Tim makes things

The ramblings of dutch illustrator and game developer Hedgefield

Tag: Game Development

  • Hedgefield Quarterly Review 2021.1

    Hedgefield Quarterly Review 2021.1

    Hey there! In the Hedgefield Quarterly Review I look back at the work I did in the past three months, both as a diary for myself and a way to consistently update you on what I’m up to. I talk project details, achievements, and the highs and lows of self-employment. Come follow along!

    You can find older entries here.

    The first quarter of 2021 sure was a wild one! I started off by releasing a small game called WanderWoods….

    It’s a celebration of all the chill forest walks I’ve been on since the pandemic started. And in turn it made the walks more fun, because each time I’d spot something new that I wanted to add to the game.

    I used procedural generation with a few rulesets to generate the forest, but it’s real difficult to fully approximate the wild and random growth of nature with just that. So I’m looking forward to using an upcoming plugin that lets me hand paint details into the procedural environment. Until then I think I have to call this thing finished.

    Wireframing a new Immer experience

    This year I’m also continuing work on the Immer app. The first version of this reading app my friends are making is live in the dutch App Store, and now we’re looking to the future. I’ve been prototyping some new features and a bunch of UI interactions while the others focus on the next round of investments, so that hopefully next quarter we can go full steam on the next update.

    In the meantime I was also asked to be a WordPress release lead for version 5.7. This meant I had to wrangle all the design issues planned for this release and make sure they all got the attention they needed in a timely manner. I’ve been part of the WordPress design team for a few years now but I’d never been actively involved in a release cycle. Luckily 5.7 was a relatively small release so it was a nice opportunity to dip my toe in. I wrote about my experiences on the Yoast blog and I wrote a guide in the WordPress Handbook for others wanting to try the same thing.

    Then something started happening. Different ideas and plans and opportunities came together in a way that I had to take notice.

    It started with something completely unrelated. I was walking my dogs in the town I grew up in when I ran into an older man. He also had a dog, which usually means: make some awkward smalltalk while our dogs sniff eachother. But his first question caught me off-guard:

    “Are you from around here?”, he asked with earnest interest. Probably because he seemed to know just about everybody in the town center, which I noticed during the next half hour that we stood there talking. I explained that I was originally from here but had moved away long ago. He, on the other hand, had just moved back here after ten years in Spain, and now runs his own translation company from his monumental house in the town center. We proceeded to discuss travel, careers, and our life stories.

    He asked me “would you ever want to go back to doing your own thing?” “Sure,” I replied, “I mean I make a good living now with decent assignments, but…” and he nodded in agreement, getting what I was referring to; “Yeah, that desire never leaves you, huh.” I felt understood.

    Some weeks later I came across an online course about gamedev that wasn’t only about making a game – I feel like I’ve got a pretty good handle on that now – but also about the business and marketing aspects, things I generally shy away from. I do fine releasing small games on itch, but I came up with several projects over the years that got too big for me to execute alone, or in my free time only. And of course the prestige of having a game up on Steam sounds pretty good.

    Anyway, I dug into that course and found myself getting excited again about the possibilities. I drafted a list of the prototypes I have worked on in the last few years and together with some dev friends judged which one was the most viable. Out of that came a pretty cool and wild idea that I want to seriously develop and think could be a hit. Everyone I talk to about it gets excited too, so I feel like this is the time to act on it.

    As a sort of self-affirmation I finally added my company to the Dutch Game Industry Directory, and registered a Steam developer account. That felt pretty good.

    Now to work on the project pitch… more on that next time.

  • Kudos

    As you may know by now from my enthusiastic ravings, the HKU is a fantastic game design college, and I am happy to be a part of it every day. That is not to say it doesn’t have it’s flaws.

    This year, they completely overhauled the education system. There’s a lot of new staff, and all classes have been redesigned and rearranged. Before, we had four semesters of eight weeks with a number of courses and a project. Now, it’s two semesters with courses of varying durations integrated into the project. And so it could happen we get classes in project management four weeks after actually starting a project, and we have to build a game while hardly anybody knows how to script or model in 3D. But at least we’re really learning something. They’re trying to get us up to speed after last year, but it’s just all still a bit of a mess right now.

    And here it shows through that management may not be entirely in touch with the industry anymore. We’re being bombarded with ‘serious games’ and doing research research research, and oh yeah, learn how to work in teams. But nobody is too concerned with teaching us how to use the tools.

    That’s why I wanted to give a shout out to Dimme van der Hout, a former student now in charge of everything that has to do with the art side of things, and additionally he runs his own company – Monkeybizniz. I think it’s safe to say he is the most respected man on campus right now, because he’s practically single-handedly trying to fix the entire system. He is very passionate about quality assurance, so he’s organizing all sorts of courses to help us raise the bar on our artwork. If something sucks, he doesn’t mince words and just gives it to us straight (a far cry from some of the teachers we had last year). It’s good to finally have someone who has his shit together and knows what he’s doing. He is by no means the only one, but he’s the most prominent figure for us.

    And I wanted to give special mention to some other former students that are helping us with the project; Paul, Erik and Ferdi from De Monsters. I had a chance to sample their project management software called PEF at the graduation exposition last week, and I’ll tell ya: you’re gonna want this product. It’s built on Adobe AIR, and really makes managing a project and it’s files between all team members an easy and fun task. It looks and feels like something Adobe designed. So keep an eye out for the PEF beta sometime soon.