PopCap Developer Program moving to SourceForge

PopCap has both online and download-able games. Their most popular is probably Bejeweled.

They had previously released the framework used for their download-able games (built with Visual C++) for anyone to use free of charge.

Sadly, they are discontinuing support for this and hopefully moving it to SourceForge as open-source.

"The PopCap Developer program has had a good run, but we've been unable to spare the developer time required to keep the Framework (and related tools) up to date here, and it doesn't make sense for us to publicly support an increasingly old version of it.

That being said, everyone who is currently using the Framework may continue to do so, and we plan on making the Framework available on SourceForge so the developer community can continue to have access to it and even support and enhance it as they (you) see fit.

Details of the SourceForge move will be forthcoming, but the plan is to move toward shutting down this site on May 1st. If anyone is interested in stepping forward to volunteer to host the message archive as a knowledge base, please let me know."

-Brian Fiete
CTO & CoFounder, PopCap Games

[Source: developer.popcap.com]

It's nice to see companies so open with their technologies.



While on the topic of PopCap, I would like to talk about their recent move to add their games (at the moment on Bejeweled and Peggle) into another game, World of Warcraft (WoW) as add-ons.

Their first attempt, Bejeweled was a direct port that allowed you to pass time in-game and has some nice extras like keeping highscore for you, your friends and your guild.

Their second attempt, Peggle has a lot more integration with WoW like using WoW's dueling feature to start a two player Peggle game, distributing loot based using Peggle, and adding WoW concept of talent trees into Peggle.

Games-within-games is nothing new, but having another commercial companies making the game-within-game is new. PopCap is probably doing this as a form of in-game advertising and hoping to tap into WoW's 11 million active subscribers. I am curious as to what this will lead to.

Ex-Ubisoft staff goes indie and likes it

Interesting story of a person, Phil Fish who was working for an established game developer and developing a game, Fez during his own free time.

He quit when he received an IGF nomination for Excellence in Visual Art (which he later won in 2008) for Fez and his boss did not allow him to attend it.

Not bad for someone fired from Ubisoft, who still calls his experience at the publisher "the worst experience of my life." It was his first gig in games, and initially he was jazzed.

"The way these people make games, it's so horrible," he says. "Hundred of people on your team, you don't know any of their names. It's so big and impersonal." Some people find ways to persevere, to grow in that environment, Fish adds — like weeds pushing up through cracks in concrete.

"In my case it made me want to give up games altogether," he continues. "It was an extremely dark period of my life. Years and years thinking this was my dream only to realize it's a sweatshop."

Gaming was changing, the way games were being made was changing and with the rise of the video game blogs, the way gaming was covered was changing, too. Everything was in flux. Indie developers were saying "Screw the corporate ladder" and going off and making their own games — devs like World of Goo's Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler. Young developers, like Everyday Shooter's Jonathan Mak, weren't even climbing that ladder.

[Source: Kotaku.com]

Working in an established game developer is not for everyone. I am sure there are advantages too, but as it seems some people just prefer being indie.

Events like the Independent Games Festival held every March are slowly helping indies gain awareness and popularity, by listing finalist and winners of the event. One such winner was Portal in 2006, which became very famous and got snapped up by Valve.

Here's an IGF trailer... excuse the language.

Bought two books to learn Flash

I recently decided to learn (self study) Flash after seeing a web site make rather interesting web game, that allowed two players across the internet to play a game against each other, while storing ranking and other information (in a database I presume) which was displayed using HTML.

The current version is Adobe Flash CS4, which uses its own scripting language, ActionScript 3.0. So I went down to the local IT Mall, Funan Center and bought two books on it.

The first book was Flash CS4 "All-In-One" For Dummies (S$69) which I am currently reading. It is a very easy to read book to give me a general background on flash. As I have never used Flash before, I found it helpful, but I think any existing user would find it too simplistic. The jokes it had did not always make me laugh, but together with the colorful pictures, helped break the monotony of reading through each individual tool and option.

The second book ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University (S$61) was purely on using ActionScript 3.0 with source code of examples, including some games that are available from its companion website, FlashGameU.com. That should be a lot more useful to what I plan to do.

In this day and age of downloading books to read, you may ask why did I buy them. Well, I personally like to support stuff I like. Also, I prefer reading actual books instead of binded printouts or photocopies.



In related news yesterday, Adobe is planning that the digital living room will likely support Flash and Flash-based applications at the end of 2009.

Specifically, Adobe has convinced a wide swath of leading technology companies to support a new, optimized Flash Lite runtime for a number of chips that will form the foundation of connected TVs, DVD players, game consoles, and digital media adapters.

[Source: PCMag.com]

More user-created content in City of Heroes that developer-created content

User created content in games has been getting more noticed from developers in recent times.

I think it was the Counter-Strike that was the first to make me aware of user created content. This FPS had tons of user created maps, models, weapon skins and mods available for it. The funny thing is, that it itself was a free user created mod of another game, HalfLife.

Valve Software marketing director Doug Lombardi has told GamesIndustry.biz that consoles must embrace user-created content.

"I would argue that it's the biggest component those guys have to get over if they want online to matter," said Lombardi.

"Half-Life 1 was okay as a multiplayer game and Team Fortress Classic was really good, but Counter-Strike kicked both their asses no question. And that came from a kid going to college in Canada and another kid going to high school in New Jersey, who had our code and thought it would be cool to play our game"

[Source: GamesIndustry.biz]

After reading the next article, I hope a lot of people mindset on this will change. This is no longer a just a potential. It is already here and now.

Only one day after NCsoft released their player-created content focused Issue 14: Architect update, and players have already crafted more than 20,000 mission arcs.



In a letter to the community posted on the official City of Heroes website, Matt "Positron" Miller revealed that within the first 24 hours of the new updates' existence, players in both hero and villain factions had created more than 3800 story arcs, each consisting of five missions a piece - more content than the development team had created during the game's entire existence.

Players have been busy trying out missions and critiquing them in the forums as well. Out of the more that 20,000 arcs now available in game, 2,860 of them have been rated 5-stars by players, with only 582 rated at 1-star.

[Source: Kotaku.com]

The sheer amount of content is outstanding; and all done in 24 hours. And with a rating system in place, that helps ensure quality remains.

Games soon may be like Second Life (a virtual world where users create almost all of the content: locations, models, activities and economy). Already games like Little Big Planet (levels), World of Warcraft (user interface), The Sims are heavily using this.

So if you make a game, try to consider this and include some sort of Map Editor.

Why start this blog?

Some friends have ask why I have just started this blog about Indie Game Development in Singapore.

After reading some success stories, I have recently decided to give it a try; not for the money but simply because it is something I think I will enjoy doing.

I have been interested in gaming, and not just computer gaming. I have enjoyed playing card games, board games, table-top war games, brain games... you name, I think I played it.

When I was schooling, there were no available game-related courses, so I went into the next closest thing, IT. Got a degree and worked in a few IT companies (including NCS, Mercury Interactive, HP) doing programming, technical support, etc. Nowadays, there are private schools and even universities offering courses in computer game design, both from the computer science and art perspectives. I envision courses from the business perceptive to appear in the next 10 years, as the gaming industry is rapidly becoming more of a serious field of business.



Next question these friends of mine ask will usually be either why or what is Indie? This is a short for for independent, which means without the financial support of a publisher.

Most computer games are so huge and expensive to develop now, that they require huge amount of funding from a publisher (like Electronic Arts, Activision, THQ) in return developers get payed for work done and earn royalties, while the publishers keeps the rest of the profit (which is sometime used to offset games that make a loss). As such, some decision as when to release, what to focus on, etc are out of the control of developers.

Being independent "in my opinion" allows more creativity when designing a game, there is less pressure to keep releasing sequel after sequel just to keep profits high. Also, joining or starting up an indie game company should give a higher chance to be involve in the design process, which is really what I am interested in.

While being involve in making a game by following instructions handed down to me is something I would still enjoy, I would enjoy it a lot better having a part in the game design too. Thus, I am now searching to either join or start up an indie game company here in Singapore

My trip to ERC Institute

Saw an advertisement in Today a few days back on how to learn to make your own game.

It was by ERC Institute, a private school that does both full-time and part-time diploma level courses in a range of subjects.

So yesterday, I went down for a preview of their course.
The place is located just next to Great World City and I was able to take a bus, SBS 195 from Tioung Bahru MRT to reach it.



They conduct two gaming related courses Diploma in Game Design & Development and Advanced Diploma in Game Design & Development (each lasting 12-15 months and costing S$10K), and these lead to a Degree offered University of Greenwich in UK.

They had two presenters. The first was Bryan, from a prospective hirer of graduates, Crystal CG whose main office in China did the CG for the Beijing 2008 Olympics. The second was from ERC and explain what their course offered. I was really impressed when they mentioned having a lot of industry contacts, guest lecturers and internships available. Before leaving, I asked to see some of the completed projects that their students have done, to get a better idea of what you can do after completing their course, so waiting for them to get back to me.

The course entry requirements are GCE 'O' Levels, and I would probably have enrolled it if that was my highest education level. However, this course is probably not suited for me as I have already done a degree.



There is another school for gaming in Singapore, Digipen which I plan to attend their upcoming information session (May 22, Friday). From what I hear, they are a lot more expensive but they offer Bachelor Degrees.