DIYgamer

The Future of Gaming: Dreamside Maroon

February 19, 2010 | Peter Eykemans

The 2010 IGF Student Winners have been announced and 10 different titles landed in the spotlight. At the festival in March the 10 will compete for an overall Best Student Game prize, but to get to this point they definitely had to be special. We’ve dug through them all and contacted their developers in a series of interviews called The Future of Gaming. Because if anyone is going to take over the industry, it’s these bright minds.

Three out of four members of the Dreamside Maroon team from Digipen managed to wrangle their schedules to talk to me via Skype. Their title is in both the IGF Student Showcase and the Indie Game Challenge, the only IGF Student title to do so. Dreamside Maroon follows the title character Aster, as he grows a vine through the night sky, collecting fireflies and lighting lanters on his quest to reach the moon. You can download the game from its website right now, if you’d like to familiarize yourself with it before reading ahead. While our chat was plagued with volume issues and dropouts, you can find the transcribed interview below.

DIYgamer: If you guys want to introduce yourselves and give a little background on what you did on the project and your year at [Digipen], or how you fit in at school.

Hamza Hutchinson: My name is Hamza Hutchinson. I’m actually finished up at the school, I graduated this past December. I’m currently in San Francisco and just started working at LucasArts.

Matt Anderson: I’m Matt Anderson. On Dreamside Maroon I did some of the graphics engine and the hit detection and shading. I’m still a senior at Digipen and will be graduating in a couple months.

Here we lose contact with the third member of the team, Justin Whitney.

DIY: Hamza, what are you doing at LucasArts?

HH: I just started there this week and I’m on the core engineering team on The Force Unleashed 2. [Going back,] I was the technical director on Dreamside Maroon. Not that that means much, because a lot of it was a really collaborative effort. That was my title, but everybody did lots of stuff.

They bring up the absence of Ian Eller, who couldn’t join the conversation that evening.

DIY: What was Ian’s position on the project?

MA: He set up a lot of the systems with game logic and gameplay and was also the audio engineer. He did all the music and set up our audio.

Justin’s voice raised to an audible level.

Justin Whitney: I’m Justin Whitney, on Dreamside Maroon I worked on physics. I’m a Digipen senior and graduate in May and will be [looking for a job].

DIY: How does it work at Digipen as far as coming together to work on a project? Do you guys have much control over that, or is a lot of it decided for you?

HH: It’s entirely under our control. You get to choose your team and you get to choose your project; the scope of it. You control how you want to go about doing it, you develop all of the technology. So it’s really in your control. They do have certain requirements that they lay down. I think they cap the team size.

DIY: What year did you start developing this project?

MA: We started talking about it at the end of sophomore year. We were trying to get a team together. There were several teams that kind of got a head start on their projects for the fall. People knew they wanted to do something pretty major. There were a bunch of people aiming at IGF. Success there is kind of being prepared early. We had to pick teams quickly before the “good ones” got away. I think we really lucked out with that one though.

JW: It was kind of interesting, there was almost a prom-like process. Where people were afraid they weren’t being asked. It went really quickly, the good people were gone.

DIY: How much involvement do professors have as far as advising and that kind of thing along the way?

MA: So we have to do game classes, and you’re in a class with maybe 8 or 9 other teams. So there’s about 30 of us. And it goes differently year to year depending on who the instructors are. For the junior year project, and they’re doing sophomore year too now, there’s a group of three teachers named Ben, Rachel and Chris. And they’re fantastic. Ben is helpful with design kind of things. Rachel with project management and Chris technical stuff. So they kind of motivate everyone through the whole thing by answering questions. Rachel really played an important role for a lot of teams by setting up meetings with her and Ben outside of class. Private moments to talk about our ideas and kind of brainstorm.

DIY: How does the curriculum work over there? What other notable stuff had you done at Digipen before getting into this team and this stage of school?

HH: The way it works is that you create a game each year. And so you form a team and create a game each year that you’re there. You learn a lot from that, and then apart from that the curriculum is really computer science heavy with an emphasis on mathematics and physics if you’d like. Or a bit of hardware stuff. In terms of notable projects, I hadn’t done anything as notable or big as Dreamside Maroon before.

MA: The notable thing about past projects is that Ian and I were on a team at the end of freshman year, and Justin and Ian were on a team after that. So that’s a bit of of kind of how we knew each other and how we knew a bit about working with each other ahead of time going into it.

Justin made a note about working with Ian, but it was too difficult to hear.

DIY: I caught the part that you and Ian were working on a project?

JW: Yeah, I was really happy with how our sophomore game turned out.

DIY: The game itself mentions it was inspired by the moon’s reflection in water. How did you guys get from that almost abstract concept to what it is now? As far as taking that idea and turning it into gameplay setting goals and adding art and everything around it. Simple question really.

JW: Well the moon was an obvious goal to give to the player in a game that doesn’t have a lot of goals. On my end, I wanted to give a very strong visual goal to the player.

MA: It’s kind of a magical thing. I don’t know if this is something that everyone feels, but I’d like to go to the moon. It was a bit tricky trying to get the moon in view and still be able to look back at what you’re doing. I guess because it’s big it helps.

DIY: How did you guys decide what’s available to do in the game? On my first playthrough, I didn’t accomplish anything, straight to the moon.

HH: So when you got to the moon, you got the text that said you should try lighting lanterns next time? That kind of thing?

DIY: Exactly.

HH: Ha, we were working on the game one day, and were saying, if they got to the moon and haven’t lit at least two lanterns…

JW: Maybe if they get to the moon without hitting a lantern, we should give them a little direction.

MA: Also we didn’t realize you could do that until the last couple weeks working on the project. It was surprising. As far as what the player can do. We wanted to have a certain atmosphere of playfulness, catching fireflies. We didn’t want it to be a combat focused thing. Though if you could swing the lantern around it might be kind of neat.

HH: We actually had some pretty funny conversations throughout the development of it. I think a good portion, if not all of us, enjoy violent games. And it’s always funny to put a violent spin on Dreamside Maroon at a conceptual level, not that we put it in the game. You have to talk about Aster bludgeoning millions of fireflies.

DIY: Along those lines, which developers would you say inspired you guys in the game, or yourselves?

HH: When Flower was announced, it was kind of like “aw man, these guys are going to kill us.” Everyone came to my place and played it through. There were definitely a lot of similarities. That’s one for me.

MA: I think Shadows of the Colossus was pretty influential to myself and Ian and maybe everyone. The feeling of that game. The sense of the world. We kind of wanted something to have an epic feel like that.

JW: Personally I feel like [I was inspired by] Will Wright…It was kind of interesting every time we hit a point in our game, there was always another game doing something similar or doing something we were planning to do, and we had to kind of bounce off that and go in a different direction.

MA: The times we were meeting as a team we put together a list of games we felt influenced us and had put it on a wipe board at school. Metal Gear Solid, Shadow of Colossus, The Legend of Zelda. Those epic games. And a professor walked in, looked at the list, looked at us and just asked, “What are you guys doing?”

DIY: Now as this was still part of your education, what did you guys still have to work to learn as it was in development? Or did you feel you had all the skills learned to bring this to completion?

MA: I don’t know about anyone else, but for me it was everything to learn. For all of us this was our first 3D game. We had a lot of preparation on the math side. The junior level graphics classes are introductions to shaders and graphics algorithms and space partitioning algorithms. So a lot of it for me was learning along the way.

HH: I gotta agree with Matt, when he says everything was to learn, he’s right. The scope of this game was, not like it’s incredibly huge, but it’s much much bigger than stuff I’ve done previously. Tackling 3D. It was an incredible learning experience trying to get everything to work together, but partitioned into separate modules and thinking about the game’s design and code.

JW: It was a bit like a runaway train that I was trying to fix, occasionally going off the tracks. I guess there were a lot of times when I was a different physics algorithm and wanted to integrate it. But had to keep going with what we had. I think one of the successful things was using height maps for our islands.

DIY: Going back to what I was saying to having finished the game without doing anything, or alternatively collecting everything, what was your goal or what do you want players to take away from the experience?

HH: This is something we wrestled with throughout the entire time. Obviously we placed players on a vine with which they can essentially go anywhere. We wanted to give them freedom to do what they wanted to do. We didn’t want to say here’s this mechanic where you can essentially fly and do what you want, but we’re going to restrict you. So it was a lot of back and forth. Trying to figure out kind of what we wanted. In the end we tried to give as much power to the player as possible, or freedom to the player.

MA: In hindsight, it’s kind of surprising how long it took us learn that we shouldn’t restrict the player and just let them grow the vine anywhere. That’s about a month of of trying to make it work with restrictions built in. I think what I want players to take away from our game is the enjoyment of playing it. I hope it’s enjoyable just to look around in the world.

JW: I guess ideally what I’d like the player to get out of it, is the more you put into it, the more it affects you and the more you get out of it.

DIY: I know Digipen has a pretty good history of sending games to IGF. How’d you guys feel about getting that announcement?

MA: I was super excited. We were entered in the student category and also the professional category. [The professional category] was announced a week or two earlier, I didn’t want to have my hopes up too high and get heartbroken. So when we heard we were in the student category, I was very excited.

DIY: I know in some places it’s listed as a “Student Version” of the game, are there two versions of the game?

MA: No.

DIY: Ah, then compounding the IGF news, you are also up for the Indie Game Challenge.

JW: That was a huge surprise.

MA: I didn’t think we had a chance at that at all.

HH: All of it is awesome news. I don’t think anyone on the team had their hopes too high. So it’s awesome, both IGF and IGC.

JW: I think we were targeting IGF.

MA: Still getting into IGF was a goal of the team from the start of the project. I know there’s a student history of getting into IGF, and I wanted that. We had the time and the knowledge to have a serious go at it.

DIY: Are you guys going to make it out to Vegas for IGC?

All: Yes.

DIY: And I’m assuming too for IGF.

MA: Yes.

DIY: And with the other Digipen title, do you guys have a friendly competition or any animosity toward the Igneous team?

Skype boots Matt and Justin.

HH: I don’t know if I should be saying this, but the Cortex Command guy last year won two awards and he was bet by somebody that he had to take his shirt off at the awards ceremony if he won. So he did. And after that I was talking to Chris Howard, who’s the graphics programmer on Igneous. And we were like, “yeah we should totally do bets for IGF next year.” And Cameron Jacobson their physics programmer wants me to wax off one my eyebrows if we win. So there’s definitely a lot of friendly competition there. A lot of support from those guys and we have a lot of support for those guys.

Everyone is eventually reconnected.

DIY: When you guys got disconnected, Hamza told me about waxing off an eyebrow.

HH: Let me emphasize I really, really don’t want to do that and I’m probably not going to which I will receive endless [expletive] for. Cameron Jacobson by the way, is one of the most intense people ever. He wrote all the physics for Igneous from the ground up and he’s very cool. If you tell him he can’t do something, he will do it. During “No Shave November” his team shaved their heads and beards right before and someone told him I bet you won’t shave your eyebrows…so he did.

DIY: What do you guys think of the other titles in the showcase? Have you gotten a chance to play any of them?

MA: I really like the concept of [Ulitsa Dimitrova]. The one about Pjtor. It’s so out there and brilliant. I really want a chance to play that. It doesn’t run on my computer. Igneous all the way.

HH: That game is fun and it’s technically impressive like no other. I haven’t gotten a chance to play any of the other ones. But the competition gets more and more difficult every year. I know everyone says that, but it really does so all the entries are really awesome. Paper Cakes is really interesting.

DIY: I haven’t gotten a chance to ask any of the other teams, but I was wondering…as far as going to school to learn game design, what do your parents think of that?

HH: I grew up in Kirkland, which is down the street from Digipen essentially. My uncle had been a software engineer for a number of years, so I don’t think it was too terrible for my mom. I think she handled it pretty well.

MA: My parents were supportive. I don’t know, I don’t think they liked the fact that it was across the country, but they knew it was what I wanted to do. This way my second time going to school. Maybe they had reservations [about that].

DIY: What advice would you give to someone who’s considering a similar path?

HH: Don’t go to a game school just because you like playing games. Go there if you’re serious about doing work…because it is. Not to sound pessimistic. It’s also a lot of fun.

DIY: Hamza, your steps are pretty clear with your new job. But what about you other guys, what do you still have to do to graduate?

MA: That’s kind of a question mark. We’re set up for a pretty good future. With the publicity from the competition. But it’s scary to go out and look for a job, especially with the way things are today out there.

JW: Whenever my parents hear there is a developer out on the East Coast hiring, they’re always sure to tell me about it.

DIY: Anything else you want to add?

MA: Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.

DIY: No, thank you guys. I know it’s tough to get everyone together.

As mentioned, Dreamside Maroon is the only IGF Student Showcase that is also up for the Indie Game Challenge “non-professional” award. The ceremony is tonight (February 19, 2010), and we’ll be sure to keep our loyal readers updated as soon as the winners are announced. And once again, be sure to download and check out this team’s game.

Full Series: The Future of Gaming
*Ulitsa Dimitrova
*Puddle
*Devil’s Tuning Fork
*Boryokudan Rue
*Continuity
*Dreamside Maroon
*Igneous
*Paper Cakes
*Puzzle Bloom
*Spectre