We are on the front page of Metro Teknik!

An article about us and our fellow Incubator colleagues was published today in Metro Teknik!

Its in Swedish only, sorry :)
Page 1, 12 and 13

A funny thing is that on the pic we're playing on our little 14" classic-TV. Yeah, we want Vertigo to work on all TV's, not only High Definition 42" LCD screens.

Time to crunch!

Right now, Olof and Daniel behind me in the office is screaming something about the highscore screen that just won't kick in. The stress today is really high since we are about to show our game tonight at a party for all the company's at the incubator we are sitting in. Simply put, we're crunching!

My desktop is filled with papers since I'm taking a break from trying to master Joomla. I'm posting new sprint-lists and updated artifact-lists so that we know what to do and when to do it (in other words, I'm putting up a new schedule!). Stuff like this is crucial for any game development process. If we don't have a up to date schedule, there's no point of having it, right.
And I think you guys can guess why we have a scheme =P

Last week we had the honor to have a quick visit by Peter Stråle! Peter works as a technical artist at Grin in stockholm and been working on numerous AAA titles such as Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter 2 and Terminator Salvation(oh yeah, and Bionic commando). He were over here to give a lecture at Gotland University and check out our graphical stuff. He gave some really nice feedback on what we should think about and what we had done good/bad. More importantly he liked what he saw and since we are so far into the project we are in the position where everything have already been looked over one or two times.
Anyway, it's always awesome to show our game, especially for the pro's and we like Peter, he is a really sweet professional guy =D!

Anyway, back to the website, sprint-lists and the stress.

Mao signing out -

Warning! Currently in production!

So yeah, a break in the blog for a little bit more than a week. Stuff like that happens when you're full of stuff you need to do to actually have something to write about! We are not in crunch, we are just putting all our concentration into creating Vertigo, so therefore, again =P, our face on the internetz gets to suffer.

But as the good 'ol Swedish saying, "if you're waiting for something good, you can never wait for too long"!

I hope I'll be seeing some of you guys on Nordic game conference 19 - 20 May. The game will be on display and at the same time we are going to have new screenshots and a new trailer (my god our current one is almost one year old =0) up on the website for the world to see!
Speaking of the website. My mission this week is about building something completely new from the ground up, with the goal that it should not be as crappy as the current one. So in the end of the week we might have something delicious! That said, we reserve ourself for the possibility of delays.

So until next time! I'm signing out leaving you with a pic from the citynightlevel... yeah, I love cuddly-san^^.

Singleplayer?

When you make a game that is supposed to be a multiplayer experience, and then comes to the conclusion that you need a singleplayer part, you are going to have problems. That is what we are experiencing right now. The whole development process and concept around vertigo have always circulated around making the best multiplayer game possible. And when you start taking Singleplayer into consideration it starts giving you severe gameplay problems.

So, how do you transfer the whole concept of what Vertigo is into a Singleplayer experience that is supposed to be as good as the multiplayer part? I mean, the most central part of a multiplayer game is the other players which you, of course, don’t have in singleplayer.

So a simple solution but a solution that takes a lot of time to do, is to throw in some AI controlled "BOTS". And that’s it, right…?

Noooee, not at all. When removing your social partners you’re also removing the goal in what vertigo is much built around. The Competition. You’re no longer racing against your friends, your racing against AI controlled characters, and mocking a computer is (believe it or not) not the same as mocking your best friend if you manage to win. The goal to beat the computer is not enthralling enough… but… if you make the player feel that he is not playing against the computer, if you make the player take part of something bigger, something more immersive than “ready, start, go”.

Narrative… It’s not by itself a solution. But it’s a starting point. A starting point on which you can build a lot of stuff that will keep the player engaged. Let’s say the computer instead starts mocking the player, by saying you can’t do this or you can’t do that! The situation dramatically changes, and the player starts feeling challenged by the “computer”. And the response to that would be to “show the computer what you’re made of”.

But still, that isn’t enough, because Narrative can only do so much. What a singleplayer experience also is critically built upon is to give the player a lot of stuff to do, Content. So besides the short term goal (beat the computer), and the actual gameplay experience the player need long term goals as to, unlock levels, get new gameplay modes, find new characters to race against. We want the player to be engaged in the game for a long time, it’s not meant to be a 5min experience.

Of course there is stuff in the actual gamedesign/gameplay that we also need to revise. And also to add stuff in there since singleplayer opens up for a lot of cool stuff not possible in a multiplayer game!

But you guys have a lovely Easter holiday! And hope ya don’t choke on any Chocolate Easter bunnies!

PS: The work on the website is moving slowly forward, it still isn’t close to finished yet, but we’re getting there! Cheers!

Monday, and more important meetings!

After a really fun eventful week, we start by having a big Monday meeting! This week will be all about production and now is another time to reflect over the project, look over where we are, and where we want to be.
So it's pretty much the weeks most critical meeting where we all sit down, drink coffee, take notes and discuss goals, game design, and production.

There's a few game design things that it's important we take a closer look at once again, such as the campaign in singleplayer and the themes for the upcoming levels. Without giving too much away, we need to overlook the numbers of levels we're about to have in the final product.

Oh yeah, the press release. So even thought there aren't so much news if your following this blog, the most spectacular statement must be that were planning a release for Vertigo on Xbox Live Community games, this summer!

So thats that... more will be revealed about what we are planning for you! So, check back for updates!

PRESS RELEASE!

Hey, check it out!

http://vertigogame.com/press.html

Its in the details

Not such an "exotic" bug, but its a good example of small stuff that needs to be fixed!



For the untrained eye here's a short description of what happens:

When Max jumps and grabs on to the ledge the character climbs up and shoots itself foward. Basically.
The character should, since Max don't have any speed before he jumps, climb the ledge and just stop on top of the roof.
Pretty simple...

I'm going to shout at Olof tomorrow =D!

P.S: Povel is working on a new level, and it shall be codenamed "Speedy"!

P.P.S: Your getting sneakpeaks of the new interface! ;)