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Tenshu General: Small-scope RTS – a New Trend or Not Possible?

December 24, 2015 — by Industry Contributions

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ContributionsDevelopmentGame DevelopmentIndieOnlinePostmortem

Tenshu General: Small-scope RTS – a New Trend or Not Possible?

December 24, 2015 — by Industry Contributions

Two veteran RTS players create a company to capture the excitement of hardcore RTS and bring it to a wider audience. A few weeks after their successful Steam release they look back at their original goals and discuss if it is possible to make a small-scope game in a genre that is dominated by elaborate and highly developed flagship titles. The studio’s executive producer Casper Bodewitz shares the experience. 



Where it started: “Who’s in?”

It started as an evening hobby for a group of friends “building games”, talking about ideas and starting on numerous projects. After a few years of progress and great fun we sat down together and asked ourselves: “If we want to create an actual game which people we don’t know will enjoy playing and pay money for, who’s in?”.

Two of us had full-time employment, and one just started his own IT company. During some intense, frank and productive nightly discussions we expressed the commitment each of us would be able to put into the project. We wrote down how long we wanted to invest our time into making an actual game. One of the friends decided to cheer us up from aside and offered moral support whenever possible. And so SmartArt Game Studio was born.

team
The SmartArt Game Studio was born out of a challenge.

Because we are all friends, we knew setting up the correct company structure and agreements was essential to remain friends, regardless how we fared with the project. We navigated this part quite well and had clearly expressed our expectations towards each other, and this proved to be a key success factor later.

We clearly expressed our expectations towards each other, and this proved to be a key success factor later.

Nailing down a concept

Of course the first step of the plan was: What kind of game are we making? Since RTS games are our common passion, it was a natural starting point. However, the scope for a full RTS for a two-man team working part time was not realistic in the given time frame of one year. Additionally, we found the challenge of creating depth whilst keeping gameplay simple too difficult to resist.

campaign_map







We set up the layers in the game in a way that we could always expand certain aspects if we felt there was depth missing in a particular mechanic. This approach served us very well when it was time to nail down the final game features and crunch time demanded tough decisions: it meant we could easily add and subtract features.

When it came to choosing a theme and setting, we were quickly drawn to the awesomeness of samurais and the feudal Japanese era of Edo. Our artist and lead designer Joost is an adept of the martial art of karate and an amateur military historian, so it all fitted nicely together.

joosten_1

The central player experience was going to be conquering new lands for the emperor from your Japanese castle, Tenshu, so here came the title: Tenshu General.

Production

Being our lead programmer I already had extensive experience in production, architecture and coding, so setting up an efficient and flexible production plan came fairly easy. The key goals were to keep status overviews and communication tooling lean. We used a combination of a project management tool called Basecamp, version control SVN and a regular weekly meeting. A more in-depth analysis can be read in my blog at Gamasutra

notes
The key goals were to keep status overviews and communication tooling lean.

A key issue that we addressed is to structure the creative process. Keep increments in mechanics and features small, so they can easily be tested. We limited brainstorm sessions to specific topics, and expanded them only when the production pipeline allowed it. One notable exception was when we did brainstorms just to increase motivation during moments where an inevitable grind in development was required. Maintaining motivation for a self-funded project not only benefits the end result, but also serves for a good work/life balance.




code
Maintaining motivation for a self-funded project also serves for a good work/life balance.

The engine we chose was a Java 2D engine called Slick2D (we didn’t know at the time, but it turned out to be the basis on which Minecraft has been built as well). Choosing this gave us a strong starting point to achieve a cross-platform game for PC, Linux and Mac. Rendering was done through a link with the OpenGL framework. One thing we encountered much later when we got to release on Steam was that the support for our OpenGL version was not 100% fault free on all combinations of Windows and graphics cards. One of the important points to keep in mind when developing for a PC/Windows platform.

Achieving the fun factor

As we had set ourselves a fixed timeframe of a year to finish the game, we kept a constant eye on the progress of the level of fun in the game. When we finally felt ready for it, we set up a beta test amongst a wide range of friends with various degrees of interest in gaming. From hardcore and board game to non-gamers. The days leading up to this crucial test were very intense and we only achieved a good AI balance one day before the beta.

We set up a beta test amongst a wide range of friends with various degrees of interest in gaming. From hardcore and board game to non-gamers.

So we were obviously nervous as we always presented this adventure as a genuine and serious attempt at an actual game that people would buy. During the beta, our testers brought their own laptops and we set up various other PCs to validate as many platforms as we could.

We provided everybody with questionnaires so we had a solid structure to analyse the test results. To our great excitement the test went very well and generally speaking the feedback was consistent. The key points were:







- “Once you get into the game, it is fun and challenging on certain maps.”
- “We like the clean art style.”
- “The user interaction could be improved.”
- “We want more of this gameplay!”
- “Hardcore players will be looking for more of the traditional RTS features.”

Our favourite comment of this beta was that from our key supporter and hardcore RTS fan who congratulated us and said “It’s a bloody game!”. We knew the polish phase certainly required some work, but the core of the game was there, which was a great feeling after nine months.

tg_campaign_complete_blue
“It’s a bloody game!” - said our key supporter and hardcore RTS fan after the test.

Getting the game out

Once we applied additional polish based on our beta, we knew that we had to focus on the process of getting the game to the audience. We also knew that this was the area where we lacked the most knowledge and experience. Knowing you have a learning curve ahead is important for setting yourself to correct expectations. Even if you have a good game, the chance of it being a smash hit are slim at best. So we decided on a two-way approach.

Firstly, we looked up from our desks and started to search around: who we could find that had experience and could possibly help us with these next steps. We went to the GDC Europe in Cologne which was close to where we lived, and spent the money to make the most of this opportunity. Along with attending useful sessions we went to talk to the guys from GOG to get feedback on our game. They were really cool and helped us tremendously by validating some of our thoughts and also confirming it was not a hardcore title, but had potential. We asked if they would publish us, but they kindly declined as the game did not really fit their audience. With a bag of additional PR and marketing knowledge we went on to phase two of our approach.




“We asked if they would publish us, but they kindly declined as the game did not really fit their audience.”

Phase two was to find a small platform to get the game out and, at the same time, start a Greenlight campaign. The goal was to get as much experience as possible with releasing a game and interaction with our audience. We decided on releasing on Desura since entry into the platform was easy and it had a respectable size at that point. The title did well, we got good reviews and some sales. Unfortunately later Desura went bankrupt and we lost some money there. However, through our networking efforts we were picked for two bundles and together with a steady Greenlight campaign we managed to get selected for release on Steam. This was obviously an exciting new step for us.

Riding the Steam train

Because we already had some feedback, reviews and audience, when we started the preparations for our Steam release, we first sat down to make a list of things we could add and do better for this step up. There are certainly players out there looking for a simple and elegant RTS, but we determined we had to do more to reach more of them and add at least one traditional RTS element, namely a campaign. The campaign feature also enabled us to address the initial hurdle some players experienced with getting the grip of the mechanics.

A campaign, a traditional RTS element has been added to reach a wider audience.

In order to attract the audience we brought in Mendel Bouman from Indietopia Games to help us with PR and marketing, social media and press. Together we compiled a comprehensive press package with a professional trailer. If your company is new to marketing, we can definitely recommend getting expert knowledge involved to maximize your chances.

Next step was choosing a release date. We checked out the dates that had little or no other (competing) games coming out, and together with the development planning for the additional features we set the date to the 1st of December.




Timing is very important, as we found out later - when close to the release date Valve announced the autumn sale that would be just leading up to our release date. This meant that when Tenshu General came out, many people had already spent their money on the discounted titles . There were also some big titles announcements after we set the date around the 1st.

Choosing a release date, we checked out the dates that had little or no other (competing) games coming out

Regardless of the suboptimal timing, the reception of the game has been quite good. People enjoy the game, most get the idea behind creating a small-scope RTS. We discovered people who normally don’t attempt an RTS having a go and getting enthusiastic about the genre, which is very gratifying for us. Obviously, people would like more content, and this is actually something we are looking at now, going through our list of features that didn’t make it, to see if it is feasible to add some extensions without upsetting the current balance of the game.

player graph

“All in all we hope other studio’s also get excited about this new market and expand the genre to bring the fun of RTS to more people”, the developers say. And Tenshu General can be purchased on Steam for $5.99. 

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