Braaaains, Breaaaans, Beans...

Hmm, coffee. Like many of you I'm a perpetually recovering coffee addict (with a bit of a sweet tooth). I have about a 3 dollar a day habit. I would get the tall caramel lattes. I told myself it was because it had fewer calories, but the truth was I felt guilty at the price.

• Tall - $3.00 x 365 = $1095


• Grande - $3.26 x 365 = $1189.90


• Venti - $3.57 x 365 = $1303.05

The shame....

So for my birthday this year, I asked for an espresso machine in the hopes of saving money. Above is a gallery of the process of making a latte. Basically my expenses are a couple bucks for a gallon of milk, and about $10 dollars for a pound of espresso beans. 1 gallon of milk is about 16 lattes or (about $0.12 per drink). 1 pound of beans will make about 30 lattes (about $0.33 per latte). So now:

Grande - $0.45 x 365 = $164.25

Initial Investment:

1. Espresso Machine - $40.00


2. Frothing Pitcher - $12.00


3. Tamper - $6.00


4. Coffee Grinder - $17.00 (Optional)

Grande (Ha!) Total about $58.00 - $75.00

Pro Tips:

1. Let the steam wand warm up before putting it in the milk (tends to spit out water when its warming up).


2. Use 2% milk to still have a good taste with less calories.


3. Avoid the sugar free syrup; its crap. If your gonna add syrup, do it right (I'm considering a maple syrup latte...).


4. Slight learning curve on steaming the milk. If you raise it too far out of the pitcher; it sprays everywhere. Too deep and no froth.

Pixel's Take:

Much like Texel, I love coffee (I actually worked at a coffee shop during college....true story!); however, I prefer traditional brewed joe. Recently I had a bad experience with a coffee pot, specifically this one. After the initial disappointment of "COFFEE NO WORK", I did some digging and found that the inside components of the coffeemaker had literally melted slightly over time, eventually disconnecting.

So, my coffee pot melted because of heat. Not good! The one thing a coffeemaker should do is handle high temperatures! So now I have this coffee pot and it works great. One side note is that most modern coffeemakers have water filters and the manufacturers recommend replacements every so often. I don't have hard water or anything like that, so I just removed my filter to save money. Honestly, there is little to no difference in taste.

Probably the only thing I really get picky about are coffee beans. Most mass market coffee grounds are terrible and will make your coffee taste like it's been living at the local gas station for the last couple of days.  Fortunately, there are alternatives to "tin can coffee" that aren't too expensive.  I really enjoy Community's beans and they are really affordable (about 5 dollars a pound).  If you want to go a little fancier, I'd also recommend virtually any brand of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe or Guatemalan Antigua.  They are great varieties with a strong, bold flavor. As a side note, literally the best coffee beans I've ever had can be found here at Kind Coffee.  They roast organic, fair trade stuff that is beyond awesome.

Coffee success!

A Link to Some Perspective

For many, Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past" is a touchstone for what a great action RPG (role playing game) should be. A true classic, it has great puzzles, memorable characters, satisfying (even today) artwork, and a great sense of adventure. Because our current title is also an action RPG, it's only natural that we've spent a lot of time looking at A Link to the Past, both for troubleshooting our own game and to serve as inspiration. Even though we've found many solutions buried within Nintendo's classic; however, one issue continues to prove difficult, and I believe the same dilemma plagued Nintendo's developers 20 years ago. This issue is the game world's perspective.

Anyone who has taken an art class probably remembers the simple exercise of learning two point or one point perspective: take out a drawing pad, draw some lines with a ruler from a vanishing point, then create buildings/hallways/chairs/boxes/etc with convincing depth. It's a fun little lesson in how our brains perceive depth.

Isometric projection is another kind of perspective. A useful way to represent 3D objects in 2D space, it is commonly used in architecture, technical drawings, etc. It was oftentimes seen in classic RPGs, such as Breath of Fire III, Civilization, and others, as a great way to convey depth in a 2D engine. 

As such, it would be easy to look at A Link to the Past and decide that it is also an isometric game. An assumption like this would be wrong. There is actually no true perspective in A Link to the Past.  At Pixel and Texel, we've come to call it the "Zelda Perspective" and it is the viewpoint for creating our game world. 

What is the Zelda perspective? Why were we dumb enough to choose this path for our game? Questions! Simply put, the Zelda perspective an illusion of truth for the sake of gameplay. Most things in A Link to the Past seem correct. But analyze practically any game screen and the perspective starts to break down into a weird fish-eye lens. The viewer is allowed to see the front, side, AND back of houses. Doorways are presented from the front, side, and top all on the same screen. Certain objects are top down. Others are from the side. Truly, the world of A Link to the Past is a crazy place.

So, on to the second question, which is why we would be dumb enough to create our game with such a wacky perspective? The answer is simple: gameplay. A Link to the Past was created with fun as it's only real utility and we realized that fun gameplay was all that really mattered to us as well. In order for the game world to truly fit in any situation, almost every kind of perspective needs to work. Rooms need doors on all sides that are visible to the player, houses must have the front and roof visible at the same time, and crates must be seen only from top down. The list goes on and on.  All of these mechanics are necessary for our game to be fun, but don't make sense from a real world perspective.

The real difficulty in the Zelda Perspective is creating a feeling of truth as the player interacts with the world. This balance can only be described as certain locations feeling "right". There is a continual struggle between whether objects are viewed in perspective or top down, as well as how they are oriented. As development continues, I believe the key to this balance is to never have to many opposing perspectives in close proximity. An open doorway that faces up should not reside to close to several tables that are in perspective facing down. As long as all objects have perspectives that are balanced (perspective vs top down, left vs right, etc) scenes always feel true and "right".

Business Mucky Mucks Pt. 1

The first day we started Pixel and Texel we decided to march to the bank and open a business account. Yay professionalism! We thought it'd be a great way to take care some necessary "paperwork" type stuff so we could rush back and continue developing. Just sign a few forms, fill out some info, and that's it, right? Boy howdy, were we ever wrong. Even running a small studio (only 2 dudes!) in a legit, legal, and safe way is kind of complex. So we've decided to share our experiences, perhaps taking some of the mystery out of the process, in a series of posts entitled "Business Mucky Mucks".

And so, let us return to our bank story. After arriving at the bank around the corner, the business banker wanted to know what kind of entity we were. My initial reaction was "An awesome one.  With magic!  And hands that turn into swords!" It turns out, the entity he was talking about was way less fun, as he informed us that we could only get a bank account as a sole proprietorship. In order to get a checking account with equal ownership we'd need to be some other sort of entity. Terms started flying out of his mouth. Scary terms. LLC! Partnership! S Corp!  ???? We soon realized we needed more information and set up an appointment for consultation with a CPA.

So our little trip to the bank has now turned into a trip to the CPA. The very nice people there informed us of several different entity types, including:

• LLC


• S Corp


• Partnership

We didn't want to clog up this post with a bunch of factoids describing the differences between entity types, so be sure to check out the links above if you're curious. In end, we decided an LLC was best for us. LLCs provide more flexibility than other entity types (due to phrasing like "unless otherwise provided for in the operating agreement"), plus tax deductions can be passed through to the individual members if desired. So, LLCs are pretty nifty. Definitely the way to go! Just one problem. How does one go about getting one of these LLC things? File it yourself? Use something like LegalZoom? Pretend that you became "official" and hope for the best? The answer: none of the above.

Let's look at each filing option and talk about why we did things differently. The first idea of self-filing with the state seems appealing at first. Until you see how much documentation goes into the creation of an LLC. And the fact that you don't recoup any money with the state if your LLC creation fails.

The second option is using some sort of online legal service like LegalZoom for 99-350 dollars. Lots of people have had success with sites like this, and they are really affordable, so why did we choose to avoid it? Simply put, using a site like LegalZoom (who provide the disclaimer "LegalZoom is not a law firm, and the employees of LegalZoom are not acting as your attorney") is a risky move. It's probably not best to start your new, awesome game studio on shaky legal ground. But don't take our word for it. The best description I've read of LegalZoom comes from this law blog, and can be summed up as such: "Are you willing to take the risk that your documents are incorrect to save money on a real attorney?" Our answer to this question was "no".

In the end, we decided to hire a real attorney for 1800 dollars and we have not regretted the decision at all. It's true the price is much higher than LegalZoom or just attempting the documents yourself, but the benefit of a real person's advice and the peace of mind that your documents have been properly created is worth the extra cost. For example, we unknowingly filled out part of our documentation incorrectly. The law office caught our mistake right away, notified us on the ideal change, and corrected it. That sort of safety net saved us a LOT of time and moolah in the end.

Long story short, if you're thinking of creating an entity like and LLC, use a lawyer. It may be a little expensive, but the peace of mind is worth it. PLUS, you'll get an awesome metal seal for stamping things.

We've used ours all over the place! Paper, bread, the floor, Pixel's hands, Texel's noggin....I mean, this things seals like you wouldn't believe!

 

Texel's Technical Tribulations Pt. 2

 

There's a couple of pieces of tech that I will discussing in my next posts. The first is how we're creating the world in our game. Pixel mentioned this before, when he referred to other RPG games using a tile based system to lay down the boundaries of the various areas. The problem with this approach is you get a lot of tiling. Various pieces of grass, dirt, or rock repeat. So when we were first discussing this game, we of course looked at Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I noticed from various fan sites that the main world was about 4096x4096 pixels. After seeing that number I decided to run some calculations to see what the feasibility of just having an image that size would be. So assuming the image is a full 32-bit we have:

(4096*4096*4)/(1024*1024) = 64 MB

Now, that's a rather large image, but it's not unworkable. The next thing to consider is the various forms on texture compression (We have about half the map done for tests).

• Jpeg - I could simply convert the image to a 24-bit image and run jpeg compression on it. This would probably yield the best results. However, since I can't have that entire image in memory I would need to cut it up and page it in. And I worry about seams in the various pieces (Might be usable if I ensure I cut it up on screen boundaries). High quality and we're at like 12 MB I can get the size lower, but I'm already not thrilled with the look.


• Png - This wouldn't have the problems of Seams but the compression ratio wouldn't be nearly as good. At this point we have about half the map painted and we're already at 16.6MB


• PVR - This is a fixed compression ratio of exactly 8 to 1. So we're looking at exactly 8 MB. This also doesn't seem to suffer from any noticeable seams, so cutting the image up is acceptable. Plus the image can remain compressed on device, allowing for more room for the other textures.

So, currently I've chosen the PVR approach because leaving the data compressed in memory is too nice to pass up. Plus it will be faster when paging between the various screens (I won't have to decompress the png/jpg images).

Recently, I added support for zlib compression on the packaged assets and I noticed I got another 10-20% savings on the pvr images.

I have a few rants about PVR though:

• The tools aren't open source.


• They don't have a 64-bit version of their library


• I doubt it supports multiple threads for batch PVR conversion.

So, this is the approach we're taking to create the world. This will be nice because Pixel can literally take a brush and Paint the entire map. I affectionately refer to this as the "Kilo-Texture" (Reference to Carmack's Mega-Texture).

Virtual D-Bad (Pun!) - How Virtual D-Pads Ruin iPhone Games

NO VIRTUAL D-PAD.  This was the phrase that rattled around in my brain as we began designing our new game.  Lots of iPhone games make use of this dreaded control scheme and I've yet to see it work well in any game.  From Street Fighter IV to FIFA, developers freaking LOVE the virtual d-pad.  Even more frustrating is the fact that many games, such as the two series I mentioned before, have solid core gameplay systems but are ruined by this strange design decision.

Some game designs simply aren't meant for the iPhone.  The iPhone has a touch screen, not a gamepad (surprise!), so games requiring lots of tactile feedback just don't work on the device.  97 hit combos, strafing head shots, and precise platforming are several gameplay mechanics that, when paired with a virtual d-pad, can become an iPhone chucking frustration.

Other games, such as Mirror's Edge on the iPhone, treat the device as a new, exciting way to create a similar gameplay experience to their console brethren, without the need to emulate it 100 percent.  EA's game uses a clever swiping control screen that proves a really satisfying way to move the character around.  By making use of an input method that iPhone users already understand, the game's control scheme feels totally natural.  Winning!

As we began assembling our iPhone game, Texel and I were determined to avoid the virtual d-pad.  So far our "no d-pad" mentality has worked out very well.  The user simply taps where the character should move, double taps for attacks/interactions, and has use of two HUD buttons for inventory/saving/options.  Simplicity.  It's why we all bought an iPhone in the first place.