The Power of Rituals

With only around 2 – 3 weeks until the deadline I had to start the "content factory" and produce all the levels and other content needed for the game. Luckily I did not have to spend many hours in university so I could spend a lot of time on the game. Now I want you to listen carefully! I did something that made me super effective during these weeks. I did exactly what Eben Pagan said he did to get himself productive. Each day during the last weeks of development went more or less like this:

1. Got up early
2. Drank half a litre of water
3. Went for a 2km run
4. Came home, took a shower and meditated. With meditation I mean I sat still for a while and listened to my breathing
5. Ate a healthy breakfast
6. Worked on Asterope, had lunch sometime in between work sessions and also went out for walks if I felt unproductive
7. In the evenings I did my best to not work on the game. I exercised and kept social to rejuvenate

The deadline approached quickly but I had a clear picture of what I needed to get done and also what I would leave undone. The final version lacked a few major feature such no audio, some level balancing issues and some of the memory management was done really badly as images got released and reloaded shortly after. But the game worked and you could play it from start to finish and I felt it was the best game I had done. I was pleased. I mailed Google the entry and eagerly awaited the result.

Scott Hilbert helped out and did some amazing art for Asterope!

Three Feet from Gold

And so the result came: "We regret to inform you that your entry was not among the top 50 submissions". I was not super surprised as I had heard they had gotten around 1700 entries. I still did feel it was worth while none the less as I learned to be productive! I had gotten another game done to put under my list of accomplishments. Later when Google announced the Top50 to the public I was a bit disappointed to see that none of the entries were regular games, there were a few that had some sort of gameplay built in, but not like your average game. So games were not what they were looking for apparently. However, it pleased me to hear I was among the top 25% - the only feedback Google gave from this challenge.

Although I felt okay with not being among the Top50 one could consider it a failure when I did not win anything, right? A friend of Eben Pagan and brilliant man named Jeff Smith, talks about how one of the biggest mistakes we make is that we have a result as a goal. We can never commit to a result; the result is the by-product of our actions. Focus on your action.

A lesson I learned from reading “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill helped me to continue although I did not get any profit from my game. It was a story about a man who literally stopped three feet from gold. A man named R. U. Darby was mining his new goldmine and it gave some good results for a while, but then it stopped producing gold, and after a while of digging without results Darby gave up. Some expert miners bought the cave as they knew it’s typical to have a dry spot in between gold findings. They only had to dig three more feet to find more gold. R. U. Darby lost millions, but he learned a lesson and later in life when he became an insurance salesman he did not stop when his potential customers said "no thanks". He became a very successful salesman and most of his sales came after his prospects had already said no. So keep going - behind every failure is a success ready to be had! I kept going and took my game and ported it to the iPhone.

“Hi I’m a PC… using a Mac”

After the iPhone SDK was released I instantly knew that I had to port my game to the iPhone. I could not let Asterope sit still and collect dust on my hard drive. I had a buddy who was kind enough to lend me his Mac Mini, but I was working full time during this summer period so I could not get myself working evenings too. Programming for more than 10 hours a day is too much. I knew I would get time to work on it after this summer was over and my summer job had ended so I decided it was better to put the thought on hold and enjoy the summer. When I visited Italy in August I got myself an iPhone. Italy has legally unlocked iPhones for sale and I’m your typical gadget freak so I got it without blinking although it was not cheap. I instantly fell in love with the device, it had the most beautiful UI I had ever seen on a phone. And it just worked! I’ve had seven Nokias in the past but never have I been as impressed with a phone as I was with the iPhone. It’s just a huge step forward from anything previously on the market.

In late August I had the iPhone, a Mac Mini to develop it on and time to make it happen. Time to roll up my sleeves. I could not let myself pass on this opportunity. And I tell you it felt almost scary knowing I might have everything I need to make a commercial game with potential to make a lot of money.

I won’t discuss the details of developing for the iPhone. I’m a bit unsure of the NDA so I better keep my mouth shut. This article is not about coding anyway, it’s about how you can turn an idea into reality. However I’ll tell you this, I had not used a Mac before I began porting and importing my game and I got my first playable level working on the iPhone in only three days. But I did get into a huge fight with OS X and its ways of doing things and I ended up porting the game from Java & Android to C & OpenGL using Visual Studio. It was easy to get the C & OpenGL code ported and working on the iPhone. After having worked three weeks in OS X I did get used to the basics and found a few things done smarter than on Windows. I’m looking forward to making another iPhone application.

Friends With Benefits

I’m not a great artist and I don't know how to do sound or music so I had to pull in some favors. It helps to have friends with great talent! Scott Hilbert did the most amazing art, a guy named Kai Saksela did three perfectly fitting background tunes and Andrew Russell did an additional masterpiece of a background tune. I bought the sound effects online, you can find really cheap sounds and I got 175 sound clips from The Game Creators. I found most of the sound effects that I needed in this collection but had to Google some royalty-free sound effects to get a few a sounds I wanted for special occasions in the game. Overall I would say that most media you'll need can be found online for a somewhat cheap price. But if you want that little extra you want your own artist and musician.

Conclusion