My own game. Part 3

Disclaimer

Here is an article about how my friends and I wrote the game. We finished it and sell it, but it does not bring us money. However, it was very interesting and fun for us to do it, and I decided to share my memories. The article will have a minimum of technical details, I will not lay out the code, since it makes no sense to learn from it. This is the code of amateurs, not professionals, there is an error on a mistake. None of us has IT education and no one has ever been professionally engaged in programming. I will sometimes lay out the technical details, as without it, nowhere. I ask readers also not to post comments about what we are suckers, as it is a shame to read. Though true.

Other parts of the article

→ Part 1
→ Part 2

Chapter 5.1. Antiquity

Year at work turned out to be difficult. But mostly Fedor Mikhalych and Dimon were engaged in the game, so the load was lighter, and I concentrated on the child and work. Nevertheless, the boss called me from the head office in Paris and said that the bank closes my line of business in Moscow.

This is bad.

- But do not worry, we are not going to throw you. After all, 7 years together. Together we started this business in Russia. Are you going to work in Paris?
- In Paris? - I did not say that I had long wanted to work in Paris like this, right away. It was necessary to fill his own worth, - This is a difficult question, I need to talk to my wife. Of course, I will go, I have long dreamed of working in Paris.
“But there are nuances,” said the boss after a short pause.
- BUT?
- In Paris, you can not.
“Got it,” I replied. I do not understand anything.
- Will you go to London? There you will work a little, and we will transfer you to Paris.
“I need to talk to my wife,” I replied. - I will go.



So, after six months, my family and I ended up in London. It was hard to work on the game from different countries, it was even harder that the transfer to Paris began on rails, and in London we lived on suitcases, waiting for documents and an underwater train. For the game, in my free time, I made the interface. Drawn buttons, icons and fonts. It turned out ugly, but since the others did it even worse, and there was no longer any desire to invest a lot of money in hiring designers for the game after the release of a real X-coma for ayos.

“Scary,” said Fyodor Mikhalych. - Saw the game.

And in the beginning of autumn 2015, I moved from London to Paris with my family.



With work, even in Paris, it was not really - the bank closed the direction not because of Moscow, but for more objective reasons. At work, I was looking for a new job inside my favorite company, and at home I drew buttons and pictures for achivok. At that time, we played a lot of our game, honing our balance. The mathematical model of level balancing did not work much. Well, or we just built it, and, moreover, the “interestingness” of the level was incomprehensible. Therefore, we played and replayed a lot. It was decided to divide random levels into 3 levels of difficulty. The difficulty level increased with the player progress in the game. And we measured progress by the number of completed story missions. So we spent the evening, playing different levels with different squad configurations.

Strange, but we liked the game. However, there is such a proverb, about its raspberry flavor. Somewhere at the same time, I finally drew traces of bullets when firing. Before that, the shots were invisible.

Closer to the new year, it was decided that the project should be completed. Redid a few pictures, polished text and launched in appstore. We didn’t do any special advertising campaign - we were very tired. Ordered a couple of articles on indie resources and all. I do not know what we expected at the time of launch. Similarly, do not get rich. All three of us continued to work on old jobs, and, finally, came to an end (so it seemed then) overtime work. And yet, it was cool to realize that we did make our game. We were simple bankers, we didn't know a damn about game development and programming in general, but we did it. We realized our dream. But the dream did not bring us wealth. The game was sold very sluggishly. There were no reviews in the appstore. On the forums where we posted it, we were sometimes asked how to play it at all, despite the fact that the game began with a training mission.

I had to urgently release an update with useful tips inside the game.



Somewhere by this time it became clear that I could not find work in Paris, and I had to go back to London, where my long-time colleague, who had headed a new direction in our bank, was waiting for me.



My wife and child decided to stay in Paris, because, firstly, it was not clear whether the new business line would take off in London, and life in London was very expensive, and secondly, the daughter went to school in Paris. I was renting a closet in central London, next to work, and on Friday evening, I would take a train to Paris from the office right away to spend the weekend with my family and come back on Monday morning. The train went for almost 2.5 hours and it was very convenient to update the game. In principle, I didn’t have much to do at home in London either, and this also helped code. So we updated the game quickly. But the money has not increased. And we decided not to remember her again.

We have long thought what to do next. We liked to create the game, despite the unsatisfactory result from a financial point of view. However, the fatigue of long work, which did not bring rewards, was obvious: we could not decide on anything. There were a few ideas, we took them, but after a while they threw them. Such a drive, as during the work on the first game, no longer came. Dimon left the project a long time ago, and Fedor Mikhalych and I thought together. I started writing a new engine. With the support of high-grade lighting, normal maps, and in general, finally, 3D. It was not clear why. Until I showed what I finally got, Fyodor Mikhalych.

Chapter 5.2. Sometimes they come back

About one and a half years have passed by this moment since we launched the game for sale.

- There is an iPhone 10. If we want to leave the game on the side, we would need to adapt it to the extra-wide screen. At the same time can we transfer it to your new engine? - suggested Fedor Mikhalych.

It was fresh. To do a long-term unpromising game. But why not? Moreover, my journey to London was coming to an end, a chair in the Paris office was on the horizon, and the idle life came to an end. Oh yeah, by that time Fedor Mikhalych already had 2 children, and I was expecting a second one.

I picked up the old, smelling code.

He was warm and soft to the touch. Soft and enveloping, with a bunch of meaningless abstractions and too bone specifics. I redid the rendering. Fedor Mikhalych made normal textures. I redid the fonts. Fedor Mikhalych polished text. I slightly repainted the interface. Together we adapted all game screens for the new iPhone. It was a bit boring, but very lamp.

This is how the picture looked, drawn by the old engine:


And so, new:

The difference is not very noticeable in statics (lighting, shadows, normal maps on the floor and some models), but it is striking in the dynamics.

Even our scanty trees began to play with fun spring colors in a new lighting / shading model.



Since the project did not represent any commercial value, we decided to make the game on the free market.

And so, recently we have posted an update in the app. True, it was not without excesses, and this time: preparing for the final release in a hurry, we didn’t check his work on the most popular screen format, with a 16: 9 aspect ratio. and we just added support for the ultra-wide screen iPhone X. As a result, due to an error in the verification code of the ultra-wide screen, the interface for iPhone X was loaded on any iPhone. We noticed a bug quickly. Quickly sent an update to the review. A day later, the update was approved by Apple censors, and the correct version went off. But we received one email with a bug report. It was amazing - someone downloaded the game after the update.

In general, that's all. It was very nice to once again scroll the story in memory. And it's time to leave the game alone, yet it is already more than 6 years old (from the beginning of the work). And in order to leave, one must bury, erect a monument and sing. We decided to bury it with the release of the last update, a monument in the form of a free download from the site was set up, and now we have otpeli.

We were good with you.
Thanks for all.