Before, and months after the closure too, Dimitri (@Mihtree) and I spent some time to get it polished enough to be proud of it, and hopefully find a publisher for the game. ...And it's done! Our friends at Neko Entertainement (they published "Puddle" last year on many platforms) handle it from now on, and will try to push the game on PC, Mac and Linux.
Do you remember the very first Mario Bros Arcade game, the one with the "POW" in the middle of the stage? Do you know Super Crate Box and Orcs Must Die? Well, mix some elements from those three titles, and make it something very difficult and fast.
This is what “Poöf” is: hectic AND very strategic at the same time. At first sight, because we wanted it very readable (remember this post?), it could look like a casual iPad game… Trust me, it's SO NOT.
After a quite long HellYeah development, we wanted to make a game only focused on hardcore gameplay, tight controls and choices.
That's how we came out with this cute canine knight, protecting his beloved kitty from waves of sneaky monsters, and using a lot of attack/defense techniques.
Playtesters who try the game at this moment seem very happy with it, and I must admit it's a kind of a relief to see it finished and played for real.
That's exactly why I made this: I won't get money from it, I just felt how it was such a shame to have a game nearly done, and maybe forgotten forever in an old computer with no one actually playing it. I know how Neko are doing a very good job at their new publishing activities, I can see it with Puddle everywhere and more to come, now I can't wait to see what they can do with our small canine hero!
As soon as they produce videos for it, I will post it here too, and share more details… So, stay tuned! And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to send it to me on twitter! ( @AurelRegard )
Maybe you wonder why the game is called "Poöf". Well, you can cancel any bonus item of the game, at any moment, and change it for a cute, slowing enemies, golden poo. So, woof, poo... Oh come on, it's super difficult to find a game name, you know that right? Thanks for reading! :)
Note for English readers: Me and my friend Pipomantis would like to present a small video we made last week. Because I LOVE making games, I'd like more people to get into gamemaking and feel how great it is. The goal is to explain to absolute beginners how to make their very own first games. I just exported the french version, so, let's post it. I still have to add subtitles and release the english version. It's coming in a few days! Update: I made the subtitles for the first half, and... Let's face it, now I understand how useless it is. You just can't look at the mouse cursor AND read the subtitles at the same time. We talk way too much for that (bloody french guys!). So no english version for now. We are thinking about a new video, english spoken from the start. Kind of a "deluxe version", with more chapters in it to answer some advanced questions we get about animation, particles, etc... So, stay tuned!
Pour les lecteurs français: Aujourd'hui je suis heureux de vous présenter >> une petite vidéo << qu'on a faite avec Pipomantis / CanardPC, afin de partager le plaisir qu'on peut avoir à faire son propre jeu vidéo. Elle est destinée aux débutants absolus, les pros vont bien rigoler j'imagine. Mais les autres devraient apprendre quelques trucs intéressants, et peut-être même avoir l'envie de s'y mettre, qui sait? J'espère que ca vous plaira, et qu'on est pas trop ridicules en action (c'est la première fois que je fais un truc du genre). Bon visionnage à tous!
>> DOWNLOAD (or alt.link) << SOURCE FILES (and the terrible music MP3)
(then you just have to select "import" in game maker studio to load it)
A quick post here to share some cool things happening now or very soon.
► New game incoming! With a publisher!
After the closure of Arkedo, we (Dimitri and I) spent some time polishing a little game we made in the last months of the studio. Basically, it's a super hardcore version of the very old Mario Bros Arcade, of course with a twist. Now we're quite happy with it. We made some successful playtests, and we even now have a publisher for it!
I made this for the joy of actually seeing the game played (I won't get any money from it). It was quite sad to imagine this title forgotten forever in a secret box or something. I will ask to our publisher if I can share some screenshots, details and artworks here in the following days, so stay tuned!
► A video challenge to bring people to game making
In the following weeks, I will try to publish a big video tutorial for beginners about making games on your own, from start to finish. The goal is to share some knowledge about various tools, and having fun explaining that to beginners.
Me and a friend (who don't know that much about game development) will try to make a small full game in 1 hour or so, from design to code and music.
Honestly, I think we'll fail at the one hour only limit, but it will be fun and hopefully interesting anyway... It could be featured by a famous french magazine too, so everyone with good game ideas can learn how to make cool prototypes quickly.
Note: It will of course be subbed in English! (< any advice on easy editing tools for that? The youtube autosub feature seems to be only available for spoken English)
► Want to meet? Join me at the next Game Apero (by Game In)
I've been invited by the Game In association to join the next Game Apero in Lille (France) on June26th. I will talk about some of my small experiences in the game industry. There will be many studios, publishers, and cool people having fun and discuss video game development topics. Let's have a beer together!
New post, now for something more positive. Since my last one, I have been getting a tremendous amount of support for my next project. It feels very good to talk about fresh stuff. But some people seem doubtful about my GameMaker choice.
... aaaand I definitely can understand that. It sounds like I was making real games using real tools before at Arkedo, and like I'm now playing with an old E-jay shareware for dummies.
Very few game developers (and gamers) really know what can be achieved with GM, so let's talk a bit about it. Even if you knew GameMaker years ago, you could be surprised by the features recently added.
First things first, here comes some great PC games you could know, made with GameMaker:
► What was the "old" Game Maker, as you may remember it?
GM is born more than 10 years ago from a teacher named Mark Overmars, for an educational purpose. Using simple Drag n' Drop actions, it has given to total beginners the opportunity to make small games of their own. The technical performances were kind of limited, but the very smart visual interface was a design tour de force.
Then a script language (called GML) was added, and a growing talented community made extensions, DLLs, and more. That way, you could find young beginners using only Drag n' Drop actions for simple tests, and advanced users using GML scripts to bring very rad games like the ones above.
This classic Game Maker software is now kind of frozen for about one year.
► What is the "new" Game Maker Studio?
GM is now owned by a company called Yoyo Games, founded by people with impressive track records ( Microsoft Xbox, Sumo Digital, Apple, Hasbro, EA, Funcom, etc... more info here) They have done an amazing work with the release of a rewritten software, named GM "Studio". Designed for real production, this new version costs real money and is targeted for professional users.
- GM is now integrated to Steam, with Cloud support for the projects, and even SVN.
- It can efficiently export to PC / Windows 8 store / Mac Appstore / iOS Appstore / HTML 5 / Windows Phone and Android. A lot of games have been successfully approved now. More targets are planned, like the Linux export coming very soon.
- The exported games run in the appropriate language on each platform (no more Delphi!), which bring performances on par with natively written games. (I'm very impressed to see how runs my PC prototype on a retina iPad)
- The included set of convenient tools (sprite editor, paths, tiles layers, room editor, timelines, etc...) makes game development super fast. - Better performances mean you're not restricted to retro inspired games. I just love 8/16-bits inspired titles, but now if you want huge sprite sheets and know how to handle texture pages management, you're more than welcome in the HD era. Even with shinny additive blending FXxxxx.
- GMS even includes "evil features" like In App purchases, Flurry, Ads support, Facebook / Twitter integration, etc... You definitely can make your shameful freemium with tons of "Coin Doublers" and "Click this ad to get a 40 coins reward!" features. (Please don't)
- There even is a physic engine. I never used it for now, so I can't tell anything good or bad about this, but here you can watch an Angry Bird clone creation, if Box2D is your kind of thing.
► Now I would like to try it for real game production, what do I need to know?
If you're a regular beginner: nothing, just go for it. You'll need patience, good ideas, and the most important, to learn to finish a game. Maybe you could just stick to the free regular GameMaker for now, if you're not interested by multiplatform exports.
If you're an experienced game developer, used to more classic environments,here come some notes.
- GM is mainly made for 2D projects. Crazy guys do crazy 3D things with it, but Unity seems a way better choice for now if you want 3D gameplay.
- You still can use Drag n' Drop actions for basic design, but most of the "pro" features use GML script language only.
- One tool is missing: where is the Particle editor?. Problem solved here.
- The documentation and WIKI are great, but the forums and the google results can be misleading at start. Because of the two versions having different behaviors (regular GM vs GMS), you always have to be careful when reading a tutorial. Is it for Studio or not?
That said, there are TONS a good tutorials everywhere for both. And once mastered, the messy forums are in fact very, very useful.
- Due to the educational purpose of the original GM, you'll face professionals AND regular users at the same place. Please don't panic. I'm personally more than happy to read dumb questions, there is always a chance to learn something from the answer. (You'll probably read some dumb questions of mine, too).
- GM Studio evolves a lot. New features come every month, like the cross platform network capacities added last week. Stay tuned, have a look at the roadmap (shaders, linux...), and read the changelogs closely. Maybe follow the YoYo team on twitter to get sneak peeks and news on upcoming things, too.
- GM Studio allows super fast game development, but can't do magic. Yes you'll have to pay the $100 developer fees from Apple, and yes you'll need a Mac connected to compile your iOS project, even if you do 99,9% of the work on your PC. Expect a very cool tool, not a miracle.
► Conclusion
I hope many devs will try the new GMS in the future, it's just great. And as titles as The Binding of Isaac shown to many, even with a very simple technology, a great game is a great game, made with Unity, GameMaker, Flash or Unreal... Let's make cool things now!
(This post has entirely been translated in English by Olivier Penot. A thousand thanks to him, at least. You can read a french version here)
Hello everyone, here is Aurelien from Arkedo Studio speaking. I’m the creative director of the games we did since Arkedo started. Camille (the real big boss of the company) and I receive a lot of messages asking us about the actual situation of Arkedo, and what are our plans next.
Arkedo stops after 7 years of super great moments, but the situation is subtle, and generally few people take the time to understand. Before we get into quick news posts like “Bankrupt! Shutting down! Apocalypse!”, let’s take the time to explain things calmly.
► FACTS
Arkedo, the company, is still here. But no one’s employed anymore. No more games are produced either. That’s the subtlety of the situation: Arkedo hasn’t closed down and is not bankrupt, going into administration or whatever big word, as it is managed properly. It is interesting for the structure to still be here as after HellYeah!, we’ve made two small games which are finished but you’re not aware of them yet. We hope to release them soon and it should be fine on this side.
► THE DETAILED WHY
There are three main reasons as why Arkedo stops. If this of any interest to you, please take the time to consider the three reasons as a whole and not separately.
♦MONEY
First and most obvious one. Nowadays need a very careful financial management. As a consequence, one always has to jump from one project to another without a rest and with a very small team.
But our team has grown throughout the years and we didn’t have any secured project on sight after HY. We first produced two new little games, self funded, by splitting the team into two mini autonomous teams. But before running out of money, we had to do something.
Arkedo has been, and will always be, an honest company, managed with generous and human values. One may consider this either silly, or nice.
So, it has been decided to disband the team when there still was enough money to get good conditions for everyone, rather than replace permanent positions with interns and a bad atmosphere. As in any human matter, it is important to know when to stop, to get a clean situation. It is precisely because we did this at this time that everyone from Arkedo is still having a good time together, even after it's officially over.
♦ POST HELLYEAH ! ERA
If you had the courage to read my post mortem (LINK) on HY!, you won’t learn much by telling you that this project was a little too big for us.
Big picture is, the game has a lot of things we love, but also things we regret. Because we didn’t have enough time, or experience, and we reached our limits. It’s no big deal, but one needs to learn something out of it.
The studio wanted to make smaller games again, on a more manageable scale, without a huge publisher behind you (even though our relation with Sega is still excellent), or any management needs.
But this small games willing is not really compatible with a middle size company structure. Right now, it is better to be small in order to take risks, and we weren’t anymore as we used to be when we did Nervous Brickdown, which was 7 years ago already.
♦WHAT ONE WANT
Adding to these: the two co-founders projects of Camille and I.
When we decided together to put everything on hold, Camille was fully involved on his publishing project, already looking ahead. That doesn’t mean he wanted to leave Arkedo on the side of the road.
On my side, I already told the team my willing to start my own mini-studio within the next few years. It wasn’t planned for a short term, but I had it in mind.
Knowing that our long-term objectives would both drive us away from Arkedo, it didn’t make sense to take financial risks again. Within a less hostile economical context, Arkedo would probably still be here, but this context just “speed-uped” the end of the studio by a couple of years.
► WHAT’S NEXT ?
- Camille will tell you better about his projects. There has been a serious, deadly problem to the publishing project in december and I will let him update you on this as I don’t want to write anything false. What is for sure is that we still see one each other and will often do in the future, all with great pleasure and for a long time.
- In order to end this far-too-long note, on my side, after a small period of time to get over the situation, I’m now fulfilling an old fantasy: to produce a game from scratch to the end: code, sounds and design. I don’t know yet if the result will deserve your attention, or if I could make a living out of it once done but it is looking good and it’s making me very happy.
If anyone read the whole thing, first, bravo. And mostly, guessing that you read this by curiosity for us, we hug/thank you very sincerely by finishing with this: Arkedo’s members are fine, most haven’t stopped the pixels and will show you new things with their own manners. In this kind of case, we say “See ya” rather than “Farewell”, right?
Aurelien, on behalf of Arkedo.
Sidenote: HY Pocket Inferno on mobile platforms should be out by now. I didn’t work on it, nor the rest of Arkedo excluding our producer. Reason is simple: the game has been entirely produced externally by another studio as, at the time, we were hardly finishing the PC/XBLA version of the game.
♦ (International readers: ENGLISH VERSION can be found here. )
Bonjour tout le monde, c'est Aurélien du studio Arkedo à l'appareil. Je m'occupe de la partie créative des jeux depuis la création de l'entreprise. Camille (le vrai chef du studio) et moi, on reçoit beaucoup de messages pour nous demander quelle est la situation d'Arkedo, et ce qui se passe pour la suite.
Arkedo s'arrête après 7 ans d'excellents moments, mais la situation est subtile, et généralement peu de gens prennent le temps de comprendre. Avant de se retrouver dans des news un peu hâtives de type "Faillite! Liquidation! Apocalypse!", faisons le point tranquillement.
► LES FAITS
Arkedo, la structure juridique, est encore là. Mais le studio ne compte plus d'employés. Il n'y a plus de jeux produits actuellement.
Subtilité: Arkedo n'a pas pour autant complètement fermé, et n'est pas non plus en faillite, liquidation ou autre vilain mot, car géré proprement.
Il est intéressant que la structure reste vivante, car après HellYeah!, nous avons réalisés deux petits jeux qui sont terminés, mais que vous ne connaissez pas encore. On espère les voir sortir bientôt, et ça se profile pas mal.
► LE POURQUOI EN DETAIL
Il y a trois raisons à l'arrêt d'Arkedo.Si ce message vous intéresse, s'il vous plait prenez le temps de considérer les trois raisons à la fois et non une seule.
♦LES SOUS
La première raison, c'est celle à laquelletout le monde pense. Les temps actuels demandent une gestion financière économe. Ils demandent aussi de sauter de projet en projet sans temps mort, avec une équipe réduite au minimum.
Or notre équipe a grossi au fil des années, et nous n'avions pas de projets sûrs en vue après HY. Nous avons d’abord produit deux nouveaux petits jeux sur fonds propresen séparant l'équipe en deux mini teams autonomes. Mais avant de voir ensuite nos économies définitivement fondre, il a fallu réagir.
Arkedo a toujours été, et ce jusqu'à la fin, une entreprise honnête, gérée de manière humaine et généreuse. Selon le point de vue, on peut trouver ça idiot ou formidable.
Quoiqu'il en soit, il a été décidé de dissoudre toute l'équipe dans de bonnes conditions, et surtout à temps, plutôt que de remplacer les CDI par des stagiaires et une sale ambiance.
Comme dans d'autres domaines, il est bon de savoir s'arrêter dans une situation propre. C'est ce timing précieux qui fait que tout le monde s'entend encore bien, même dans l'après Arkedo.
♦L'APRES HELLYEAH!
Si vous vous êtes infligé mon post-mortem sur HY!, je ne vous apprends rien en vous disant que ce genre de projet s'est révélé un peu trop gros pour nous.
En résumé, le jeu comporte beaucoup de choses que l'on aime, mais aussi des éléments que l'on regrette. Par manque de temps, de recul, et surtout d'expérience, nous avons atteint nos limites. Ce n'est pas grave, mais il faut en apprendre quelque chose.
L'envie du studio a été de repasser à des jeux plus petits, plus maitrisables, sans gros éditeur derrière (même si nos relations avec Sega sont toujours très bonnes), ni management d'équipe. Juste faire de bons petits jeux entres potes.
Or, cette envie de petits jeux indés se révèlent assez peu compatible avec une structure de taille moyenne. En ce moment, il vaut mieux être léger pour pouvoir prendre des risques, et nous ne l'étions plus, contrairement à la période de production de Nervous Brickdown, il y a 7 ans déjà.
♦LES ENVIES DE CHACUN
S'ajoutent à ça les projets des deux fondateurs du studio, Camille et moi.
Au moment de prendre la décision commune de tout mettreen veille, Camille était à pleine vapeur sur son projet d'édition de jeux, et déjà tourné vers le futur. Ce qui ne veut pas dire qu'il voulait lâcher Arkedo en route.
De mon côté, j'avais annoncé à l'équipe mon souhait de monter mon propre mini-studio dans les prochaines années. Ce n'était pas non plus du tout prévu pour tout de suite, mais c'était dans un coin de ma tête.
Sachant que nos envies sur le long terme nous éloigneraient chacun d'Arkedo, il ne faisait pas sens de reprendre des risques financiers. Dans un contexte économique moins hostile que l'actuel, Arkedo serait surement toujours là, mais ce climat n'a fait que précipiter de deux ou trois ans la fin du studio.
► LA SUITE
- Camille vous parlera mieux que moi de ses projets. Il y a eu un contretemps sérieux au projet d'édition, et je le laisserai faire une update là-dessus de son coté, de peur d'écrire des bêtises. Ce qui est certain, c'est que nous nous voyons encore régulièrement avec plaisir, et que nos chemins se croiseront sûrement encore longtemps.
- Enfin pour terminer ce bien trop long billet, de mon côté, après une petite période pour digérer la situation, je réalise depuis quelques temps un vieux fantasme: faire un jeu tout seul de A à Z, code, musique, et design. Je ne sais pas encore si le résultat méritera votre attention, ni si je pourrai en vivre une fois terminé, mais ça avance bien, et ça me rend très heureux.
Si quelqu’un est arrivé jusqu'au bout de cette explication, d'abord, bravo. Et surtout, en partant du principe que vous avez lu ceci par curiosité pour nous, on vous embrasse bien sincèrement en terminant là-dessus: les membres d'Arkedo vont bien, beaucoup n'ont pas raccroché les pixels, et ils vous proposeront prochainement de nouvelles choses chacun à leur manière. Dans ce genre de cas, on dit "à bientôt" plutôt que "bye bye", non?
Aurélien pour Arkedo.
Note: Pour répondre aux questions, HY Pocket Infernosur smartphones devrait être sorti au moment où vous lisez ces lignes. Je n'ai pas travaillé dessus, pas plus que le reste d'Arkedo à part notre producer. La raison est simple: le jeu a été entièrement réalisé en externe par un autre studio car à l'époque nous terminions de notre côté la version PC/Xbox en tirant la langue.
The more I use Game Maker Studio, the more I love it. But there is one very annoying thing to deal with: PARTICLES. Making your own using drag n' drop is quite limited, and creating it blindly with code takes foreveeeeer.
I'm used to the Arkedo particle editor for years now, and I was missing it so much when making things with GMS. But, this was before... PARTICLE DESIGNER 2.5! (hallelujah.wav)
This tool makes everything so much faster: the settings are super easy to get if you're familiar with some other tools. Set the scale, speed, alpha, blending, and BAM, and then export your graphic effect directly to the clipboard!
That's it. Paste into your GML code, and watch the final result in your game. Thanks SO MUCH to Alert Games for this tool...Go visit their website!
Note: the tool was designed for Game Maker (not) Studio. Remember to delete the "_0.png" extension in your code, and it will work like a charm.
I just love to create new characters. And Snoopy. Imagine how happy I was when drawing this one!
But sometimes I can't stop adding details even if I know it's wrong. As said before, I recently realized (LINK) how important it is for a game to keep things simple and readable. So, sadly, the following version of this character doesn't exist anymore, I replaced it later with a new and simpler one and it works way better once in game.
On a side note, I hope to show more on this title later, but I can't promise anything for now, this is not a tease or something. I was just sincerely afraid to lose it in my PC mess / randomachineblackhole, so I'm glad to post it here so I know it's somewhere.
