Tale of Tales “8” VAF Mile Stone Plan

REPORT
Step 7: "Exploration" (Sep 15-Oct 15)
Introduction
This is the first report after the revision of the content of the mile stone plan as per our proposal in the mile stone step 6 report. In this mile stone, next to sitting around waiting for Dreamcatcher to come through, we have
  • had contact with other publishers
  • searched and found several new candidates to supplement our team
  • developed a redesign of the structure and the gameplay of “8”
  • started streamlining and detailing the production documentation
  • started organizing the production.
The publishers
Whilst the producers at Dreamcatcher Europe are still very enthusiastic about our project, the decision is out of their hands now. From what we've heard from other developers, it is not abnormal that it takes the top executives quite a bit of time to make up their mind. Some of this time might be increased in this case due to a recent switch of legal staff at Dreamcatcher's Canadian office.
In the mean time, if only to have a backup solution, we have been communicating with other publishers as well. We have confirmation that Ubisoft Germany and Eidos UK are evaluating the product as we speak. Ubisoft is one of the largest game publishers in the world. And Eidos is probably the largest in the UK. Ubisoft would be suitable because they have a wide range of games on offer and are not afraid of the occasional experiment. And Eidos is the publisher whose logo has been engraved on the backside of our skulls due to countless hours of playing the very first Tomb Raider. We have also been honoured by negative answers from Activision and Vivendi Universal (two gigantic game publishers). Both seemed to genuinely like the title but declined to offer us a deal because they did not believe that “8” had sufficient mass market appeal (and apparently the mass market is the only market they are interested in).
Smaller publishers would obviously be more suitable for this project. But, as we have experienced before, they seldom have the financial means to support production of “8”. And there are very little medium-sized developers. Dan Marchant compares them to catterpillars, hungry for success, with the desire to turn into a butterfly as soon as possible. “8” probably needs one of these caterpillar publishers who are about to turn into a butterfly. One that has enough courage and enough cash at the same time. Ideally, though, “8” should be published by a company who targets a niche market on purpose. And Dreamcatcher is one of those few companies that does this with its "Adventure Company" brand.
If Dreamcatcher does not come through by the end of the month, we should probably start taking the smaller publishers more seriously and see if we can come up with some kind of collaborative publishing deal.
The team
In preparation for production, we have started to look for additional team members. We haven't made our final choice yet, but we have found several very suitable candidates for the jobs of
  • producer/project manager
  • senior modeler
  • concept artist
  • concept painter
  • animation director
  • animation assistant
Especially for the first -and very important- position of producer/project manager, we have had the luck to attract many extremely experienced candidates. So much so that we have already turned down the producers of such high profile titles as Far Cry and The Movies, in favour of the three or four remaining candidates. We will make our decision by the end of the month and start working with this person on a part time freelance basis until a deal with a publisher is signed.
The job of the producer/project manager with us consists of:
  • Making schedules and mile stone plans and making sure that everything is done on time. And when it is not, coming up with alternative plans (including suggestions on cutting features e.g.).
  • Making sure that everyone on the team feels good about the project and their place in it. And making sure they perform their best.
  • Overseeing the financial and legal situation of the company, interfacing with lawyers and accountants.
  • Assisting the recruiting of team members.
  • Communicating with the publisher (producer and marketing staff) and investors.
  • Organizing quality assurance (testing).
The design
We have worked with International Hobo on a redesign of the structure and the gameplay in “8” with an eye on both reducing the costs and expanding the potential target audience. The result is a much tighter game design that will be much more enjoyable for many more people, without compromising on the artistic soul of “8”. The major change is that the game world will not be fully accessible from the start of the game as it is feared that this kind of freedom will lead to the player feeling lost, not knowing what to do. The new structure will carefully and almost imperceptibly guide the player through both the environment and the game.
Feel free to have a look at the Initial Consultation Document concerning the ideas proposed by International Hobo. Some things in that document need changes and others more details, but overall we feel that their analysis of the game and solutions for its problems are "spot on", to use the words one of one of our British producer candidates.


Structure with three "logical loops" as proposed by International Hobo.
Brown lines are puzzles, red lines are latched doors and black lines secret passages.
The blue disc labeled "H" in the middle is the central Hub of the game (the Mausoleum).


We have succeeded in producing an implementation in the existing game world of the new structure, with minimal changes to the original layout. As you can see, the game now only requires slightly over 100 rooms rather than the original 250.
The documentation
After some technical problems with Usemod, the "Wiki" software that we have been using to document the game's design and everything else related to it, we have switched to another Wiki application called WikkiTikkTavi (yes, they all have silly names like that). This one is written in PHP and stores the information in a MySQL database. Which will be much more robust and versatile than the Perl and ASCII approach of Usemod. We have used the incompatibility in formats between these two applications as an extra motivation to clean up our documentation. Now we are structuring the new document so that it is suitable for use during production.
The idea is to
  • make complete lists of all elements required in the game; so that we can make solid schedules before starting production
  • add sufficient detail and reference material to the description of assets (models, textures, animations and sounds) for the concept artists to get started
  • design as much of the technology "on paper", to make implementation fluent when production starts
The information put into the Wiki can be used, without alteration or copying, to inform our collaborators.

Next to this text-based documentation, we have also built a new "3D map" based on the structure proposed by International Hobo. This includes dividing the game world into three zones: "logical loops", that form circular chains of rooms that guide navigation and replace the open environment we had before. This map is made with the same software as the game engine. As such all of the geometry of the rooms is already in place to make a first blocked out version of the complete game, early in the production process.


3D map of the game world, displaying the three "logical loops" (red, green and blue), the doors and puzzles (cubes and cones) and the location of the "Alcove Objects" (spheres).

The organization
Another major thing that we have been doing is look into ways in which the production can be organized. A significant part of this has been, and still is, research into software that can help us do this. There are many applications available but they all lack features. Especially with regards to our need of a "virtual office", an internet based environment that our homeworkers can use to communicate with us and each other.
Another aspect has been trying to figure out how to structure production to garantee both artistic success and within-budget delivery. With regards to this, we have been "abusing" our experienced producer candidates (see "The team") by extracting as much information as we could from them during job interviews. This has been most enlightening.
Depending on consultation with experts and key team members, we would be scheduling the production in three major parts:
  1. 1.5 months: High level design (of gameplay, technology and assets)
  2. 8 months: Development of an "acceptable" version of the complete game
  3. 0.5 month: Player testing
  4. 2 months: Development of a more detailed and better balanced version of the complete game
The reasoning behind this structure is that we have too many ideas and too great ambitions to realize everything within a reasonable budget. So, in order to not go off on an artistic tangent and lose sight of finishing the product, we have to make choices. We are going to define all elements in the game in terms of whether they are essential or extra and first make the complete and finished game with only the essential elements. The choice of which "extra" elements will make it in the game, will be based on analyzing the response of many different test players.
The long second phase will be divided up into 4 milestones, each delivering the complete game in a more and more finalized state.
Conclusion
  1. We have solidified the game design and produced documents vital for production. And we have done a lot of organization work, including research into schedules and software.
  2. We haven't heard much from the publisher(s). Let's hope that no news is good news.
  3. We have found many new potential team members.
Document written by Michaël Samyn on 22 October 2004