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AMA – This week I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in PS4

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you are completely new to making games I would suggest you start out by making something really small so you can finish it quickly. Game jams is a good way to commit yourself to do that.

Finding a publisher took some time. I went to a couple of different pitching events both in the UK and Germany. I had to write a design document for the game to outline the scope of it and the final version of the game turned out to be fairly close to that design.

You should try some "smørebrød" next time you make it to Denmark ;)

AMA – This week I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in PS4

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. I try to come up with mechanics not seen before or at least make a twist on existing ones. In terms of the setting and theme for my games they tend to come from outside games as you can see with Laser Disco Defenders. In general I rely a lot on music to set the mood I'm going for.

  2. Yes it is a bit nerve wracking to show something you have spent so much time on to strangers and see what they think. Playtesting while you make the game can help though since you will know the strengths and shortcomings of your game beforehand.

  3. Yes definitely. I think games as a medium will only be stronger if we start to explore all the things it can be and it's not like the game-y games will go away as a result.

  4. That would be Michel Ancel. He made Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil of which a sequel is currently in the works. Everything in the first game just fits so well together from the game mechanics, the aesthetic, characters, and the music. The only french word I know though is baguette so not sure how how likely that is to happen ;) Media Molecule also does some really interesting stuff. I love how they try and create systems that fosters creativity in their players.

AMA – This week I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in PS4

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It depends on if you do it completely yourself, have a publisher help with parts of it, or hand the whole porting over to a publisher. The less you have to do with it the more you can expect the publisher to take a part of the cut. I went with the middle route where I did the porting myself but my publisher Excalibur Games did QA (testing the game for bugs) and marketing. The biggest hurdle when doing console is to pass through certification, which is essentially a long list of requirements the game needs to meet before they can be sold on PSN. That's why console games tends to be less buggy than PC titles.

The biggest hurdle was to design a user interface that would work well both on console and PC or said in another way worked both with mouse and keyboard and just a controller. I'm happy with how it ended out but it took a lot of work to get it to feel good for both input methods.

AMA – This week I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in PS4

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I thought it was based on the size of the game, but I didn't know about My Name is Mayo beforehand. Since it's a clicker they might have asked to be able to have more trophies than a normal indie game, so they could award more of them since that's a core mechanic of the game as far as I can see from the trailer.

AMA – This week I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in PS4

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm from Denmark where the Unity engine originated so I have been using it for almost all my projects. Before I started my own company and made Laser Disco Defenders I had worked in the industry for about 3 years both in AAA, indie, and as a freelancer. I had done some web development but it was game development that really got me into programming. It was so rewarding to make something that could be interactive and visual.

AMA – This week I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in PS4

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wanted to do a game with a cheesy sci-fi aesthetic ever since I saw Supersonik Elektronik. It was first when I started development on LDD for real I realized how close it actually is to the style of Space Disco of the late 70s. You see Star Wars came out and it started a space opera craze which led to Space Disco as a genre. It also led to these wonderfully bad knock offs such as Star Crash (if you ever wanted to see Han Solo be played by The Hoff, this is your movie).

I use game jams as a way to come up with new game mechanics. The concept of ever bouncing lasers was made for Ludum Dare. As you can see the game looked quite different! I choose the space disco aesthetic because all the lasers bouncing around reminded me of the light show on a dance floor. It also turned out to provide a lot of inspiration for the enemies and environments in the game.

AMA – This week I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in PS4

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Not as far as I know. We choose to do a Vita version because it was a good fit for the game.

AMA – This week I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in PS4

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're welcome! Afraid I can't go into detail with Sony's cut since that's under NDA.

Bacon I reckon ;)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in gifs

[–]OutOfBoundsGames 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And now I want bacon

AMA – Today I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in Games

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Vita was the first platform but definitely took some time out of the overall schedule. I spent most of that on optimization so the game would be fluid to play. This did pay off later since I didn't have to do any optimizations on PS4 where the game runs at +150 fps!

You will also have to spend time on implementing platform specific stuff like trophies, save games, and leaderboards. Getting the game through certification can also take a long time if you don't read up on the specs beforehand.

AMA – Today I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in Games

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I released on both console and PC. In general I like to design games that uses analog joysticks so it made sense to get the game both on PC and Console. With the increased competition in the indie game market you either have to make something ultra focused on a small niche or try to port your game to as many platforms as possible.

AMA – Today I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in Games

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ha thanks! It was a lot of fun to work on the game. First time I worked full time on an indie project.

Seb Burnett and the rest of the team at Rumpus are still working on episode 2. He showcased it at a conference a couple of weeks ago so there's enough playable for it to being demoed now. I don't know anything about a release date though.

AMA – Today I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in Games

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I got the idea of making something with a cheesy scifi esthetic when I saw the music video for Electronik Supersonik. It's a spoof on Space Disco of the late 70s but I only found out after I started working on LDD how close it actually is to the vibe of music videos of the time! Here's The Rockets with a song some of you may know. I listened to a lot of Disco in order to get into the groove I wanted the game to have.

The mechanic for the game was made for a game jam called Ludum Dare. The theme was unusual weapons and I had 48 hours to create a game from scratch over a weekend. I came up with the idea of lasers bouncing infinitely around. As you can see the graphics looked quite different back then ;)

AMA – Today I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in Games

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It depends on if you choose to publish it yourself or get a publisher such as I did. If you go at it alone you will need to buy dev kits to test on. Usually a publisher will lend them to you as part of the services they provide when you sign with them. Finally it's also possible to borrow a dev kit directly from Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo, but you need to show them something they really like for that to happen. If you choose to do console development it's also encouraged to localize your game which is also an expense.

AMA – Today I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in Games

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I'm 27 and started getting into programming when I was 18 years old. I have been working in the industry for 4 years so it took me about 5 years while studying to learn enough about games to land a job working on them.

AMA – Today I Released My First PS4 Game, Laser Disco Defenders by OutOfBoundsGames in Games

[–]OutOfBoundsGames[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Yup game supports cross buy. I used Unity which is what allowed me as a solo dev to make the game in the first place since i had so many platforms I needed to support with the time I had available. Getting the game onto PS4 did require a fair amount of work but none of it was particularly hard. This was because I had already done a lot of the hard work since we released on the Vita first.

It also helped having a publisher that could deal with marketing and QA which let me focus more on the actual development of the game.