This article and the video are meant to complement each other. They share a topic but attack it from a different perspective.
Since We Last Spoke
Last summer we took on a game dev contract to help finance the game. Plan was it would be half on Archmage and half on client work. This quickly expanded to everyone on contract. Then we had to hire more people. There are big risks to companies, most fail, because they grew too fast. I think we’ve done it well but only time will tell.
Unfortunately…
We delivered what was asked of us on their extremely aggressive deadline. The client team we worked with was happy with what we did and how we did it. Unfortunately executive politics got involved: the goal posts kept changing, it got to the point where priorities changed weekly. We were unsure what we were doing or why we were even doing it. While nice to have a breather while the client figured out what they actually wanted, it was also demoralizing to our team: It was impossible to know if the work we did this week would be thrown out next week. Leads and execs were quitting on their side.
Keep the Main Thing The Main Thing
Why do we exist as a studio? To make new kinds of game experiences with systems driven procedurally generated worlds. Client work assists in achieving this, but in early Feb it was clear it was taking from it. So I fired the client: told them our last day was Mar 31 2022. We need to get back to Archmage.
They countered and we agreed to Feb 28.
Back in the Saddle
May 2021 we were 4.
May 2022, coming out of this client experience, the Defiance team is now 10.
It is a good well functioning team, we make amazing things together. I want to keep it together and going in the right direction. I’ll talk another time about the financial side of all this, today I’m focused on just organizing the work.
Programming - Michel, Josh, Tyler, Zach, Sean
Art - Rogier (contract), Rubi, Adam, Jessi
Audio - James
Game Director - Thomas
Tools
Bigger team brings bigger challenges and emphasis on effective tools.
Last year we were using codecks.io
If you don’t know where to start with Game Dev Project Management, start with codecks.io .
Codecks free plan only lets you have 3 users. Suddenly having 10 and needing to pay caused a decision point: Is this really the right tool long term?
Jira provides better high level team/objective management (including a customizable workflow manager with custom rules enforcement). It is free for teams up to 10 (phew!). Plus, we just spent 8 months using it with the client. Pretty easy decision.
The Clincher
The biggest part of the decision was the integration with the wiki-based documentation system Confluence.
I’ve been writing use cases/user stories/features/game designs in Word for 25 years. Two big issues with this:
The linear structure of the document makes people’s eyes glaze over as they navigate hundreds of pages and long tables of contents. Word doesn’t allow encapsulation of information.
How disconnected the write up of a feature is from the PM tool.
Yes I know you can write up and document a feature in the PM tool, but it isn’t as clean, easy, or fully featured (mockups, tables, fonts) as Word.
Being wiki based, Confluence allows us to have a page “Monsters” and then a separate page for each monster like Goblins, Wolves, Gargoyles. Complete with stat and ability tables.
But what is even better is tasks can be embedded right into a monster page: creating the concept, painting, rigging, animating, coding AI, audio.
Whenever we read feature documentation, we know the feature state in game. I don’t have to parse long tables of tasks just to check on things; just read the documentation!
This creates the single point of truth which every PM/Producer is striving towards.
“Why are there gargoyles in Archmage Rises? Because I really enjoyed Ultima 6. Sometimes, that’s how design decisions are made.”
When Is Alpha (Feature Complete)?
Alpha is an industry term meaning “Feature Complete”. We have been pre-alpha for almost 8 years. That needs to end. :-) See the video for more details.
We are targeting Alpha in Oct. We’ll see what the team’s actual feature velocity is as we go. I’ll post the burn down values as we go, so you will know as we know.
I find “Feature Complete” a very misleading term.
I fully expect the game to suck when we are feature complete. Many of the ideas we are implementing because we think they will be cool, but they probably won’t.
This is why I coined the term “Feature Terrible”. Ya, the features are in there, but they suck. Some need to be cut outright. Some need to be improved with balance and polish. If you are looking to make a serious impact to the quality of Archmage Rises, helping us get from Feature Terrible to Beta is the time.
When Is the Next Playable Build (Build 14)?
Since Mar 1 we’ve really broken the game doing some low level rewrites. How the map is stored and displayed, how world details are generated, how the game saves and loads. All of this puts the game in an extremely unstable state. We’re near the end of this work now. In a couple of weeks I’ll pick a date for the next public build. We’re probably a month away from it.
Let’s Chat about Archmage Rises
The latest info on the game is always on the Archmage Rises Steam Forums. We’re back to checking it daily now, so come on by and tell us what you are thinking!