What's cooking? As some of you may know, I embarked on this journey nearly three years ago, in September 2020. Back then, I was an enthusiast and dreamer who had little knowledge about game development and the industry. Now, after three years of experience, if I could send a message to my younger self (like Lord Raiden), it would go something like this: This seems impossible, you shouldn't pursue it. Don't give up if you've already taken this path. In essence, I have already followed the second piece of advice. Over the past three years, we've had various artists come and go, but the programming team has undergone significant changes. We had to start from scratch at one point and have revised the code for most systems multiple times. This was mainly due to the fact that, like me, my programmer friend is not very experienced. Currently, the team consists of one programmer, a couple of freelance artists, and myself, the designer and owner of the project. Fortunately, the individuals who have remained dedicated to the project have shown remarkable mental prowess, particularly our programmer/engineer/codemaster. Despite the challenges, difficulties, and setbacks we've faced, we have finally reached a point where we can at least envision a clear path toward the future.
What's coming? Long story short, despite having learned not to provide specific timelines for release, I am pleased to announce that we will be launching a playable demo (alpha version of the game) before the end of summer. Our main objective is to enter Early Access in the winter and generate some revenue because, well, I have to take care of my basic needs too. I have already made significant personal sacrifices to bear the financial burden of this project, and I cannot endure it for another year. While I have doubts about investors and am not particularly inclined towards Kickstarter (as it requires a considerable amount of work for modest returns), I have willingly subjected myself to this financial hardship. However, I genuinely believe that all this struggle will fade away in the not-too-distant future, only to be replaced by the greater challenges of release stress, player feedback, and numerous bugs... More technical... As I mentioned before, we have extensively overhauled most systems and their codes, which required a significant amount of work to get things in order. Recently, we have nearly completed the Quest System, which was the only untouched system remaining in the game. Now, after the initial coding phase, we will need to go back and refine everything from the beginning. Currently, most systems are interconnected and successfully communicating with each other. However, the main challenge lies in the abundance of intricate details in the game, which further complicates our code. Therefore, we anticipate needing at least a month or two to polish everything. Additionally, I estimate that I will personally require 2-4 weeks for playtesting. Once we are confident in the state of the game, we will release a demo, hoping to engage many players who can thoroughly test the game and provide valuable feedback. This feedback will guide our continued work on the project. We will demonstrate most systems in the game in demo, but a few systems like Camping will be left out for Early Access.
Last word I have a small request to make. Currently, we have a limited number of wishlists on Steam and followers on Twitter. While I don't want to excessively promote the game before we have a solid demo, I kindly ask that if you have friends who enjoy old school turn-based RPGs, please help us spread the word. Best regards Semih

[ 2023-06-10 11:18:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

We had a fruitful month of December. That was a month we mostly focused on items which is an integral part of the game. Here i am gonna give small details about it.
We have bunch of item classes such as potions, herbs, foods, fruits, tools, gewgaws and so on... Two classes which would probably be most interesting for players are: 1- Potions 2- Gewgaws Each hero can equip up to 3 potions 2 of which are controlled manually. 3rd potion is used on Provision Slot as seen below.
Potions aren't as straightforward as you might find in other games. Health potion is the simplest and most classic one. It heals the user for certain % of life. However, it decreases Vigor (an attribute that determines the max hp) until end of the quest, thus consequantially a player will not be able to spam Health potions but use them when it is really necessary. Additionally, -as every other potion- it has certain chance of giving the user a negative trait called as "Potion Addict". Potions are only items that are usable during combat. I aim to add strategical depth to the combat by giving positive and negative effects to a potion at the same time. When designing a game, the urge to create more and more complex stuff might possess the game designer. On the other hand, the bitter truth is that this makes the job of programmer harder. We had discussions back and forth with my programmer mate to get to a common point. At the end, although i had to regulate certain aspects of potions (and items in general) i didn't wanna kill off the interesting effects of potions. Long story short, all these little decisions we make throughout the development process, either makes the game better or helps it release faster but rushed. After all this time, approx 2 years of work, i don't intend to release a game just for the sake of releasing a game. We are taking things easy, but going steady. There are many game design decisions i had to make, to add a unique aspect on our game. (Otherwise why would you spend time on playing our game but not Darkest dungeon or likes?) But this obsession unfortunately increases the dev time. I thought we were gonna release a demo by February couple months ago. Now i am more leaning towards a late march or april demo release. I have no doubt we are getting there and we started to have something solid already. But this truly is a very exhausting process. I am sure lots of fellow indie devs understand me. I don't have extra job to support project budget. Neither do i have time. But i have to focus and work on the project after so long time with the same amount of care and discipline. It is pretty hard. Harder than i initially thought it would be. Nonetheless, when the pain is higher, the result will be better. At least this is what we wanna believe.
Before closure i would like to talk very shortly about Gewgaws. We spent almost a month about these naughty little items. They are very similar to trinkets from Darkest Dungeon. Though each of them has a slot type. And a hero can only wear 1 Gewgaw of same slot type in the 3 Gewgaw slots that he has. So same guy can not wear 2 Neck items or 2 Head items. (You cant put 2 helms together in real life right?) Well maybe you can wear 2 rings but why complicate the framework more? Although there is an exception for Dwarves (there is currently just 1 hero planned with race Dwarf). He has no limit for Ring slot type count. Every single item has a Class, Culture or Race restriction. X item can be worn only by Humans and Elves. This is a race restriction. Y item can be worn only by Macalakies, Safrimans and Mngwas. This is a culture restriction. And Z item can be worn by Water Mage, Enchantress, Moss Mage and Sparksherald. This is a class restriction. I mean did we have to create restriction on all items? No. But logically, a human and a water buffalo-man would not really wear the same Helm. So why not apply it on the game design? Sometimes i really feel bad for my colleague for the programming difficulties he faces, but at the end of the day i believe everything is for the best. We are getting there. Please continue following the game updates on twitter. I try to post stuff time to time to shed some light about the project. We are on track but we are also very very tired. Especially me and programmer. I worked with many artists and animators throughout the period but as this is not their only job and they are not that much deep into the project, i can't say the same thing for them. We are a core team of 2, although at least 4-5 guys helped us with the project for a long time in terms of art and animations. Lets not forget the musician, who had done a great job. You can listen to our main theme in the link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFlWO1j41S0 Btw i have just scratched the surface of Gewgaws. I could talk longer about the Gewgaw quality types, how different each quality type from one another, suffixes prefixes and so on... But i will leave it up to later. Hopefully you will find it out yourself along with the demo. Have a nice 2023 and please pray for us. After all this trouble, work, sufferance, sweat, tears and blood, this is the year we will release the game. Regards Semih

[ 2023-01-09 21:30:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings to you good people of Capua!

Here is another update from our dev process. Just a heads up for those of you who may have thought project is dead. No, not dead yet! Just delayed. Which is something usual. As we got deeper in this process we realize as optimistic as you might be, reality will slap your face as hard. That's what happened to us. We, i mean me - the game designer and owner of the project and my programmer buddy who is simply the other half of the apple, are gaining our experience with this debut. (You might even include a bunch of artists, animators, voice artists and musician who contributed to the project along the way to the WE.)

What's up now?

Right now, thankfully we are at a stage where we can see things more clearly. After all the work, fight, struggle, hardship we are kinda content with the progress made in the recent months and hope that we will release the Demo before December. Which means November. The Sweet November. It will be exactly 2 years since i have officially set up Shargad Game Studios (technically a one man company - yes i am a CEO of my own, pretty fun, recommended except all the money you will sink in) in 19 November 2020. Knowing how often small bugs caused us lots of time loss, our November goal might easily extend to December.

Why set up goals if you can't make it?

Tricky thing is; you aren't bound to set up goals if you will always have to delay. No one is forcing you. However without having these goals and deadlines you might lose the urge to finish the game. It is an unseen pushing force indeed. Of course it is better to be more accurate - compared to us. Long story short we are pretty close to a demo release. The reason i can't give an exact date is because i still didn't test the game. On paper everything looks fine, the game design rules, numbers, skills, stats and all that. I need to test for the balance purpose first and i dont know how long its gonna take. Luckily, we have you, the great people of Capua to test the game further on, even better than me once the demo is released.

What is the meaning of a demo for us?

We intend to treat our demo more like a short beta version. We will keep updating and improving the demo until we actually release the EA version of the game (hoping sometime in Q1-Q2 2023). And then full release in the Q3 or Q4 of 2023. We still have a lot to do. Lots of things to code, artwork to finish and animations... which gave me headache more than anything. VO is another tricky spot for me. It was my decision alone to go with VO unlike most games in our genre made with a similar budget. It is a burden and it is really hard to find high quality VO talents with small budget. These are all some nice topics to discuss further on but the time will come for that.

All is good

For now, just know that development is in process. Demo is underway. We are far from dead. Just stumbled couple of times down the road but all is good. We are certainly in a better shape than the roadkills Dahmer collected back in the days. Hope life is treating all you great people well. Don't miss the arena fights in the weekends. They are pretty fun. Cheers Semih

[ 2022-10-03 10:52:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Signs of life

I was not planning to make an announcement but i felt i had to just to clear mind of those who wishlisted the game by some reason and might not be following us on twitter which is where we are active. Just to let you know, we are very much alive and project is going well. "Well" is a subjective term of course but after so much struggle we had early on the development, right now any small improvement could mean well.

Team of strangers

I guess it is classic for indie teams to encounter hardship in game dev process but i can comfortably say we are not a classic team. There is no one in the so called "team" that knows one another in real life. We are bunch of strangers doing the work remotely. Sounds funny? Not too funny for me as i, designer and producer of the project faced with lots of trouble to get things going. This is a passion project started very roughly late 2020. I worked with programmers from other side of the world who doesnt know what is programming at all. Since i was as clueless and inexperienced, it took me quite a while to understand something is not right and we are going on the wrong direction.

Revival

Long story short, i had to take a bold decision to make a huge change management. With some bit of luck we managed to revive what could have been a dead project now. Programming is not the only thing in game development. Art and visuals are pretty core stuff to begin with. I had a long period of working many people here and there, just giving me 1-2 characterr and leaving the project as well. Not to mention animations. Worked with too many individuals and after some point it was really hard to gather everything and put it into the same pool. What i mean is having idle animation files on different version of Spine is a nightmare. But thats the story if you are doing an indie project and you dont have tons of money to spend to monthly salaries of pro animators but just work with random freelancers. If they are good, after a while their price will see a steep increase. At that point you have to either increase your budget or make another bold decision to sacrifice some bit of quality. Not proud but yeah, i had to choose to apply my budget on more important things (like actually getting the game done) rather than having polished animations or else. At the end of the day we are having a 2d turn based rpg focused on party and skill customization. It ain't gotta have a polish level of Ruined King. Not realistically.

Voice gives life

On top of all that we have voice over. I mean not voice over from start to end but 20+ playable characters, 30+ NPCs all have some sort of voice lines you can hear throughout the game. Games i can compare our game to doesnt have it at all, for a solid reason: good VO is expensive. And finding so many people is really hard. See, Darkest Dungeon found only one guy, just for narration, and he had a great impact on the game. They didnt add VO to their characters for a reason. I dont know why i cant follow rules of reasonable people and do things within the budget. But the reality is; i had to do VO for multiple characters myself to actually get the job done. Good news is; you can turn it off anytime you want. I won't feel bad if you do it. But i prefer you play the game (once it is released) with VO on. Which is what gives the characters some sort of life imo. (Please check our Teaser. Thirsa -the demon- is one of the few pro VO artists i have worked with. She makes the Teaser sound better.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1IByDxOFLw&t=2s

Demo release?

So much blabla and there is no clear explanation about the current status of the game nor release date right? No. I learned my lesson to not throw unrealistic dates anymore after everything the project had suffered. However, unless some huge tornado happens and swallows us all, i guess we will release a demo in August. Can't say 100% because you know, this is game dev. But i am pretty sure we will have a small, decent, playable demo by then. I really wanted to release it this month only, in the Steamfest, but recently we really faced with some weird bugs we never had before. And i think the biggest problem (and also good thing) about Shargad: First Blood is the game design is too complex. Most systems are entwined with each other. So you can't code each system one by one. You have to do a bit of everything to see the bigger picture and then go with your guts. Hard to create solid frames of work which makes the planning even harder. Right now, i am hopeful as i never have been before. Because combat system, which is the most intricate system of the game had seen a good progress within the last month. We have around 24 playable characters and each of them has 4 main skills, 2-3 supportive skills. 4 main skills have each up to 6 perks which marginally change the effects of each skill. We spent really a lot of time coding this and i still have to give good time to playtest myself to see how its working. In the demo you will be able to play only 4 of this 24 characters (and just 2-3 quests) while we intend to release whole ACT 1 - which includes 8 playable characters by Early Access. After that we will keep building up the rest of the game until the Full Release which will be i guess Q1 2023. By a miracle it could be earlier, but i dont believe in miracles after i started this job, so lets hope not later. This is the current road map for those of you who are interested in our project. If you are already patient enough to read this announcement, i am sure you are patient enough to wait couple of months more, right? Sounds good. Regards, Semih

[ 2022-06-05 10:51:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Jungle

After a long journey filled with trials, errors, mistakes, wrongdoings and whatever word you can find to bear the same meaning, at last we got into a path which leads to something solid at the end of this ruthless jungle. Something solid doesn't mean we are still not far from a full release but a playable demo seems within reach. Our main goal is to push for Steam Next Fest at the end of February, however that seems like a tough goal - not impossible but hard, really hard.

Skills

We spent a lot of time on building the Skills - Perks tree system. In most similar games, the skills level up in a straightforward fashion. As you see in the pic below, if you wanna level up your skill in Shargad: First Blood, you have 6 perk choices of which you can pick 3. Either from column A or B. And you dont necessarily follow a straight path of A or B; you can pick A1 then B2 and then B3.
Some paths are locked straight because of prerequisites (say A1 is prerequisite to A2, if you pick B1 then A2 option is greyed out) but overall you might realize that you, the player has a lot of room for skill customization. Honestly i think this is the punchline of this game - not artstyle, not animations (especially not with such a tight budget) and not else but the variety of skills and heroes player can choose. It is impossible to try them all, thus we are hoping to add replayability value to the game with this aspect - a hope to let players test new builds even after game completion.

No Hell, No Piece of Cake

Another thing we can account for game replayability value is the difficulty. Difficulty is progressive upon game completion. So you start the game in the standard difficulty mode. When you complete the game, you progress from the same game file to next difficulty level. We have 3 character classes for the main hero Abbas, but you can make the class choice it inside the game. Means, you can complete the game as Skirmisher, and you can choose Warden for the next difficulty. You dont need to start a new game from scratch to test other classes of Abbas. Fundamental reason i personally did not want to offer difficulty choices in the beginning of the game is; i feel the difficulty system is a bit too loose in rpg games. There are very easy and very hard difficulty levels which are either piece of cake - noone who has a small bit of rpg knowledge would play, or too hard - noone in their right mind would want to torture themself to try something unattainable. And come on, we are doing an indie game, although it is my personal wish many people would spend hours on this game, i am aware they have other bigger titles to sink their time in. Nowadays we got too many good games out there and the competition is real. The market is getting larger (yes pc gaming is not dead as some futurists prophesized a couple of years ago) but that doesn't necessarily mean it is something good for indie games. Now you have to make your mark more than ever, to get the attention of the player. How do you do that? No one really knows. But surely, as in all things, you gotta find a unique trait of yourself and work on your strength rather than trying to become something you can never be.

Lore and Story

What is unique about our game? I never thought of it. But i am hoping my personal work on the lore and world setting for the last 7-8 years is something to make a difference. Generally story and lore in most games are very superficial, as most of you could notice. Be sure you will get something deeper here, both lore and storywise. At least i can comfortably say lots of thought, effort and research went into this. Mythologies is something big for Shargad. I have setup the main infrastructure of the lore, and gods pantheon based on Mesopotamian mythology. While we use a lot of features from African mythology in the game - and borrowing from many other cultures and folklores too. Sometimes mixing and matching, sometimes directly stealing (well mythology is pretty old right? so it doesn't even count a steal)... But truth is; while there are so many races and cultures in Shargad, i never thought of making up a language from my ass. I can make one or two, but not fifty! So i borrowed from the various languages as well. If i got a culture called Galunas, i'm not gonna create a new language for them, Spanish would make it. I got Macalakies - weretiger folks, so should i create some bullshit names consisting of 5 apostrophes and 6 consonants one after each other? That ain't gonna happen. I got some nice Southeast Asian cultures in this world which can help me out. I will not spoil and explain everything i did while creating the lore, but you got what i mean.

Conclusion

Lastly, i guess when and what will happen to the game deserves some mention. We are hoping to release a playable free demo in the month of March. It is still a hard goal but i think we can make it. Getting ready until Steam Next Fest seems really really hard. I did write it is not impossible in the beginning i guess... But yeah, it is close to impossible. Though we will try. Thanks god i am not alone in this. I got a programmer buddy and a couple of freelancers who sticked with me for a long time, and i guess, the time to reap what we sow is nigh. Need some more push. So feel free to push us in twitter with your questions. Semih

[ 2022-01-16 13:41:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Honestly my preference is to continue the development process unfettered rather than spending some time here and there to give updates which no one will read about - but i have to. Shargad First Blood shouldn't be seen like a game dead before it was born, because it isn't. I mean not that it isn't born but it isn't dead, at least not yet. And probably, unless something terrible happens to me or some of my main helpers/buddies - main programmer and few artists i have been working for a while now - the game process will continue. I am not gonna get into details of how much trouble, pressure we face in daily routine with not only game development but real life, or how many tough choices i personally have to make to get things going - let alone the vicious economic downturn here in Turkey damages our budget, because none of you care about all these. And i totally understand that. We, as game developers, claim to steal your time and money to give you something fun in return. We are not beggars afterall. So main goal here is to make a fun game which players can play and shall not regret the time they have spent playing, learning or being annoyed with the game. (Yes we have Dodge and a lot of attacks will miss the target, i know it is annoying but you gotta live with that somehow...)

How to make a fun game?

That's a very tough question. I think 90% of the people in this industry do not have a correct answer. Even people who made games that sold millions, they don't have that. Trying hard, workiing 10+ hours everyday, crying around about the toughness of the job and all that blabla are the basics, they are not difference makers. I regret to say that in the small experience i had in this industry i have observed that even if you do many things right, simple mistakes might lead to paths with dead end. I don't wanna relate it to bad luck but sometimes it really is. So what i try to say is; if you aren't lucky, your gem of a game might not be visible and not sell enough at all.
High number of sales means your game is good or vice versa? Not necessarily. To call a game good or bad is very subjective. That's the reason why metacritic review values can divert so much from the user score. There are certain technical details within the game which only some people can recognize and call it a very well done game but if the player doesn't wanna play it, that well doneness has no meaning at all. I would highly suggest players to not come to a buying decision with the game with "your favorite" game critic website or a few bad Steam reviews you have read. Check it more thoroughly before you buy. Because even Overwhelmingly Positive Steam reviews will not give you a guarantee that you will like the game. There is a Hack n Slash game "Loki" made by Cyanide Studios in 2007 which i have been playing a lot back in the days. I had spent so many fun hours and despite of some flaws and bugs n crashes i have loved that game a lot. And i don'y believe it deserved Mixed reviews. But probably there are bunch of other people who do not agree with me. And that's perfectly fine. Furthermore this goes in accordance with my point. Steam reviews doesn't exactly indicate how good a game is but i would say it is a better indication to show the Price to Quality ratio of a game. If Cyberpunk was cheaper, would it still have gotten the same number of negative reviews it got? Definitely not! Probably it would have gotten Overwhelmingly Positive reviews. And maybe it would have led to even higher no. of sales.

Pricing a game / Regional pricing

I have to breakdown couple of points to discuss in this subtitle. - What is the right price for my indie game? - How should i approach Steam's regional pricing? - Should i discount frequently to increase sales numbers? First of all there is no right or wrong answer on how to price your game (especially if it's a Triple A.) I have an answer but i can't say if it's right or wrong but it is just my way. If you are an indie dev the first thing you shouldn't compare your game to a Triple A title is the pricing. They have high price and excessive marketing and they know they can sell. I am sure some of them are too greedy to see if they could decrease the price a little bit they can increase the sales exponentially. But anyway, they are not you or me. They can handle themselves while 80% of indie devs barely break even. The rest are the ones who make money and only a handfull of them/us become unicorns. I would suggest people not to copy or inspire the game design of unicorns because they are unicorns, if you could copy and would have the same result they would have been called multiplecorns or something. I personally, was inspired of Darkest Dungeon when i came with the first game design idea of Shargad First Blood. Because it was a great game first and it was a doable one second. Since i started game dev process i have found out many more games in the same line as DD. Basically it was the unicorn of 2d Turn Based Rpgs. But it could have been stupid to copy their game design. The players would have preferred to play DD with different mods rather than trying my unknown DD-like game. I am proud to say that our game design is very different. But i have copied one thing from DD (or at least benchmarked it): Price. I knew if i was doing a game in the same genre, i couldn't be better than the Unicorn so i had to price the game lower than that. I will price the game at 19.99 Usd. I didn't benchmark only one game of course, i have researched other similar type of games and decided this was the good spot for the game with current content with have. (Not to mention 19 is my lucky number.)
Yes i have priced my book 19 TRY back in the days. With conversion it was around 5 usd then and now, a few years later it's around 2 usd. Pity right? I hope it will not continue it's freefall otherwise i will not be able to complete the game given the budget. Just joking. I mean, i will not complete it anyway... Calm down, double joke. I want to discuss little bit about an uncommon behavior done by indies and more common done by Triple A games. I believe this to be an hallucination that some people believe it will increase their net income from sales but it will not. (I don't have any statistical data but i am strongly behind my projection.) DON'T NEGLECT STEAM SUGGESTED PRICES, PLEASE! Steam suggested prices aren't 100% accurate. For instance i believe the ZLT value is a bit too high. It is right nearby the original Usd price. But in Poland buying power isn't as high as Uk, Usa, Canada or France, Germany whatever. They are not in a bad position but they aren't as high neither. So i will consider lowering the price of my game in ZLT, i suggest you the same. But overall Steam's regional pricing is a very good way to let many people around the world play their games and from the business perspective this is a solid plan too. Honestly as much as i love God of War franchise and i want to play the game there is no way i will pay 35 usd for it. I am sure many people here in Turkey agree with me. The original price is 49 usd but 35 is a lot of money here. There is a reason Steam suggest prices in TRY value 4,5 times less than the original value. Triple A studios can do this, they don't care, they will exceed their projected sales numbers anyway, but as an indie dev you don't have that power. You should aim every market and you should follow the adjusted prices. If you wanna make further market research you can tune up the numbers but if you don't have time for that just follow the rule blindly. It is better than converting each market price to the original usd value. That's a crime against humanity, i am telling you. (With a small bit of exaggaration i simply mean that kids outside developed countries deserve to play games too.)
No, no, not this game! Now let me cover the last part quickly and i have to get back to work. Writing this thing doesn't take so much time but editing and adding the visuals etc do. I don't have a correct answer myself about the discount rate and frequency. I get email on discounted games on my wishlist so i am thinking it might be good to have the players notification about your game time to time. But the buyer behaviour i guess tends more towards buying bunch of games at once in huge discount periods, like Winter Sale, rather than buying games 1 by 1. So yes, discount is good, and considering you don't have any fixed or inventory cost on each game, any money you will get from the game sales is a plus. On the other hand you have to justify the full pricing of your game. Honestly, it would be stupid to price your game highly and then give huge discounts to justify it. Two indie games i believe did a very good job in terms of pricing and discounts. Hades and Wildermyth. (Hades is a bit bigger than an indie game and Wildermyth is close to being a unicorn and i understand why, both games are solid and they have consistent pricing / sales strategies.) Anyway, i have just tried to shed light upon some areas from my point of view and i hope it helped to some of my fellow devs or player audience. I still can't claim anything i shared is correct or not. But those are my opinions and i will apply them to my game as well. Next time hopefully, i will give more update on our game design process rather than general issues. I couldn't share much now because i have dived into it too much and i feel a bit clumsy, don't know what to say or what to present. I feel our game is a bit too complex to talk very clearly about. Watch this short vid and you will know what i am talking about. https://twitter.com/ShargadS/status/1453072896880951308?s=20 Cheers, Semih

[ 2021-10-27 12:05:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

It has been quite a roller coaster ride for me, this whole thing. They have said "Game dev process" is pretty hard before i started it and i knew it, but soon i realized those were just vague words until i actually experience it. Frequently i am confused between using the word "I" or "We" when i start the sentences, because i have started this journey alone. It surely has pros and cons. But first you have to define yourself, whether you are a lone wolf or you can be a member of the pack. Lone wolves are mostly alone because they are actually left out by the pack. The ones who thrive alone can follow the path i did. The rest, better find yourself teammates to share the burden. Because game development is a very extensive job and there is no way in the hell you can do everything alone. Well maybe you can, but it will probably take 5-6 extra years compared to what you can achieve with reliable teammates. Who else loves hammock? In my case it was different, it wasn't all about gaming but Shargad. I have been already worldbuilding Shargad, the fantasy universe this game is based upon, for the last 6-7 years and i have already written and published a 120k words book and written 200k more which haven't been published yet. Idea of a game set upon Shargad was already in the back of my mind, but i always thought it is a distant dream. Especially if you are referring to Triple A games - you know thats the first thing that comes to mind when somebody ever imagines to make a game. If i had a few million dollars budget i wouldn't be doing this anyway, probably i was in Hawaii, swinging in my hammock and writing my 3rd or 4th book. Unfortunately, life doesn't always give you what you want, and whenever it gives something too easy, it takes something back. I have been doing sales of machinery for the past couple years. Worked in various industries but no, i knew deep down corporate life was not for me. I actually knew it before even i started. But society pulls you to a point where you can do nothing but bow down to it. So i had to chew it hard and work 5 years in a world i didn't belong. On the side though, i kept working on Shargad series. I was searching for an exit plan... "Nobody reads book these days" was the most common phrase i have heard back then. "Why do you even write it?" I also heard a lot of, there are just too many foreign words in your book, i can't understands too, but i am not getting there. Nobody knows Sumerian these days anyways... The exit plan I had some ideas for an exit plan but none that would work. Too much pressure from family, society whatever whatever. You had to come up with something strong, something... that will make money actually. Who would care whether you are happy at what you are doing anyway? So there was no easy way out. Ironically, i made it too easy. I quitted my job, just like that. Simple and sweet. No one cried for me, except for my manager who probably had tears of joy. I had to survive a few incoming waves from within the house though, of "WHY"s "What the heck"s and so on... And i knew i had to do something before the waves turn into Tsunami. Yes, i had to do something... Well for a few months i have just played Northgard at home. I will never play multiplayer RTS games again, too engaging, kills all your time. I could have made a game in the same amount of hours... Meanwhile i have been writing the second book of the Shargad Saga series. I actually have written a long time ago but things had changed. Now i had to edit but it was more of a rework, a huge rework. I have almost rewritten the whole thing. I had settled a nice Northgard in the day, writing in the night type of routine. Meanwhile just to resist the terrible storm in the house (yes all elements were used by my parents, air, water, earth, add to that the frightening stories of Hellfire), i started to look for a job half-assed. Return of the lone wolf I was happy, i had broken the rotten loop i was in, but i couldn't survive for many years without a job. Then i had this idea, to do sales, but this time, not in the pack, as a lone wolf. Like a mediator. I set up some arrangements with old clients for an event and scheduled a business trip to Spain. I was gonna go for business, but you know, also take a chill in Canarias. It could have been some relief. On paper, i was not idle, i would do some light negotiations and rest a week and then come back. Everything sounded good for me. Then something happened. Crown in spanish. You know what it is. My trip was canceled because everyone in the event was scared their ass off. I still dnt know, how i was so ready to go. A few days later, the flight had been canceled anyway. So the idea of going to Spain and not coming back was good on paper, but in reality, it would have messed me up for sure. My entourage who complained i was never getting out of home, now were praying for me not to go out. There was a worldwide crisis, but still time flied. I couldn't just not do anything. Then i remembered the quote of coach Snyder: "Adversity is opportunity in disguise." At that point, i guess my Turkish blood intervened. We are good at converting crises into opportunities. Yes, it was time. I had to make a game. But what game? Even the cheapest Triple A game costed a million dollar. I didn't have so much money. I didn't know any dumb investor who would invest so much and then not reap what he sow exponentially. I guess it was another divine intervention this time. Darkest Dungeon saved my ass. I had bought it a year ago, never touched it because i had basically no time from work. However, now i had more time than anything. I played it and it did nothing but gave me hope, a good game with low resources is doable! Even the world wasn't built in a day Game idea was there long ago, it didn't happen out of nowhere like a revelation. I was thinking a lot whether a HoMM type of game could be done in Shargad universe and after playing Darkest Dungeon my mind had shifted towards that specific DD-like genre. Good thing about Shargad was i already had a strong story and built many races, cultures in the game, so i could make a game with Town system and bunch of playable heroes. Although Darkest Dungeon triggered my hopes, it wasn't quite the answer. I had something else in mind. Something more spicy. More towns, more quests, but less grind. Something where players would go for Hunt in the wilderness and come back Town, play some mini games and take a chill... I was playing, thinking, processing my thoughts and searching for ways how i could get things done. Of course i purchased those online courses from udemy. And downloaded unity. But it didn't take my long to realize i had to spent 3 years to get to a point where i could call myself a programmer. Indeed, i couldn't be a good programmer. Because i don't have that much patience and i wasn't a well organized person. Two specs that each good programmer should have. So what i had to do? Surely find a programmer first, but how? Don't know anyone in the business in Turkey. Well, i had to start searching, somewhere, Linkedin for instance... Every story has an end, but not right now - Now lets take a break. Because since i didn't have enough time to write my book due to diving into the dev process too much, my writing impulses started to surge like the Sea of Tides in Shargad. I will stop here, probably write a second episode and explain how blindly i jumped into business, how my earlier programmers created a circus and alltogether we played a fake game of creating a game and the hard transition to now, where we at. Where are we at? Shortly, we are 1 month of excessive work away from creating a playable demo. We are rushing for the Steamfest in October. I am cautious because if we rush too much, we might lose control and mess things up in the long run. But this is also a great opportunity for visibility so we can't just neglect. Yes, i am telling we because even though those other guys i am working with are all freelancers, they are putting a lot of work and time into this. Surely they have other work too, i can't expect people to put their time and effort for me and not pay them well enough. But i can't also pay well enough because... i said it. It is just personal resources man. No financer, no kickstarter and add to that wild recession in Turkish economy in the recent years. I actually feel pretty lucky to be where i am at! This project should have been collapsed long ago... Praises to my buddies from across 10+ countries, who kept working together with me to help this dream come true. I am not gonna tell their names one by one, they will be written in the Credits upon full release anyway (also i am a bit scared someone can take them away from me). And hopefully, we will make it to the end. I really hope, nothing will collapse, after we have come so far. Now my only plan is, not to spend too much time with writing here but the game script and dialogues. And also, art direction, some UI design and a bit of voice acting. I don't count the excel sheets i have to prepare and explain to the programmer so he can apply to his framework. Thus, time goes by. We still need time, but i feel, something is coming. Darkness is upon us. No, not that. That is the classic voice line from any expensive movie trailer nowadays. Though, truely, i hope something is coming. Just need some more push, a bit of blood, some sweat, and tears of joy like my manager had when i was gone. Bear with us. There is a nice saying in my country, "Best pear is eaten by the bear." Our pear is yet too sour, but we will be right there with you when its ripe enough. Join us in twitter https://twitter.com/ShargadS Discord channel is empty, but if you wanna join and just be idle, you are welcome. https://t.co/rBLai7fyM5?amp=1 Regards, Semih P.S. I am pretty sure only 6% of the people who started the long read came this far. You are loved.

[ 2021-08-26 22:39:51 CET ] [ Original post ]