The Poet’s Corner - The Scraps that became a Game
Welcome to the poet’s corner!
You can’t imagine how happy it makes me to welcome you to my humble blog once again. Last week a lot of you reached out to me personally, to tell me you were glad to see the blog back and that you liked the content of the previous post. It’s an honor to have you read this and makes writing it all that more special.
So without further ado, let’s get on today’s topic: How I used scraps to make a game.
Scraps. Unused assets. The “Yeah… that didn’t make it into the final game” things.
Anyone who has ever done any work knows, not everything you do becomes part of what you hand in. We actually learn this pretty early in life:
Ever done one? I did many!
Yeah… those took a while.
Don’t take me wrong! Calligraphy is a great skill to have, if it wasn’t for the pros we wouldn’t have all the awesome fonts we use in our electronics or the mind-blowing designs found in logos. However, the average person invests a lot of time and effort into learning it and ends up realizing they can communicate with horrible handwriting (yep, we all know a person), or working with a phone/computer where they don’t really use that knowledge a lot, much like knowing the names of Christopher Colombus’ ships.
(They are La Niña, La Pinta and La Santa María, in case you are interested)
How does this relate to games? Well just like caligraphy we Game Designers end up working on a lot of things that we… don’t use. Yeah. It’s not a secret or anything, in fact, it’s common to hear: “Oh! there was an unused voice clip in a secret folder.” Or “Someone used a mod to explore the game and found a secret room in X location”.
Some Studios/Publishers, like Rockstar or Team Salvato, hide things on purpose for players to find, which are usually referred to as easter eggs, but no. Not those. Rather things that just didn’t make the cut and were scrapped.
Once a game is released, it’s possible people never notice. I mean all you have to do is take it out of the game. And sometimes developers just leave it… in there…
A famous example is the “recently” discovered multiplayer mode of Luigi’s Mansion:
But rather than have a debate about good coding practices, I wanted to express the importance of keeping everything you make.
SERIOUSLY! SAVE! EVERYTHING!
We went through many iterations on the games we wanted to make. While working on two others and making many versions of how to wanted their gameplay to be, we had a striking inspiration: We already had enough material to make a game.
If we took all the things we didn’t use for those games and put them together, we had the foundation for what would later become our upcoming game: Part-Time Myth.
”Yeah but you guys are lucky that worked out”. Well yes, we are lucky to have readers like you, but it’s actually not unheard of in the industry. The most famous example is Capcom’s “Devil May Cry” series.
Officially, it was meant as a sequel to the popular “Resident Evil” series but since it was so different they decided it was better off as its own thing. And it was a wise choice since it went from this:
Someone really needs to clean that floor…
To this:
Hey, look! It’s your worst nightmare, personified!
So that’s how you go from delta (δ) to beta (β).
In conclusion, save everything you make. You never know when that awesome menu, character design, or minigame can become a wonderful treasure of its own. Part-Time Myth is living proof of that. :)
And now this week’s poem:
***
My Midnight Sun
Do you remember?
The night we spoke our mind,
With feelings tender,
How it shined.
My heart danced,
And so did yours,
Our souls entranced,
For what was to come.
We talked once again,
For we were surprised,
About the changes since then.
That’s when I realized…
In this quiet midnight,
Where shine has since gone,
I still see the light,
For you are my Sun.
***
Thanks for reading.
I wish you the best, see you next week!
Images:
Features, not bugs: https://i.redd.it/0gkhf1mi37541.jpg
Calligraphy: https://www.reddit.com/r/Calligraphy/comments/3pf88e/drills/
Devil May Cry: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/f-96T4q6zzM/maxresdefault.jpg
Resident Evil: https://indiefaq.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/1548377212_resident-evil-2-13-1-678x381.jpg
Videos:
