You wake up in a shop window. All you remember is a bright light before your eyes. You lower your head and see robotic prostheses instead of your hands. Slowly you turn around, and around are the same people stuffed with microcircuits. What thoughts will appear in your head: “What year is it?”, “Am I in Detroit?”, Or maybe “What about human rights”?
Hello street samurai!
My name is Anton and I am a game designer on a small game development team. She is small, because there are seven of us: an artist, an animator, a programmer, a June game designer, me, empty pockets and enthusiasm.
Team and idea
We all came at different times and under different circumstances to the call of love for cyberpunk and games in order to build a business model and become cooler blizzards. They decided to start with a clicker, because a project in this genre is easier to implement, and its appeal is no less.
The concept of the future game - cyberpunk and clicker - gathered in our heads, but we had to figure out how to combine these concepts in the game. The choice fell on such a popular activity as the mining of cryptocurrency. Therefore, throughout the entire game, the only way to earn satoshi ( local bitcoins ) is to mine them!
The game, in our understanding, should also contain a plot component. There were several ideas on this topic:
- Dystopia with class division, gangster seizures of areas and the desire for equality through revolution with the hands of machines;
- Life and everyday life of a criminal of the future: stealing satoshi from corporate accounts, escaping from security services in cyberspace, and instead of lead bullets, DDoS attacks.
Maybe we used one of these ideas, maybe we mixed both in a story blender, or we used a completely new one. You can find out about this yourself if you go through this article to the final cut-scene.
Technology and planning
As a development platform, we chose the Unity engine because it is easy to learn and relatively inexpensive ( because it is free ). And of course it allows us to make our game cross-platform.
We chose between Spine and DragonBones as a program for creating skeletal animation, both of which are easily integrated into Unity. However, they preferred Spine, as it has more interesting functions, its interface is more convenient.
We used Jira and Confluence as platforms for tracking issues, it is convenient and helps to monitor progress. To visualize all tasks in time, we wanted to use one of the services for building a Roadmap. However, these services are quite expensive, so we created a task map in Google Sheets ( just shhh, don't tell anyone).
Quarantined development
Most of the development fell on the period of self-isolation, so I had to work remotely and resolve emerging issues online. This was unusual, because at home it was not a work environment at all. But I had to put the TV shows and cookies aside and get down to business!
( Yes, I even interrupted watching the series about game development "Mystical Quest" )
Since we worked in a team, no one had the opportunity to stretch tasks so as not to let each other down. Therefore, many are faced with situations where they needed to overpower themselves and show good results in a short time.
Difficulties in implementation
In the game, the miner has passive income, it is credited every second. There was a problem with the elimination of the possibility of manipulating this income by changing the date and time on the phone. To avoid this, an online time link was made, but in this case it was impossible to play offline, which is rather sad. Then a hybrid of telephone and online time was made, but even so, the game was easy enough to cheat. As a result, a solution was found: to use the time that is counted deep in the device's system.
The difficulty that arose in the process of working on the animation was the creation of character skins. The new skins did not fit evenly on the skeleton, and there were more shifts than they should have. As a result, the character's limbs peeled off right during mining. A terrible future, agree. Now we figured out these errors and are working on skins and optimization of character movements.
Gathering together even before quarantine, we decided that we would make the game in two months, but as soon as buckwheat and toilet paper disappeared from store shelves, everything changed. With the onset of the pandemic, it became impossible to get together, so the whole work process went underground - into discord. Oh, this distance ... Someone lost interest in our small project and constantly hung in LOL ( I saw everything), someone could not stay with us for personal reasons. But one way or another, we found new people and in three months of work, all the functionality of the game was ready! My heart told me to call the game "Cyber Clicker", but numerous promotional articles reported that "Cyberpunk Infinity: Dystopian Mining Sci-Fi Tale" would be better.
Game release and your wishes
It doesn't matter if it is on a computer, on a phone, on a football field or on a crayon on the asphalt - everyone plays games and has always played. For the same reason, some people strive for game development, it seems to be something fascinating, mysterious, and at the same time familiar from childhood.
We realized that almost anyone can find themselves here, from screenwriters and economists to artists, website developers and just enthusiasts who do not have skills yet, but are ready to learn and comprehend new things. But despite the friendliness of the industry, many teams of ambitious guys break up because they don't believe in success or face difficulties.
We hope that our experience will motivate someone not to quit their business and believe that the risk is always justified. And it's up to you to judge whether we managed to assemble a team and make a really interesting game. We hope for your feedback, this is our first experience, and therefore your opinion is very important.