Fourteen Years of Development in Screenshots

05/29/2003

But first a detour.  I had been playing BYOND at the time, and I decided to try a rapid prototype of a fully flat world (not even isometric flat, 100% top down).  So I grabbed some sprites and threw together a quick test.  This was one of BYOND’s first ever “icon” games, where you could run around and build stuff and that’s pretty much it.  Every time the server rebooted, the world was wiped.  It was basic, but it let me quickly test out some key concepts.

One of the neat features that never made it into the real game is toggleable windows.  You could close them and then your field of vision would be blocked.

11/28/2003 12:08am

Back to the actual game proper, the graphics engine was rewritten.  Now with a isometric 2D world, there was a /build command that let you enter a RPG-maker esque build mode to customize your map (which was properly saved on the server).  Looks like the party hats are still in… but with fewer pixels?  Pretty sure the tileset is a free one I found online.

11/29/2003 10:39pm

“Simple build kit finished. Editing as I edit and others watch :)”

Also, here’s me circa 2004 getting surprise attacked by a girl with a katana during anime club.

I was a bit oblivious, but yeah, not long after this photo was taken we ended up dating for a while 😉

5/16/2006

College life keeping me busy => long gap between updates.  I also was working on SimWorld during that time, along with a thesis project, running the anime club, and generally living college life.

I graduate college!

My family and I are taking photos with professors on graduation day.  As I’m introducing them, we’re talking about my future plans.  I am determined to apply to every game studio in America and become an assistant producer — even though almost no one ever goes directly into production from college.  The last words I hear from one of my professors to my parents is “yeah… Robby should probably set more realistic expectations…”

I’m employed as an AP at Midway within a month.

2/10/2007

Moved to Austin and was heavily focused on work for the next year.

But sometime in that duration, I still managed to get a new UI system integrated, added NPCs, doors, owner doors, z-heights, cash, and basic shopping.  I was using a (better) tileset I found online:

At this point, I started getting ambitious again… my tech skills were getting better as well, and I had learned a lot over the intervening years.  I guess it was time for another rewrite.

3/2/2007

I began playing with the Irrlicht 3D Engine, but as far as I know, only got as far as this fancy login screen.  Those are my own cubes at least.

Also, the project was renamed to Archive Metaverse.

Then I switched engines again, as it looked like OGRE was a bit more full featured for my needs.

Meanwhile, continuing to learn lots in the AAA industry.  Midway was shuttered, and I was now at Capcom working on some good projects with cool people.

8/9/2009

By August, I had a 3d multiplayer networked client in OGRE.

What’s more is this build had integrated PhysX.  So you could pick up blocks, toss them into stacks of other blocks with physics, etc — all with network sync.  It was a nice bit of code.

House model in the background was from turbosquid.

9/27/2009

Lighting & more usable building system (picking up blocks skyrim style and tossing them around was neat, but not all that practically useful)

10/11/2009

“First test on the newly re-ported linux server. Lots of building by Walrii & Sim9”

There were a couple of really big problems at this point though.

1)  I had planned to make objects buildable using a wider variety of 3d objects (and I wasn’t sure how I was going to make that content.  Was still really afraid of art.)
2) It was a huge challenge to get people to download the 200ish meg installer (which had several redist’s bundled with it).
3) Would PhysX be able to scale to the number of objects I wanted in the world?  What about the size of the continuous world I wanted to build?  Would I need to parse the world into smaller, discrete zones, or could I figure out an elaborate world cell simulation?

I started to think about how if it could play in a web page, a lot more people would play.  And I really wanted a return to the simplistic top down graphics and easier challenges of a 2d world without fancy physics.  So I started thinking about that for a while, and eventually embarked on another rewrite.

1/8/2011

Ended up working at Microsoft in 2010, which would end up changing the course of my life (and 8bit) significantly.  I found myself in the position of enjoying the projects I was working on, working alongside some highly skilled people, but had bad luck and got a boss who was… well, let’s just say… unpleasant to work with. Basically imagine having this conversation every day, except the boss is constantly angry because of problems in his personal life.  It was a good, but tough, lesson in how to make the most out of a broken situation, and I’m proud of what I still managed to accomplish in my time there.  Most importantly, it gave me plenty of motivation to get my own studio going ASAP.  Painful though it was, if I hadn’t gone through that experience, I almost certainly never would have gone full-time indie.

I began rewriting the client in Java.  I used an engine called Pulpcore, which had the misfortune of being discontinued not long after I started using it.  But the engine did have the advantage of being able to run as a browser applet, which would prove to be pivotal for getting people to try it early on.

1/9/2011

Rewriting the networking code.  The networking now needed to be not only cross-platform, but also cross-language since the server was still in c++, but the client was Java.  I switched the serialization to use Google’s Protobuf.

2/21/11 (‘Sprint 1’)

First multiplayer test.  Finally bit the bullet and started making my own graphics… for better or worse.  Making my own art was tremendously painful at first, because I knew just how bad it was.

Looks like building and chatting was already functional by this point.  And running in a web browser!

Really glad we didn’t go with armless guy as our mascot.

3/24/11 (‘Sprint 2’)

Six player test, and the introduction of our emblematic character (& cement blocks).  Also, build tools.  I think at this point you got building blocks by typing /give me blocks, or something similar.

5/23/2011 (‘Sprint 3’)

Combat.  Check out that HP & Cash stat.

I must have implemented the first revision of the shop, since we were talking about it.

Fighting NPCs:

6/12/11 & 6/19/11 (‘Sprint 4’)

Six players online!  I think we managed to make the server fall over from so many players (six), until I fixed some rather suboptimal code.  This is also I think the first time I ever saw people in-game who didn’t already know about the project!

This was also around when the dev blog started, so you can see my first ever post here.

At this point, you basically spawned in the center of the world, and were free to build wherever or take anyone’s blocks.  That worked fine, until new people showed up and began trolling everything.  It was chaos.

Also, no one read the instructions and asked the same questions, leading to…

7/24/11 (‘Sprint 5’)

The first ‘tutorial.’  Now you spawned in a room with a bunch of signs that you could read.  It cut down on confusion a little, but people still weren’t reading them.

Also, a lot of people complained about not being able to see the depth of blocks, so lighting was added.  It was even slower to render than it is today.

Some other neat features: roads, signs, doors, IRC, password reset.

10/10/2011

Finally leave my job.  It’s a departure that’s long overdue.  One of my last conversations with my boss is him angrily yelling at me for twenty minutes about the wrong font being used on an internal document.  I wish I was exaggerating, but I’m not.

I’ve received enough irrational abuse from this guy that my emotional state is wearing thin.  The way it works at Microsoft is you can’t transfer unless you have good reviews, which are set by… guess who?  It doesn’t matter that in a year’s time, he had lost 5 out of 6 of his direct reports — being new there, I was stuck.  Anyway, it got bad enough that (at least at that moment) I was convinced with utter certainty that I didn’t want to work for anyone ever again.  So bad I was willing to put in my notice, move out of my house, and begin couchsurfing — all within two weeks.  I was gainfully employed on a Friday, and by Monday I was effectively homeless.

8Bit wasn’t making revenue at this point.  This was a leap of faith.  But I was finally a full-time indie, and it felt great.  No one to report to, and the endless possibility (and limitations) of being able to build anything I could make with my own two hands.

11/18/2011

I’ve found an apartment in downtown Seattle.  It’s tiny, but I can afford it on my budget.  I’ve saved enough to last a year, and I’m excited and nervous and happy.

First ever trailer:

12/1/2011

Edge shading to help with visual height differentiation

12/28/11

RPG-style dialogue boxes: