If you’ve read our recent “You Don’t Want To Work In The Game Industry” post you’ll understand why so many developers are creating games on their own or with their friends. Take a look at the TIGForums and you’ll see that there is a large and supportive community of developers working away on lots of great Indie games.

Earlier on this week I chatted to two indie developers Dugan Jackson and Rudolf Kremers about how they got into Indie development and their current PlayStation Network theme “A is for Astronaut.” Long time Average Gamer readers may recognise Dugan’s name as he used to be one of the regular contributors to the site and has previously worked on Operation Vietnam (DS) and Gravity Crash (PSN).

How did you both end up being indie developers?

DJ: I originally come from a traditional art and film background, but have worked in the games industry for well over a decade. It’s a long time since I practised with tools like DPaint and Shoot’Em-Up Construction Kit (a.k.a. SEUCK) on the Amiga, but they were great in starting me making games. After making `RockBoshers` recently I setup a small indie company Tikipod Ltd through which I collaborate with other indies as well release my own projects.

RK: I am a games industry veteran and a SciFi fan for life. After working on anything from Harry Potter to Avatar the Last Airbender I started my indie (games) company Omni Systems Limited, which acts as a publisher for SciFi ABCs. Among other things Omni has done the successful indie game Eufloria with Alex May and is currently working on various games and comics and other creative projects. The themes fit perfectly in our philosophy :-)

So why are you making themes then?

RK: The idea is that the theme is not linked to some corporate brand, but is purely meant to help fund other indie projects. The theme itself is very high quality, and is not meant to sell another project. Because of this we can purely focus on the theme itself and hopefully as a result the series will become popular with people who like dynamic themes.

Tell us about A is for Astronaut

RK: “A is for Astronaut” is a the first in a series of dynamic themes for Playstation Network. The series is modelled on old ABC posters and is some ways an ode to Science Fiction. The plan is to dedicate a theme to each letter in the alphabet, in a SciFi context.

DJ: Old paperback book cover art is another influence, like ones by Chris Foss for example. Classic sci-fi films are of course another big influence. We also wanted to make themes that you can have playing in full HD on your TV for a long time, with lots of subtle variations going on.

What was the biggest challenge in making this theme?

DJ: The themes have a limitation in file-size and processor power available to them because they run within the PS3 menu system. It’s quite small which meant it was a real challenge trying to pack in as much as we did and not make the theme fall over. Oh and the small rocks casting shadows onto the rings of dust, that was a lot more painful to do than it might look.

How did the PSN downtime affect you? Was the theme put on hold for a while?

DJ: Yes, we were all ready and due to submit just before that happened. So we had to wait until things were up and running again, then it was a couple of days after that that we went live – as Sony had to clear their backlog in order understandably.

Are you working on any new themes?

RK: Of course! There are too many to list, and we don’t want to give away too much but if you think of classic scenes form SciFi books and films the chances are that something like that will find a way into the series. Dugan is probably going to do an epic space battle next, which is rather exciting.

DJ: Yes for the next one I`m torn between that idea and another involving satellites. We shall see which wins out.

What’s next?

RK: We are working on various projects, including a SciFi exploration game called StarLit, with David Parsons of Gravity Crash fame. StarLit is actually spiritually connected to “A is for Astronaut” as it has a similar protagonist.

DJ: We also hope to have our themes available in world wide, as currently it’s only available in Europe and Australasia.

What are your favourite biscuits? Do you have different biscuits for different stages of development?

DJ: I believe that’s an industry standard yes, but also an industry secret!

RK: We need our biscuit secrets to stay enigmatic!

Thanks for your time.

You can follow the progress of one of Dugan’s other projects Aqua Kitty (working title) on the TIGforums.

Update 28th Oct 2011: A is for Astronaut will be available on the US PSN Store from the 1st Nov 2011.

Gravity Crash is a proper “old skool” shooter, one that wouldn’t seem out of place in the late 80′s. The premise is simple. Fly your ship around a level, avoid hitting the walls, save the airmen (occasionally) and blow everything to bits. That’s about it. It’s quite hard too, courtesy of some very unforgiving level designs (thanks a bunch Tikipod!) which will annoy the crap out of you as you die repeatadly due to:

• Running out of fuel
• Bouncing off walls
• Running out of fuel and then bouncing off walls
• Bouncing off walls and then running out of fuel

However, a big tick in the box for this game is that Gravity Crash’s developer Just Add Water have been nice enough included a level editor which is also really easy use. It’s actually the editor Tikipod used to create all the levels in the game, so it is pretty powerful. So when you finish the main levels there are loads of user created levels to play. Some of the are arguably better than the ones in the game ;-) The addition of this editor really adds to the longevity of the game, as it is much quicker to create a level than in other games with level editors like Little Big Planet. So before you know if, you’re flying off around your own creation.

The in-game music is brilliant too. Ok, I really like CoLD SToRAGE‘s music anyway, which I’m listening to as I write this review. It’s the prefect music for Gravity Crash with it’s techno beats nicely complementing the on-screen space carnage. I thoroughly recommend listening to more of CoLD SToRAGE‘s music if you can.

So the bad bits. First up the main plot is just total drivel. It really is. Just ignore it and get on with playing the game. It is like reading the script to a Uwe Boll film. Yes, it is that bad! Also the menu system is fairly unintuitive making it far more of a pain publishing and playing user designed levels than it really should be. It is just plain confusing. Somebody please make it better. Also the gameplay gets pretty samey after a short while, with many of the levels blurring into each other. But then what do you expect for £6.29? Yeah, just £6.29 from the PlayStation store. Actually when you look at Gravity Crash as a whole and take into account its tiny price then it’s a bargain.

Just Add Water have just released Gravity Crash on the PSP for £6.29, so look out for it on the PlayStation store.

Screenshots:

Q – Firstly, what’s the inspiration behind Gravity Crash?

Dave Parsons (DP): Well, I suppose it ultimately goes back to a mis-spent youth spending a long time playing 8-bit games on early home computers. This introduced me to games such as “Thrust”, and a variety of other gravity/inertia games, and I was always charmed by the simple mechanics which were fun to play with regardless of the rest of the game. I had been wanting to make a proper game of that type for a long time, so when I had some time off in between jobs, I made a start on a PC game which eventually led to the PS3 version.

Q – What was the thinking behind including a level editor?

DP: I’m not entirely sure of the origins of the idea, but I know the designer we had at the time was pretty keen on the idea. We knew that inclusion of an editor would be a great feature to include, but obviously it has entailed a lot of work for us. But we also knew that we’d need some way of constructing levels for our own use (the original editor which I had been using for level construction had gone through 3 different iterations, but was still extremely fiddly and slow to use). So, all of our game levels were created using the very same editor people will have access to. We did have a few extra features available to us, but nothing major.

Stewart Gilray (SG): From my perspective it seems the perfect way to introduce some of the players to this type of game, and indeed into what makes up games like this, via them using the editor. It was something that sat in the back of my mind from day one.

Q – How long will it take on average to knock together a decent level using the editor?

DP: A simple level can be put together in a matter of a few minutes. To make a level really good takes a lot of testing and tweaking though. This is something that we can’t really assist with the editor, so we have just tried to make everything as simple as possible to use. I’m sure an interesting, playable level could be put together in less than an hour.

Q – How difficult was it to come up with the trophy challenges? Were you trying to avoid the boring, reach x number of points trophies?

DP: Initially the problem was simply finding the time to think of them. Once we got started however, it wasn’t too difficult to come up with a lot of ideas – we could easily have done more if allowed. We have only one silver, and all the rest are bronze, because we’d rather have lots of trophies than a few high-value ones. I suppose I had in mind an idea of roughly the sort of things we wanted, so it became a question of choosing challenges to fit.
SG: I have to agree with Dave, however there were a few stops and starts, we had some ideas, but they were either too simplistic or too trite in that everyone else has done that type of trophy objective.

Q – How easy was it to port the game over to the PSP?

DP: Well, when the code was originally started, it was aimed at low-spec PCs. However, even a modern low-spec PC has a lot of processing power. The general game code isn’t too demanding, but things like the numbers of particles have needed tweaking. Our PSP guy, Paul Carter, has been doing a great job with the conversion, and the biggest task has been to re-write all the rendering code for PSP.

Dugan Jackson (DJ): From an art perspective, a number of the more complex objects have had some subtle refinement to suit the PSP better, and many levels have been modified to suit the PSP’s screen and view, but you get all the objects the PS3 version has.

Update 23rd Nov 09: You can read part II of this developer Q & A here.

Gravity Crash is released on the 24th Nov 09 on the PlayStation Network.

• 35 Single player levels, including hidden and boss levels
• 12 Multiplayer levels
• 3 Multiplayer modes
• Different player ships
• Special weapons
• Weapon power-ups
• 20 devious Trophies
• Leaderboards
• Over 200 editor items

What’s also great is that you’ll be able to play 4 of the single player levels and 12 multiplayer maps of the full game in the demo. You also get to try out the level editor, but you have to buy the game to be able to upload them to the PlayStation Network. Add in the fantastic soundtrack from CoLD SToRAGE and this game is going to kick ass.

Check out these awesome looking screenshots:

See, looks cool doesn’t it. I love the little jetpack guys in the 2nd screenshot above.

Finally, here’s a developer diary video showing the level editor in action:

We’ve also got 2 Q&A posts coming up with the Gravity Crash development team so look out for them.

Gravity Crash is available from the 24th Nov 09 from the PlayStation Store.

I’m proud to announce that one of the contributors to this very website – Tikipod – is the graphics artist on Gravity Crash. Mmm, notice how he’s not written any posts for ages, yep, working hard on Gravity Crash. Definitely. Yeah, it takes time to create all those lovely light blurs, heat haze and refractions :-)

Back to Gravity Crash. Well, it looks quite a bit like Thrust crossed with Defender. In total there are 40 single player levels and 5 major boss battles and a level editor. I’m told the level editor is really easy and quick to use. Once your level is created you can upload it for others to play. Think of it like LittleBigPlanet’s level editor, just simpler.

Here’s a trailer for Gravity Crash, featuring awesome in-game music from CoLD SToRAGE.

You can also buy some of the music from CoLD SToRAGE’s band camp page for £1.59. Gravity Crash also features multiplayer modes including local split-screen so you can get your butt kicked by your boy/girlfriend.

Gravity Crash currently doesn’t have a release date or price for either the PS3 or PSP version. Boo!!!

According to the competition page on the forums:

Procedural generation, or procedural content generation, is a term to describe the creation of content algorithmically “on the fly” (i.e. after the software executes, rather than before). In video games it is generally used to either generate “random” content (like graphics or levels), or to reduce file size. This competition is focused on the former, but you may choose to apply the theme however you see fit.

Tikipod’s entry is called Laser Bunny – Adventures in the Alien Death Mines and can be found here. It’s only a 4mb download. Think Bomberman with bunnies and very long levels and you’re just about there. Oh, and replace the bombs with lasers. Yeah, that covers it! Enjoy….

Now the younger of you might be a tad horrified by the lack of 3D-normalmapped-HDR-rendered images in the piccie above, but fear not – these are snapshots from the great olden days of videogaming.

What is the quiz? – Good question, well it’s based on the knowledge of 2D arcade games. Look at the picture, and work out which games all the spooky thumbnails are from. All we want to know are the names of the games please.

What’s with all the death? – It’s GAMEOVER images, moments from when you have been klobbered by the enemy, moments so painful they should still be burnt into your retinas.

Mummy, it’s so hard! – Yes well it wouldn’t be a quiz otherwise. Watchout for a couple of possible red herrings in there too, if you aren’t 100% sure then I’d advise you go back a double check.

OK, but what do I win in exchange for my genius gaming knowledge?

• Brand new (unopened) copy of Black and White 2 (PC)
• LocoRoco Demo (PSP – UMD)
• Burnout 3 (PS2) PAL
• Manhunt (PS2) PAL – 18 rated
• DVD region X (PS2) PAL – lets you play DVDs in full RGB colour
• Resident Evil 3 – Nemesis (PSOne)
• UMD Holder

So how long is this competition going to run for? – 1 month. Starts 29th October, last entries must be recieved before the 29th November. Whoever gets the most answers correct is the winner!

How do I enter? – Please state your name and age. Then list each game name followed by the grid reference. E.g. – “RAMPAGE (4,A)” – so that would be the fourth game along the top row.
Finally, email your entry to: competition@theaveragegamer.com