Peter Wingaard Meldahl, member of Rain AS, talks to TPG about their upcoming 2D action puzzle platformer, Teslagrad. Peter walks us through the ins and outs of development, thoughts on the indie scene and much more.
Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your role with the development of Teslagrad.
I coordinate the team working on Teslagrad. I also design the puzzles, rooms and general layout of the game together with Magnus Holm. I gathered the Rain team, I am also responsible for the business side of things. I feel pretty lucky being able to do game design for a great team like ours. But of course; everyone here influences the game in their own way.
How did you get started in developing PC games?
I love games of all kinds. PC, Console, Board Games, Role-playing Games and so on. I have wanted to work with creative projects where I could make games of my own for as long as I can remember. I had already done a lot of work leading teams for things like volunteer organizations and festivals when I decided that I would try to get together a team that could try to make something lasting. Back then, Stefan Svellingen convinced me that digital games was the way to go, and I started to gather the team. The rest is history.
Where did the idea for Teslagrad come from?
The first game we worked on was Minute Mayhem. The game was rather simple, but we made a world for it containing 4 nations. Each nation contained elements of the European nations at different times in their history, and each possessed a Steampunk Science unique to them. Working on the project we came to focus on the past of one of these nations in particular: Elektropia. This was the nation that embodied Eastern Europe and the Nordics, and their science was: Electricity and Magnetism. One Inspired evening me and Olli sat down and I wrote the base concepts for a platformer set in the history of Teslagrad, while he drew the concept art.
The idea was based around the art style of Minute Mayhem, and the Elektropian science of electricity and magnetism to create the central gameplay. This was when what we had for a game studio was a part of a desk we rented at an Art collective. The building was rather old and really poorly isolated, and this was in the middle of the harshest winter in Norway for quite a while. Crows were cracking shells on the frozen seawater outdoors, and we had to buy candles to try and help getting the office to a livable temperature. It is pretty hard to type with frozen fingers. Working parallel on the new game Teslagrad and Minute Mayhem we got some funding for Teslagrad in February 2011. This led to us focusing on Teslagrad full time. At that point the concept for the game looked like this
And that was it. We have been working on Teslagrad ever since, and it has been wonderful fun.
What are some of the successes and failures you learned from in developing Teslagrad?
Thankfully we already knew not to use a self made game engine for a project like this. Teslagrad is built on the Unity Engine, a piece of Wisdom i got from Bjarne Rene from Vostopia way back when we started out.
We have learned a lot about working as a team while building Teslagrad. The team has been slowly growing through development, and I have learned the importance of having the right person doing the right job. Olli adds a lot of his style to Teslagrad trough all the and drawn animations and level flourishes, but he could never have been as effective if Aslak and Petter weren’t there to back him up and making the rest of the art that might not be as noticeable, but is still just as important.
Lastly. A thing that did not work out too well was a segment we planned to work based on visibility. One of the problems is the difference in screen brightness between different screens. Sometimes you would see too much, other times it would be way too dark. There is still a level in the game where the mechanic is in use, and it is a nice distraction or change of pace. But it could not hold up as a core mechanic.
In its current form, how close is Teslagrad to your initial vision?
It is pretty close. The mechanics are as we originally envisioned them, and the look and the world are pretty close too. We took out some things like this magnetic rail because of time concerns. But Bioshock did it, so the world got to experience it anyway.
Some devs admitted their games were too hard upon release because they became experts as they developed the game. Talk about setting the difficulty levels for Teslagrad and if you faced a similar challenge.
The above is absolutely true. To counter this we have done a lot of testing with people outside Rain. We are pretty confident that most people can get trough Teslagrad with a little bit of tenacity. We squirreled away the challenges that are fun but probably too hard in the hidden parts of the tower. If you can find them, you might be able to solve them too.
Were there any challenges you faced in ensuring Teslagrad would run on the various PC system configurations?
We had to solve screen size early. The maps have boundaries, and we would rather not have the player see past them because of a broad screen. We have also had to do a lot of optimization. When people see a 2D platformer the idea is that it wont take a lot of resources. But we use a lot of big textures to get our unique style, and we run a full physics engine. We have had to test the different areas for performance on older machines with different setups to see how they run.
Lastly we made sure that Teslagrad can use any kind of input device. You have to key up the buttons yourself in the menu, but Teslagrad can be used with any kind of controller.
Please talk about developing the art style, level design and music for Teslagrad.
Jørn Lavvoll has made a lot of beautiful music for us, but other sounds were a problem for us for a long time. Jørn is an experienced composer, and he always get to see the finished levels before he makes the music. According to him it is easy because the game inspires the music directly. Recently we got Martin Kvale who also does the sound for Among the Sleep to do the sound implementation for us too. As fellow Norwegian developers we help each other out like this.
When I and Magnus make levels we have very different approaches. I usually start with some high concept, and have to find a way to make it intuitive for the player. Magnus prefers to mash the mechanics together, try to feel the flow of a level, and then tweak, add and remove stuff until it just feels right. We try to mix our level designs as much as possible to make the feel of progression in the game feel less monotone as it othervise might. As mentioned before Olli masters the art of Teslagrad, but all of the artists add their own touches.
However; The unsung heroes of way too many teams are the programmers. Fredrik has created the tools and digital framework that has let us do implementation easily and smoothly. Thomas, our other programmer, is still a student himself. Still he adds a touch of programming chaos that gives many of the bosses of the game their life. As nothing ever works quite like it did on the drawing board as soon as a physics engine is involved Thomas himself designs a big part of the bossfights behavior.
Outside of creating the game itself, what is the toughest aspect of being an indie developer?
It is difficult, though vital, to find the right people. You don’t have a lot of money, and often only people who believe in you will work with you on a project. And the old bogeyman is as always money. Working for next to nothing is the only way of keeping control of the company and the IP unless you already have a lot of money. Bootstrapping is hard. But in my opinion it is still worthwhile.
How did you go about funding Teslagrad and did you receive financial or emotional support from friends and family?
We were lucky enough to get a grant from the Norwegian Film Fund. Not a lot compared to the work behind the game, but enough to get us of the ground. The support from others has been great. Family have accepted that we have made an unusual choice of career, and as the game started to take form the Internet community has received us heartily.
Tell us about the process of submitting Teslagrad to the various digital distribution platforms and if you encountered resistance in doing so.
We have actually been approached by a range of different distributors, and have actively contacted a few others. In our experience this has not been too hard, but there are still things to be resolved with some of them. Getting on Steam however is a pretty long process for any Indies these days. Teslagrad is on Greenlight now, and we are happy to report that we reached the top 100 in only 14 days. There is still a long way to go though, so we hope even more people support us with a vote.
How important is it to get instant feedback about Teslagrad from users through online message boards and other social networking sites?
It sets the tone for how it is received. If an issue seems to be mentioned often we fix it right away. For the technical side of the feedback we rely more on our Alpha testers. We have a simple in game system where you can deliver a bug report without leaving the game which sends a screenshot directly to our server. The community has been of great help in this way.
How much value do you place on the opinions of those who review Teslagrad professionally?
Everyone is blinded by their own baby of course. To get the detailed opinion of someone outside the office is always valuable. We read a lot of the articles written about Teslagrad, although I admit it has been a bit harder the last couple of weeks as we have gained some momentum. For those that write in other languages: Don’t worry. We have Google translate.
How do you feel about the various indie bundle promotions and the “Pay What You Want” pricing methodology? Would you be interested in contributing to a project like that in the future?
Sure. We especially love the Humble Indie Bundle concept. If we get a chance to be a part of that in the future, we will.
What are your thoughts on how the PC gaming industry as a whole are dealing with the problem of intrusive DRM and piracy?
We are like most Indies. We feel that DRM is a house of cards, best constructed to obstruct for those already playing by the rules. That said, we and other developers do need to eat. So we hope as many as can afford it still buy the games they play.
How do you feel about individuals posting videos of Teslagrad?
We love nothing more. To see what we have made shared with the world is great. We also love to see the «Lets Play» videos ourselves. If you only have a couple of views, then it is probably us.
How do you feel about DLC and its current implementation in the PC gaming industry?
Well. Steam itself is DRM too, lets not forget. It all depends on the handling of the concept. After all: Steams convenience and services make many people prefer to get it there rather than getting a DRM free version even when it is available. In other cases things are not handled as well. Solutions where you have a certain numbers of installs, cannot reinstall the game after a certain date or have to fiddle with keys rarely works. Steam itself also doesn’t work for people with unstable Internet connections even for single-player.
In the long run I hope that all games get a DRM free version. Nothing is more sad than seeing our collective gaming history disappear behind abandoned services and propitiatory hardware.
How do you feel about the online modding community in general and specifically if mods were created for Teslagrad?
I feel we have some nifty core mechanics, and I would love to see what people could do with them. The game is in Unity however, and I guess it would be pretty hard to change it unless someone had the original project. Autotile that we used for a lot of the art and level geometry is already available on Unity asset store, it’s pretty cheap. If there is demand we might put out the rest of our mechanics too. If someone would like to monetize a mod we would really prefer it if they built a new game on the same resources, rather than using most of Teslagrad over again with some slight alteration.
What advice would you give up-and-coming indie PC developers who are trying to break into the business?
People are way more important than ideas. It is the team that is at Rain right now that makes us what we are. Finding out what kind of project suits the teams talents is also important. The next is scope. Aim for making a game where you can imagine doing every bit of the job. It will always take a lot longer than you think. Get in touch with other people, especially from disciplines other than your own. A good way to do this is joining a Game Jam where the teams are not premade, and see what happens.
And lastly: Show your idea and your game to people. It needs to interact with other people and ideas to become great. Sheltering a game in fear of theft will lead to a less thought-out game. – End
We would like to thank Peter for his insightful and detailed answers. You can pick up learn more about Teslagrad via IndieDB and Steam Greenlight.
Follow TPG