Team Blog

So you've read about how the game was designed and how our artists worked together on all the graphics, and now what you're all wondering is - where's the cake? Alright, so maybe you weren't, but I was!

I decided to try out one of the recipes I was once dared to bake! It's a slightly strange one, but it turned out quite nicely and as long as you don't admit to its contents, people actually enjoy it!

It's great to have another game up and selling, and it was good fun having everyone working together on the same project. I think my favourite part of the development was working on getting the snakes and ladders drawing correctly. As you may have already read, Bryan made the snakes out of little pieces for me to join together so I could create a whole variety of snakes. Of course, the first few attempts didn't all go quite to plan!

When any number of artists work together on a project, it is essential that they understand each other and work as consistently as possible, regularly taking the time to keep updated on the others' progress. Bryan and I wanted to give you a taste of how that process worked on our new Astraware Boardgames project.

The programmers were finishing up work on their previous games but for us, the project was underway! We had little time to come up with the visual motif of the Astraware Boardgames pack so we jumped straight in, considering the look and feel of the boards and pieces, that there are set dimensions and measurements to be kept to, and certain items that must be available to a player. We threw around a number of themes, styles and layouts for the games, all of which were, at this point, inconsistent with one another. But the point of the exercise was to brainstorm and get down as many ideas as possible.

Toward the end of pre-production, Howard gave us a big clue which went on to become integral to the look and feel of the project. The clue was 'Grandpa's Study'.

Instantly, our ideas were synchronised...

Mike: There was a sense of Christmassy excitement when Howard arrived laden down with boxed board games. We gathered the team together along with some pizzas and beers and an evening of board game fun was underway. The key questions on our minds were 'what makes this game fun?' and 'how can we make our versions feel real?'

Bryan: We were also thinking about how to make these games better. One thing we discovered with Snakes and Ladders was that it can take AGES to play. Some of the team also really enjoyed cheating when backs were turned. For a while we thought about incorporating that. One thing that was problematic with the game was that it was the same experience every time. Nothing but the dice rolls changed. We realised we had the power to improve on the game in that department.

Mike: After the board games night we broke up the workload a bit. Bryan, being the more experienced of us both dealt with layout and design, working closely with Kieren to come up with solid functionality that worked visually, while I began to experiment with cosmetics. While I collected photos of various wood textures, (mainly focusing on oak and walnut), and spent hours hidden away lighting and photographing various game boards and pieces from all kinds of different angles, Bryan was figuring out how we make the games feel real.

Bryan: I wanted to use the items you'd expect to see in a board game in as real a way as possible. When you roll the dice, rather than have it show a number and move the piece, I wanted the player to actually ROLL the dice. I tried various mechanisms to make this work, eventually coming up with the dice shaker.

Mike: We did some great sounds for that too... I especially enjoyed conducting the staff in the cheering chorus used when you win a game. While Bryan was putting in the functions, I wasn't having much luck with photos of pieces. There was a sense that I wasn't getting enough of my own ideas into the pieces, and there were loads of issues with lighting and angle consistency, no matter how careful I was with the camera and lights. Eventually I went down a road I haven't visited for a couple of years. I fired up 3D Studio Max and was soon glad I did. The chess pieces were comparatively quick to produce. They were dynamically lit and I was able to get completely consistent shots. I could texture them in the wood material of my choosing and get exactly what I wanted. Having the models also meant I had assets to use for other areas of the game. I was able to theme things within it to keep the same look. Things like the loading bar in the form of a box full of board game pieces gave things a very organic and themed look and became very possible with some careful composition once the heavy modelling work had been done.

Bryan: There were places where we had to dispense with realism and go for the hand drawn approach for functionality. With Snakes and Ladders we wanted to be able to make the game really user changeable. We experimented with ways to allow the player lots of different ways to play the game. I knew the secret with that was to make enough variants of snakes and ladders to make the board really user definable. To cut a very long story short, I broke the snakes up into small pieces, all with their own colour values attached to the different bits. It got very complicated and took a lot of design and reworking, but eventually I managed to make it all very memory economical and it worked really well.

Mike: I was finding loads of need for pixel popping too. Especially when it came to the low resolution versions of the games. I had to basically redraw the models, which had now become reference material, in pixels. This took a lot away from the realism, but with low resolutions we can't mess around. Clarity is too important. So what we lost in realism, we gained in nice clear graphics which still keep in style with the original models.

Mike: Also I had to add a lot of hand drawn art to the title screen and close up graphics... Unless you spend weeks on the detail, a 3D model tends to look a bit dodgy when closer up than it's designed to be. When suggestions came in that I give the knight model some character and use him as the game's main title emblem, I generally handled the request with a couple of hours in photo shop. I'm particularly happy with the little guy. I based his cool, smug grin on a young Bruce Willis!

Bryan: We really pulled together on the game. Usually we can cope with one artist putting the style to a game at any one time. This one has taken a lot of concentrated effort between the two of us. I think it's because the devices we're making the games for are getting more and more powerful.

Mike: We're having to evolve to stay as far ahead of the devices as possible, improve on our visual ideas. Basically, the moment we discover there's more we can do, we get right in there and do it. Having the two of us co-ordinating our efforts on Astraware Boardgames, helps us to match up our styles. That can only strengthen the quality of our graphics. We know we have a good reputation for that so we obviously want to keep the games looking better and better. Our customers are loyal and appreciate crafted games. They deserve the value for their money.

When we create games ourselves, even if they are our version of a well known style such as Solitaire or Board Games, we put a lot of thought into them. One of the main things we think about is getting the right balance between fun and challenging. Too hard, and you don't get a chance to enjoy winning. Too easy, and the sense of achievement isn't so great.

This article at the BBC, by Margaret Robertson entitled "State of Play: Man versus machine" talks about people who've created machines to play games better than they could themselves. I can understand the technical achievement at doing so, but Margaret makes an extra point - the games aren't just there to be a chellenge, they are there as an entertainment. Making a game impossible to beat certainly doesn't make it more fun for normal people to play! So, while it seems like the game is trying to cleverly beat you, the reality is it is trying to make it look difficult, but let you feel a sense of achievement. As she says, "They aren't machines determined to beat you, they're machines determined to entertain you."

In Arthur C. Clarke's book, 2001: A Space Oddysey, the ship's computer, Hal 9000, will play chess with the crew to keep them entertained. While it was able to play so well that no human could beat it (a concept inconceivable at the time, but a reality now), it was programmed to give the players a challenging game but to let them win about half of the time. The crew knew this, but would still play. I didn't understand this when I read it in my teens, it didn't seem to make sense - but I understand much more about the nature of entertainment now!

In our Board Games (coming very soon) we've had a lot of decisions to make - on visual design, what games to include, and how hard - or otherwise - to make the computer player. Unsurprisingly, in an office full of game enthusiasts and computer programmers, there are a few people who are very good at each of the games, and keeping in mind that the experts aren't the target audience is sometimes a challenge!

There are some fantastic stand-alone chess games out there - and they're brilliant for people who play at club level. I'll admit I'm not that great at chess - I tend to find computer chess games often beat me on their easiest setting. Personally, I don't play chess to improve my chess skill. When I do, I play chess to enjoy playing, and I think the majority of handheld gamers are just wanting to pass time with their device. I wanted to set the levels so that someone who knows the rules stands a chance of winning at beginner levels, and medium and hard are enough to give players who are reasonably competent enough of a challenge to be fun, without necessarily beating them every time. I also wanted a set of games that at their easiest level would be playable by children!

Have we managed this? I think so - many of our beta testers have enjoyed playing, and the better players at each of the games find they can often win. Are the games enjoyable to play? I think we've achieved that - and I'm very much looking forward to finding out how many of our audience think so too!

You may have spotted that we've just added a brand new PC games channel to our website. It's powered by Big Fish Games and includes hundreds of fantastic, fun games for your Windows PC. Whether you like puzzles, adventures, action, word or card games, they've got a fabulous selection for everyone.

I've bought a few of the great games that they have available and I'd like to share some of my favorites:

Chocolatier - travel the world, collect receipes and ingredients, make a range of delicious chocolates and master the art of the Chocolatier! If you enjoyed Story Mode in Tradewinds 2 with its tasks and missions, then you're sure to enjoy Chocolatier. My only complaint is that it didn't come with real chocolates!

Virtual Villagers: A New Home is a fun SIM game. You start with a handful of scared villagers washed up on a desert island and you get to teach them skills and build a new community. As your villagers learn they can solve puzzles that reveal the mysteries of their new island home. If you played Village Sim on a Palm OS® device, then you'll love this 'big screen' version with even more puzzles!

Luxor Mahjong is a great variation on the classic game of Mahjong. Pair-up matching tiles to remove them from the board. The object is to try and remove them all, and then progress to the next level. Luxor Mahjong has beautiful Eqyptian theming, and 5 useful powerups to help you clear the boards.

Don't forget, all of the games have a 1 hour free trial so you can try them out before you decide what to buy. If you've enjoyed any of the games and would like to tell us about it, post your thoughts in our forum using the Comments link below.

Yarrr! Today be our official company holiday as we be gettin' piratical and takin' part in all sorts o' nautical nonsense. It's international so ye can take part in it wherever you are in the world! You might want to take it easy and just interject an occasional "Avast!" or "Yarrr!", or you can go the whole nine yards and get into yer finest pirate regalia and get into the whole spirit by makin' yer coworkers walk the plank (which they be sure to be deservin', scurvy dogs the lot o' 'em!)

Them amongst ye who be interested in keepin' to the pirate code will want to check back to our blog and comments section, which we'll be updatin' throughout the day with news and pictures of what we've been up to so far!

Mad Cap'n Redbeard Tomlinson