Earlier today we talked to Positech’s Cliff “Cliffski” Harris about his new game, Gratuitous Space Battles. There was also some discussion of a Saddam Hussein sim, the pitfalls of outsourced indie art, and the problems of small-playerbase multiplayer.
RPS: Hello there.
Cliffski: Ahoy!
RPS: Shall we talk Gratuitous Space Battles?
Cliffski: I think we should
RPS: Right, tell me a little bit of what to expect – I’ve not seen anything beyond the videos.
Cliffski: It’s a bit of a hybrid game, it’s part ship design, part pre-battle planning, and part interactive cut-scene space battle viewer thing. Basically its like a big space battle simulator where you can go back to the start of the battle and re-jig things and try to correct for why your fleet got destroyed. In gameplay terms, its a sort of tower-defence game, but with moving spaceships you designed.
RPS: Interesting. And it seems to fit with what’s going on at the moment – there’s a lot of tower defence variant ideas turning up now, and strategy variants generally. Did you find yourself inspired by anything like that in particular?
Cliffski: Well to be honest, the game (as usual) was inspired by anything *but* games. Originally the game was a ‘virtual Saddam Hussein’ simulation, believe it or not. I got carried away doing the code for the map. And then I was reading this awesome book about D-day, and how it is suspected that the allies won because Eisenhower made all these awesome plans, and then just let the guys in the field wing it on the day, whereas Hitler micro-managed and delayed the response. And I thought “that would be a good game”. Imagining the Allied generals biting their fingernails watching it all go pear shaped… I look on it as a real strategy game, not a tactics game.
RPS: Saddam Hussein sim, like a dictator sim? The opposite of Democracy. eh?
Cliffski: Yes, it was like the opposite of my ‘Democracy’ game. You were Saddam, and you had to crush dissent, balanced against angering your foreign oil export partners. I’ll still make it at some point. Being an evil dictator is just a finely balanced sim game.
RPS: I designed a dictator pen and paper RPG when I was a kid, based on old military hardware annuals and maps of the world. I forced my mate Tim to play it, but he preferred D&D. Definitely some mileage in that idea, however.
Cliffski: It’s amazing nobody has done it, or done justice to it.
RPS: So how does GSB play out then? I assume there’s some larger campaign?
Cliffski: You assume wrong. That’s in some ways, the whole point. Take a game like Galciv II or Sins of a Solar Wossname… they take AGES before you build up enough resources and enough ships and money to actually have a big space battle. GSB is like spacebattle porn, without all the foreplay of empire-building. Although it would work well if it had a traditional 4x built around it.
RPS: So you get to build what – individual ships, fleets? And let them duke it out?
Cliffski: Yup, there is a ship builder, all the ships are modular, and the game is basically a series of battles against AI fleets, where you place formations of ships, give them basic orders etc. You can also challenge other players online, in a sort of asynchronous PBEM style.
RPS: Ooh, excellent, I used to love those.
Cliffski: Well I think its the indie holy grail. No indies do anything multiplayer because lets face it, we sell a handful of copies so nobody is online. Asynch PBEM solves that entirely.
RPS: Did you realise that was how it was going to work early on?
Cliffski: No not at all. The design morphed as I went along. I’m sure it will morph more during beta too.
RPS: Is that generally how you work, allowing it to grow organically?
Cliffski: Oh absolutely. No game I’ve ever made has stuck even vaguely to it’s design, although Democracy was closer than most. The first version of Kudos was set in Slough, and was meant to be about psychology and fighting off insanity and depression.
RPS: There need to be more urban insanity games, it’s not well explored in game design. GSB seems pretty heavy on the art assets compared to your other games, was that a big issue?
Cliffski: It was in terms of cost, because I use a proper artist for stuff like that. Although I end up tweaking and fiddling and adding lots of stuff myself. It all takes ages.
RPS: How do you go about finding an artist for such a specific task?
Cliffski: I spent ages trying to find the right guy, got a lot of quotes from different people, ended up going with someone who was pretty expensive, based upon how detailed his work was. Most 3D artists are used to doing low poly stuff, and I use pre-rendered sprites so they can go ballistic with the poly count. I did experiment with off-the-shelf models, but they were shit.
RPS: But is there like an secret indie dev talent market for this stuff? Or do you have to track down specific artists?
Cliffski: Well indies really do talk to each other regarding recommendations. Finding someone who is good is easier than finding someone who is good and also reliable. Artists that work for indies are often very unreliable. I ended up getting my nebula artist by trawling Google for images and finding some guy on a forum working on a freeware version of Masters Of Orion.
RPS: So how has the experience of this ranked against the development of your other games – harder/easier/more or less fun?
Cliffski: Much, much, much, harder, because the code is awesomely sprawling, and I’m doing it all. Much much much more fun, because I get to play with exploding spaceships all day. I’m sure for some people, some days I have the best job in the world. I literally sit there and design huge laser cannons for space cruisers. What could be more fun? I can also go see the Star Trek movie on expenses, legitimately.
RPS: So what’s next in the process, you’re talking about a beta? What flavour of beta is it?
Cliffski: This is meant to be relatively low key. I need to get people playing the game, because its a game where everyone has ideas on what direction it should go in, and I’m all ears. It might be in beta while, the same way Mount & Blade and Dwarf Fortress worked.
RPS: Will everyone be able to get at the beta, or just pre-orderers?
Cliffski: Right now its pre-orderers. I’m not a big fan of open betas. I joined the Pirates Of The Burning Sea one, and I quit after a day, without leaving any feedback. I think if its a pre-order beta, you get more of a dedicated playerbase who will help improve the game through suggestion.
RPS: Yes, that’s probably true.
You can pre-order Gratuitous Space Battles here. And we’ll be investigating it more thoroughly later this week.
Obligatrailer:
Related Stories:
Hmm. So if there’s no campaign or somesuch, how exactly will the game manage to hold up singleplayer interest in the long run? Anything to keep the player coming back for more? Achievements, maybe? And yes, I do know those things are much hated in the internets or by “serious” gamers or whatever, but it could quite possibly motivate some folks to go and fight those wonderful space battles over and over again. (I have to admit I do like Demigod’s achievements. Or rather I would like them if they weren’t broken.) Plus, it might feel like a more “honest” way to keep the lone player playing than a campaign (which I wouldn’t be too fond of either). Ah well…
Impressions, beta people!
@ArtyArt
There are mutliple difficulty levels for each battle type, and it looks like there’s an unlock system linked to winning battles and whatnot, so there’ still a “progression” of sorts with reason to continue playing to collect snazzy new weapons and such.
But can you NAME your ships? ;D
@Shalrath
Yes you can, you can name the class as well as the individual ship.
If the ships are pre-rendered sprites, why not go for a 2D artist? (instead of a 3D artist as it seems cliffski did, given the talk of poly count).
Cliffski, you should whip up a syntactical casus bellum generator “the [unjustifiable aggression] of the [filthy tentacle beasts] has led them to [pollute our space] with their [noxious pseudopodia]. This will not [stand]!”
What does he mean with PBEM multiplayer? You set your formation online and let it waite for an other player to do the same against you and then even if you’re offine they fight? And you get replays or something?
Pls explain someone, it looks pretty cool, and multiplayer makes things always more fun I think.
Eh! Spent some time designing ships and putting them up for the first battle, and the game crashes when I click to start the battle. That’s… disappointing.
Went to windowed mode, and it worked. Until I destroyed my first Cruiser, at which point it crashed again. I suppose I can’t expect much else in a beta, but I’m wondering if I’m ever going to get to play a challenge before the game is released :x
PBEM – Play By E-Mail. Basically, you’d e-mail a small file to eachother (Or just one way, I suppose it depends on how its setup) and then the results would be run for you. Since it seems to be a give orders then click for cinematic game, the results of all your choices can be easily put into one file for each player and then the game can load those file(s) to output the battle results.
Does raise the question if two separate clients would play out the battle in exactly the same way though, different system specs and all that jazz. (I remember one of the puzzles in 7th Guest being harder to win on faster computers)
there is a tragically common bug which is fixed thus:
go to options, turn off ‘menu battle’ and then quit to the menu, then exit the game, and restart.
it works fine then. Its all my fault :(
i am agree with vinrath, if this had a meta game, it’d be pretty awesome, as it is it seems a bit thin, it would be good if it was like a list of strategic battles throughout a whole war and winning earlier battles made later battles more or less difficult and stuff. but in the pbem game you and your friend would be fighting all the games at the same time meaning, it’s pretty complicated but i think it’d be awesome.
AI War and GSB all in one week? Nerdgasm. (If nothing else, I’m a sucker top-down pre-rendered sprites set in SPAAAACEE.)
Can’t wait for the retail release Cliffski.
Nimic,
Could this be the game you mentioned? Critical Mass. It was rather fun.
Taillefer,
Crikey! I can’t be completely sure before I try it out, but it certainly looks familiar.
Cheers!
Indeed. I’m looking forward to it.
Speaking of cash monies, I’m currently holding back on $5 for Time Gentlemen, Please!, so $20 is very much out of my price range. Contracting has many, many perks, but constant (or even assured) cash flow is not one of them. Also, I have kids who use roughly the GDP of Ireland in diapers every week, so most of the money I manage to grab away from people ends up being stolen by Darth Poop, evil dictator of crap.
(He’s an enemy in that new MMO, by the way. He speaks in rhyme and performs nude physical comedy. He drops purples, though, or so I hear.)
@Vinraith
I still think the battles could get a little tired after awhile without any thing spurring you on. I just wonder how random the space battles are if they change nearly everytime it could be fun, but if its something under that number well it could get old after awhile. One of the things I loved about Democracy that it was different every time.
@Vinraith: “Would Defense Grid be any less fun if it didn’t have that tacked-on story line?”
Arguably, yes. At least for the first encounter with the game, as you’re getting to know the game mechanics and effective tactics, the AI assistant’s speech and personality are a major draw. They’re also a great vehicle for hinting at the game’s backstory and the nastiness of the aliens. Now that I’ve played the game and am exploring the challenge mode, I don’t have any further use for the game’s threadbare narrative, but it was genuinely appealing on my first runthrough.
Naming your own ships, excellent!
Prepare to be ravaged by the ROU Jello Shot, and GCU Casual Application Of Farce.
I had no qualms buying into this Gratuitous Space Beta, as I was set to buy the game regardless.
It’s rather good fun, despite the rough edges. My biggest issue at the moment is probably that the initally learning curve is a touch steep. As far as I can tell, the first battle is unwinnable with the stock ships and substantial tweakery is required to get that first taste of victory. Still, failing so many times makes that first taste all the sweeter.
@ JonFitt: Pleasingly, the auto-generated ship names are already very Culture-y (if not lifted straight from Banks).
If I knew this was going to work on my Eee I’d have bought it already. Since it might not, I guess I’ll have to wait till the demo’s out.
btw, reminds me a bit of nodedef: http://www.node-def.com/ it is in free beta and you have to design your own virus to let it battle against other online players. Much fun, only very few players tho, my guess is GSB will de quickly because it ain’t as much fun to built spaceships if the only way to test them is a cpu AI, nut maybe PBEM is a good solution, let’s hope so.
This game is bloody hard and gratuitously brilliant.
Maybe I can get my friends to play this. There’s something romantic about painstakingly designing your fleet and sending it off to die. It’s like raising a child, I imagine. You even get to name it.
This game is crying out for a 4x campaign mode.
The biggest problem I have is that you come into every mission with no idea what to expect until you send them all out there and then find out that they missile heavy and you have no point defense. You can’t plan for a battle with no intelligence about the enemy, unless I missed that bit.
And it takes a very long time to get to the menu even on my beefy computer, boo.
I will certainly be looking out for Sadam Husim in the future, will probably pre-order this once I get my F@#$@# internet back at home.
As far as a possible meta-game goes I think it would be enough just to have a commander stat page that had a ton of stats as, how many ships you’ve lost, how many ships you’ve destroyed, how many battles you’ve won and lost. How many commands you’ve given (pre-battle) how many ships you designed and then have stats for each ship design (how many times they’ve been destroyed how many times they’ve destroyed another ship of type X ect) It would be pretty easy to get those stats from the battles and would provide a sort of meta-game as you attempt to build your stats ;) Then you just make a way of put your stats online maybe through the website or as a forum sig or something so people can brag about how good (or horrible) they are at being commander.
This game reminds me most of Battleships Forever http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleships_Forever Which allows you to create your own ships and use them in sandbox mode. Only in this game you can actually control them as well as design them.
Kommissar Nicko – I would think that is NOTHING like raising a child since the fleet gives you no feed back and you have some actual control over it ;P Raising a child is more like you tell them X Y Z then do A B C and don’t realize until AFTER they’ve F@#$@ed up that you were right about X Y but wrong about Z Because you’re human too and can make mistakes. Where as building a fleet you have control over every little detail and when it ends up being exploded it is no one’s fault but your own (and if your kid gets exploded it is generally their own fault and there was nothing you could do about it but trying to warn them against blowing themselves up)
Ah yes, naming my own ships will make me by this!
I have to say I love the idea of the petty arguments leading to war. I like Submojo’s suggestion, but another might be to have a mini competition where everyone comes up with say 100 petty reasons for a conflict and use that randomly as an opener to each battle. For example, “The Jello Empire is outraged to learn of the jelly-wrestling competition that you held on Tau Ceti III last week. Their disgust at your disrespectful treatment of jelly has boiled over into WAR!”
How about a war fought over how many licks it takes to get the center of a tootsie pop :P
I may have missed this somewhere, but I’ll ask anyhow – are the battles randomized enough to make it worth replaying, or is it just a series of pre-determined fleets to work through?
The biggest problem I have with tower defense games is that the levels are always the same, so once the puzzle is solved, there’s little incentive for me to go back again. If they were pretty random challenges I’d be a lot more inclined to spend more than $5 on them – here’s hoping this is one of them!
What? No “Say more words?” I’m outraged.
No dictator sim? What d’you call Tropico, then?
Save your ire for something that’s actually over-priced, ie. Modern Warfare 2.
Overpriced? Hah! Try living in other parts of the world. MW2 is *still* cheap in comparison to most games sold outside US/UK (and even the EU). And again, way to miss the point that it’s not the cost that is the issue, it’s the unfinished product and the idea that you have to pay the full RRP for it in that state.
@Cliffski, you’re now $23.84 CND less poor. You don’t have to eat cat food any more, disaster averted yay!
I got about halfway through this article still wondering why Cliff Bleszinski was doing indie games suddenly and why everyone was shortening his name.
As far as a nebula artist, I am not a lawyer, but the fourth paragraph of http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html seems to imply that you could use genuine NASA nebula pictures if you want. I imagine you looked in to this, am I interpreting it incorrectly?
@ JimmyJames:
At the moment it’s a series of pre-generated fleets to work through. I’d hazard that a fair chunk of the game’s longevity is going to come from the PBEM challenges, but a randomised battle generator would be a nice addition.
@ Ashbery76:
It really isn’t. The campaign certainly needs a bit more meat tying it together though, perhaps something along the lines of the meta-game Vinraith is suggesting.
Shouldn’t it be Obligo-trailer?
As someone who loved ROTJ just of the few seconds of Star Destroyers and Mon Cal cruisers slugging it out I can safely say that $20 on its way to you as soon as I get home Cliffski.
Looks fun and ’splodey! The laser strewn battles look great. I agree with others that it’d be nice to have some sort of goal/progression system, since I’d probably play a lot of single player.
The trailer needs a bit more bombast, but I suppose that might not be ‘final’. Were the ‘wipe’ edits a deliberate Star Wars homage?
14.95$ at most. anything more and I’m turned off by it, for an indie game at least.
Based on the video, I’d be happy with 15$ (and, 20$ for mount and blade). A shame, I’ll have to wait until a price drop.
I’d love to see a Tom Francis diary (a lá Gal Civ 2) detailing his Gratuitous Space Battles in GSB and the stories he would conjure up to justify the battles. Would make a great piece of marketing.
I have buy the game, and I have started to explore it. I feel like one of the first players of Mount & Blade, using a early version of something that later was great.
GTB (or 678 if you use a hard-to-see sci-fi-ske font) is a game where you visit the main menu often. The gameplay hang from there, like no other game ever.
My first battle whas somewhat disapointing, because (on my copy) theres not battle sounds. I could be because on the void of space you can’t have sounds. Or because Cliff can’t or don’t want these sounds, or because my computer can’t handle the load. Either way, I miss these sounds.
I like the battles, feel how I suppose a homeworld-ish battle sould look.
For a game where the inteface is the first thing and most important, is not good enough. Numbers are show as …number. I would have been better to use something more apparent, like a gold rock for x1000 and a silver rock for x100 and and a copper rock for x1. 140, 60.. all these number look the same, with others numbers around, etc.
The interface for drag and drop ships may benefict from some enhancement. I really miss a option to “place and clone” to place a serie of ships fast (like 60). Having to place manually 60 ships from the table is tedious. The table where you pick the ships use only the hull icon, so is “misterious” to pick the right one ship. Only the “onrollover” title that appear wen you place there the icon show what ship is what.
Battles start unceremoniously, that is Ok, but also end unceremoniously and thats less ok. Stats are again kind of a misterious numbers soup.
Everything is Ok, high quality, what you expect from a classy Indie developper. But Is beta, and it shows, or maybe is me.
@Arty:
Thing is, you want to try to beat each level with as small and cheap a fleet as possible. If you win, you get an amount of Honor Points, based on how cheap your fleet was.
So … If you beat a certain level with 5 cruisers at 2900 points each, and the max is 15k, you’ll get gew points. if you manage to beat the same level with 5 fighter wings worth 1200 each, and maybe one cruiser used as a carrier to repair fighters, that’s a lot less points and therefore a lot more honor. The campaign has some 8 or 10 levels with 3 difficulties each, some you won’t run out of things to do.
Just unlocking the estimated 50+ extra ship components, some 20 ship/fighter hulls, and playable races, you’ll have some experience.
Once you have them all, why not strive to perfection? I spent most of yesterday evening in the second “endless battle” challenge where the waves just keep coming. I made some 30.000 points with my initial ships, decided to use different ones … got to like 43.000 points after four tries. I posted that score online but the lowest one that’s showing in the online statistics is 85.000 … so it’s back to ship design *g*
The various races are nicely different from each other, with different special weapons (e.g. the Empire gets a better beam laser, Tribe has good short-range guns …) so even if you’ve won the entire campaign, it’s fun to just try the same level with a different fleet. The balance is not always perfect though: Using fighter squads instead of cruisers seems a bit too powerful in some of the levels that allow fighters.