image by Lorrie McClanahan

I just did some research and found a bunch of neat commonly used keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop. Of course there are tons more that I’ll may learn over time, but already these ones are speeding up my work and teaching me cool new tricks.

Please let me know your favourite shortcuts!

Ctrl + Alt + Shift + K – Show Keyboard Commands

Zoom/View

H – Hand (or use Spacebar to pan around)
Z – Zoom tool
Spacebar – Pan
Ctrl + Spacebar – Temporary Zoom tool
F – Toggle full screen
TAB – Toggle panel visibilities
Ctrl + 0 – Fit to screen
Ctrl + Alt + 0 – Zoom to actual pixels (1:1)
Ctrl + keypad +/- – Zoom in/out
Ctrl + R – Toggle rulers
Ctrl + H – Show/hide guidelines/grid etc.

Movement/Selection

Ctrl + Click when Move tool is active – Select layer under cursor
Ctrl + Drag when a tool is selected – Move a layer
V – Move
M – Marquee (use Shift to make square selections. Also shift to add to selection and Alt to subtract from selection. Alt to centre on start point. Space to move whilst drawing selection.)
L – Lasso
Ctrl + A – Select All
Ctrl + D – Deselect
Ctrl + Shift + I – Invert selection
Ctrl + T – Free transform
Ctrl + Click layer thumbnail – Selects non-transparent pixels in layer
Move tool + Alt – Copies selection/layer
1->0 Tool opacity
Shift + 1->0 Tool flow
1->0 while layer selected – Layer opacity
Ctrl + H – Hide marching ants
Shift whilst moving – Constrain to vert or horiz movement
Ctrl + Shift + ; – Toggle snap
Ctrl + ; – Toggle guidelines
Ctrl + ‘ – Toggle grid

Tools

A – Selection tools (for path editing)
T – Text (Hold Ctrl to move text whilst typing)
B – Brush (Hold shift to cycle through brush tools. Works for other multi-tools as well)
E – Eraser
C – Crop Tool
I – Dropper
S – Stamp tool
Q – Quick mask
X – Swap foreground & background color
Alt + Backspace – Fill with foreground color
Ctrl + Backspace – Fill with background color
[] – Brush Size
Ctrl + Tab – Next Point on Curves Adjustment
Keypad Enter or Ctrl + Enter – End text entry

Layers

Ctrl + J – Create new layer from selected one (or selection, or current layer if nothing selected)
Ctrl + E – Merge down
Ctrl + G – Group layers
Ctrl + I (while layer mask selected) – Invert layer mask
Ctrl + Shift + N – New Layer
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + N – New Layer No Dialog
Ctrl + Shift + C – Copy Merged
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E – Stamp Visible

image by zugaldia

Over the years I’ve made quite a few casual games, and played absolutely tons of casual, indie, facebook and mainstream games. As I result I’ve seen plenty of tutorials ranging from non-existent to fantastic. Getting your tutorial right is a fine art and will greatly affect the sales of your game if you are using the Try before Buy model that most casual game portals use. Even if you aren’t using that model, you still want everyone who plays your game to really get into it and tell their friends how great it is – so a good tutorial is vital and not something that should be tacked on at the last minute (which of course it often is due to time/budget constraints – something that I’ve been guilty of myself).

Here are some tips to get you started. Of course every game is different and yours may need a different approach, but hopefully these general guidelines should help:

1: Make a List

List out all the unique game mechanics/features/content in your game.

2: Mark the Important Features

Mark the important items on your list that you want to introduce with a tutorial element of some kind. You may not want to introduce everything if you want players to discover some things naturally.

3: Order the List

Order the list appropriately, which means a) in difficulty AND b) in coolness (to make new players see the epic possibilities of the game).

If you are doing a demo, figure out what to show in the demo and what to leave for the full version (perhaps >50% of features in demo, but not >50% of levels i.e. the full version is padded with more levels using the features in clever ways).

4: Construct Tutorial Levels

Construct (or use existing levels) to show off the mechanics in your chosen order.

5: Have some non-tutorial levels

Make sure there are some levels that don’t introduce anything new but get players to practice previously learned stuff, perhaps in a combined manner. This way it won’t feel like there’s a constant barrage of tutorial levels. Also it helps to pad/pace the demo a little bit.

6: Avoid Modal Windows

Try to avoid modal tutorial dialogs (where you have to read the text + press OK to clear) wherever possible. Sometimes it’s really not possible to avoid a couple of these.

7: Use Popups

Use popups on screen with an animated arrow pointing to the item of interest. These will disappear when the user performs the action.

Alternatively/additionally consider tutorials in the game world that you can walk past and read, and structure the game levels so that you can’t proceed without solving the simple tutorial, and be sure to repeat the lesson in a slightly different way (without tutorial text) soon after so it’s not forgotten.

8: Use Dynamic Popups

Some popups will be at the start of the level or trigger when a normal event/sequence of actions occurs (works better in sandbox-type games). Others will be for special edge cases where the player may have done something wrong (or way cool) and you want to inform them of that.

Don’t forget to point to things like goals or picked up items on the HUD that you want to draw the player’s attention to.

9: Edit the Text

Wield the knife on tutorial text. Make it as small as possible whilst retaining the core message (leave out extra details for skilled players to find out themselves). I’ve seen some very long and wordy tutorial text before than could have been reduced to just a few words.

If English is not your first language and the game is being sold on English sites, then get someone English (who is good with writing) to edit it for you.

10: Use Image/Animations

Try to add images/animations to important tutorial popups that show the player what they are trying to do (picture paints a thousand words…)

11: Ability to turn off tutorial

Decide if you want an option to turn off the tutorial. (Some players may turn it off, then fail to understand the game and quit).

By default the tutorial should repeat every time you play the same levels so that players who didn’t get it and want to can re-read and try again.

Also, if you don’t have a profile management system (unique profile for each player), new players will probably want to see the tutorial so you’ll have to leave it on by default. Profiles are better though.

12: Test it and fix it

Test it. Use Metrics (time level completion, track failures/retries, track when they give up/stop playing). Also watch players.

Look for where players have forgotten simple early lessons later on in the game, and where later lessons are too confusing, or they screw up the sequence that you want them to follow. Then make changes to the tutorial and test again.

Do you have any more tips to add? Please comment!

image by Steve Wampler

Can you make money on XBLIG? This question has been on my mind for over a year now and recently I’ve been researching it a lot, so I thought I’d share my findings with you.

I love XBLIG, it has some really awesome games on it for hardly any money. Also XNA is bliss to program in. I’d dearly love it to be a successful platform, but unfortunately I’m not so sure it is…

Here are some things I’ve discovered:

- You most likely won’t make any money at all, not even chump change. Many games make < $100, no kidding. But many are bad. Better games can make several hundred dollars, and the best can make a few thousand dollars (based on recent stats on the Creators Club Forums).
- To make a few thousand dollars you have to make really stand out excellent games that get in the top 50 download or rated charts, or on the IGN picks (People have not done much external advertising yet except for the Winter Uprising thing. Although there are a few review sites mentioning XBLIG games. Marketing may well be vital to making money on the platform.)
- So if you make a few thousand dollars from a great game (say $5-$10 over quite a few months), that means you need to make a game in a month and pay absolute minimum for content (graphics/music etc.) to make it worthwhile in my opinion. Plus it has to be awesome and maybe have a silly hook to get downloads and convert well. That is NOT an easy task at all. Probably <1% of people will manage it.
- Some of the best devs who are making the most money are considering quitting XBLIG (according to their blogs). Not a good sign.
- Sure that Zombie game made a ton of money, and some of the early games have done OK, but now there's a huge volume of less that stellar titles on it which probably puts a lot of people off even bothering to download anything. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that it's open and anyone can make a game and get it on a console, cool! But it's crappy if you want to make your game stand out and make money.
- Another problem is eyeballs. The Indie games are a bit hidden away on the Game Marketplace and not many people check them out. Some really great games only get 10K-20K downloads during the launch period (and plenty get <1000 downloads), and if they convert high (10%-20%, which is entirely possible) that might be OK. But that is a fraction of the total Xbox users. Casual games will EASILY get 10x (and even 100x) that many downloads on a portal (but will convert at a lower %)
- Personally I'm going to make some games for XBLIG for fun (early in 2011) and because I like XNA. It will be a good learning exercise. But it may be smart of me to think more about iPad, Facebook, and Download games later in 2011.

I hope that things will change it will become a very successful platform, but I'm not sure how or when that could happen.

Have more info? Perhaps you disagree? Please let me know.

Just read an article on Inside Social Games, and there was a great quote in it by Curt Bererton, the CEO and co-founder of social game developer ZipZapPlay, about building an awesome team that I thought was worth sharing. I’ve seen first-hand what an awesome team can do and also the opposite, so I agree with this statement wholeheartedly (I’ve bolded a key statement):

“Our philosophy is that we aren’t looking for prima donnas or drama queens, just smart and cool people who love games and get things done. Turns out this combination is pretty hard to find. Probably the most significant factor in our success is the people I work with: my co-founder Mathilde and our awesome team of great people. Having fun, highly skilled people without egos working together means you can move quickly without getting bogged down in drama or politics. Speed is the probably the most important factor in the success in almost any business, and this is doubly true in social games. I’m just happy to go to work every day and make great games happen.”

What experience do you have of working in or building an awesome team?

I’ve spent a *long* time analysing Facebook games, working out what makes the good ones successful, and I’ve finally condensed all that knowledge into an awesome next-gen Facebook Game 2.0.

Behold my new Facebook Game that will shove Zynga off the top spot: Progress Ville!

Stay tuned for more incredible insights.

Photo by ~Oryctes~

Someone just emailed me and told me that they want to follow their dream and make an RPG game. They are competent at programming, very knowledgeable of RPGs, and believe that they have what it takes to make an RPG game. They have also begun saving up money for the art and are prepared to live frugally to get the game done.

They wanted to know what sort of money they’d have to spend and what time frame it would take. Here’s my reply…

What “stage” are you at?

Firstly I checked our their site and I can see good examples of programming and a long history of programming, but no actual finished games (although their email does talk about making some games for fun).

My main worry when anyone talks about making an RPG is that it’s a BIG undertaking and that they should finish some smaller projects first.

Check out my 6 steps to massive game development success. I’d say you need to be on stage 4 (made a commercial game), but preferably stage 5 (successful commercial game) before undertaking an RPG if you want to make a return on your investment. If it’s just for the experience and “the dream”, then stage 3 (made a complete free game) should be OK.

Make an Art List

I’m not an expert on the cost of art for games because from what I’ve seen it varies wildly in cost and quality, but I do know first hand that if you spend more and get a good result, you game will most likely make more revenue.

The important thing to do is build up a list of what graphics your RPG would need, but before you can do that you need to decide on the scope of the game and what time you can put into making it (i.e. are you full-time or part-time?).

My advice would be to keep the scope down, so don’t make a massive RPG, make something smaller that you can handle in less than a year in order to get it out the door. For example I played a really great game on XB Live Indie Games today called Soulcaster, check it out. It’s an action game more than an RPG but it has simple graphics and didn’t last that long but was great fun. The pixel art wouldn’t have been that expensive and in fact the programmer did it himself according to the credits. I bought the game, it was worth the $3 or so for sure. I bet it didn’t take him a year (looks like 6 months or so from the blog), and now he can use the profit to make a second better game, and I’ll buy it.

So once the scope is decided, make a full-art list. This list could take you several days if you do it properly and of course is subject to change. Of course, to make an art list you really should have made design doc first, and that can take weeks.

Get some quotes

Now that you have an art list you can go about getting some quotes. The artists will no doubt ask a bunch of questions which will help you tighten up the art list. These quotes will give you a healthy reality check on how much it’ll take to make the game, and you may wish to descope at that point

2D or 3D

According to the email the game is going to be isometric. Therefore you are better off doing the characters in a 3D program so that once they are created you can then rotate and display them at all the angles required. If you add character animations you don’t want the artist to be drawing them all again at each different angles, you just want to re-render at all the different angles. However finding someone fast and competent in 3D on a budget is going to be a challenge as most of them will already be working for someone else if they are any good. I don’t have enough experience with 3D artist rates and how long it takes to offer any cost advice (but I’m hoping readers can help out) because I’ve only used 2D graphics for my games – although My Tribe (Facebook game I worked on) uses 3D people and it did take a long time to create the relatively small number of animated models, but there may have been some learning curve.

Alternatively you could try the old-skool Zelda semi-overhead view and do that with pixel art which may be less expensive. Still the characters need to be drawn at all 4 angles though, but it’s way easier to do than isometric characters.

Art Style Guide

Some of the games I’ve worked on have had medium 5 figure art budgets and have taken a professional artist around 10 months (others have had more artists and cost lots more) – and that’s just for 2D casual games.

An RPG does need a lot of content, but one thing that may help is to decide how high you want to set the art bar at the beginning. You can do this by creating an art style guide with the artist. Then stick to that so that the artist doesn’t spend overly long on some graphics and not long enough on other ones. Another good reason for an art style guide is if you loose the artist, the new one can check out the style guide to hopefully keep things consistent.

Also get the artist to do work in clear batches that you can evaluate, get right, and then plug into the game. Plus worst case, if they leave, you’ll hopefully have a complete batch.

Spiderweb Software is famous for great RPGs that don’t look that good, but the gameplay rules and they have a huge following. Remember that when making the art style guide.

Who to Hire?

You may want to hire more than one artist. For example, someone to do all the in-game graphics (or just the characters and someone else does the scenery), and someone to do all the title screens, dialogs and UI. Remember there’s a lot more to a game than just the in-game graphics, all that dialog stuff (especially in an RPG) takes an age to make.

You’ll get the best results by hiring a full-time professional who you pay partially upfront and partially on completion. Everything else is a compromise based on your budget. If you try to pay the professional just at the end, they may not do the work or may even stop working on the project – this is even more likely if they are hobbyist and part-time (always check out their track record). You might be able to pay someone half now and the rest from royalties. If you’ve made and shipped games before they should have the faith to work with you otherwise it may be harder to convince someone to team up with you for half-pay and/or royalties unless they are really very dedicated and/or want to prove themselves

Conclusion

OK, I’ve rambled a bit but I hope that I’ve generated some points for further examination. Also check out: How I sourced the art and music for my games.

If any readers have any further advice, please help out and post it. Many thanks in advance!

Photo by 3rd Wheel

How do you get from here to there, where: here = dream about massive game success, and there = massive game success?

They try to teach this at video game design schools, but I will give you some hints that I have learned from my experience. Well there are 6 steps as I see it:

1) Learn to program. Hopefully in a language conducive to game programming!

2) Fiddle around making incomplete games and engine code. This is where you get better at applying programming and begin to learn about game design.

3) Make a complete free game. Many people never reach this stage. Making a 100% complete game (even a small one) is not easy and takes a lot of staying power.

4) Make a commercial game. This is a complete game that is commercially viable that you sell and actually make money from. Many people never reach this stage after stage 3.

5) Make a successful commercial game. I added a word, but oh it’s an important word. Almost everyone reaching stage 4 will not have made a game that makes any decent money, and so many people give in at that stage. The ones that carry on may have to make several games, honing their craft (game design AND marketing), before they reach stage 5.

6) Make a massively successful game. Once you hit stage 5, stage 6 can be achieved by further improving yours skills, investing money, getting a lucky break etc. It is possible, but only a few developers will ever achieve this final accolade.

I’m at stage 5.5 Stage 5 has been done a few times, and now I’m part of a team working on stage 6 which I believe is inevitable based on everyone’s skill and the financial backing we have. (We recently released a popular Facebook game called My Tribe that is now scaling rapidly. It’s very exciting to be part of it).

Think of these stages as belts in a martial art. Stage 5 is your black belt, but Stage 6 is becoming the master. To progress through the stages needs regular hard work, determination, and skill. Wimping out at Stage 2 or 3 because it hurts or you are tired won’t get you a black belt.

Which stage are you at?

photo by Robbert van der Steeg

Someone emailed me a little while back and said that they don’t have much time to program due to having a full-time job and asked what can they do to get into the programming state of mind so that they can be productive with their precious time. Well, I’ll try and answer that in this post.

Give up your job

Sure being more productive with your spare time is a good goal, and more on that in a minute, but another way of looking at the issue is how can you get MORE time to do programming.

The most obvious way to get more programming time is to give up your job and go full-time Indie! Of course, this path is not for the weak-hearted, and for goodness sake, make sure you have a runway.

Let’s say you really can’t give up your job right now, well…

What else can you do to make more time?

1) Start young when you have parents paying the bills and not many obligations, and get lots of practice in.

2) Try going part-time with your job. Some employers will allow this and it will give you the much needed time to do programming.

3) If you go part-time or give up your job, consider reducing your outgoings as much as possible by things like:

– Move back in with your parents, share a house, or marry someone rich
– Downsize so you have a PC/Mac in a caravan (knew someone who did this and he managed to get away with very little work).
– Get rid of your TV to save money AND create more programming time.
– Ditch frivolous expenses and stay in more. However, don’t ditch exercise, healthy eating or spending time with your kids or loved ones, if you have any.
– Get rid of your car.
– There are tons of way to save money if you put your mind to it and are dedicated in the pursuit of your dreams.

How can you be more productive with your time?

1) Make it a habit. Write down a schedule of weekly programming hours and stick to it no matter what. Even if you don’t feel like it, just start and force yourself to work on your game for 10 minutes and before long you’ll be into it and making progress.

2) Try telling everyone that you are going to make a game by a certain date, and ask them to badger you about it. Public failure = embarrassment.

3) Put on some inspiring music that makes you work super fast. Trance music and 8-bit music does this for me. Nothing with lyrics though or I can’t concentrate on typing code.

4) Keep a proper up-to-date To Do list so that whenever you get a chance to program, you know exactly what to do next. Floundering and not knowing what to do is a massive waste of time. Try keeping a list of some low hanging fruit (easy coding tasks) that you can do on days when you don’t feel like tackling something hard.

5) If you really can’t face programming then get inspired: play some games, read blogs/forums, listen to music, talk to friends, go out for a walk. But, warning, you may never start! Or you may go the other way and get so inspired that you stay up crazy late and get no sleep and eventually get ill – I did this and it wasn’t pleasant (worked all day on business software then stayed up until 4am every night programming for months until I felt really awful).

6) Make sure you have a definite end goal, and make sure it’s realistic. Keeping the goal in mind will work as motivation on those days when you most need it.

Realise it’s a pipe dream and forget it.

If you can’t motivate yourself to program for an hour or more a day and more at the weekend then you really won’t make any decent progress. It’s the same as learning an instrument, or getting good at a sport or martial art. You need dedication and determination and a burning desire to achieve your dreams. If you don’t have that yet, then go and develop it. Or just give in for now, stop punishing yourself, and come back to it later when you are ready.

Good luck in whatever you choose!

What ways have you found to make more time for programming, and what techniques do you use to get into “the zone”?

photo by as737700

I had lunch the other day with someone who is planning to go Indie soon and I asked the all important question: “Do you have a runway?”. And I was very impressed that he a) knew what I was talking about, and b) has a 5 year runway! That’s a serious runway!

So what am I talking about? Well if you have a “regular” job and are about to go Indie, for goodness sake make sure that you have saved up some money first. You need to have enough money to pay for ALL of your living expenses: mortgage, bills, car, food, kids, debts (if any but I hope not) etc for quite a long time. How long? Well that depends of course on how soon you start making real money. If you are very lucky and skilled that could be in 6 months, but it could take 2 years or longer. Many Indies don’t make any decent money from their first few games because they are more like learning exercises. I didn’t make any decent money for almost 2 years and that was from royalties from my 3rd game.

Aside from the runway, you are most likely going to have to spend some money on graphics at some point (unless you are planning a retro “programmer art” style), so you need to save up even more money! Or you will have to get a loan, or get invested in, or find an artist to team up with (tricky if you’ve never released a game before, because how can they trust you to deliver?)

When I went Indie, I had no runway at all, which is not wise. But I just felt I’d had enough of business software and was determined to make it work it. It was very tough and I had to do some IT Consultancy to keep some cash coming in, plus juggle my finances a lot and rely on my partner Helen to bring in some cash. It took longer than I thought to make some money, and even longer to pay off my debts!

To conclude: don’t quit your job until you have a runway, some serious skills, and a decent plan!

Photo by Jake Birkett

Someone just asked me what Game Industry meetups there are in Vancouver and here’s what I could think of, please add to it if you can!

- A recruiter called Jared (http://www.myservco.com/31337/) used to hold regular Game industry meetups in Yaletown in 2009, but sadly no longer.

- In January 2010 there was a Vancouver Interactive Night Out in downtown, but I’ve not seen another one since, so not sure if it’s regular.

- There was an EXP Gaming event at VFS a week ago. Although I gather there were lots of gamers there rather than game industry types. Not sure if this is going to be regular or not.

- We held one at our Big Fish Games studio in Yaletown back in 2009, and before that (over a year ago) I held one just for Indies and Casual Game devs.

Shall I Start a New Meetup?

I’d like to start up a Game Industry meetup that is regular and very useful for Game Devs to learn stuff and network at. I’ve attended quite a few VanDev meetups and I like the format:

- 30 minute presentation from an industry expert then Q&A.
- Door prize (like a raffle where attendees can win prizes). This could be optional, but it is fun.
- Introductions (every one has 30 seconds to introduce themselves to the crowd in preparation for network)
- Networking until close.

Sounds formal, but I think it could work really well because it’s both educational and great for networking if you can find a suitable non-noisy venue where people can talk at. Vandev was held in a UBC classroom on Robson Street, and I can enquire as to how I could do the same.

An alternative type of meetup is the “all meet in a pub and informally network”. This is certainly fun but I find that pubs are noisy and so talking about anything meaningful becomes difficult. Although I have certainly enjoyed some good meals with other devs in the past. Perhaps there is room for both types of meetups, formal and informal. Vandev did that as they had a separate social meetup group in a cafe.

Anyone want to help? Any further thoughts or recommendations? Thanks.