Post Alpha High
Post Alpha High
What a ride!
Buckle up- this is a long post.
We just got to host the first, limited Alpha test of Sky Pirates! There was laughter, there were tears, and at least 22 pirates plummeted into the endless expanse of sky. In a nutshell, everything we could have hoped for.
My name is Russ, the other ‘R’ in RxR, who quietly lurks in the Discord server. But as the guy who’s written 85% of the code, I’ve taken some time to create a retrospective and share my thoughts about what worked, what didn’t, and where we’re planning to go from here. This feels especially fitting as we come to the end of the year and stare down the prospect of re-entering the workforce.
But more on that later. For now…
*Bill Murray did not agree to endorse this project
We literally couldn’t test some of these things without your help- and you guys showed up! Over the two sessions we held we had 16 people join up- and more that were interested but who couldn’t make it. That doesn’t sound huge, but it’s exactly what we needed. That brings us nicely to what went well.
Wins:
Server Stability: This was the overriding goal of this test- will our servers stay stable when at capacity. In short, we aced it, and we have some head room! At release, each ‘ship’ will be a separate server instance, and we needed to make sure we could have our target number of players on a ship. Our data shows that not only can we support our target, each player that joins only adds a very small amount of load, and that means we can likely support much higher player counts on servers and try some other cool ideas we’ve had. We’ll need to do some more testing, but this was our top priority during this test. If this hadn’t worked, we would have had to do some major re-working or re-designing.
Build Distribution: We were aware of a handful of ways to distribute a build but really wanted to utilize Steam. Aside from a small panic when the test keys didn’t show up as expected, this test helped solidify our build process and gave us steps to take when we implement our Steam pipeline.
There are still a few things to work on- but the big hurdles have been crossed and we had very little issue distributing (and updating) client builds via a platform people are familiar with.
As expected with an Alpha build, there’s far more that “needs work” compared to our wins- but this is alpha, of course stuff needs work!
Alpha Sign up process: We learned quickly what was helpful, what wasn’t, and how to approach this next time. And we’ll put those lessons into effect for our next Alpha. It’s nothing interesting, just some things that are painfully obvious in hindsight.
Mini-Game Fine-Tunning: As a former game tester for titles of all sizes, I only write the best code and never let a bug escape with a release. In reality, I can say with certainty that most bugs you encounter in released games have been logged by a studious tester in some basement before release, but just couldn’t be fixed in time or without breaking other things. And the same goes for our Alpha. None of the mini games escaped unscathed by bugs. Some minor things, some major things, and some things we didn’t know! We made a bunch of notes, took screenshots, and will be adding these to our ever-growing list of things to do.
Logs: Someone forgot to re-enable logs for the Alpha build. It was me. I forgot to do that.
Next time, we’ll grab logs.
UX: As expected, some of our games suffered from a lack of feedback to the player while others just displayed it incorrectly or unintuitively. We knew there would be iteration, and the feedback from our faithful alpha testers will help guide what we tweak and change.
Multi Platform: We gave ourselves this specific date for the Alpha test, and because of our punch list, just didn’t have the time to make sure our friends on Mac or Linux could join. These are platforms that we’re targeting to release on, so that’s on us for not making sure we had builds ready for those platforms. It’s on our list!
Wow, that seems like a lot of stuff- and we only had 16 people in the game. So what’s the plan?
Release a Demo: With the success of our server functionality, we have the confidence to move forward with a demo version of the game! This will still be through Steam, but should be “open” for people to sign up for, play when they want, and invite others to join. Not only that, but we’re also aiming for…
Mobile integration: Our main goal for Sky Pirates is for anyone to join from anywhere. Whether you’re on your computer with a RedBull for a 3 hour session, your laptop at the airport for 40 minutes before you board, or 12 minutes on your mobile device while on a break, cross play is the goal. To this end, we launched our mobile app earlier in the year (Android, iOS GO GET IT) and will continue to update and expand it to work seamlessly with our servers so you can play with your friends. It will focus on the mini games, but a mobile player loading cannons will be contributing to the ship they’re on just like anyone else.
Publisher plans: The demo serves a secondary purpose- shopping the game around to publishers. Long-time followers may remember that we’ve tried the publishing route previously. Showing that we have an active, working demo will help us show off the game to interested parties better than our (admittedly amazing) pitch deck does. We’ve been asked about crowdfunding, but neither of us have the know-how or capacity to reasonably make that work at this point.
Art: Another thing neither of us are: artists- though we both know our way around 3D modeling software and Rock has been knocking out assets above his pay grade. We’re hoping to get art help either directly through a publisher or via contract, to really help bring our world alive with custom assets. We can do the work, but someone else can probably do it faster!
And speaking of publishing and contracting, we’re rapidly approaching the end of being able to work on this full-time. Make no mistake, it’s been a dream come true for both of us, and an experience I’m exceptionally grateful for. But we’ve been actively seeking employment, as that is what the reality of the situation requires.
We’ve had ups and downs throughout the year, in and out of the game work. We took a leap, and Rock especially put a ton on the line to make this a reality for the two of us.
But looking back to where we started this adventure at- with thousands of lines of code and a mixed bag of useful and old assets, all of which barely worked together and only if the planets were aligned just right… where we’ve ended up at this Alpha is just about as good a spot as we could have hoped for.
Our servers are stable, our foundations are incredibly solid, and our future work is well defined. I used to come home from work and almost dread trying to figure out how to push this project forward. But now our early work is paying us dividends and I get to check things off our feature list. Yes there are bugs to fix and changes to make, but it’s such a better place to do those things.
And we’ve seen that our community is behind us. What more could a game dev ask for?
Turns out, about $300k.
Comments
Post a Comment