The Last Page of History

In this entry, I'm going to discuss some of the work involved with developing the stories for my game projects, hopefully some of the things I mention will not only ring true for my own work, but might reveal something about the kind of work that goes on in game development in general.

First, though, I'd like to say that this blog entry is what it is because of Joe Morse's generosity in allowing his music to be used in Sahaquiel's brand new story trailer, more on that later. Joe Morse is a solo musician and also a member of the band Astronaut Down . You can find out more about him and hear his solo work on his website. I encourage you to check out both his music and his band's because, as far as I can gauge, they have a great sound to their music and Joe's been helpful and giving in working out getting the trailer off the ground, I spent the last handful of days getting everything sorted out with him and I have permission to use his song "Silence" in the story trailer.

Now, all pleasantries well taken care of (read: I hope.)



Here is the trailer that I've hinted at; it takes you on a short romp through the desperate and aged world of Sahaqiel, it features parts of the introduction I've produced to be played at the onset of the game and some original work, you can find the music used in the trailer at Joe Morse's website.

When I make video games, I don't have a fourty head team working at my whim, making art assets, writing graphics engines or figuring out the best way to spin game play to make it seem as new as possible (although any penny pincher investing in mainstream gaming would say the less new, the more safe it is and thusly more desirable,) so we can't always expect much from that. What I am is one high school grad with free time, so that means completely different means to development, and maybe a completely different end.

First off, I don't go with what's safe, instead, usually something will hop out of my head, if it sounds good, I'll catch the idea mid jump and throw it on the drawing board, that's where the fun begins. I would at this point say "what do I have to do to get this working and working well?" About half the time, its out of my reach as a coder (game maker language, not mainstream coding yet,) an artist (I'm an infantile 3d modeler) but hardly ever is it out of my reach as a writer!

They say the best stories are told over and over again in many different ways; a hero, a villian, a conflict, a place, a time and somewhere along the line we start blurring the lines for all of them.

As the player, are you really a shining hero, sole defender of humanity against people who are evil through and through? Or are you part of an exercise in uselessness, one ship staving off an endless army -intelligent and deadly- to defend billions of people against a dozen power brokers trying to buy their way into heaven by playing god with the universe. This almost sounds like a tale of dark towers, wizards and sword wielding knights. Well its actually set thousands of years in the future.

The question above is one faced day in and day out by Dallako Rossen, hand-picked pilot of Sahaquiel. Spun on a molecular level, the result of thousands of years of scientific knowledge and at its core, one of the greatest interface constructs ever conceived, theoretically giving the pilot the ability to bend the very fabric of space and time to his will. Theoretically.

Until that time comes, he is the pilot of a very expensive, unarmed, vulnerable fighter against an army of automated drones a billion strong and growing commanded by a handful of incredibly powerful but hopelessly insane and sadistic AIs. How do you save the world with those kind of odds, how do you even survive? Ingenuity.

In Sahaquiel, that is your only ally as you go on a romp across the universe assisted by a crack team of strategists and thinkers that drop you into the field against some of the most awe inspiring machines of war to date, on the hunt for the five AIs that even now attack humanity mercilessly.

Eventually, if the enemy's genocidal attacks can be curved, if they can even be damaged, you must somehow break through the enemy's invincible stronghold and face an enemy you know nothing about, only then will the universe be saved.

This has been one of the most out-there stories I've had to write for a game, it's been a challenge just settling on the overall premise, and now i have to create a living world for the player to be taken on a thrilling ride through, somehow create details that captivate and inspire, bring the world the player now inhabits to life.

Part of that was emphasizing the atmosphere of the story with music, nowhere is this more true than in the introduction. I had a great deal of tries finding good music for the intro, but this time it came to my serendipitously as I mucked about singing and trying to emulate some of the work in the Homeworld and Homeworld 2 soundtracks. What I recorded was sorrowful and haunting, that's what I heard anyway, form your own opinions and don't take my word for it though.
Have a listen yourself.

So that's it for this entry, I've released a new trailer, divulged on the story of Sahquiel and maybe let some people pick up on new ideas, I hope anyone who's had a go at this entry has enjoyed the read.

My next entry will concern what goes into making the game play of my project come alive, the levels and the enemies you face along the way.

So Far

So now that you guys know a little something about the feeling of the game, hopefully you'll get something about the development so far.

I started project Sahaquiel perhaps half a year ago with the intent of making a clean, short and dirty game to expand my portfolio, but since then, the game's evolved into something much, much bigger. This was primarily due to my experience with Hideo Kojima's work on zone of the enders, I finished the game less than a month into Sahaquiel's development cycle. His work on Zone of the Enders had a look and feel like nothing else out there, being an avid creator of all sorts of things, I took that as a challenge :P.

So Sahaquiel changed from a game where you were a tiny ship with a giant melee cannon that smashed into enemies into a full-blown game-play concept with a story on a huge scale. It wasn't long before things started resolving on how I wanted to handle this newly proposed project, how I wanted things to look, how I could make the gameplay as odd, yet simple as possible, I had found my time-sink that would last me a long while.

Some months later, I hade developed a nicely comprehensive physics engine, at that point it was downright bogged down with bugs, but it was a ball to mess with (read: throwing mechs into other mechs and watching them bounce about in delightfully correct ways.) The lovely thing about the throwing physics was I could use a simple "massactor" variable to define the movability of an object, meaning a tiny flying drone could be kicked around like a playground ball, but an assault carrier would be about as movable as a mack truck with its brakes on.

I had also developed the swinging system, which was fun since it allows you to rev up a good spin with your ship and smack things hard in the face with any old hunk of metal lying about the playfield, the fun thing is they would also fly off paralell with the spin velocity so you really felt the umph involved with the action, much to the elation of my classmates who were having a go at the time.

Some time afterwards I had a nice catalog of enemies, each with differently configured intelligences, some programmed smart, others dull as a rock as I felt was fitting to their frame. One nice example is the gunship, a mean little automated frame that makes up for its lack of size with its clever use of its many weapons, they could evade, circle while sputtering away at the player with their sizable rear turret, or dive into battle while their fellow gunships held a back line and harassed the player. Sometime around then was when I made the tech demo trailer, quite a few months back.

I soon started developing the first level as a prototype, progress proved slow at this point as I didn't feel the look and gameplay were meeting my standards, that changed rather quick as I came up with plans for the first boss that would be waiting for you at the end of the fourth stage. He's a barrel of fun, and I'm sure people will love how alive his machinery is; giant turrets spew fourth plasma beam death, then spout steam from their muzzles as they re-cycle to fire again. Hydraulics whirr as launch bays slowly slide open, then catapult fighters from their depths, point defense guns spin up and unleash gigantic volleys of muzzle flash and ballistic firepower and spew fourth storms of shells.

Recently, I went ahead and developed the menu infrastructure, which was nicely modular and easy to program once I set up my own structuring for menu options. Another thing that's different about this game is the menu, suffice to say it's not a simple vertical setup like most people are used to. Not to mention my "test group" once again was egging me to start a campaign that didn't yet exist they were so impressed and ready to see the game run tip to tail.

The next entry is going to talk about my adventures with story development and my random inspiration for the haunting music that will play through the intro. For now, here's a shot of a great cradle of humanity, roasted alive by the mysterious drone armies of the Exiles, back from isolation to tell humanity of the end they saw fit for the universe. This is all in respect to the story of course.

Introductions

Hello to anyone viewing this blog for the first time.

This blog was started by me as a venture to help promote my solo game project called "Sahaquiel." Hopefully I'll be recording progress made in development and you all can see how ballistic my methods are compared to the big dogs who actually have experience in this field besides years of hobby work. Similarly, I can't make any promises about how frequently I'll bring this blog up to date; since this blog hinges on me having free time during game-development, which hinges on me having free time during life :P.

On to the game itself.

You can see the game in action here courtesy of google video, the owners of which consequentialy made this blog possible, which I find a bit funny (funny ha ha not funny wierd.)

Sahaquiel is a a traditional top-down shooter with a twist, your ship isn't equipped with onboard weapons for the most part, just a set of manipulators it can use to grab and handle objects. What objects the player manipulates to defeat the enemy is up to them and what's at their disposal, giant mecha firearms, stray drones, missile bodies (which make lovely clubs for smacking things.)
The aftermath of this system's been pretty good amongst the pinched group I've tested it with, mostly my classmates in Robotics 1, who have had a great deal of fun smashing the living snot out of the enemy or otherwise making things explode. Hopefully the trailer illustrates the fun I intended the game-play system to have.

In the next post, I'll bring everyone up to speed on the nearly half a year the game's been in development.