we're up to, please check out our site! And feel free to send an email or look me up on Twitter/Facebook. I'm friendly :)