Hey there, friends! Welcome back on board of “San Francisco”, a huge spacecraft travelling far, far way from planet Earth.
Today I am going to talk about the testing of our game, and what we consider “good quality” for the project.
I already explained how the game works from the inside. Here is a quick reminder–the quest logic and action sequences are not implemented directly in the code. Instead, we’ve implements our own engine, which reads a simplified text file with a set of actions. That way I can be sure that dozens and hundreds of logical interactions will not overload the game and it will remain stable even after hundreds of locations.
Nevertheless, we all understand that bugs will be bugs and there is no way you can release a game without testing. So the project has passed the most thorough tests. Of course, the most credit goes to our publisher, HeroCraft, or rather to their QA department. I am an avid quest fan myself with a lot of experience. So I perfectly understand how frustrating are bugs in this particular genre. When you have tried all the options and already reached out to solution and , finally understand that there is a bug in the game that makes it unsolvable, and it is now impossible finish it – what could be worse?! Maybe you are lucky to find an old saved game, but what if there is no saves? What if you saved in a desperate situation? The Horror! A dozen crashes would be better than that!
So, I assure you, we take the game testing extremely serious. When the project was submitted to the tests, QA specialists were given a strict order to search for logical errors with the utmost attention. I even compiled a special list of priorities:
1) Bugs of the highest category: by performing certain actions, including strange ones (by clicking everything, saving and loading, quickly pressing anywhere on the screen), you can "break" the game at any time in any location, which makes its walkthrough impossible;
2) Bugs of the first category: by doing any actions to find the opportunity to break the game at some critical moment and make the walkthrough impossible. Or using all the usual actions find an opportunity to freeze the game or crash it;
3) Bugs of the second category: everything else.
The guys tried their best to flicker, click and press everything in the game! And if something was found, we immediately corrected it. So I can say that the HeroCraft QA engineers did their best. Up until this point not once have we heard about any critical bugs that would not let you finish. Let's hope that will be the case in the future.
That is all for today, folks. Next time let's try to talk about mini-games.
Thank you all and have fun, everyone!
Odysseus Kosmos - Developer Diaries #12
Hey there, friends! Welcome back on board of “San Francisco”, a huge spacecraft travelling far, far way from planet Earth.
Today we are going to discuss sound effects and music in the project. I think, we have been very lucky with the sound design, and main thanks goes to our sound designer Ivan Holodov and the authors of the game’s main theme – Lyuba “Princess” Terletskaya and Mikhail Mishenko.
But why did it go so well?
Let’s find out!
Long before we’ve outsourced the soundtrack, even long before I’ve started developing the game, I already knew how it should start. It would go something like this:
A huge spacecraft is flying slowly somewhere through silent darkness of empty and lonely space and a pure woman’s voice starts singing off-screen.
Yes, I knew how it should go, I knew what kind of voice I needed, but I had no idea where can I find this kind of soundtrack and what the song should be about...
As it’s often the case, chance came to my aid. I discovered Lyuba Terletskaya on YouTube (she is a blogger) and not knowing yet that she is a singer, while reading about her I already found the album and the song “Hold My Hand” that became the opening theme for the first episode. I knew right there – that’s what we need. Lyuba was glad to contribute to the project and sold us non-exclusive rights to the song.
As for our main sound engineer and composer Ivan Holodov – our publisher (HeroCraft studios) has helped us find him and his studio Creatorium Sound Design. It was truly one of the best discoveries for the project! All the music tracks you hear in the game and all wonderful sounds have been created by Ivan. He was incredibly responsible about his work and delivered superb content. While I was writing a technical task for the sounds I’d like to hear in the game, I’ve created a spreadsheet. When Ivan played through the game, he increased the number of sound three times! And I've never regretted it. We were extremely lucky to get such a high quality soundtrack for an indie project. So thanks again, HeroCraft!
I should mention that our simplified game engine has also helped here – credit goes to Ivan, he understood very quickly how things work and placed all the in-game sound in the text file with game logics all by himself, even though he has no programming experience. And the result turned out amazing! I sure hope that Ivan will continue working with us in the future.
All right, thank you for your attention, everyone. There is not much time left until the second episode release. Next time we will discuss the technical stability of the project.
Odysseus Kosmos and His Robot Quest - full season
You have a unique opportunity to buy the full season with a discount if you like Odysseus Kosmos and His Robot Quest: 1 Episode!
Check the bundle here: http://store.steampowered.com/bundle/5963/Odysseus_Kosmos__Season_Pass/
Odysseus Kosmos and His Robot Quest: Episode 1 is released!
Today is a big day! We release Odysseus Kosmos and His Robot Quest: Episode 1 for 4.99$!
Now you have an option to buy the first episode for 4.99$ or the complete season for 14.99$.
Join Odysseus Kosmos and Robot Quest in their adventure on the "San Francisco" board! ːsteamhappyː
Odysseus Kosmos - Developer Diaries #11
Hey there, friends! Welcome back on board of “San Francisco”, a huge spacecraft travelling far, far way from planet Earth.
Today we are going to focus on art. I keep hearing all the time that the graphics is not that important for a game and game play is all that counts. But we all know that people judge by the looks.
We have chosen a style for our visuals a long time ago, long before the first location has been drawn. Everybody calls it “pixel art” to be short, although it’s not that simple. If you want to see pixel art, the first thing that come to mind would be 8 or 16-bit retro. It is a pretty cool style, though not entirely what we’ve been looking for. Firstly, usage of a hardcore pixel art creates serious limitations for character art. Just look at the folks faces in Gemini Rue or Gods Will be Watching :) Secondly, we love space and wanted to picture its beauty, and such a minimalistic visual style would not work here.
So finally we’ve settled for graphic modes of mid-nineties: SVGA adjusted for 16:9 screens, more common these days.
The first draft I’ve created all by myself. I’ve assembled a pixel art demo using simple images and animations from popular cartoons (this I’ve already mentioned in the blog). And a bit later Roman joined the project and Odysseus flourished for real. Of course all of the credit for the wonderful final art of Odysseus with its colorful rich easy to read and definitely stylish visuals goes to Roman Gezerov, our artist. We’ve received a lot of compliments for game art, so we are not the only ones who share that opinion. :)
There is a downside to this – the process takes a long time. The most time consuming part of our entire production is drawing of locations and animation. First I come up with a description of a location with detailed info on items and key points on the scene. The artist renders a temporary 3D placeholder that is used to set the perspective and the final composition of a location.
Then we discuss and approve the final draft and afterwards all content is drawn by hand in several stages. Often we create multiple layers on a scene to add a parallax effect. As result a single location (a single picture) takes from a week up to ten days, and the entire project will take a bout a year of work. And we still have to add animation for the main character! Sometimes we hire outsource artists, but all content passes through Roma’s hands anyway. Big thanks to him! Without him Odysseus surely wouldn’t be so wonderful.
Next time we are going to focus on sound design, but for now – happy New Year and merry Christmas everyone!
Odysseus Kosmos - Developer Diaries #10
(few moments from second ep =) )
Hey there, friends! Welcome back on board of “San Francisco”, a huge spacecraft travelling far, far way from planet Earth.
Today I’d like to discuss the puzzles and riddles in the game. Because no matter how great the game’s visuals, GUI or story are, most importantly the game should be interesting to play.
What are the means to create interesting game play? (Or, should I say, what means are we using? Well, firstly, you have to be creative and think outside the box! For example, we have our item interactions. Yes, items are basically the foundation of the entire quest game play: “find a pair of scissors to cut a ribbon” or “take a wrench to unscrew a nut”. And this could be fun; this is what we like about the quest genre. But when the entire game is played simply by going through all the options – there is no fun in that.
I’m sure that a decent quest requires at least one (ideally several) puzzles that cannot be solved by going through all options. And I don’t mean that players should guess the solution without going through all options. I mean that you literally won’t be able to solve the puzzle without finding some sort of unusual solution beyond the standard “find an item and use it” pattern. An AI “bot” should not be able to play the entire game, only a human being should be able to do that – than it will be fun for a smart player! The metal detector puzzle in “Grim Fandango” is a great example.
Another point that seems important for me is the structure of the game play. I am an avid believer in the classical quest format, and I’ve already mentioned that I don’t like the “scheduled access” to content. Let’s say, we have a lock on the door and players must find a key to open it and go further. The solution is obvious. There is no mystery here whatsoever. Once the door is opened, you get a new portion of dialogue. All players pass the game at a similar pace.
A good quest in my opinion is when having finished examining the locations you can continue playing in your mind, picturing various solutions that seem correct. Than you have a true fun quest. If this is impossible due to the automatically story progress – this game is not a quest.
I’m sure we will return to this topic a few more times, but that would be all for today. Next time we are going to talk about the soundtrack or the game’s visuals. Thanks for your interest!
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Hey there, friends! Welcome back on board of “San Francisco”, a huge spacecraft travelling far, far way from planet Earth.
Great news everyone! The game has been successfully released and started selling. We would like to thank all our backers – your support is greatly appreciated.
Steam has also given us some support and featured our game on the main page with a huge banner for a while, which was also a great help.
A few quick words on the pricing – this decision was made by our publisher. Currently we are selling the entire season. We trust the publisher’s opinion. And what’s important for us – the publisher guarantees that the season will be completed and all episodes will be released as planned. The stability is highly important in this regard.
By the way, the next episode is scheduled for 1st of March! We’ll be waiting together.
The episode is already in active development. The first testing will begin in January and the episode will be launched according to schedule. And the third episode is coming next summer.
Also many thanks for your nice feedback. It’s just… WOW, thank you so much! Your feedback is what keeps us going. We are reading everything carefully and planning improvements in the next episodes based on your feedback. If you have an advice or a suggestion – please be sure to let us know. We are reviewing all feedback and we’re very interested in hearing your opinion.
Now that the game has been launched we are planning to post developer diaries biweekly. Next time we will be talking about the in game art. And once again many thanks to all of you! Until next time :)
Odysseus Kosmos and his Robot Quest !
Big day today!
If you are a fan of the old school classics - please check out HeroCraft's newest release!
You are the ship engineer Odysseus Kosmos; you and your service robot Barton Quest are stuck in deep space near a black hole, all on yourselves. Your shipmates are down on the surface of a planet where time moves far, far slower and you, along with your robot, have been waiting for years for them to return to your orbital station. You were used to your comfortable boredom, but then the ship starts acting funny: it looks like this mysterious black hole affect your ship in strange and unexpected ways, cutting off your communications and threatening with de-orbiting the station and sending you stranded into deep space… unless you can do something to stop it!
Odysseus Kosmos - Developer Diaries #8 (Release!)
Hey there, friends! Welcome back on board of “San Francisco”, a huge spacecraft travelling far, far way from planet Earth.
First let us get back to our last week’s quiz and why Oddy thinks about spaghetti when looking at a black hole. Naturally, this is a reference to spaghettification of any object (an astronaut, for instance) that lands in a black hole. I recommend looking that term up in Wikipedia! And the key goes to RedBug!
And now let’s return to our tale of the game’s development.
Today is a big day for us, as we are releasing our first episode! And in that connection I would like to take some time to talk about the atmosphere of the game that we are trying to create.
Our main character, Oddy, is trapped alone on a space ship for many years to come. But out story is not a drama and most certainly not a horror story (like Stasis or SOMA). This is not a disaster and not an “awful awakening”, as everything seems to go according to plan at first. Imagine yourself on vacation for a few years. You can stay in bed all day long or sit at your computer. You can have as many donuts as you like, walk around the ship or work out at a gym or read some books. There is enough food on the ship as well as free time until the crew is back. Sounds awesome, many of us can only dream about this!
Well, things really aren’t that bad; except for the service bot Barton Quest that keeps on bothering you and making you do your chores. This is how the game begins. Oh well, and the ship’s systems have been acting up quite a bit lately and this is not yet another slight malfunction… It seems this is the time to straighten things up.
This is the atmosphere we’ve been trying to create!
What means do we have for that in the game? First of all, we have space. A lot of space! There are views of space through the ship’s illuminators, in various devices, captured on astronomical photography – literally everywhere: outside the ship and outside the cabin window. If you like space – oh boy, you are going to love these views! And there will be as there can never be too much of it.
Secondly, we have our music. And we’ve been working quite a lot on the music. The game’s soundtrack includes great ambient sound, as well as humorous tracks typical for the quest genre and fun retro-pixel sound stylized to resemble classic melodies. And the game opens win a theme song “Hold my Hand” by Liubov “Princess” Terletskaya.
We would like to talk more about all this in detail, and we will do that eventually. But today we’re off to release the first episode of the game. Wish us good luck and please support the game if you find our project interesting!
