Come listen to almost 80 minutes of Chris Park from Arcen Games talking about indie game development in general and the development of AI War: Fleet Command in particular.
Troy
Chiming in to say thanks for this episode, Troy. I know the single-game discussions often don’t get as much listener response, but everything I’ve heard and read from Chris Park suggests he has a fantastic way of thinking when it comes to game design.
I’m amazed that copies sold hasn’t reached 5 figures yet, though. AI War has been a hit with some of my friends that I thought wouldn’t like a game like that in a million years. Frankly the asymmetrical nature of the design and the replayability in terms of the various AI types, as well as the “expand but think about expansion” gameplay makes it one of the most well-thought out games I’ve ever played.
Damn, those are some low numbers for what I’d have thought would be a huge seller. This game is so much worthwhile than other recent releases.
Still, even at $15, that’s quite a bit of scratch. Hopefully more people will jump on board with the Steam release.
That game sounds really interesting. I rarely play RTS games in competitive multiplayer, so a game focused on vs computer play sounds right up my alley. I’ll pick it up this weekend,
I’d struggled to get through the tutorial on the demo on this one. But based on the podcast, I’m going to give this another shot.
I’ve tried a few times to get into this one, but no luck yet. Seems much more fun in concept than in execution to me.
Arcengames has released an updated selection of tutorial videos, featuring version 2.0 of the game. Work a look see if you’re still finding the game a bit of a struggle.
I need to give the demo of this another attempt at a fair shake, too. My main problem was graphical–for my terrible eyes, the UI elements at 1920x1200 were too small, especially the minimap. There was a UI scaling option, which improved that a touch, but made the fonts horrible instead. Think I’ll muck about with different windowed settings, because I do like the concept of it.
Wasn’t there a thread on Qt3 about AI wars? Maybe I am plagued by the “too few characters” search demon?
Thank you
Wednesday is the best commuting day because then I get to listen to the latest Three Moves Ahead. Chris Park was a great guest!
I love it when a guest comes on and just talks - deals with our questions, of course, but uses the time wisely to expand on things larger than their particular game. I have issues with AI War, and more issues the more I play it, but it does have some neat design concepts and I’ve always been interested in the perils and promise of independent development.
I hope we can have Chris on again sometime in the future.
Troy
Sounds like you’d like to grill him a bit about some of his design choices?
troy, can you expand on the issues a bit, or are you planning an article about it?
He promised to mention them in the main thread. PROMISED.
Great job on this, guys. I especially love how you let your guest talk, how well you listen and work in questions here and there as appropriate. I also appreciated the insights into the process of getting a game out into the world and what surprised him about that.
Very nicely done.
-xtien
P.S. And thanks for the plug, Troy. How cool was that?
Wow, hasn’t hit 10,000 sales yet? That amazes me, but then reading these forums I guess I’m more aware of indie stuff than the general populace. It’s even on Impulse, so it has some exposure that way too.
Great game, easily worth $20.
Amen to this, he was coherent, didn’t pause to say um or ah every five seconds, and he used the time given to him to expand on his points in an interesting way.
A perfect guest.
I’d have like to seen him taken to task a bit more for some of his choices and challenged more on his points. Certainly I thought that when he was bringing up the negatives in other games he aimed to avoid that he had failed in several of them. Especially pacing.
For myself, I came back to the game to try it post-2.0 and I’ve found it quite a challenge. I thought the game before was quite clean and it was easy to see what was happening, while now it feels cluttered and I find I’m struggling to get the relevant information from the screen. Whether this is a case of needing more time to adapt or a case of bling overcoming good design, remains to be seen.
I’m looking forward to his expansion (a good reason to bring him on) because I think having a 3rd party will add a much needed element to the game in the absence of AI allies taking on human roles.
Finally, props to Chris for making his codes work on Steam regardless of where you bought the game. Apparently this was a free service offered by Steam (which was a surprise) and I find myself wondering why more developers don’t make use of this. Perhaps they worry about lost sales (I have my Steam copy ergo I give away my CD copy), or perhaps for larger games there is a cost due to greater strain on the Steam infrastructure.
I guess I don’t think 10,000 copies is all that small for an indie game, especially relatively early in its life cycle, -especially- in a genre (RTS) that isn’t traditionally associated with the indie scene.