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[Chad]

Myself and the project are pretty new to TIGSource. This is going to be a hard one to nail down in percentages, but here goes! The devlog for:

What is Indie Van Game Jam?

Indie Van Game Jam is a comedy, documentary web and video game series where we travel around the country, interview independent game developers, and make games along the way in our van. It's a celebration and exploration of the indie spirit. Each episodes is a city, an indie developer, and a game design question. The question comes from the developer's game catalog as we attempt to answer it ourselves in the form of a game jam. We take our show to their city along with our half complete game jam to get their knowledge. On the way back we try to implement their feedback. The result of which is a 20 minute-ish show along with a downloadable game for PC, Mac, and Linux.

Who are Binary Solo?

Binary Solo is an independent game developer in Austin, TX comprised of former BioWare veterans. Chad Stewart, Zeb West, and Diego Almazan met while working on Star Wars: The Old Republic at BioWare Austin and bonded over a shared desire to charge into the vibrant indie scene which has erupted in North America. With new tools, markets and funding channels available to the masses, and a rebellious dissatisfaction with the increasingly bland games being turned out by large publishers, now is the time to make the game you dreamed about. Binary Solo has been working on bringing videogames and an original webseries to fruition. After completing work on Blowfish Meets Meteor, we set off on a journey across North America in a '95 Dodge Ram Conversion Van along with our filmmaker, Scott Rosenkrantz, to make a show casting a light onto Indies all over whilst making games along the way.

How far are we!?

The show is comprised of so many moving parts. Traditionally in film you have three stages: Pre-production, Production, and Post-Production. We wrapped pre-production in November, journeyed around the country from mid-December to early February, and have released two episodes as of this writing. What do we have?

7 episodes filmed.

7 games created.

2 episodes / games released!

A Steam Greenlight campaign.

If you want to read about any of our journey up until now, here are some blog posts from our blog on BinarySolo.com. (I will post new content here as well in the future along with smaller updates.)

Chicago in Review (An account of our trip to Chicago to visit Rob Lach.)
Orlando in Review (What it was like driving through a Polar Vortex to visit Phyken Media.)
Episode Two Update (Why it took so long!
The Gear we Used to Film.
Pre-Production!
The Turmoil of Filming an Episode

Published Episodes? Steam Greenlight?

That's right! Up until now (and for the entire first "season") our episodes are being published to youtube while the downloads are being hosted on our website, http://www.indievangamejam.com. We want everyone to see the show and to play the games we created on this trip. On our site are two episodes, each are a ~22 minute episode and a game jam. The idea is you watch the episode and then download the game you saw being made immediately.

Episode One: Rob Lach and Two Smoking Barrels
Episode Two: Wizards of the East Coast

Each of these episodes was cut from around 10 hours of footage. Each game jam had countless ideas unrealized due to time. What we want to do is release a super awesome Digital Box Set, equivalent to what you'd get with TV Series on DVD. For example, we've got segments entirely cut from the show due to time. Awkward van rides with the developers. Hours of conversation at lunch we didn't use about many different topics. We want to release at least one or two hours of special features per episode and update each of the game jams to be a fuller game experience. In our first game jam, our Second Person Shooter, we'd love to update the levels, add more levels, add a new enemy type, and add this idea of a mirage that we had.

We began our Steam Greenlight campaign at the start of SGC, along with the release of our second episode. (Check it out here!) We aren't limiting ourself to Steam just yet. I'll be posting updates as I finish up the client that launches the episodes and games. We intend to release it on every platform possible. (Desura, GOG, Ouya, Mobile) As anyone that has gone through a Greenlight campaign knows, however, sometimes it takes a while. We figure we need to start that process now.

What's Next?

Last Friday we started editing the third episode. This one is about the fine folks at PixelDash who are helping to bring Road Redemption to life. Without diving into too much detail, (I'll post about that next) we are in the stage where we watch all of the footage and try to sort out what works in the context of a 20 minute episode. We have about 8 hours of footage for this episode. This is the first time that I have been involved in this part of the process entirely, as it used to be Zeb and Scott who do this part. Well, Scott and I are the only ones in Austin this month, so I have to fill the slightly smaller but same-styled shoes.

At the same time, I have to work on the wrapper application that surrounds the Box Set and make builds of the third game, (Spoiler alert!) Wrecking Ballz. Hopefully in the next few weeks we're done with the Box Set application and can begin releasing it to other outlets besides Steam.

Until next time.

See You, Space Cowboy.

[Chad]

We just posted on our site about how we do all of the video editing for Indie Van Game Jam. I thought it would be interesting to talk about the game side of that as well here on the TIGSource forums.

Post Jam Game Shenanigans!

Each city we visit, and each developer we meet, is a new game under our belts. It is a prototype based upon their strengths. We truly do try to set our "pencils down" once we arrive back in Austin, TX. However, our work isn't done yet. We now have the task of grabbing screenshots, recording additional gameplay footage, and preparing the game for release on both our site and for our Box Set. (That is, of course, after I add the game to our git repository.)

We start by playing the games all the way through. This is usually a 15 minute task, although we have a few which are a bit longer. Our goal is to make sure that we can play the game without any crashes or game breaking bugs. If we do encounter any of those, we fix them immediately. If the game didn't come out quite as we planned, at least you can actually PLAY it.

The other work we do is add a splash screen to the game to set people's expectations. Because it is a game jam, we want people to understand that what they are about to play is not comparable to Gears of War. It is Luftrauser and not Luftrausers. This is what one our JAM splash screens looks like:

After that, I build the game for all platforms. I upload it to our site and get started on the episode page for it. This includes grabbing a square 50px icon, writing up the game description, and stubbing out the youtube video. I test the download link on all platforms to make sure it works and we're good to go.

Once it is, we're off to the races! We generate a Google Spreadsheet with all of the ideas we missed, additional art we wanted, and any emergent ideas that come out of our brainstorming session. These form the basis for the improved version of the game going into our Box Set. (AKA What we're trying to get Greenlit on Steam!) For example, here is our list of improvements for "Who Wants to Play a Game about Beekeeping!?"

• SFX - jump
• Bugfixing
• UI to know how close I am to victory
• Get stun pose working
• Pause/Quit within game
• Bopping with head jump stuns (test)
• Set decoration
• Bugfix duplicate walls/floors
• Get walk animation working
• Fix joystick mapping
• Background image
• Balance Honeyslicks stickiness
• Bopping makes you lose bees
• Bopping with net does knockback
• Bees move around (small localized area)
• Touching bee stuns you
• SFX - Bopping
• Queen Bee
• longer stun
• Queen Bee goes after players (doesn't respect walls)
• Queen places nests
• To fix or not to fix wall sticking
• More maps

So far it has taken two months to edit an episode. That means we can get quite a bit of work done on the game when we're not showing off at or preparing for a convention, working on the launcher app that wraps the Box Set, writing blog posts, or helping Scott to edit the actual episode.

What do you want more insight into? Let me know and I'll put together some answers!

See You, Space Cowboy.

[Chad]

Are you ready for episode 3 of our show / game series? I hope so because I'd like to introduce:

Wreckingball Run

In this episode we visited PixelDash Studios. They're a company that has done dev-for-hire work to fund themselves while they chip away at their own original IP. Now they've partnered with Dark Seas to bring Road Redemption to fruition.

But enough about them, enough about us, enough about enough. Watch the episode, play the game, and then let me tell you a story about the editing process on this one along with the real deal on the game. (Seriously, I don't want to spoil the magic.)

Movie Magic!

Okay, so first let's talk a little bit about the episode. This episode was different than usual for a few reasons.

We're Virtual Now

Usually the first step in the editing process is for Zeb to sit down with Scott (Filmmaker) to sort through the footage and key in on what should and should not make the initial cut. Scott is a great filmmaker, but he is not a game developer. This series is geared towards game developers, both professional and aspiring, and so we want to make sure we portray development honestly.

Zeb is now in San Francisco. For most of this Diego was in China. This time I (Chad) filled Zeb's shoes to sift through footage with Scott, but there was a lot more email this time around. This didn't work quite as well as in-person feedback because things can be mis-read, sometimes people don't respond right away, and I am crazy sarcastic all the time.

Camera Issues

During the filming of the episode our camera died in two key spots. Despite what you may see, we're largely a single-camera operation. (We do have a GoPro that we use every now and then, but it dies quickly / is reserved for emergency conversations.) When we were in the whiteboarding process, the camera died before we finished discussing the idea. (Off camera, we had a two hour argument about what the definition of cool was, what they wanted, what kind of game to make.) That means we don't have footage of us agreeing on a game and we don't have any footage of us actually working until the next day. We borrowed about 30 seconds of footage from elsewhere and chopped and stretched it into what you see before Pensacola.

Our camera also died at the tail end of the game playthrough with PixelDash. During the episode you see a giant list of feedback, but we had no actual footage of them delivering said feedback. We had to bridge this gap with VO and an interview with Zeb. This was hard because for some reason (tail end of two weeks of travel?) Zeb wouldn't stop munching!

Game Dev Sausage

For this game the feedback was all pointing us back to one single thing: Make what you do feel better. Make it more satisfying to destroy buildings and hit demons. Unfortunately, easier said that done.

Each time we tried to tweak it, it felt wrong. We tried making the chain all real physics, but that was an absolute nightmare. Setting it up took a little while between Diego and I. Really, that should have had days of attention to try and get the swinging and physics right, not about 8 hours. What we ended up was a hybrid where the chain is made of hinges, but only for visual effect.

Because we spent most of our time on the ride back focusing on the input, several features fell by the wayside. The planes were supposed to explode. We wanted the demon to be a proper boss battle. The spirits of defeated enemies were supposed to float into the sky as angels. We wanted more characters in the game.