Osmos

I'm Eddy Boxerman, the chief cook and bottle washer on Osmos. I'm a programmer by day -- specializing in physics and animation -- and a game designer by night. I've done the lion's share of the work on Osmos, but a few friends have really helped out.

I've had a penchant for inventing and modding games since I was a kid. In parallel, I started programming in Basic on my TRS-80 and on my brother's Apple II+ by the time I was ten. At the age of twelve, Dungeons and Dragons really opened my mind to game-rule systems. Since then, it's been an on and off hobby for me; and it's been "very on" these days.

It's an activity which allows me to be both creative and logical at the same time. At the outset, everything is completely open and undefined, much like a blank canvas. But the final goal is to create an elegant, logical system that is novel -- and enjoyable to play with! So sometimes I get to geek out on math, and sometimes to express myself artistically. What's not to be on fire about?

I think the idea as a whole hit me while I was doing the dishes. Or was I in the shower? In any case, it was the culmination of years of background thinking: courses on spacecraft dynamics and deformable modeling...Asteroids and Lunar Lander... eye of newt and toe of frog...

The trickiest aspect, design-wise, was introducing the player to the basic mass-propulsion navigation mechanism. Most people are familiar with the action-reaction concept: it's like a rocket. But for some reason no one expects it. If something comes out of "your ship", it must be a bullet, right? Well, most people "got it" within a minute or so, but there was always this initial confusion. I wanted the game to be as smooth and intuitive as possible; it's supposed to be zen, or ambient, after all.

At this point however, and after much experimentation, I think I've converged on a good set of tutorial levels in terms of layout, wording, and pacing. It's surprisingly subtle. And that initial Newton quote seems to help a great deal. Most people seem to naturally "get it" now.

It definitely would have been more efficient to purchase an inexpensive (say... $100) engine, and have saved myself and my friends hundreds of hours of work. When I tally what that means my/our time was "worth"... ugh. But that said, I/we learned a lot. I think. Right guys? Guys...?

I started on the initial prototype almost two years ago. Since then it's been mostly part-time, with a couple of heavy bursts for the IGF deadlines. (We submitted in 2007 as well.) At this point it's steady work, and I believe we'll have something worthy of publishing in about five months.

It's a home-rolled engine built upon openGL (yay for NeHe), openAL, Freetype, and libVorbis. Big, big thanks to the open source communities! We also use Beanstalk and TortoiseSVN for source control, MSVC 2005 Express, Photoshop, Fraps, OggDrop, etc.

He ain't got no distractions
Can't hear those buzzers and bells
Don't see lights a flashin'
Plays by sense of smell
Always gets a replay
Never tilts at all
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball

The levels in Osmos, besides a few special mote placements, are all generated procedurally; and it uses tweaked curves to handle the difficulty progression from level to level. In general, I'm a big fan of procedural content, especially for prototyping. I'm currently in the process of adding more procedural goodness to the visuals, and if I had more time, I'd go even further with it.

And oh yeah: save time for tweaking. It's all about the tweaking.

Well, I'm moving to the wilds of British Columbia in a few months: to a beautiful little town called Nelson. I admire Jason Rohrer's simple lifestyle, and hope to move a little in that direction.

Besides that, finishing Osmos is going to keep me busy for a while yet. After that... hopefully a little hiking, paddling and backcountry skiing. And after that... I have a couple board games waiting in the wings, as well as a few other video-game ideas up my sleeve.