Viridian Games

Just got this comment in a previous post and thought I’d respond here rather than there.

So.

WHAT were you guys thinking, to go around saying it was ready to ship?

Because, y’know, it wasn’t. As just about every review and forum thread is acknowledging, some more heatedly than others. (PC Gamer: “You should not buy it.” Uh, wow. I’ve NEVER seen them be that blunt before.)

Does Stardock have an actual QA department? Is it organizationally independent of development? Are there good lines of communication between QA and the rest of the company? Do they write test plans? Do they run them? How can they test this game and not encounter the problems that were present?

Or is the only testing done by developers in their spare time?

How does something like this happen?

-Rollory

First off, welcome to the site! I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before. I’ve got some free games you can try, and if you’re here for the Name That Game! feature, I’ll be posting a new entry later today.

Second, allow me to answer your questions and respond to your statements in the order they were presented.

So.

Nice to meet you too!

WHAT were you guys thinking, to go around saying it was ready to ship?

Brad’s now infamous statement (which you can read here) was made in anger and exhaustion. Brad explains the situation (and apologizes) here.

Because, y’know, it wasn’t. As just about every review and forum thread is acknowledging, some more heatedly than others. (PC Gamer: “You should not buy it.” Uh, wow. I’ve NEVER seen them be that blunt before.)

PCGamer’s most recent article about elemental states “I’m glad Stardock are patching Elemental so quickly after its disastrous early launch, and I’m relieved to finally have the game in a playable state.”

Does Stardock have an actual QA department?

Yes.

Is it organizationally independent of development?

Yes.

Are there good lines of communication between QA and the rest of the company?

Yes. We use Skype chat channels to stay in constant touch and they use Jing to quickly post screenshots and movies of problems so that we developers can see what they are seeing.

Do they write test plans? Do they run them?

Yes and yes.

How can they test this game and not encounter the problems that were present?

And now you have raised my ire. As a former tester I can tell you that testers find bugs; they do not fix them. If bugs exist in a final product they are not the fault of the testers; they are the fault of the developers. Of course they saw the issues. They are not idiots, and I resent your suggestion that they are.

Or is the only testing done by developers in their spare time?

No. Although most of us developers do play the Impulse version in our spare time and keep track of any problems we find.

How does something like this happen?

At last, you have asked a truly salient question (although I’m sure you intended it to be rhetorical.)

“This” happened because it was the lesser evil. Stardock simply does not have the clout to release a retail game during Christmas. Our choices were to launch on August 24th or push the game back to February of next year. Pushing back would have had disastrous consequences for Stardock because of the partnerships we had made and the forfeiture of our retail space.

I’m sure you’re thinking, “Well, releasing an incomplete, buggy game is also going to have disastrous consequences!” And thus you’ve hit the crux. We were in a bind, and chose the lesser evil – to release on time and then work like the dickens to get the game to the state we and the players want (instead of, you know, sleeping like most people who have just shipped a game do). Yes, a lot of people have already had a negative initial reaction to the game. There’s nothing we can do about that. But Stardock has a reputation for continually improving their games over the months and years after its release, and we’re continuing that tradition by improving Elemental as quickly as we can and turning it into the game it deserves to be.

-Rollory

Again, welcome to the site, and I’m sure we’ll have lots of spirited debates in the future!

It’s out in both the normal and lovely collector’s edition. Go! Go, my minions and purchase copies!

Now it’s possible I might be able to sleep soon.

Brad has taken to calling Elemental a game where you play, not as an adventurer in a fantasy role-playing game, but as the king who has to (among other things) clean up the messes the adventurers leave behind. A-like so:

If your interest is piqued, join us over at elementalgame.com!

All right, people, here it is. The current source code to Planitia, along with the cut-down, more retro-styled resources. (The previous animated sprites not only didn’t look that good, but they ballooned the project size to over a hundred megs – what the hell was I thinking?!)

Click here to download the source code and resources necessary to get the project running!

Now, having clicked that link, your work here is not done. You will read to the end of this entry before you start asking questions about how to get this working. Okay?

That zip file is going to extract into two directories – one called “Planitia” and one called “Framework”. That’s right kiddies! As a bonus, you get the framework I use to make all my games nowadays.

Here’s what you’ll need to do to get this project working.

Install Visual C++ Express 2008. Yes, I know, Microsoft just released Visual C++ Express 2010 but I haven’t tested with it yet.

Install FMOD EX.

Install a version of the DirectX 9 SDK.

Alter the include and library paths in both the Framework and Planitia projects to point at the local versions of FMOD and DirectX.

Alter the include paths in Planitia to point to the Framework source.

Check Project Dependencies for Planitia and make sure it’s dependent on Framework.

The working folder for Planitia is “Redist”. You’ll probably have to put your versions of fmod.dll and the directx redistributable in there to get your particular compilation working.

I’m sorry I couldn’t make this any simpler, but it shouldn’t be that hard to get running (under Windows, at least).

If you have any questions (that aren’t covered in the above instructions), please feel free to either leave a comment or email me at anthony.salter@gmail.com.

Good luck with the source! And don’t worry, just because I’m releasing the current source doesn’t mean I’m done with Planitia.

EDIT: It has occurred to me that people may want to play the current version of Planitia without having to compile it. Those people should click here.

EDIT: I have been asked what license this software is being released under. I am releasing it under the Simplified BSD (or FreeBSD License). The upshot is that I retain copyright, but you are free to do anything you wish with this source code (up to and including developing a commercial project with it) as long as you attribute the original source to me. This source is being provided “as-is” and I take no responsibility for any problems you may have with it.

The complete text of the license follows.

Copyright 2010 Anthony Salter. All rights reserved.

The views and conclusions contained in the software and documentation are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing official policies, either expressed or implied, of Anthony Salter.

Okay, I’d been getting this a fair amount after getting a Windows 7 box. I’d install an older game, like Dungeon Keeper or Populous: The Beginning and I’d get very strange colors, sometimes just in the menus but sometimes in the game itself. Annoying, but hey, they’re older games.

Then I reinstalled Starcraft, and the same thing happened.

Now, Starcraft is probably the most reliable piece of software ever written, and watching it come up in psychedelia was painful. I knew there had to be a solution. And there is.

In Vista, right-click your desktop and choose “Personalize” from the resulting menu. In Windows 7, right-click your desktop and choose “Screen Resolution”.

Don’t do anything in these screens; just leave them up.

Run your game. Your colors will be fixed.

Right here. You no longer have any excuse.

I’m going to talk about Hero Core a little more. Because I wanna.

There’s a lot to like about Hero Core. It may be the most perfect one-man band game I’ve ever played (although technically it’s two men because the music was done by Brother Android). It’s a perfect study in overcoming the limits of your own abilities to produce greatness.

Can’t do great art? Design your game so that you don’t have to. Hero Core runs in 320×240 and is in black and white (not monochrome, mind you – black and white are the only two colors used). Almost everything that moves is a particle of some kind, and they are almost all made of simple geometric shapes. The actual levels are made up of square tiles – no attempt to soften or round them was made. The main character doesn’t even have any frames of animation! While the word “retro” is horribly overworked, this game literally looks like it was made in the mid- to late-Eighties for the ZX Spectrum. Practically anyone can do art at this level, and it’s effective. Contrast this with Daniel’s previous game Iji, where the art is by far the weakest part of the game because Daniel isn’t that great at drawing and animating humanoid figures.

The game’s design strikes a perfect balance between challenge and accessibility. Death has practically no sting – all that happens is get warped back to your last save point. And these save points are everywhere, fully refill your health when you use them and allow you to teleport between them. That last bit is the really brilliant part – Daniel Remar has made a Metroidvania that doesn’t have any tedious backtracking in it.

The end result is that Daniel can make the individual rooms (or a sequence of rooms) difficult without making the game frustrating, since all you have to do is make it to the next save point – or teleport elsewhere if you really think you’re not ready yet. And while it’s not quite NES hard, it gets very challenging towards the end and veers into bullet hell territory on the higher difficulties. But practically anyone can finish the game because you don’t need an impossible level of skill; you just need a moderate level of skill and some perseverance. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – allow the player to trade time for skill.

So, to sum up, great design, effective art, excellent music and it didn’t take him four years this time. Bravo, Daniel. Bravo.

Okay, this isn’t Zeta, but it’s got a lot of the feel that I would have been going for with Zeta. And it’s darn fun, so you should try it out. It’s called Hero Core.

It’s done by Daniel Remar of Remar Games, who also did the excellent Iji.

If, like me, Supreme Commander just made you wish you could play Total Annihilation again, your wish is granted. And it’s been updated to ensure it runs on all versions of Windows, supports higher resolutions than the original game…and is still both LAN and internet-playable.

The number of older games that are now available for digital download in one form or another is increasing. Publishers are learning that there is still value in these older games, which makes me happy, as a lot of my discs are getting really, really scratched.

Okay, I know I promised a whole bunch of stuff that would revitalize this blog and I’ve delivered exactly jack and squat. But there’s reasons! Really!

First, while I wouldn’t say we’re in crunch mode on Elemental, we are working very intently. And the interesting thing is that we’re not working intently to make some publisher happy so that they’ll keep the money drip going. We’re working intently to make our beta testers happy. The current beta (1G) actually has the potential to be – wait for it – fun. It’ll be a nice reward to everyone who stuck with us through the first few betas, which were so un-fun that we felt the need to actually put a warning on the splash screen.

Second, I lost my video card. Well, that’s not really true. I know exactly where it is…it’s in my wife’s computer, since hers flaked out thirty minutes before a raid. I could try to get it back, but I’d probably lose a hand in the process.

So I’m stuck on internal video, which is not conducive to video capture and/or…anything really. The best game I’ve been able to get running on it is Morrowind, and even that is pretty choppy. Hopefully our finances will loosen up towards the middle of the month and I’ll be able to return to the land of the 3D-accelerated.

In the meantime, I’ve found something to keep you occupied. First, GetDaved, who not only has a great YouTube handle but is also one of the best LPers out there now that DeceasedCrab is semi-retired, is currently playing through Galactic Civilizations 2. He did an excellent playthrough of Master of Orion and two (count them, two!) playthroughs of Master of Orion 2, but when he was asked to play Master of Orion 3 he refused, saying he didn’t find that game fun. So he’s playing GalCiv2 instead. Good for him!

We will resume our regularly scheduled programming soon.

I promise.

Again.