So it’s been a while since I posted anything here - largely, my interest has been directed elsewhere. However, I’ve decided to keep this blog for professional stuff, and it’s with that in mind that I’m posting today.
I’ve just finished my latest project at Preloaded, a physics-based game in the mould of classics like The Incredible Machine: challenge the player to build a Heath Robinson contraption to get from Point A to Point B. The project was for the Science Museum to support the relaunch of their Launchpad exhibition, which made it an interesting challenge: we had to reflect the hands-on experience of visitors to the gallery, keep the physics accurate enough that we wouldn’t be giving out any bad, counter-educational messages and keep the thing fun enough to keep people entertained while they’re absorbing the science.
One of the first big decisions we made was to use a third party physics (or, more specifically, dynamics) engine. The reasoning here was that I could either have spent most of the project time busting my heed over the finer points of vector integration and rigid body dynamics, or we could use one of the fine open source engines out there and I could spend the time making the damn thing fun instead. Practicalities aside, I’m very much into the idea of pushing an open source agenda at Preloaded anyway; I think we could make a really good contribution to the community and get a lot back if we managed it properly. Flade was the obvious choice (at least, while we’re still an AS2 house), and Alec Cove has my undying gratitude for making such a great engine and being cool with our using it.
The next decision, then, was what blocks we should include in the game. Bearing in mind the point about realism, this ruled out a lot of stuff like transporter beams, cannon, lasers etc. The eventual set we ended up with were the result of a lot of back-and-forth with the Science Museum staff, based on discussions with their content team and, in some part, on National Curriculum Key Stages 3 & 4. I then spent a month implementing the decisions we’d made, tweaking the physics like a madman all along the way. This was precisely the point all that stuff I’d ever been taught about both science and object-oriented programming came in very handy indeed, and let to some interesting points where I’d start having thoughts like “this magnet will always be affecting the ball in some way. Does that mean every magnet in the universe affects every metal thing in some minute way?” and have to step away from the computer and have a nice cup of tea and a little rest.
Outside of the game engine itself, we had a lot to think about in terms of user experience. As the game’s aimed (mainly) at children, we had to make sure that the UI was clear and easy to use, which we refined in collaboration with Science Museum staff over many iterations. Additionally, we decided fairly early on that an important part of the game would involve giving players the chance to build and share their own levels. This meant we were going to need a pretty involved backend, handling user accounts, sending out share emails and, most importantly, managing both in-game and created levels. Stephen Pope at Eduserv did an amazing job building a webservice to provide all the functionality we needed and fielding increasingly frenzied IM conversations during crunch points. The client/server interactions we’re doing with the game could swallow a blog post by themselves (and are the reason we couldn’t host it elsewhere, Digg trolls ;) ), but I’ll save that for a rainy day…
I didn’t have much involvement with the level creation process, outside of making the sandbox editor usable enough to make it possible, but three evil geniuses on the Preloaded staff came together and did a brilliant job of it - seeing stuff done with the engine I’d built that I had no idea was possible was a big grin moment. Jon (the last of the three geniuses in that list) was the design ninja behind the whole thing and also possesses an admirably geeky brain which frequently made stuff clear that I couldn’t see for looking. Frankie Roberto, one of the team at the Science Museum did some good work too, providing some of the more surreal levels and helping us out with the CMS.
I’m incredibly proud of the end result, even though at times it made me feel like quitting Actionscript entirely, buying a lathe and moving to the country to make furniture in a barn. It’s certainly the most ambitious and fun thing I’ve done to date, and early indications would seem to show that the internet digs it too: when an early version got posted to Digg, it generated enough traffic to kill the Science Museum’s server (good news for us, bad news for the poor guys at Eduserv who were probably quite surprised when one of their boxen started to do its best impersonation of an Aga).
Big fat thankyous to the Science Museum for being supportive and helpful clients, especially Frankie and Daniel Evans, and dirty great manhugs also to Barnaby Sheeran, Simon Oliver and Alias Cummins, Brothers of the Curly Bracket who all helped me out of sticky points of one sort or another. Respectful nods to Phil and Rob, my bosses at Preloaded who kept the whole thing shiny, and Jason and Sarah who kept the project running, despite my increasing crankiness.
So what’s next? Being at an agency means I’m kind of at the mercy of the work that comes through the door, but game wise, I’ve been really inspired recently by tangible interfaces, especially the reACTivision; it’d be awesome to build something which had a bit of a physical presence. A nice, well crafted platformer with a really neat core mechanic would be nice, too. The idea of trying to develop something for a console also appeals: the Wii/Flash stuff is starting to look enticing, as are the possibilities made available by the DS homebrew scene, and XNA Game Studio hasn’t escaped my beady eye either: it’s starting to look like an interesting little ecosystem is starting to breathe on Xbox Live Arcade.
But first, a week with my criminally neglected, saintlikely-patienced girlfriend in the sun, as far away from computers as possible ;)