Stick To Your Guns: Pirate Code Interview

Conducted By – Adam Ames

Head man at Circuit Hive, Peter Robinson, talks to TPG about his pirate-inspired strategy game, Pirate Code.  You will read about how the game was formed, road blocks encountered and life as an indie developer.

 

Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your role with the development of Pirate Code.

I wore a number of hats during the development of Pirate Code but the central role I played was the lead programmer.  I also wrote the story, designed the game mechanics, directed the team, engineered the sound effects, and even drew one of the characters.  I did a little bit of everything but that’s not to say that I could have done it without my team.  Pirate Code wouldn’t have been possible without them.

 

How did you get started in developing PC games?

My history sounds a lot like most indie developers.  I started playing games when I was young.  I had a friend who introduced me to Q Basic when I was about six.  I immediately fell in love with making games and I spent my childhood learning everything I could about it.  I taught myself to program, draw, and play the piano and write music.  I released my first game when I was in 9^th grade.

 

Where did the idea for Pirate Code come from?

Well we were originally going to make a Battleship clone where the ships could move, but that really didn’t make any sense.  The game mechanics just don’t work if the ships can move.  My bother wrote a song for the title screen of the game that sounded very piratey.  The whole team was inspired and we decided to change the game to a pirate game.  From there we spent about a month throwing ideas around and putting them together into something we could play.  What came out of the other end was fun so we decided to run with it.  It quickly turned into a marathon.  The music that inspired the game is now the music that plays when you’re at an island.

 

What are some of the successes and failures you learned from in developing Pirate Code?

We developed Pirate Code for over five years.  I would guess that we probably could have avoided at least two years of development if I had known what I was doing as a team leader.  The biggest problem with an all-volunteer and geographically separated team like ours is that it’s very easy to let several weeks pass by without doing anything on the game.  This is also a great way to lose team members.  We lost some very valuable people along the way just because they didn’t see enough life in the team.  I wasn’t able to really fix this problem until 2011 when I decided to start tracking my time and reporting it to the team on a weekly basis.  This forced me to maintain my momentum on the project over a long period of time.  It also allowed me to see if I was slowing down.  We absolutely could not have finished this game without time tracking.  I also added a new programmer in the middle of the project on three different occasions.  In every case this only slowed down the project and not because they were bad programmers.  The scope of the game was also pretty large and we probably could have designed it to take less time.

 

In its current form, how close is Pirate Code to your initial vision?

If you compare Pirate Code to the Battleship game we originally envisioned then it’s pretty far away.  Once we got a handle on what we wanted to build though Pirate Code turned out to be more or less what we envisioned.  We did reel in the scope a little once we had been building it for a year or two.  For instance, we originally planned to make seven ship categories with seven captains and we eventually whittled this down to four.  I hope to add some of these ships back in someday as expansions to the game.

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 Pirate Code and if you faced a similar challenge.

I definitely became an expert at Pirate Code.  The third battle in the campaign for example, was much harder when I first made it.  I was able to win every time by carefully strategizing, but I also knew exactly how the AI would respond to my every move.  My team was not so lucky and they were all stuck on that battle when it first came out.  I lowered the difficulty on that battle at least twice by removing enemy ships.  We had similar problems with two or three other battles throughout campaign.  Of course we also had to balance the various ships so that no one ship or strategy became unbeatable.  We spent much of the final year of the development while I was finishing the campaign tweaking the ship actions and crew costs to keep things fair.

 

Were there any challenges you faced in ensuring Pirate Code would run on the various PC system configurations?

We used Garage Game’s 2D engine for Pirate Code so most of the technical hurdles were already taken care of for us.  However, the fullscreen mode of the game presented some special challenges.  The built in functionality changed the screen’s resolution to that of the window which in our case was 800×600.  Although this might have been ok five years ago most people don’t want their resolution changed every time they played the game.  Worse was that the game was stretched on widescreen monitors.  I spent several weeks writing custom routines that could set the game to full screen while maintaining the aspect ratio without changing the resolution.

 

Please talk about developing the art style, level design and music for Pirate Code.

We were building a pirate game so that pretty much dictates the direction of the art and music.  I wanted to graphics to be similar to a hand-held strategy game like Advanced Wars (of which I’m a huge fan) so we weren’t going for realistic.  The ships were created in 3D and rendered with a cell shader into sprites.  We did something similar to the tiles – tweaking them in Photoshop as necessary.  The character art was hand drawn, scanned, and colored on the computer – similar to something you would see in many RPGs.

The level design started as a simple fixed grid of water.  We later changed this to tiles that we could rearrange to create unique maps.  Then we added a large number of land tiles to give the game even more variety.  To make use of all these tiles we had to create a custom level editor (which we might release someday).  The most important part of the level is the starting position of the ships which had to be closely married to the story and the particular enemy ships that you would face.  This again took a lot of time to test and retest until we had it right.

The music was written by my younger brother, Philip, who did an excellent job of creating some very compelling pirate music.  There were several songs he wrote where I repeatedly shot him down until I heard what I was looking for.  For instance, the ghost pirate boss music (which features an awesome pipe organ) took three tries before it captured the right mood.  I feel like I had more freedom to speak my mind with him since he was my brother and the music was that much better for it.  As with any good game music, the point was to help the player feel the right emotion.  For instance, the world map music gives you sense of adventure.  The boss music gives you a sense of dread.  One of my favorite songs is the boss of the game music – it is epic!

 

Outside of creating the game itself, what is the toughest aspect of being an indie developer?

This was a tough question.  Everything about being an indie developer is hard.  The only easy thing to do is give up.  But if I had to pick one thing, it’s probably motivating your team and for that matter yourself.  Most indie developers have been on a team or two where things fall apart before the game is finished.  Once a project goes longer than a year everybody starts wondering if they should bail and take their chances with another team.  It takes a person with a lot of tenacity or some severe character flaws to stick with a team all the way to the end and I applaud my surviving team members.

 

How did you go about funding Pirate Code and did you receive financial or emotional support from friends and family?

We were self-funded and bootstrapping so we basically all kept our day jobs while working on Pirate Code.  Nearly everyone on our team has kids and none of us had the options to strike out on it full time.  We received lots of emotional support from our families though despite the fact that they thought we were a little crazy.

Tell us about the process of submitting Pirate Code to the various digital distribution platforms and if you encountered resistance in doing so.

We haven’t encountered any resistance directly but like all marketing it’s a constant battle to be heard above the noise.  On Steam Greenlight we’ve been able to get a steady stream of yes votes.  I just wish I had a better idea of why some people choose to vote no – if they just don’t like strategy games or if there’s something that actually turns them off about the game.  I’m always nervous that a bad screen shot or a poor description is killing something that took years to make.

 

Did you research similar titles when trying to come up with the launch price?

We actually read quite a bit about price.  Apparently if you go too low people will consider your game subpar but if you price too high – well, then nobody will buy it.  We eventually arrived at the price of 14.95.  Hopefully expensive enough to sound like a game worth playing but cheap enough to afford.  The jury’s still out on if that’s true or not.  Compared to other games we’re about in the middle.

 

Can you tell us why you chose to release a demo for Pirate Code?

Demos are a win for everyone! Players get to try the game and we get to show them why they should buy it.  In our case, since we don’t have a large marketing budget, a demo can do more to show off the game than any screenshot or trailer ever could.

 

How important is it to get instant feedback about Pirate Code from users through online message boards and other social networking sites?

Extremely important!  Right now, since we’re small, I literally hang on every word of every comment I can get from our users.  I suppose my sensitivity will decrease as more people talk about the game, but I will always care about what users think.

 

How much value do you place on the opinions of those who review Pirate Code professionally?

I think the opinions of professional game reviewers are very important to the indie game ecosystem. The barriers of entry are fairly low for game developers and none of us have enough time to try everything.  Professional reviewers give gamers a good idea about what to play and give us a chance to rise above the noise.

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?

Absolutely!  I think they’re fantastic.  I’ve personally bought several Humble Bundles.  I think in most cases you’re selling your game to customers who would not have purchased it without the bundle.  From a business standpoint, even if you only make a few cents per copy, you’re still making a net profit.  More importantly it gets your game into the hands of the players.  Everybody wins.

What are your thoughts on how the PC gaming industry as a whole are dealing with the problem of intrusive DRM and piracy?

I think it’s sad that this has become such a problem, but I’m far from an expert on the subject.  I can say that as a developer there’s nothing more demoralizing then having something that you spent years on stolen by a pirate.  Pirates in games are cool.  Pirates taking games, not cool.

 

How do you feel about individuals posting videos and receiving monetization of Pirate Code?

Well if they’re posting videos and making money on the videos that essentially the same thing as a reviewer who writes an article.  It gives them a chance to make a living while giving us some free publicity.  What’s not to like?

 

How do you feel about DLC and its current implementation in the PC gaming industry?

For games with small teams it makes a lot of sense.  For instance, with our game I would love to create some additional content that could be downloaded for the game.  This makes sense because we don’t have the manpower to get that content created when we first release the game.  For large published developers it seems a little gimmicky – especially when the content is ready to go at launch time.  Why not just include it with the game?

 

How do you feel about the online modding community in general and specifically if mods were created for Pirate Code?

Imitation is the greatest form of flattery.  I would be happy if there were fans out there who liked our games so much that they wanted to build a mod.

 

What advice would you give up-and-coming indie PC developers who are trying to break into the business?

I’ve read a lot of indie developer who’ve answered this same question and I’ll say the same thing they all said: quit now. It’s hard.

Now if you’re like me you probably just ignored that.  So moving on, here’s some practical advice.  First, learn everything about everything.  You’ll need to know at least a little something about business, finance, marketing, web development, social networks, legal documents, team building, motivational speaking, writing, and sound engineering.  You’ll probably want to know a lot about programming, artwork and music.  You can rely on your team to provide expertise in different areas, but your chances of succeeding will improve the more you know.

Next make sure you stick to your guns.  It might take a long time to make a game so make sure you’re making something that will still capture your interest in two years.  Which brings me to number three: don’t try to make a game that’s too huge.  Pirate Code took a long time to make, but I’ve been shooting down new ideas for literally years to get to release.  Had we not cut back the scope and if we had done everything we wanted, we’d probably still have another five years to go on it.  Finally, make sure you have a team you can count on.  Even one person who you can count on can make all the difference in the world.

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