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The Around the World in 80 Games spotlight series is all about series is all about speaking to Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers across the globe. In this month’s installment, we visit with Milkstone Studios’ Alejandro González Fiel to learn about making Xbox LIVE Indie Games in Spain!
Where are you and your team from?
We mostly are from a little region in the north of Spain called Asturias. There are not many people in the game development business here, but we're hoping that it'll change gradually.
What languages do you speak?
Mainly Spanish, but all of us speak English more or less fluently.
How popular are video games and video game development where you are from?
They are common entertainment and widely known [and] the [video] game community isn't very large or hardcore. There are some video game development companies set up in Spain and most of them are small.
What are some challenges that you face that are unique to developing games in Asturias? What are some perks?
Our biggest challenge right now is making a life out of developing videogames. We're having fun while developing and would like to do it as a full time job, but we don't think it would be possible as of today. We are a young small team with few contacts.
[What is] the positive thing [about] creating videogames? We are developing something enjoyable and having fun while doing it. We can see the product getting better each day, with no pressure due to deadlines or budgets.
Could you describe your games for anyone who hasn’t seen or played them yet?
Right now we have three games available on the [Xbox LIVE] Indie Games channel:
Little Racers: A top-down 2D arcade racing game, with online capabilities, and lots of cars and tracks to race on. Little Racers is inspired mostly by Super Sprint and Turbo Sliders. Both were great games on both single and multiplayer department, and there were no other games like those on the Xbox 360, so we decided to be the first to offer a game like that.
Probably the most successful racing game on [the Xbox LIVE] Indie Games [Channel] to date.
Wool: A sheep herding game with cute visuals and high production values for up to four players. We learned much from our first game and improved a lot the overall game quality. Wool is heavily inspired by Sheep, both sheep and player behaviors are very similar to the ones found on the original game. Anyway, we added our personal touch, adding multiplayer support with co-op and versus modes. [Wool is] a highly rated game by critics, most think it's a steal for 80 Microsoft Points.
MotorHEAT: An arcade game where you race against the clock to reach the furthest point possible, while dodging traffic and competing against the world for the best score. It's gotten pretty good attention and it's said to have the best looking 3D graphics on the Xbox LIVE Indie Games channel.It is our first attempt in the 3D department and [it is] also our first single-player only game.
What made you want to make these games?
Mostly, the fun factor. We thought a game like Little Racers or Wool would be fun, and more importantly, we thought that we were able to finish it.
It's a very common problem to get feature frenzy and spend months developing a game with no sign of completion. We've had this problem on some occasions and thankfully we detected it before it was too late.
Can you tell us more about the other games you’ve worked on?
Before Little Racers we did some individual projects on our own, but certainly not as finished as this one. Some of us have also done some 3D software at our full-time jobs, although not games.
We'll probably recover some of our older projects in the future and make them available on the Xbox LIVE Indie Games channel.
Why did you choose XNA Game Studio to make your game?
We started developing games with C++ (well, some of us) and switched to C# due to easier and faster development times. We started using SlimDX (a DirectX wrapper) and switched to XNA Game Studio when the 3.0 version appeared. It was a smooth change, since most DirectX functions are available also with XNA Game Studio.
The main reason for the change was the ability to develop for Xbox 360. We were surprised by how easy it is to develop and debug on the [Xbox 360] console.
What other tools/programs do you use to help you make your games?
Two tools I recommend to every novice developer: Pivotal Tracker and a CVS [Concurrent Versioning System]. The first one is a website that allows you to track what's left to do in a very simple way. And it's free to use.
The second one is mandatory if you want to work on the same code base, but it's also useful to track the changes in your code, etc.
Other useful tools: Adobe Photoshop, AngelCode Bitmap Font generator, Notepad++ and nVidia FX Composer.
How long did it take you to make your games?
Little Racers took around three months of development (only one person developing the game), plus two extra months for all the updates that were added after the game came out.
Wool took around two months (two people developing and another two testing). It took an approximate total of 200+ hours of development.
MotorHEAT took a bit less than three months.
Since this is not our full-time job, our development times aren’t as short as they could be, but we’re proud of these short times, thanks to the XNA framework.
Can you walk us through a usual day for you and your team?
Once we finish our daily full-time job, we work at home, using chat software and the tracking tool we mentioned earlier to organize the work. We choose the tasks depending on how tired we are when arriving home.
What games are you playing now (other than your games!)?
We are four people at Milkstone Studios, so our genre preferences are mixed. Some of them: Gears of War 2, Red Faction: Guerrilla, Dominions 3, Metroid Prime: Corruption, FIFA 10, and Rock Band 2.
When playing together we choose four-player games such as Castle Crashers, Splosion Man and Storage Inc, another XBLIG that we really recommend for co-op play.
Do you have any ideas, wishes, hopes, and/or dreams for anything XNA Creators Club Online could do or provide to be even better?
Better integration with the whole Xbox Marketplace: [Xbox LIVE] Indie Games don't appear on your recent game list, or the "all games" list.
More price points for the games would be also appreciated.
What’s next for Milkstone Studios?
We’ve just finished a little break after MotorHEAT’s recent release, and we’ve started working on our next project, an avatar game with simple gameplay mechanics. We don’t have a name decided yet.
We have lots of ideas in our agenda, enough for years of development!
Thank you for this initiative; let’s hope it gets more people to know the [Xbox LIVE] Indie games channel, both players and developers.
Would you like to check out Milkstone Studios' games? Head on over to the Xbox LIVE Indie Games channel on Xbox.com, or through the Xbox LIVE Marketplace on your Xbox 360!
Feeling ready to make your own game? Our Education Roadmap is a great place to start!
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