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May 25, 2007
Meeting Report: Tuesday, May 22, 2007
IGDA Meeting Minutes by Casey O'Donnell
Tuesday, May 22
Colin Wilkinson - Senior Designer, 1st Playable Productions on Puzzle Quest: Co-development for the Handheld Market
Minute Taker's Notes: Colin had a nice set of slides which I'm hoping we can post here soon. Screen shots of early versions of Puzzle Quest both on the PC and DS gave a nice visualization of how much the game has transitioned through this process.
Colin was given a brief introduction by Joe Cecot, a former co-worker from Vicarious Visions. Colin is now a Producer and Senior Designer at 1st Playable, and was the Producer/Designer for Puzzle Quest on Nintendo DS. He has worked in the game industry for the last eight years shipping numerous titles on an array of devices. Most recently he has been focused on the DS.
He began talking about how the task of taking a game from the PC to the DS. Puzzle Quest was released in March of this year. The PC demo of the game had shown up at the 1P office, complete with untuned game-play and early artwork. Their interest in the game was particularly in a "new original game which scopes to various play session lengths." It was an opportunity to build on and improve existing technology. It was also an opportunity to work on a game that everyone wanted to work on, not to mention that "working on a game meant free copies."
They wanted everything to use the touch screen. They wanted a game that anyone could pick up and play, and that all necessary information was available to the user at all times. No need to flip through numerous screens and sub screens. An "RPG has lots to display," but they also didn't want to cut any features.
The first chore of course was moving from the PC to the DS, two platforms with very different specifications:
DS: 16MB Rom - 4MB Ram and 656 KB Vram - 4Kb EEProm
PC Demo Specs: 90MB Installer - 256MB RAM and 64MB VRAM - HDD Saves
They began by scaling the artwork down from the PC to the DS. The PC had used huge TGA ("TARGA") textures files. They did a lot of compressing down, scaling, removing of character directions that would be unnoticeable on the DS screen.
The second issue was that on the PC the LUA ("Lua") files were all loaded on startup. "We can't do that." They switched to a load on demand system. Lua was used for just about everything. XML was their data storage format and LUA their scripting language. The DS's simplified memory system was where they spent a lot of technical time.
The UI provided the single most important and time consuming aspect of the project. They did an extensive series of mock ups of screens on the DS. Moved lots of things around. They spent nearly a month or month and a half working on this aspect of the project. Attempting to figure out what you've got and what you're going to need to do. Later in the development cycle they encountered issues related to compression and the UI.
Designers looked at what many other games were doing and how they had been reviewed. What could they learn from those games that had come before them? The limitation of two 256x192 screens was a complex issue to work around. The main goal they decided was that the Puzzle Screen needed to take over the entire screen. The same ought to be true of the map screen. Ensure that the player has as much room as possible to work with those aspects of the game.
Since the release of the game, they've been happy to see other games making use of some of their design decisions, like the use of the DS shoulder buttons to swap to top and bottom screens.
Because the game was entirely stylus controlled, and they were working along with the PC guys, they found that the stylus was nothing like the mouse code on the PC. It somehow left the game feeling lifeless. Lots of time was spent fine tuning the touch screen.
Colin then talked a bit about the audiences that the game was being targeted at, two largely different audiences. Puzzle Gamers and RPG Gamers. They wanted the game to appeal to all of them, not simply those who were both. For the most part DS users have been interested in lots of different things, and willing to experiment with new concepts.
One of the major design changes that was made early on was that the PC demo had only male characters. The game needed female avatars. They also wanted to ensure that players were not being kept from the action. Ian relayed a story from the original designer of the PC game where his mom called him up at 3AM asking, "I'm at the sea serpent, I can't figure out how to win."
The game has been very successful:
Top 5 in sales 6 weeks in a row. It has since dropped to 6th, "after Pokemon came out."
1st in sales 3 weeks in a row.
Average Meta-Critic Rating of 80+ ("It would be higher if it weren't for Nintendo Power. Nintendo does have an upcoming puzzle game title.")
The games featuring in a Penny Arcade strip hasn't hurt either.
The PC version is the #1 downloadable game on AOL.
The question, "Where will this take us?" was asked of the audience. What are the implications of going from the PC to the DS? What does it mean for game budgets and scope? Will we begin to see more cross-development or fast-prototyping on the PC for handheld markets? Will we see more overlaps between existing genres or more casual versions of historically PC genres? Where too does this leave traditional licenses?
The question and answer session consisted of a few questions regarding:
1.) Q: There is a European and US Version, are there plans for a Japanese Version? A: Not yet.
2.) Q: How was cooperation from Nintendo on this title? A: Yes, it was good.
3.) Q: Would something like the use of Wacom Tablet on the PC help prototyping? A: Yes, that would likely help. It would also help if the DS was in your mind during the original design.
Posted by casey at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)
May 12, 2007
Photos from May Puzzlequest meeting
The crowd at the Puzzlequest talk.
Colin talks about Puzzlequest
Mingling after the talk.
Discussion among members.
Preparing for the meeting.
Posted by MeganPerry at 12:03 PM
May 11, 2007
Puzzle Quest: Co-development for the Handheld Market
Speaker: Colin Wilkinson, Senior Designer, 1st Playable Productions
Topic: Puzzle Quest: Co-development for the Handheld Market
Location: Brown's Brewing Company, 417 River Street, Troy, NY
Date: Tuesday, May 22, 6-9 PM
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords created quite a splash when it came out in March. The game is a fusion between the addictive game play of Bejewelled and RPG mechanics with experience gain, loot, magic and tons of monsters to slay. In short order it had received critical acclaim, two comics about it featured in Penny-Arcade, and became a top seller on Amazon.
Three versions of the game were developed. A PC Demo which was released in February and then a PSP and DS version. The DS version was a collaborative effort between several companies D3 Publisher, Infinite Interactive, Vicious Cycle, Engine Software, and Troy's own, 1st Playable Productions.
Colin Wilkinson, Senior Designer at 1st Playable was the producer for the game and worked with Infinite and D3P to bring the design to the DS system. Join us next week when he will give a talk going into the details of that process.
Colin's Bio:
During the past eight years Colin Wilkinson has shipped more than 16 titles for handheld, PC, mobile, and web platforms in genres ranging from classic platformers to children's titles to action adventure. Most recently he has focused on the Nintendo DS, where the touch screen and other features offer exciting new design opportunities and challenges. Most recently he led the development of the cross-genre hit Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords for the Nintendo DS. Puzzle Quest combines casual puzzle play with an epic RPG saga, and illustrates how handheld games are reaching new audiences while also appealing to the more classic audience.
Click here for directions to the meeting
Posted by IanStead at 02:05 PM | Comments (0)