A glimpse of the future
Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 3:01 am
Strictly speaking this news entry isn't Darwinia related. It's sort of Introversion related - in that i'm going to suggest what we're up to and what we're planning, but since we don't yet have anything good at www.introversion.co.uk i've no choice but to put it here.
Speaking of which, we are actually building a new Introversion website that isn't tied to any specific game of ours. We've got two games out and we're well underway with the next one(s), so we're definately at the point where we need a company website to bring everything together. It's long overdue - the existing page at www.introversion.co.uk is a half-arsed amateur embarresment, and for that we are sorry.
So lets talk about Introversion.
Our next game <the third game> is in development, and has been for many months now. In fact, work began on <the third game> on the 2nd of August 2003 - over two years ago, and stopped exactly one week later. Believe it or not, even WE get bored at work from time to time - and during August 2003 it's fair to say that I was BORED FUCKING SHITLESS of Darwinia. So I put it aside for one week, and made something else. I actually planned to work solidly for one day exactly - ie 24 hours - but this is Introversion, and even on a 1 day project there is slippage and feature creep like you wouldn't believe. Some readers may remember this news post on the Uplink website around that date, in which I said:
Chris got a massive flash of inspiration, coded solidly for around 18 hours a day, and produced a complete game in 7 days, single player and multiplayer, by stealing copious amounts of code from <the next game> and <the next next game>. This will probably show up as a B-side on <the next game>.
Decoding (bear with us), we now know that <the next game> is of course Darwinia, and i'll tell you about <the next next game> in a sec. Unfortunately the game referred to in the post - which we now know to be <the third game> - was never sufficiently completed or polished for any kind of release, and we were all far to busy with Darwinia to devote any more time to it so it was shelved, until June 2005. The fact that the "first playable" was put together in one week should give a strong clue : its a much simpler and smaller game than Darwinia or even Uplink, and it's not going to take us that long to finish it. It's Multiplayer and Singleplayer, and we're currently at the stage where we play each other over the Internet every day for around an hour. In other words, things are progressing nicely. We're not sure when we will be done, but we're talking months rather than years, so you'll be hearing about details soon. This time the core dev team is Chris and one other developer (soon to be revealed), and we've got Alistair and Michael on board to do the music and sounds as before.
So, moving along. Amazingly, work on <the forth game> has also begun. In fact, work on <the forth game> began shortly after Uplink was completed, waaaay back in early 2002. Intelligent readers will notice the above quoted news post from the Uplink site mentions <the next next game>, which is now <the forth game>. I'll come straight out and stop any suggestion that this game is Uplink II, or is related to Uplink at all - it isn't. It was intended to be our second game, and I worked on it full time for around six months before embarking on a new project with Andy - codenamed Future War, which eventually became Darwinia. After a few months of working on both games at once Mark and Tom insisted I put one of them on the shelf, and I was forced to conclude that Future War was the better project to continue with. This was late 2002 and Future War was just six months from completion.
Ok, we've learnt our lessons now.
I'm working on <the third game> full time at the moment, but that doesn't mean I haven't begun work on <the forth game> - just in a different way. I'd like to introduce you to NaNoWriMo. The basic genius concept of these nutcases is to write a Novel of AT LEAST 50,000 words during November (the name means National Novel Writing Month). That's around 1700 words per day, for 30 days flat. It's an astonishing personal challenge designed to inspire people to just get on with it and put words on the page, and to let ideas fly without engaging the inner critic too much. And it's just the sort of challenge that <the forth game> needs right now.
I'm going to bend the rules a little bit. My basic intention is to write a number of short stories, all set in the world of <the forth game>. I'm aiming for ten short stories, roughly 5000 words each, which is much more achievable. I've already got a fairly solid plan (i've used hand written Game Bibles to build the game design, just like I did Uplink), and all the stories weave together in strange and interesting ways. These aren't designed to be published - 50,000 words is do-able, but 50,000 well written words is impossible for me even without the time-limit. The tens of thousands of yearly participants clearly all have their own reasons for subjecting themselves to this, but for me there are two goals.
My first aim is to explore the game world - to flesh out the characters - and (hopefully) to run into some fascinating ideas that I would not have come up with otherwise. Writing at this kind of speed, i've got no choice but to dive in and run with whatever comes up. The plan I spoke of is 3 lines of text per story - in other words, there is no plan. I'll know the plan on November 30th, and with a bit of luck i'll have a ton of new ideas, and maybe, just maybe, some material for <the forth game>.
The second aim is more subtle. Writing material of any kind has always caused me huge headaches. Uplink's mission descriptions we're all placeholder nonsense until very late in the project (some would say they still are) - I simply couldn't bring together the enthusiasm to write anything else in them. And Darwinia stars just one character - Dr Sepulveda - but writing his dialog was a horrific experience. He's got to get across vital tutorial information, and he's got to explain aims and objectives, but he's also got to talk about what it all means - why you should care about these little green fellows, and what effect your efforts have on the world. One minute he's explaining the purpose of a Control Tower, the next he's discussing the philosophical implications of digital lifeforms reading their own source code. He has thousands of lines of text and every one was a struggle. There's only one way i'm going to get around this problem, and that's to practice.
And I can't wait for midnight 1st November.
Speaking of which, we are actually building a new Introversion website that isn't tied to any specific game of ours. We've got two games out and we're well underway with the next one(s), so we're definately at the point where we need a company website to bring everything together. It's long overdue - the existing page at www.introversion.co.uk is a half-arsed amateur embarresment, and for that we are sorry.
So lets talk about Introversion.
Our next game <the third game> is in development, and has been for many months now. In fact, work began on <the third game> on the 2nd of August 2003 - over two years ago, and stopped exactly one week later. Believe it or not, even WE get bored at work from time to time - and during August 2003 it's fair to say that I was BORED FUCKING SHITLESS of Darwinia. So I put it aside for one week, and made something else. I actually planned to work solidly for one day exactly - ie 24 hours - but this is Introversion, and even on a 1 day project there is slippage and feature creep like you wouldn't believe. Some readers may remember this news post on the Uplink website around that date, in which I said:
Chris got a massive flash of inspiration, coded solidly for around 18 hours a day, and produced a complete game in 7 days, single player and multiplayer, by stealing copious amounts of code from <the next game> and <the next next game>. This will probably show up as a B-side on <the next game>.
Decoding (bear with us), we now know that <the next game> is of course Darwinia, and i'll tell you about <the next next game> in a sec. Unfortunately the game referred to in the post - which we now know to be <the third game> - was never sufficiently completed or polished for any kind of release, and we were all far to busy with Darwinia to devote any more time to it so it was shelved, until June 2005. The fact that the "first playable" was put together in one week should give a strong clue : its a much simpler and smaller game than Darwinia or even Uplink, and it's not going to take us that long to finish it. It's Multiplayer and Singleplayer, and we're currently at the stage where we play each other over the Internet every day for around an hour. In other words, things are progressing nicely. We're not sure when we will be done, but we're talking months rather than years, so you'll be hearing about details soon. This time the core dev team is Chris and one other developer (soon to be revealed), and we've got Alistair and Michael on board to do the music and sounds as before.
So, moving along. Amazingly, work on <the forth game> has also begun. In fact, work on <the forth game> began shortly after Uplink was completed, waaaay back in early 2002. Intelligent readers will notice the above quoted news post from the Uplink site mentions <the next next game>, which is now <the forth game>. I'll come straight out and stop any suggestion that this game is Uplink II, or is related to Uplink at all - it isn't. It was intended to be our second game, and I worked on it full time for around six months before embarking on a new project with Andy - codenamed Future War, which eventually became Darwinia. After a few months of working on both games at once Mark and Tom insisted I put one of them on the shelf, and I was forced to conclude that Future War was the better project to continue with. This was late 2002 and Future War was just six months from completion.
Ok, we've learnt our lessons now.
I'm working on <the third game> full time at the moment, but that doesn't mean I haven't begun work on <the forth game> - just in a different way. I'd like to introduce you to NaNoWriMo. The basic genius concept of these nutcases is to write a Novel of AT LEAST 50,000 words during November (the name means National Novel Writing Month). That's around 1700 words per day, for 30 days flat. It's an astonishing personal challenge designed to inspire people to just get on with it and put words on the page, and to let ideas fly without engaging the inner critic too much. And it's just the sort of challenge that <the forth game> needs right now.
I'm going to bend the rules a little bit. My basic intention is to write a number of short stories, all set in the world of <the forth game>. I'm aiming for ten short stories, roughly 5000 words each, which is much more achievable. I've already got a fairly solid plan (i've used hand written Game Bibles to build the game design, just like I did Uplink), and all the stories weave together in strange and interesting ways. These aren't designed to be published - 50,000 words is do-able, but 50,000 well written words is impossible for me even without the time-limit. The tens of thousands of yearly participants clearly all have their own reasons for subjecting themselves to this, but for me there are two goals.
My first aim is to explore the game world - to flesh out the characters - and (hopefully) to run into some fascinating ideas that I would not have come up with otherwise. Writing at this kind of speed, i've got no choice but to dive in and run with whatever comes up. The plan I spoke of is 3 lines of text per story - in other words, there is no plan. I'll know the plan on November 30th, and with a bit of luck i'll have a ton of new ideas, and maybe, just maybe, some material for <the forth game>.
The second aim is more subtle. Writing material of any kind has always caused me huge headaches. Uplink's mission descriptions we're all placeholder nonsense until very late in the project (some would say they still are) - I simply couldn't bring together the enthusiasm to write anything else in them. And Darwinia stars just one character - Dr Sepulveda - but writing his dialog was a horrific experience. He's got to get across vital tutorial information, and he's got to explain aims and objectives, but he's also got to talk about what it all means - why you should care about these little green fellows, and what effect your efforts have on the world. One minute he's explaining the purpose of a Control Tower, the next he's discussing the philosophical implications of digital lifeforms reading their own source code. He has thousands of lines of text and every one was a struggle. There's only one way i'm going to get around this problem, and that's to practice.
And I can't wait for midnight 1st November.
