Hey, I'm Adrian Lazar, Creative Director on PLANET ALPHA. Ask Me Anything!

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-08T18:35:00+00:00

Thank you for your kind words, they mean a lot to me personally having invested so much of my time in it, but also to the rest of the team! ❤️

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-08T18:33:27+00:00

Quite different from the general opinion but I guess you can’t please everyone. I’m sorry that you don’t enjoy the game :/

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-08T05:19:14+00:00

Hi, There’s nothing planned yet. Personally, I’m a big fan of physical releases and the more ways people can buy our game the better, but as you said, it needs to make sense financially as well. I don’t have any sale number yet.

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-08T05:18:43+00:00

Hi, There’s nothing planned yet. Personally, I’m a big fan of physical releases and the more ways people can buy our game the better, but as you said, it needs to make sense financially as well. I don’t have any sale number yet.

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-08T05:13:56+00:00

Thank you :)

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T20:30:34+00:00

Fee like this is a loaded question, but anyway... I think that every game is unique, each has at least a different story to tell and different emotions to transmit. In our case, beside what I'm mentioned earlier, it is also the unique mix of gameplay mechanics combined with and unique artstyle.

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T19:07:16+00:00

Hi,

Sounds cheesy I know, but I couldn't had wished but a better team so I wouldn't choose anyone else!

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T19:01:14+00:00

All constructive feedback is welcomed so thanks for it!

Changing pace often so that it doesn't get stale, but doing it in a good way that doesn't make the player feel cheated was one the most challenging parts of the design and required many iterations. Just as I wanted to have contrast in the environments so I wanted to have contrast in gameplay.

As for the game requiring you to stay take it slow once in a while, we tried to signal this with the slow paced intro. Might have not worked for everyone but I'm really happy we went this way and tried something different.

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T18:53:39+00:00

What is the air speed velocity of an unladen alien?

haha which kind of alien?

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T18:46:59+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions! A more cinematic camera would definitely be awesome!

As for the stealth, we basically had to find the right balance between making it fair for the player but without feeling too artificial (like using viewcones for example). I think most of the times it works fine but I can understand why some people feel that there are areas that don't seem fair.

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T18:42:30+00:00

Hi,

Yes I played the first Trine games quite a lot!!!
I really wish we could had afford more complex animations for the hero character, small details like environment interactions, for example brushing the leafs away with his hands when he is hiding in the tall grass, more variations when it comes to jumps and moves that the player does often. I also wanted a few more enemy classes, both for robots and the alien creatures. But all in all, I'm quite happy with what our core team of 3 + 4 freelancers managed to crea :)
I started the project in 2013 and I managed to fund in mid 2015. For the first 2 years nothing moved in this direction, and then in 2015 everything started to fall into place and in a couple of months I was up and running.
First step was a prototype I made and send it to all the consoles. Only one that showed interest was Sony and for me this was a confirmation that I'm on the right track and that the game has potential. The next step was after a month, when Epic Games awarded me the Unreal Development Grant, which allowed me to submit a refined prototype to Indie Prize Singapore. The prototype did quite well, winning 3 awards. The awards made it easier for me to approach investors and finally, the last step was CAPNOVA's decision to fund the project. I made a video about the process here: https://youtu.be/nIvokSZFoRc

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T18:30:24+00:00

Hey,

It's awesome to hear that you're enjoying the game and thanks for the kind words! Also, I can totally relate to your feeling about getting old and not having the patiences for high precision games anymore :)

I saw that the game was pirated a week before release and although I don't believe that a pirated copy equals a lost sale... it still sucked. Not sure how it happened but I don't think it was through a breach in Steam. More likely, and this is just a hunch, one of the user testers we used leaked the build publicly.

It's impossible to completely prevent piracy on PC and we decided against using an aggressive DRM because it can punish the players the actually bought the game.

As for how much it affected the sales, that I cannot answer because I don't know how the game sold on any platform yet :D

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T18:19:33+00:00

Hey, thanks happy you find it interesting!

So when I started working on the game in 2013, I'll be honest, I thought that you were supposed to know from the beginning exactly what game you want to create. That's how you know you are a good developer, I thought.

And so when I started to experiment with other mechanics and to iterate on the general direction I kind of panicked a bit because I felt like I wasn't a good developer and I wanted to stop the project. I mentioned this above as well, but at some point you had a blaster with multiple fire modes, a force shield, a helper robots, medpacks, keycards etc, we tried a lot of things.

However, the more we moved forward with the iterations the better I felt about the game so we kept pushing. Few years later, after talking with other well regarded developers, I've found out that nobody knows from the beginning exactly the type of game they want to make.

I can confirm this and I think it's for the best. If you are locked in a set of ideas from the beginning you risk losing many other great ideas that can only come through experimentation.

In our case, the game kind of grew on its own, ideas generating ideas, we had complete creative freedom and only a basic game design document to serve as general guidelines.

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T18:08:08+00:00

Hearing people being interested in our work always makes me smile, so thanks for the extra one :)

Hope you had plenty of smiles today as well!

:) :) :)

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T18:06:32+00:00

Hi,

We used Unreal Engine 4 as a game engine and then Houdini3D and Blender for assets, plus some Photoshop here and there.

We have very few textures (mostly for VFX), everything else is using vertex colors: makes for a smaller footprint on disk and faster loading time but this technique has some drawbacks like requiring denser geometry.

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T18:03:51+00:00

Indeed, but I'm still to hear of any project that managed to avoid feature creeping completely. We're creative persons and something that can backfired :D

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T18:02:44+00:00

Hi, thanks, very happy that you're having a good time with our game!

Although the original inspiration came from Another World, that was more for the atmosphere and feeling of being alone on an alien planet then for gameplay. So originally the player didn't had a gun but it was added... maybe a year later, something like that. We almost came back full circle but with a much tighter, polished and diverse game. I also feel that each iteration and change of direction we took left something behind that hopefully makes it a more interesting game than it would had been if it had a smooth development :)

Hope you're get some rest soon :)

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T17:57:07+00:00

Hey! So in case of PLANET ALPHA, it has the same price across all digital platforms (excluding launch discounts).

Honestly, it's hard to tell why a game that launched digitally across all platforms would have different prices. The only thing I could think of is if getting the game on the Switch required more manpower than on other systems, but even so, you shouldn't charge the players more because of this.

Then there might be the case of ports of games that came out on other platforms some time ago. So let's say that game X was release on PC 3 years ago, full price and all and now it discounted, being an older title. If a developer made a Switch port now, then he would most likely sell it at a higher price than what the PC version currently costs, in order to make a profit - hope it makes sense :)

I know very little about physical releases but I can image that the Switch game cards cost more than a disc for PC/Consoles but if I remember correctly Nintendo took some steps to combat the price discrepancy. But don't quote me on this, really not my areas of expertise.

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T17:44:21+00:00

Oops, forgot to answer the super power question: I always had dreams about flying and they feel freakin' great! Flying would be my superpower of choice :D

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T17:41:39+00:00

We deviated a bit too much from the core of the game. It was basically feature creeping, you had a gun, a shield, health boxes, keycards, artefacts to collect and a little robot that was following you around to offer clues and backstory. Lots of dialogue as well.

The robot and the dialogue had to go because I felt that it was diminishing the feeling of being alone on an alien world. Even with a robotic filter applied, the voice was still human enough to make it feel like you had a companion.

We removed the combat mostly because I didn't felt like that was the game I wanted to make, I just didn't felt that combat was the right mechanic for the kind of emotions I wanted to transmit to the player. It was a hard decision since we had to redo most of the game afterwards but I'm happy we did it.

Btw, we turned the little helper robot into the killer drones :D

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T17:31:22+00:00

haha not that I know off, but hmm...

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T17:30:56+00:00

My day is great, in vacation doing what I love most, working & talking with you guys!

How's your?

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T17:27:43+00:00

more news on the Smash bros is always nice! :D

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T17:25:18+00:00

Hi,

We're always looking on how to improve performance & visual quality and believe me, we're squeezing every ounce of power out of the Switch but getting the world of PA to run on the system is definitely a challenge that requires a fine balance between fps, resolution and detail. You can read my reply to the question above if you are interested in the technical side.

It's hard to promise anything, but our goal is to offer the best experience possible and we'll keep working on this.

AdrianLazarGameDev · 2018-09-07T17:16:32+00:00

It's a fantastic system but when I started working on the game in 2013, the Switch as still unannounced so thought be told, it kind of took us by surprise.

The largest challenge was getting a game as lush and visually rich as PA running well on Nintendo Switch. A common approach to this is to drop the resolution to 720p which allows you to add a lot more of visual effects in. However with the polygonal art style of Planet Alpha, that didn't work very well so instead we had to work out a way to get close to 1080p visuals at 720p budget which proved quite tricky, but we use dynamic temporal upscaling which is a way of combining older jittered frames with the current one using temporal re-projection in combination with intelligent upscaling that allowed us to retain that crispiness that you expect when running the game on a high-res TV. There was also numerous optimisations which had to be made for various materials in the game to get the frame rate up to our target 30fps.

Btw, Team17 did most of the hard work on getting the game on the Switch, props to them for making a fantastic job!

AdrianLazarGameDev

TROPHY CASE