Just a quick one, breaking down what has been happening. After losing a couple weeks and a computer HDD, I’m now back in action, new computer fully operational with all software reinstalled. If you’re a computer nerd, you might be interested to know I got:
Ryzen PC
Ryzen 1700x
16gb FlareX Ram
Two M.2 SSDs
…and kept my old GTX 780
I was hoping the speed difference would be quite noticeable in Unity but… meh, not heaps. My old i7-4820k was already quite good, so I guess I’m not heaps surprised. I did just render a short video, though, and it really ploughed through that in record speed. Also, Map Magic generates terrain segments a bit faster, but again in general, I was hoping Unity would become super snappy and responsive, but it hasn’t. Compile times seem much the same, as do scene saving times, etc.
I also bought a Cyberpower UPS battery backup, as I was paranoid my old machine might have lost some HDDs from dodgy electrics in my office/s over the years.
Intro Sequence Progress
Unfortunately, after all this new computer mumbo jumbo (and a big delay in receiving the UPS), then some work on Exo One for AVCON, I’ve really only done a few days solid work. Here’s a peek at an improved intro sequence that I’ve been meaning to do forever:
AVCON
Exo One next to Hollow Knight and Forts
I opted not to actually attend AVCON the other week, because I was concerned I’d get sick again, so huge thanks to my partner and some very helpful local dev friends of mine!
Of course, I got the con-flu anyway, but I can work through it for the most part. Bad things happen in threes or something? Therefore it’s all smooth sailing this month!
Tasks Completed
Bit of a small task list (lots of small things) for the month:
Hunting for writers complete (pretty much ready to go)
Story prep work for writer
New Ryzen PC received, reinstalled all the things…
Intro Sequence
Added transport monolith animation
Crater impact + FX
White flash + sound
Steaming craft
Improved low speed craft handling (doesn’t float about as awkwardly now)
AVCON prep (got Restart working properly)
Improved high altitude sky, so that we can’t see the world end so easily
Improved craft appearance (reflection probe)
Custom rain (needed custom solution outside of trueSky, due to high speed movement of the craft)
Switched temporal AA method to standard Unity for slightly nicer looking AA
Some terrain improvements, possible due to streaming/not having to worry about generation time.
Catch you for the next update! Should start seeing some more progress very soon.
This is going to be a shitty update because a) I got nothing done and b) I hate making excuses and c) I can’t go to AVCON.
First off, I got pretty sick last week and had to go on antibiotics. I’ve just recovered from that, so with AVCON only a few days away, I’ve decided it’d be unwise to dive into the virus zone that is games events. I’m yet to attend an event without getting sick afterward. Luckily, I have friends and my partner who are going to show Exo One for me. I have enough energy to go and setup/tear down on the Friday/Sunday, so that should be safe enough I guess.
Secondly, (this is the comedy part) as I started feeling better and sat back down to do some work, my OS SSD died and failed to boot. SMART and Crystal Disk stats gave some conflicting info, and I did a Windows 10 reinstall, which lasted only 2 days before the drive died again. Really average timing prior to AVCON, and zero chance I can show the new build now :(
Spent all day today sourcing new parts for a new computer, as this is actually the 3rd time in 3-4 years I’ve lost HDDs! The first time was due to an unlucky purchase of an infamous model of hard drive that failed at a high rate, the second time was from a power surge, and this last time I don’t know, but all the houses I’ve lived in the last few years (3!) have had power issues (brown outs and black outs). That may have something to do with it. I also fear the computer is just ‘haunted’ (dodgy motherboard or PSU or???) hence the new computer.
I’ve grabbed a bunch of premium brands/parts to try and reduce hardware failures as much as possible and ordered a pure sine wave UPS (uninterruptible power supply) that arrives next week to ensure my home’s power isn’t causing problems. So now I do the impossible and not put together my fast new computer – I don’t really want to take a brand new machine to a games event I’m not attending. I wouldn’t use it beforehand without the UPS anyway, just in case. You would be paranoid too if you’d lost this many HDDs :P
I’m planning on using this downtime for story work, as that can all be done easily on my laptop.
Apologies to anyone that was hoping to say hi at AVCON, but at least you’ll still be able to play Exo One! I’m off to put in a new OS HDD and get Exo One running on the TV before Friday.
Hopefully a more positive update at the end of the month!
A quick update on what I’ve been working on for Exo One this past couple of weeks, now that Kickstarter is pretty well settled for now:
The new version of the backer preview build should now work for 4k screens/odd resolutions. Check your Humble email/download link if you had issues in the past.
Worked on the story for a couple of days.
Rhys fixed an old, annoying camera bug. In some situations the camera would tilt annoyingly. Still one or two other oddities to fix yet.
Slight ‘wing tip trail’ upgrade on the craft in glider mode.
Partial world streaming tests. Instead of generating terrain in real time, I’ve pre-generated it in a huge area, which results in a big performance gain, and hopefully no frame rate spikes for people without beast CPUs. There’s still plenty to explore, but this would mean no more infinite terrain. With the focus of the game more on the movement and feels, and without a huge amount of ‘content’ to find, I think this is fine. I’m still yet to complete testing this as I have to actually stream the terrain in. Have to see if there’s a framerate spike from that next.
As part of optimization tests, I’ve tested baked lighting as the terrain now exists (pre-generated) before the game starts. This would mean a slight improvement in distant shadows, but unsure if I’ll be using it as I have less control over lighting (afaik, need to spend a little more time) and there would be a huge lightmap generate time for the number of terrains.
Pre-generated, streamed terrain (if they’re as smooth as I hope) will have a number of other advantages visually as well, since I won’t have to try quite so hard to keep frame rates super high to account for frame rate spikes.
Terminus Nominee – best game/design. Pleased to announce Exo One was a close runner up/nominee for Best Game and Best Game Design for TERMINUS this year. Full details: https://terminusevent.squarespace.com/2017-award-winners
Wind air currents. These are nice little atmospheric objects you can find if you look for them. If you manage to get inside the air current, they will give you a speed boost. I may toy with other ideas like having your controls become harder to handle within as well, so you have to ‘wrestle with’ the turbulence/speed.
First Ansel Tests. While this didn’t work in Unity 5.4, now that I’m in 5.6 we are in business. Just need to remove my own camera controls while in Ansel mode to make this work, since now the camera controls are competing with Ansel’s. Below is just a silly retro snap:
New trueSky, MapMagic, material updates. Here’s a screenshot of Sagan4 with the latest versions of these plugins, using MegaSplat for their rather awesome texture clustering (minimizes tiling effects):
AVCON. If you’re in Adelaide and are coming to AVCON, I’ll see you there! Unsure yet whether I’ll be bringing an older or newer version of the game. Might depend on what state the current build is in.
Catch you for the next update, where I hope to have made some solid progress on planet streaming!
Thanks to all 1076 backers, we have ended our Kickstarter campaign for Exo One with a total of $40,103 after targeting $35,000! Couldn’t have done it without everyone’s support, sharing, advice and encouragement! I’m so grateful!
What’s Next?
If you missed out on pledging before the deadline, I’ll be investigating post-campaign options for supporting Exo One, once things have calmed down.
Then, development will enter full-steam-ahead-mode! I hope to bring you a truly unique game that takes you to the farthest reaches of outer space for a mesmerizing, sci-fi, planet-hopping journey!
I’ll be at AVCON (a comics and games event) here in Adelaide, South Australia to show off the latest version of Exo One in July, so please come and say hi!
Once again thanks to all who helped me succeed with the Exo One Kickstarter!
July 28, 2016 / Jay / Comments Off on EXO ONE Greenlight Post Mortem (2016)
EXO ONE has been Greenlit, making it to #26 (24 at its height) in 2 weeks. You can check out the EXO ONE GreenLight page here.
Starting From Nothing
I began the Greenlight process with practically zero fan base. The games I’ve made prior were on different platforms in different genres and from different companies. Perhaps outside of family, friends and old work friends, I might have had a dozen or so fans following me on Twitter (maybe).
I released a teaser alongside a game announcement press release on GamesPress on the same day the Greenlight went live, and I hand emailed every games website I could find who had covered similar games to EXO ONE. I would direct most of these emails to a specific author, mentioning in some way, shape or form that I was aware they either liked the genre or had reviewed a similar game. I received two replies from probably 50 emails, both saying essentially, “looks interesting, let us know when there’s something playable”.
Here’s the teaser I made using 100% in game footage. Music was by Rhys Lindsay, which, since it was made for the game, really fit perfectly with the mood I wanted.
This netted a total of about 500 views on Youtube in the first week, which is ok, I guess. Clearly not a hit or anything, however. I put a ‘vote now on Greenlight’ annotation at the end, and figure I can swap that out for whatever I’m promoting next!
Within the trailer, I spent exactly zero time showing my Exbleative company name or my own name and instead went for opening directly to a mysterious looking structure behind some pretty clouds, then went from there. The game is all about the vibes, so I pushed that mystery/melancholy angle as hard as I could while splicing in a little bit of gameplay.
While it would have been nice to see the video do so well on Youtube that it brought in Greenlight votes, it did at least singlehandedly take me to #26 on Greenlight, which I’m fairly proud of. I got some really positive feedback on Twitter from some people too:
I used these guys to handle my press release since they had a reasonable fee, Gamasutra used them and so does most of the industry it seems. I also just really wanted to cover all my bases. They were super quick on email and I felt like I was dealing with real people, which was nice. You can see below how many views I received compared to the average, and compared to the best (who already have huge followings). I think if I had something playable, or perhaps just more gameplay footage, this would have been more helpful.
You can see I did almost twice as good as most ‘average’ press releases, and really not too bad even compared to big name releases like Minecraft and The Walking Dead.
After sending my press release through Games Press and hand emailing everyone, I appeared on around 6-7 websites from several countries, which was nice, but it wasn’t exactly a feature on Rock Paper Shotgun or anything. For the most part, I got some repostings of my trailer or quick write-ups that used the press release pretty heavily. I need to mention here just how grateful I am for these, don’t get me wrong! For all I know, I got a lot more traffic from these sites than I thought. It *is* a mystery to me where half my traffic came from (see Google Analytics below).
In the future, I may be writing any releases in a more ‘reviewer’ tone, which might sound more natural if copy pasted. But of course, actual hand-written reviews are slightly better! I put down the lack of coverage again to just not having something playable people could get their hands on. Even with what I think was a quite good trailer, it’s still just a trailer and low on the gameplay and story as well.
2 Weeks on Greenlight
The game followed a straight line trajectory that barely seemed to accelerate or slow, until the last 2-3 days where we hit 24 then 25 then settled on 26. I assume this would be due to the top 25 having a steeper trajectory of yes votes than EXO ONE, therefore making them perhaps unbeatable without outside press coverage or a larger audience. But I don’t feel any of this matters much, I was very happy once we hit top 50. Greenlit is Greenlit!
Here is said, straight line graph: Interesting, all the different trajectories! You can see for some reason even the #5 item isn’t Greenlit yet, after 30 days. I’m assuming the lines disappear once a game has been Greenlit! I’ve also spoken to fellow devs whose games did not even reach the top 100 (not even get 50% there) and they were Greenlit. The mystery process remains, I suppose!
Some more Greenlight stats:
The yes to no ratio looks nice, and I think it is decent, but the AVG TOP 50 also seemed to change a lot from day to day. Sometimes I’d see stats like the above, most of the time it was similar to mine, and sometimes it’d be higher than me, around 63:37. I mostly lagged the Favorites and followers most of the time compared to the top 50, perhaps again due to the lack of clarity on what the game was.
These figures are roughly a third of what I’ve seen other bloggers mention in the past as a ‘minimum requirement’ to get Greenlit or into the top 50.
Comments
I got quite a few comments like, “this game needs a story or it will be boring”. I imagine this is mostly from people that didn’t read the description. Probably no one will, so if you want something communicated, you want to do it in the video.
I really enjoyed reading the feedback, though, and in one way I’m glad “it’s all over” because I was becoming a serial refresher, but once the campaign was over I missed all the interaction and waking up to check my rank every day (not really, I checked way more than that)!
Discussions
I would have liked to have seen more discussions crop up around the game as well, however, I got practically none. On the one hand people seemed fine just asking questions in the comments, but on the other hand, I did notice other titles receive a lot more than me. Once again I believe the lack of gameplay and story shown was a probable cause of this.
Lists
I’ve read people going to quite the lengths to get on as many lists as possible, but I managed to get on 10 (good or not, I’m not sure?) without doing anything at all. If you are struggling to get into the top 100, you might want to look into getting in touch with some relevant ones.
Google Analytics
I hooked up analytics and apart from noticing some obvious stuff like almost half of my audience being Russian, I couldn’t make sense of the Direct VS Referral stats:
Direct traffic went straight to the EXO ONE Greenlight url from (?). Referral traffic was mostly from Steam itself (store.steampowered.com) with a smattering of what looked like people linking to it from Dota2 discussions from streams, CSGO lounge and GamesPress.
If you understand this I’m keen to know, is Direct traffic coming from people clicking a browser link which opens up their Steam client, which appears as Direct Traffic?
AVCON and Newsletter Sign Ups
I showed EXO ONE at a local anime and video game festival here in Adelaide (AVCON) which happened 4-5 days after my Greenlight began. How many of the people who played the game and voted, I don’t know, but there was a little upward blip over that weekend visible around the 17th. I got around 30 newsletter sign ups from the event too, and it may be safe to say a similar number of Greenlight votes.
I thought AVCON may have added some ‘legitimacy’ to my campaign. If someone at Valve is checking to see how serious your game is, having taken it to a festival I can imagine is a bonus. So too would be things like:
Getting press coverage/previews/reviews
Awards
Release date that is less than a million years away (I got a few “this game isn’t ready for Greenlight” comments with a mid 2017 release date)
What Does a #25 Greenlit Game Mean?
If I was an excitable person I might have lept up and down a lot after getting Greenlit, however how this translates into actual success is anyone’s guess. How much does my audience carry over when the game is made available? 190 followers isn’t a huge number, so at the end of the day I feel like this might be the equivalent of adding that many people to my newsletter list. Of course, with the added benefit that I can now release my game on Steam, which is no small thing!
Now I just have to make the entire game, market it successfully, play test it, release the alpha on itch.io, then on Early Access or a full release on Steam… “Ez!”.
If you wanna follow along on the ride and be notified upon release, trailers, alphas and betas, you can sign up here. Here’s the EXO ONE game site.
Also if you’re curious what a number 1 Greenlit game gets, “Scorn” managed 2000 comments (10x mine) and I imagine probably 10x everything else, as well! Once you reach the top 100, I imagine the closer you get to #1, the more vertical the climb required to get there (see #5 above).
Adelaide’s video game and anime festival (AVCON) just finished last night and it was an amazing experience. I showed EXO ONE in the Indie Games Room along with 60 other developers over the course of the weekend and had a lot of fun. I thought people would like EXO ONE based on family/friends/colleagues playing, but the response was above and beyond what I could have hoped for! Considering how fleshed out the two planets were in the AVCON build, people played for a really long time and in quite a few cases, would come back or bring friends over to play. Players would quite happily travel in one direction for (I swear up to or over half an hour?) on one planet, I assume mostly because they enjoyed the flowing, physics-based movement so much. I was blown away!
Some of the most common comments:
– “It’s really relaxing/hypnotic” from both players and people watching
– “I can fly!!!” after reaching and soaring above the clouds
– “Weeeee!” in the ‘tutorial level’, which is a spherical interior level, where people loved building up huge speed sticking to the outer wall
– “I love the graphics” and “Is this the Unreal engine?” (It’s Unity 5)
– “The sound and music is amazing”
– “How long until it’s out?”
Survey Responses
In an anonymous survey I had next to the game, the most common ratings were 4/5 (60%) and 5/5 (33%).
Here are some answers to “what was your favorite part of the game?”
– It was a very beautiful game. i loved the movements of the avatar and how it looks so much like real life.
– the graphics and physics of the game
– exploring
– world design / the visuals / the graphics
– everything
– Beautiful visuals and unique design
– Beautiful visuals, free reign, satisfying physics
– the atmosphere of the game – beautiful and stunning. I like the freedom you feel with movement, zipping down hills with more gravity then hurling off a ramp.
– Exploration.
– Relaxing – Great Graphics
And some answers to “what was your least favorite part?”
– no impact crator / trail
– Changing direction at low speed with varying viewing angles. Intuitively I’d feel better steering relative to the ball’s movement rather than where the view’s pointing.
– I didnt find many flaws but i think the story should be more open.
– trying to find objective
– unclear of the main objective
– nothing
– some of the sound affects were a bit screechy
– im not even sure
– Lack of direction, though that was probably intentional
– I might not have played it enough to see, but it would be interesting to explore a wide variety of landscapes – more variation would be cool
– Sometimes feeling like I’m not in control, e.g. not being able to stay in one place.
– No objective – Its a good thing though
Other comments:
– It looks and feels phenomenal and super mysterious. I love the massive structures.
– Love the idea
– really like it, music is awesome, really interested of how the final result will be
– multiplayer!
– Loved it – very relaxing etc. Can’t wait to see more – love the exotic landscapes. Would like to see more and explore various areas!
– very echoey voice is hard to understand. I’d love a level with more green and that would look like a nice place to be. Gliding [needs tweaking]
– Very serene. I like the first sound track and the introduction was a good tutorial. Got stuck on left stick in to zoom. Doesn’t feel required.
Takeaways
My biggest takeaways and areas to focus on after looking through the survey answers, and from talking to people all weekend was:
– It wasn’t obvious enough where you had to go. While it’s an open world game, you have to travel to a ‘transport monolith’ in order to launch to the next planet. So that needs to be clearer and more visible at all times. People would either think the launch point to the second planet was ‘just another piece of scenery’, or they would lose where it was among the clouds and rain. Another solid option here is that there are multiple launch points on each planet, so no matter which direction you go, you’ll be able to find one. Perhaps the best way forward is both making it clearer you need to reach these structures, and also having them scattered, so you’ll never feel like you need to remain near the sole transport structure to get to the next planet.
– People also didn’t seem all that interested in the story, however being at AVCON, it was incredibly loud and almost impossible to hear the voices that communicated the story. I’d equate it to trying to play Dear Esther or Gone Home in an arcade (a bit useless).
– 10-20% of players didn’t get a handle on the gravity based movement, or it took them a while to get up to speed. I’m going to include a more in-depth tutorial here which, in real-time, will instruct players on how and when to use it. Still, those players who had trouble would play for extended periods of time just rolling and gliding quite happily, which is good. I suppose there’s also a chance that some players just liked moving more slowly.
AVCON Wrap Up
Thanks to everyone that played and signed up for the newsletter, you’ll be the first to know when the first publicly playable build is available via itch.io.
And apologies to the other developers who took the time to come check out EXO ONE, I just didn’t have time as a solo dev to come and return the favor to everyone. Was great meeting so many cool people for a change, though. I am quite the recluse developer!
P.S. if you’re ever in the market for a solid TV, LG make one which can survive a fall from a table top onto the floor, completely unscathed!
Steam Greenlight
We are currently sitting at rank #52 and on a trajectory (based on the sweet graphs Steam gives you) to enter the top 20, which would be amazing! From what I read recently on Steam Greenlight, I expected votes would trail off quickly after 48 hours, which hasn’t happened.
