Postmortem: City Across the Sky

To start off this blog, we can take a look at my very first video game (and only game half-worth a release), City Across the Sky, originally known as Project CAS. (It was about 95% or so complete before I stopped development to move onto something else.) Besides some missing things however, I tend to call the game complete as of 7/1/2012

City Across the Sky (Download Link)

Project CAS began as an idea for a small, innovative video game that would help me learn the basics of programming and design. Little did I know that what I originally thought would be a small game would end up being designed as a game much larger than originally intended.

The original premise of the project was a fairly simple, yet dark one. You are a single mother who lives on a small island off the coast of somewhere and your son disappears into thin air--at the same time, the main character is also dying of a degenerative disease known as Zero, making it impossible for you to truly control your emotions. Gameplay was supposed to be a mix of Castlevania and Megaman with the focus on exploration as opposed to combat. The kicker was in a concept that I had designed called degenerative gameplay, where rather than steadily increasing the difficulty of enemies to boost the game's overall difficulty, the player character would slowly "degenerate", lose levels and become weaker. Through this system (that was never actually implemented), the game would become more difficult the longer the player took to complete it while enemies stayed at more or less a stable level of difficulty. I still think that the idea is a feasible one and one worthy of being implemented into one of my projects. Alas, my skill set was too limited at the time and I made far too many mistakes early on to get the idea working (and feeling) the way I had wanted it.

Development Story

Essentially, the development of Project CAS was pretty much flawed from the very beginning and for anyone who reads this, I hope they learn to not make the same mistakes as I did. During the "design stages" if you can even call them that, I wrote a base outline for a story following about 113 plot milestones (what I considered a small amount) and drew a couple of graphs depicting how I wanted degenerative gameplay to flow. That's it. I look back now and wonder why the hell I decided to completely skimp on the design for my first developed project when I have literally written hundreds of pages of designs for other projects (that I am STILL designing to this day). I feel like I should have known that without a design or a general outline of actual goals to meet (in relation to creating a compelling gaming experience) that the project was destined to fail. That is one half of the story of Project CAS. The other half is a very dramatic experience with inexperience--one that caused the development of the project to drag on...and on...and on... In fact...

It was almost a year and a half before I realized that I just didn't like the way the game was going anymore.* So, I dropped it (after lots of internal debate and struggle, as well as discussion with my game development partner, Jacques Yeates).

*Do not let this situation happen to you. Ever. Period. AT ALL. Zero percentage of chances. It drains you physically and mentally. Try not to force yourself to work on something that you don't have to and you are no longer inspired to work on, especially while you are young. In the end, you'll regret a lot of the time you spent and you probably won't learn as much as you could had you decided to move on.**

**At the same time, don't just quit and move from project to project. Sometimes, it's worth it to stick it out and finish something, even if you don't like it. Just don't spend two years doing it.

Regardless, it was a pretty long time before I realized that what I was working on just wasn't coming together, but I tried to force myself to work for months and eventually just burned myself out. I recommend to any young developers that if you're not feeling a project, then reevaluate and think hard on it's worth and then decide to continue or quit.

Early Development

"Prototyping"

While I like to call the early graphics of Project CAS my "prototype" version, it was really an excuse to ignore people's criticisms about the game and learn the basics of scripting with Game Maker (it took me a full three months of dedicated hatred to get collisions to work before I decided to rewrite the "physics" of the engine to my specifications [a fairly difficult thing for someone so new to scripting]). However, in the end, I got all the movement working, threw in some placeholder art (about the best I could manage since sprites and colors aren't my forte at all) and even some enemies before showing some friends what I had "created". (When your very first non-mentored programming project gets glances and uninterested "that's cool, man" comments from your friends, something should strike you as immediately wrong.) But for me it was, ":O REALLY?!" so I kept on working on tiled maps that weren't even tilesets and on learning to code, while expecting people to love my game despite it's mediocre graphics, horrible controls (not to mention an overpowered wall climbing ability) and lack of a definitive goal. Unacceptable, even for a junior in high school and eventually I almost quit because I just wasn't feeling it anymore.

But then, enter Jacques (back then I called him by his internet alias Nekomage), with his decision to help update the graphics with me, we created some concept art for the new look (viewable here) that eventually led to the graphics that the game ended up with today.

Uhh, Half Development?

But still not a good game. Which is the desire.

With Jacques' help, I was able to renew an already waning desire to work on a project with graphics that I didn't particularly like, or even enjoy working on. And by the time of the game's pseudo release (only here and a few various other links scattered around), the graphics and overall aesthetic/feel of the game may be one of the only things that I'm proud of. (Music as well, but I had very little influence on the quality of that).

But the issue was never really the graphics, the issue was a mixture of inexperience and lack of direction. Even once I recruited Jacques onto the project (originally just the composer for the game), he explained to me (later) that there was a general lack of direction, but assumed that I knew what I wanted and just kept quiet. I had wanted to design and then make a game where exploration was key, but I was too inexperienced with coding and design to even design a game that had a focus! I wanted combat! I wanted great graphics and music! I wanted exploration! A great story! Lots of items and things to find! I wanted too much for a first game. What I should have wanted was a focused experience and that is the center of what I learned from developing CAS. Instead, I tried for awhile to just include everything, even when I just didn't know how to code it. But, because of this failure, I later learned to focus. I learned that I should design and prototype before execution.

These are important things to understand as a new designer/developer of video games and I can't and will not be the last person to make that mistake. When you want to make something good and you're new to the whole thing, just start small; and I mean actually small. Not what you think is small, not 113 damn plot points spanning across 16 locations. Choose something simple--like jumping, sliding, displaying dialogue (which is actually harder than you'd probably imagine if you want it to look nice)--and build something around that. For new indie developers, or new developers in general, focus is key. Stay focused and you'll build a better experience.

And hence the crux of early/mid development of Project CAS.

Late Development

The least fun part. Seriously. It is a draaaaaaag.

After realizing that I made a terrible mistake dragging the game out for so long, I wished I could have stopped earlier, but I had partially dedicated the project to a "graded" assignment in school--the CAS (Creativity Action Service) Project for my IB diploma*. I had to turn in something, so I pushed forward...and it was a terrible push. I cut the game to almost 25% it's original size and scope, restarted the project, removed a lot of the mechanics (like overpowered wall climbing, which became ledge climbing), and rewrote all of the cutscenes to accommodate for the new (absolutely horrendously written) plot and story.

Problem is, because of a lack of time I kept ALL of the old maps** (which were originally designed for the older mechanics) and wrote the new story around what I already had in place. I then created the new project, dubbed CASmini, in around 6 months*** and hoped everyone would just ignore the fact that it was a giant mezclado-turd of a game (design-wise and story-wise) with elements coming in from all the variations the game went through, when it should have been rebuilt from the ground up to accommodate the new mechanics.

* Which I didn't end up getting, partially due to the hours (which reached into literal full weeks) spent working on CAS instead of studying.

** DON'T DO THIS.

***Not nearly enough time.

I never even added the brick decal to the rest of the city (and I removed this whole map).

In fact, the only redeemable parts of the game are the portions I mapped and designed after the new mechanics were factored into the design equation (intro tutorial, and the factory), whereas everything else is pretty much just empty space with nothing happening. But, I kept on working and as a little voice inside of my brain kept telling me to quit (almost like clockwork) I kept on working, and working, and working. I burned myself out and that was it (this was June of 2012). I really just couldn't mentally handle it anymore.

That day, I talked to Jacques and we decided to end it; I added in what I could in the last days, closed the window and have only opened it to fix a bug or two people found while trying it out. In the end, I was supremely disappointed in myself for working so hard to create something so abysmal, but I feel so free now that it's done, or at least over. I learned so much about the process that it's ridiculous how empowered I feel almost a month later working on something new. The best part though, is almost immediately after closing the window for that "last" time...everything that I had once held near and dear to my heart and was once passionate about prior to the uninspired crunch...it all rushed back into me. After almost 8 months of terminal artist's block, I was suddenly inspired to draw again and images filled my mind. It was fantastic.

I had new ideas again! And slowly, but surely, haunting images of the City Across the Sky left my mind and were replaced with new concepts and a feeling of happiness that is difficult to explain in words. It just is. I was just happy to be "done". In other words: I was free.

But by being free, I knew I had to use that inspiration to get into a brand new project; but this time, I had to make sure I did it right. And here I am, dog-sitting at my girlfriend's house while she is away with family, writing a blog post about how terrible of a designer I was, and maybe still am, in order to understand myself and my mistakes better. Something I would have never (and could have never) done had I still been working on CAS.

But, the point of being young is to learn, and the point of making games (in my opinion) is to have fun, to make fun, and to get better so that you can inspire others to experience something you've or they've always wanted to do, maybe through your games or otherwise...but ultimately, it's about your experience and what you get out of making the game that matters, because at the end of the day, what's a player, but another person living your projected experiences through the medium of your choice. Video games. :D

Expect Greatness.
A Postmortem by Ryan Huggins.
Siifour Studios

Thanks for Reading~