Interview with Adam Ellis Today we present you with the second in our series of developer interviews.
Adam Ellis is one of our quest designers.
Thanks for taking the time to do this, we’ll try and keep it quick so you can get back to work! As a quest-writer, what does the full process of creating a quest entail?
It varies slightly from quest to quest.I usually start with an idea or a map. If I start with a map, for example, I’ll develop ideas based on how that map works. Sometimes I end up coming up with both at the same time. Once I know what I’m doing, then I need to script it.
Can you walk us through the process?
Surprisingly, it takes some time to do a map; or at least to do one well.The introduction of the larger map sizes actually makes it easier since I don’t have to create the illusion of an environment—I now have enough space to actually create one.It takes a bit of work to make the topography look decent but still be usable to players.And yes, I know that lots of the maps already in the game need a lot of work.
Scripting and debugging is definitely the most time-consuming part.Each spawn, every chest and its loot (I promise they have loot), all the pop-ups, and everything else has to be put in.Some quests are less complicated than others, but we are working with the programmers to get more advanced features put in to quests so we can make them much more interesting.
What do you look for in good quest ideas?
Primarily, the quest has to be fun.That’s why I like getting ideas from players—they often know fun way better than I do.I actually have a number of really good quest ideas in my Inbox that I intend to implement somewhat soon.Our players have some awesome ideas that I need to harass the programmers to make possible (or teach me how to write).Some of the ideas we get from players give us new ideas for quest mechanics, so keep them coming.The game will only improve from players’ input.
Is quest balance a big priority for you?
Oh yes.As lots of players have noticed, some quests aren’t quite possible at the levels they appear.And some of them are just plain crazy (the players know which ones I mean).One of the big things I’m going to be working on soon is readjusting almost every quest.We want to make them much better balanced and make them more fun.
We’re also working on improving the presentation of the overall story arc for the five (soon to be six) factions.
I know you helped write some of the new quests that feature the Undead, how was that process?
There was a lot of work that went into that which I didn’t even expect.I spent a while playing with the map editor to see what the new buildings and ground textures looked like in various ways.I even got a new computer here in the office so I can crank out some introductory quests for the Undead a bit quicker.So The Shadow have single-handedly improved my ability to make maps.I suppose I should thank them for that.
Are you working on any exciting quests right now?
My top priority is getting some Undead quests in for the near future.We want players to see how powerful they’re going to be.I’ve got a number of simple quests that are designed to showcase them, and those are almost finished, but they need a little more work so they can do the new faction justice.
After those, I’ve got to go through my Inbox and do the players a little justice as well by putting in some of their ideas.It’s nice to have more ideas than I have time—I don’t have to think of quests myself.
And now onto our ‘video game industry’ questions – Due to the overwhelming interest to work in the video game industry, we decided to take the chance to ask some of our employees what they think .
How did you get involved in the video game industry?
I actually started here at Silverlode as an Intern.My interview was actually pretty interesting; I sat down with Jason and told him how bad I am a RTS games.Did you know I can’t even beat the demo for Starcraft?He hired me anyway and actually had me try to get a feel for the game back in beta to see how noob-friendly it was.I hope I helped simplify it a little for new players.
Working for a startup company is interesting – employees get the opportunity to help out in a lot of areas of game development. What’s the most interesting task you’ve been given?
Heheh.What task haven’t I been given over the past few months?I’ve helped fold the booster boxes to ship them, I’ve tested countless features, I’ve even had to translate for our cleaning guy.The most interesting one, I guess, is when they ask me to stay up all night to help new players in chat when we run promos.There are players who think I never sleep.
Sleep? I’m sure I’ve heard that word before…Well, for our last question, what advice would you give to someone trying to get into the video game industry?
Get in early, be willing to start out lower than the peons, and do everything you’re asked to do and a little extra!
Thank you again for your time. We’ll let you get back to working on balancing those new quests!
Testing Tournaments "No!!!" -Our lead tester just got matched up against our CFO for the second tournament in a row.
"I'll give you a $15/hr raise if you can beat me!" -*Someone* in authority is pretty certain of his abilities.
"Do I get a raise if I beat you, Monk?" "No, but if you lose you get to keep your job..." -A tester "How'd you get 4 units of Dark Elf Magi!?!?!" -Me, after being ingloriously shut down by John in the Art department.
"Is the next tournament starting yet?" -Pretty much all of us, right after losing.
"There's NO WAY you could have won without those spells!" "That's my whole strategy!" "Umm... Point remains guys, we're just testing tournaments right now... these aren't for real." The lead tournament programmer responds to our head tester and CEO's conversation
As you might be able to tell, we've been having a blast around here testing out tournaments (still a few bugs to work out, but we're getting there), and inter-departmental tensions are at an all-time high. I just got beaten by John in Art - he managed to pull 4 dark elf magi! My single unit of Treants went down first, and after that the rest of my army fell pretty quickly (I don't normally play nature).
I don't think I'd ever realized what a competitive bunch we are! Put in an organized tournament and *wham*, smack talk galore. The losers are generally quite sore, the winners are generally quite immature, and treaties have rapidly come to ban the use of testing commands like 'F9', which instantly kills the selected unit (only on our test builds, never in the released game).
It's been interesting playing in sealed deck tournaments, because so much of the tournaments relies upon being able to craft a solid strategy with cards that were given to you randomly. Also, it's been very interesting to see the re-prioritization of spell usage. An earlier battle between myself and the CEO resulted in him deploying a single cavalry unit and blasting me with as many spells as he could.
Kiting aside, it's interesting to see what strategies are developed on-the-fly. Sometimes you only get one or two units you want, and a lot of filler. Sometimes you get a healer or two, and hope that a tank is coming soon.
Needless to say, tournaments are shaping up to be amazing - and we're all enjoying them immensely. We're working as hard as we can to get them to you, the players, as soon as we can! We'll be bringing you more about tournaments as development progresses ~
Origins Wrap Up Apologies for missing the last show update. I lost my voice late Saturday showing Saga to new player #973. I’m not sure how that kept me from blogging, but that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.
It has been seven years since I last showed a game at the Origins show and I can report that not much has changed. Sure there were new products on display, some that I didn’t even recognize, but overall the players were just as excited as ever to play their favorites and search out new products to bring home. Among the best of the new products of course was Saga.
We had many players stop by the booth who had seen a review in the past or were dragged over by their friends. It was rewarding to see their eyes light at the same time as a bulb did over their heads when they started to grasp the scope of Saga and imagine the possibilities. Many ran off with a copy of the game only to return hours later with more friends in tow. Saga really is a lot more fun when you quest with friends.
Amazingly enough the feature players were most impressed with was the anonymous help chat. They were astounded watching question after question get answered quickly by the community without the condescending attitude they are used to in many other MMO’s. I couldn’t have been prouder of our players.
When I get back to the office tomorrow, I will post some additional shots of new and current players, for now I leave you with this shot of Casey, owner of SagaUnits, trying to “catch them all”.
Interview with Mark Owen While Slava's off at Origins, the rest of us have been busily working away, preparing for the Undead and other exciting new features. Here we get a behind-the-scenes glimpse on how the new movement algorithms were developed and what's still to come. Dennis: What were your goals in re-writing the troop movement algorithms? Mark: Well, up to this point, everything in SAGA had been handled on a unit basis. For example, when you would move around a lake or around a building, the entire unit would move, but the troops themselves would often collide with mountains or buildings. We wanted it to look a little more natural.
Dennis: So how did you tackle this process? Where did you start? Mark: Usually with designing any new system, I'll start with research. One of the perks of developing video games is that research doesn't always entail reading through textbooks - it's simply going and playing other games. I did read through several articles on systems like this, but I also went through and played many different games. After watching how a lot of other games had done it, I started to create prototypes and finally came up with a system that I really liked.
Dennis: What was the most challenging part of this project? Mark: One of the difficult parts of it is that there are things that are very unique about SAGA. For example, as units move around obstacles, troops need to not only move away from the obstacles, but they also need to maintain their formation. The most difficult part, however, is that at any given time in SAGA there are going to be hundreds of troops on the map - so I needed to create an algorithm that was efficient enough that we wouldn't lose performance.
Dennis: What features are you working on now? Mark: For the movement architecture, there are adjustments that will be made. For example, right now the troops tend to move very quickly into their positions, where I'm going to make it so that they go a little bit slower, so it looks a little more natural. Also, right now we're working to improve the AI of the enemy troops, which will be announced a little bit later on, so we have many aspects if that that we'll be working on.
Dennis: There are a lot of people out there who want to work on video games, so we figured we'd ask our staff about working in the video game industry. What is your favorite part of working as a video game programmer? Mark: There are actually two things that I enjoy a lot. The first is that with every video game there are very unique problems to be solved, and I really enjoy finding solutions to those problems. The other thing is that in many cases you'll spend a lot of time working on something trying to get it to work - to fix something. Sometimes you'll be struggling for a while, but then you'll get it working, you get to see it running, everyone gets to see it running, and once it's in the game, it's there. Every time you log into the game or play through a battle, you get to see your work.
Dennis: And your least favorite part of being a video game programmer? Mark: One of the hardest things is that we all have a vision of what we want to be able to do, of all the things that we want to accomplish. But due to time, resources, or even our own experience we run into restrictions. That can be frustrating sometimes. You get to a point where you have to say, "well, we'd like to do everything, but we have to just do this." That's probably the most frustrating part of it.
Dennis: What surprised you most about the job? Mark: The thing that surprised me the most is that when I came into the industry, I had kind of an idea of the things I wanted to work on and the things I would enjoy the most. In truth, some of those things I didn't enjoy all that much. The things that I thought I would enjoy the least I really started to love doing. Dennis: Do you have any examples? Mark: I had never worked on an MMO before, and when I started working, I thought "Oh, well I'll enjoy working on some of the AI, some of the mechanics of the game - but I don't know if I'll really want to deal with a lot of the network stuff, per se." In reality, I've come to enjoy that the most, and it's actually become the most interesting to me.
Dennis: Thank you for your time, we'll let you get back to work!
Thanks for reading, next time we'll be interviewing Adam Ellis, one of our quest writers.
Origins Day 2 Yesterday was the first day that the dealer room was open to the public. With the Saga booth positioned next to the door to the CCG room, we expected a lot of traffic. What we didn’t expect were some of the very strange people who stopped by.
I think the guy in the Pokemon suite may be a Saga player.This peculiar quintet that stopped by to steal some of my shirts and claimed to enjoy the game as well. From left to right, Trevoria, Greshish, Many Arrow, Paragrin. That’s SagaUnits behind the weird bunch. Many other players stopped by who escaped my lens, but there is always tomorrow.
Origins Report Day 1 I arived at the Origins convention center with Casey from SagaUnits who volunteered to leave his online world and help demonstrate SAGA to 35,000 gamers. We found our booth at the opening to the CCG area and realized we had our work cut out for us.
While a dumpster in the booth has a certain charm, we elected instead to put up some art that players could enjoy. Large vertical posters were printed for use to adorn the back of our space.
The booth still seemed a bit dark and sparse, but after a trip to the local WalMart and getting my site back after blinding myself with one of the flood lights, the setup was complete.We are both looking forward to four fun filled days, lost voices and sore feet.
I will be posting reports nightly along with plenty of pictures, hopefully catching some Saga players who stop by to lend a hand.
Fun at the office As part of my continued efforts to expose players to the culture inside a game studio (I have been told that is all I am allowed to expose), I wanted to share these fortune cookies that our intern Sam made for us. You may remember Sam from her comics earlier in the year.
The game industry is a great place to work. The hours are long and sometimes things don't go your way. Stress is a huge factor, especially when you feel you let your community down with a bug that slipped through. The rewards however are well worth it, and the culture helps keep us sane.
More of the SAGA family. Well howdy ho there. I hope you are all enjoying SAGA and everything else that has taken a back seat to you playing it. I wanted to take some time to recognize some of the folks here at SAGA that keep the wheels on the bus going around.
This is Dennis, yes that Dennis. Anyone playing the game has seen his name appear in the help chat. He's our Community Manager or something awesome like that. He speaks French and enjoys long walks on the beach.
Have a good one.
Are you busy?? Hey whatcha doing June 25-29?? If you have time and are in the area come down to the Origins Game Fair. You know you want to so just do it already. You know we'll be there. I know this changes everything right? Come down and meet some of the crew. Slava will be there and who wouldn't want to see him. You can volunteer some time and get a free pass and room. So do it.
John
hey you wanna trade? I have 500 gold I will trade for 1000 gold, I'd even take 3000 stone. Any takers???
So how you doing? You know, we don't talk enough. I really feel alone, why don't you chat anymore?? Is it me? What have I done?? Let me know how I can be a better game for you. I really want to be. I'm willing to do the work for "us".
Just a reminder to use the in game chat. It's a cool way to connect with other players and learn a trick or two.
John
P.S Me and Dennis got our behinds handed to us today from some heroic quest. It was brutal. I hope you are all having better luck.
Hey EA, we've already made this game. Just read a great article about a new game EA is coming out with. It's going to be blazing new ground or something. Well maybe not so so new ground since we've already done that. Check it out here. I think you'll love the comment by el_cheezer. Thanks el_cheezer, you rock.
Thanks to all of you for helping us really blaze new ground in the RTS world.
The wind beneath our wings A good Friday to you all. I was thinking it's been a while since I posted about some of our team here. So I thought I'd throw up a picture of our fearless Director of Marketing, Slava(the one on the left. The guy on the right is Mark, he's too cool for school). Slava heads up the marketing here at Saga. I will have to say he's done a pretty good job. Look you're here right. It was probably through one of Slava's genius marketing ideas that made you want to play Saga so bad in the first place. So, if you meet Slava or chat with with him on the boards tell him thanks for bringing Saga into your life.
GAMA If any of you are in Vegas this week for the GAMA trade show track down the Saga guys and make sure they are behaving themselves.
The Undead SAGA just announced a new faction. The Undead warriors are fearless and strike terror into the hearts of their enemies. Their abilities and tactical strengths will reflect conventional traits drawn from undead mythology with some surprises thrown in. Read the full press release here.
Do you have a hard time understanding?? I know I do. So, for all of you out there like myself Saga is coming to the rescue. The new Saga manual has been uploaded. It will answer all of your life's questions. Some question you may or may not find answers for are. Does Slava really like Piña Coladas and getting caught in the rain? Do they still call John Captain Awesome? You might also find some great info about Saga. So go check it out.
John
the secret is out This is the new Saga logo. What do you think about it?
I have a secret Ok I have a secret, about Saga. I want to tell you guys sooooo bad, but I can't. I just wanted you to know that I wanted to tell you.
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND PLAYING SAGA!
A Billion Game Sites, give or take a million I've come to the realization that the internet is huge. I mean really it's big, and there are at least 253 web sites out there. Of those 253 sites a billion of them are game sites. All billion of these games site are wanting Saga to be listed on their site. Being the loving, service oriented person that I am. Really it comes down to the fact that I just care. I'm trying to fulfill each site owners dream of having Saga listed on their site. So here is my question for all you so called gamers. Is that an ok term to use? Will the non gamers be offened by that? The last thing I want to do is exclude people from the joy of playing Saga. Oh, my question, where do you go to find games? Second question. If I were to make Saga not only the worlds first collectible MMORTS game, but also the first collectible MMORTS MLM game. Would you be in my downline? On that note if you tell 3 friends about this blog you will feel really happy about yourself. You should give it a try.
John
Just to make sure you know that we really wont make this a mlm game, At least not until we can come up with a good comp plan and a line of Saga vitamins and lotion.
Get down... Just a warning here. I didn't want to post this. It was totally Slava's idea just in case anyone asks.
Ok, for all of you out there who have been holding off playing Saga. You have been officially called out. Slava, our Marketing Director, my boss, yes the same boss I beat in Saga, anyways he has a new blog. In this blog he is showing you that yes; you can play Saga for free and still have fun. Now, my wife still encourages you to pay for the full version, she would like to make the mortgage payment, but this is a great way to feel us out. So, for those who have been holding out, come on already get on the Saga express and take a ride. Sorry for that last bit. I've been watching old WKRP reruns. Gotta love Dr. Fever. I guess you'd be wanting the new blog site huh? http://sagafree.blogspot.com/
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