A couple development screenshots from a couple months ago….

Hey Guys!

These past few months have been really really hard, for myself and Gil working on this Soccer game. We both burnt out, especially me, we hit a point where we had just drudged ourselves through this project for too long and hit the end of ourselves and our own capacity.  Today the Lord spoke in several ways to myself.  Firstly through Jonathan Brodmann who is currently doing the music for the soccer game.  Gil met Jonathan at his Church, and it was divine providence which connected them.  Even then I had no idea how good Johathan’s music would be.  Just today Gil sent me the rough draft of the main track for the game and I cannot begin to express how amazing and uplifting this track is, no way in our own capacity could we have found someone, the right person to make a track like this.

Which made me think, in spite of all my incapacities, God is going to move ahead with this game with or without me.  That he is carrying it and not I nor Gil are going to be the ones that see it through, but are simply participants in it.

Can’t say things have been easy, there’s been days which have been big struggles. Myself, Brenton Keegan and Dan Wilkinson have almost finished a casual space game, the deadline is next week.  It’s a really fun game and I believe it’ll do well.  We’ll have spent 4-5 weeks developing it which is a good development time, compared to 18 months for the soccer game.

The Lord is good and He is the one who will carry us through this, and we will bring Glory to Him through testifying of the unbelievably amazingly awesome GREAT things he has done.

God bless!

David

Hey Guys check out the latest game Rebel Planet’s been doing (we’re also developing a soccer game).  There’s 2 videos be sure to watch them all, they both have great stuff!!

While I was visiting Savannah myself and Gil did a demo day of Axys and Light Rangers at a Family Christian bookstore, it was great!

Regards,

David

Hey Guys

I wanted to share with you an email I just drafted to Peter Churness, the content is really significant for us so I wanted to share it here.  I just came back from 5 weeks in the USA, visiting Brethren Entertainment’s studio in Seattle and attending the Christian Game Developers Conference Winter Retreat as the keynote speaker.  And what follows are the things the Lord has really impressed upon me during that time.

There are Christian games and successful Christian games, and there is actually a huge distinction between the two.  In my opinion Christian games in general are not fun games to play, if I want to go and play a fun game, I never think “I’ll go to the Christian book store to find a fun game”, I go to Target, or a game shop.  So in general Christian games don’t sell because people don’t buy them, therefore the ‘Christian games’ remain unsuccessful.

Then there are successful Christian games, in my opinion a successful Christian game needs to be a game that anybody would walk into Wal Mart and buy.  And to get into these channels the game needs to be fun.  And for the game to be fun the game needs to be designed a certain way.  The wrong way to design a game is to find fun gameplay, then water it down with a Christian message.  In my opinion, a Christian message directly opposes the game’s gameplay.  For example looking at Axys, Axys is a fun game, however the entire experience isn’t fun.  If you look at a game as a timeline of player experience, in Axys you have -fun-fun-fun-boring bible puzzles-fun-fun-frustrating task that is too hard-fun etc.  The moment the fun experience in the timeline is broken the entire experience for the player has been severely tampered with.  Now some people will enjoy these sorts of games but most wont.  I even dislike doing the bible puzzles.  And I threw it in there because I thought ‘Christians would love to have a biblical aspect to the game’, but I’m a Christian and I don’t love that sort of aspect to games.  Unless it is expressing the gospel in a fun experience which I the bible puzzles don’t do for me personally.

So this leads me to this conclusion, to make a successful Christian game you need to make a game like Narnia, or in our case Orion.  However to make a successful Christian game, because we are communicating such deep themes of the gospel and God, this needs to be done in a story context.  I believe it would be very difficult to put such a story or message into any game other than an adventure game and be successful with it.  The problem with that, is that adventure games of this nature require alot of resources and talent to make successfuly and in such a way that the actual gameplay experience = fun-fun-fun-fun.  And it can’t be done with a preachy message, it has to be done with non biblical language, like Narnia and Orion.

This leads me to another thought, we are under resourced and under experienced to make a game like Orion and make it successful.  We’ve jumped into the deep end of game development without never having succeeding in the shallow waters.  Which leads me to think if we are to do Orion and make it a successful Christian game, I think we need some experience and resources under our belt.  ie build up to it rather than jumping straight into it.

I have been working on a game since my trip in the USA, for about 4-5 weeks now.  And while there I started a new idea/concept with game development.  What was revealed to me was that too often we come up with ideas for a game’s theme, rather than an idea for the game’s gameplay.  The problem with this is that the gameplay is 100% of the fun experience (which in most circumstances is tainted by a Christian message).  So it got me thinking, I should test this theory, if I can make a game with just blocks, and make it a hugely fun experience, even for myself developing it, then that idea surely was going to be successful.  Within 2 days of developing I was having so much fun playing the game, it was unbelieveable, I have never had so much fun playing a game I have been developing for so long.

This confirmed, to make a successful game you do not need a theme, you don’t need resources, or huge ideas.  You just need fun gameplay.  I was so gobsmacked at the simplicity of it all I was amazed.  I went ahead and started thinking of ways of putting a Christian message into the game however that proved to directly oppose the game’s fun gameplay, and put a huge -annoyance- in the midst of the fun gameplay experience.  So I realised, I can’t make this game Christian, the genre of the game cannot be both a successful fun gameplay experience and a Christian game at the same time.

Peter this is amazing, I have actually completed the game, 5 week part time development cycle.  And the game is the most fun game I have ever developed.  Once I have refined it a bit more I am going to send it to you in a week or two.  Gil can testify to how much fun the game is.  The game had 3 hours of gameplay, the entire time I was on the phone to Gil learning his gameplay experience with it and making changes accordingly, after the conversation ended, and he had finished the game.  He kept playing the game for another 3 hours just wandering around blowing up enemies collecting items because it was so much fun.

Ross Leland said the following:
I like playing it more than World of Warcraft.

Thanks for reading guys!  I hope to make a youtube video soon as a development documentary of this game and title it ‘How to make fun games’.

David

Hey Guys, just letting you know we’re still developing strong. The project we’re working on has so much potential it’s amazing

Please enjoy the first CDN podcast!

And a little fun I got up to the other week

I’m also going to CGDC Winter Retreat 2009.

Thanks for supporting Rebel Planet, and if you haven’t already go and buy Axys!

- David

Here’s an easter egg for you.

Just letting you know, we are still working on a particular unmentioned project (it’s underwraps until it’s polished).  Our active development team at the moment consists of 4 people:

• Gil Ruiz - artist/designer
• Kendall Stump - artist
• David Lancaster - programming
• Peter Churness - webdevelopment/overall genius

Things are moving along really well, Kendall and Gil are great guys to work with.  We’re really putting the quality into this project and it’s a matter of time before release.  We’re aiming for a September-October (I think it’ll take longer).  But release dates are painful and there’s always a good chance I’ll be posting here in 3 months time saying we’re almost done we need more time.  The game is not a Christian game, we’re focusing our efforts to bring in some income to fund what we’d love to do.  We’re all really excited about the game’s potential, it has lots of innovation.  Experience tells us that the feeling of excitement is usually short lived, and the words of Peter Churness ring true:

“The good things that happen (the things that immediately give us a burst of exicitement) are never really that good, and the bad things (the things which make it look like everything’s going to end) are never really that bad.” - Peter Churness (Epicly Awesome Game Developer and pastor)

Simply because the emotion experience is always short lived, the down times and the up.  The journey we are taking is such a long one that the ‘moment’ is not even close to revealing what’s going to happen later down the road.  For us what we do is a journey of faith as every part of our life is just like Abraham.  God has given us no reason to doubt, he’s proven himself time and time again, for all the times we were disappointed and things were bleak, we pressed on and God has been good.  We have our dreams and ambitions but in the end it’s about God fulfilling His purpose in our lives. I’d sure love to make some great games in the process though

David

During March-July 2007 we decided to recover from the loss of Wicked Mansion by using the left over resources to make a quick casual game. We managed to get the game ready in time for CGDC, however we ran into the exact same issue we ran into with Wicked Mansion, we had no money, we had no one willing to create models and animations for free. So all we had to use were the models and animations Eric Nadeau kindly passed to us from his ventures with Biyu Biyu Rocket. As good as the artist was who made the animations for free in his early years of experience, when he made them they weren’t made with a high level of quality, they were quite bad. So now we faced the problem of making enemies with personalities, attacks and defences completely based on one or two of these low quality animations they came with. We did a good job with what we had and they look alright. It severely limited us in making bosses, unique enemies and whole bunch of other things we would have liked to have done. So once the game hit completion there was a lack of desire to polish it or extend it from where it’s currently at now. From my point of view it’s a watered down game from it’s potential but fun none the less. Rather than having it sit around collecting dust we’ve released it for free, please enjoy

Download Monster Island

Yes there are bugs, some solutions are found in the readme.txt file.

David

PS: Don’t forget to check out David Stevenson’s interview, he is the voice of Axys and is now in a really awesome band named Manic Bloom.

David Stevenson, director of voice acting for The Axys Adventures: Truth Seeker, voice of Axys and Prince Reigus, has recently been involved with a band, as lead singer, Manic Bloom who have just released their first EP. I recently got a chance to have some email exchanges with David and wanted to share we spoke of.

Lancaster: Your work on Axys, involvement and the game itself, has it at all been a blessing in your life? What in general is God doing in your life?

Stevenson: Axys and RPC was and is definitely a blessing on my life in many ways. When I came on board with you guys, I was doubting my abilities and was losing a lot of self confidence. I was starting to think that all I could hope for is a “normal” life like my dad and his dad and his dad… (”Normal”, meaning working at a job I hate until I retire) Axys and RPC let me have a creative outlet from my mundane job, and also sharpened some of my skills. On top of that, it was a great experience to work with you guys, especially with how encouraging you were (and are!), and how passionate you are about the vision. I’m definitely proud to be able to say I worked on the game, and I wouldn’t change anything at all, were I to go back in time.

As far as what God’s doing right now - I think He’s still just bringing me through a season of waiting. There’s a lot of possibilities in the near future (getting a house hopefully soon, the band, recording people, a possible job opening with a guy that does voice overs…), but I’ve been stuck in the same spot for a while. If you were to ask me what I think I’m supposed to be learning, I’d say patience and relying on Him… However, I’ve found that I’m not as patient as I once thought I was. Nor am I as reliant on Him and I used to think. So I guess that’s what God’s doing right now… Hitting me over the head, telling me to trust Him and wait!

What Scares You Most

Watch the hand connect the dots
Between the lines inside your thoughts
Even in your dreams it still takes hold of you

Lancaster: I used to have night terrors when I was a child, half asleep half awake, absolute nightmares I’d go crazy. The only way I could describe them was ‘there were lines and dots’ serously, that’s what I said when I was 10 years old.

Stevenson: Whoa!!! That’s pretty crazy! I wrote the song to be kind of the moment when things start clicking in the head of someone who is beginning to believe in Christ. Watch the hand connect the dots – the story where King Belshazzar saw the hand of God write on the wall the words “Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin” – basically “You’re not as tough as you think you are. You’ll be judged just like everybody, and currently, it won’t be in your favor”.

The thought of lines and dots in my head are just the truths of God that I think are written inside of us, but our sin tries to force us to not make sense out of them. As long as they’re scattered everywhere, then we don’t understand them, and we don’t live like they’re true. However, when God grabs us, and forces us to the edge and make us choose, he makes it perfectly clear what we are choosing. Either we can stay on the ledge and we’ll always be desperately fighting Him, or we make the leap of faith and are free. It scares the crap out of us, but it’s exactly what we need.

Lancaster: What Scares You Most talks about taking a leap of faith, a point in some lives when we can be so terrified to take the jump. What was the most significant leap of faith in your life?

Stevenson: The leap of faith in my life… I’m not sure what the most significant leap would be… I grew up with a Christian mother, going to a Christian church, so becoming a Christian didn’t require me to feel like there might be nothing to catch me. I have friends who had a different experience… I remember one time in college, driving my newly Christian friend to his parents’ hotel room (they came in for the weekend to see him) to tell them he had become a Christian. They were Hindu, and they disowned him. I haven’t spoken to him in a few years now, but last I knew, they still wouldn’t talk to him. That’s a huge leap of faith.

One leap of faith for me deals more with my purpose, and listening to God’s direction. I grew up in Kentucky, and started college in Kentucky. Into my second year, I found out about a college in Tennessee that offered a program that I was passionate about, and felt like God was telling me that it was where I needed to go. I was really comfortable where I was – had great friends, a fairly serious girlfriend, and was halfway through a computer science degree. It scared me a whole lot, but I knew that I had to do it – else I would always regret it.
It was the right decision. I ended school (though it took me longer than it would have) with a degree in something that I love and am passionate about, showed me problems in my relationship with my girlfriend that I was not really willing to look at (and I met my wife not even a month after moving. We didn’t date until about 2 years later), and developed deeper and stronger friendships than I ever had in my life.

That’s kind of what the leaps seem to do, though, when you’re really listening to the Holy Spirit. We look at them as dangerous and risky – but then we have to see what we are holding onto. Even though my comfortable life was at risk when I took the leap, I was soon after shown that there was a far greater life than what I was living. It’s more like sky diving. It’s frightening, but it’s an awesome experience that changes your perspective, and hopefully makes you tell other people your experience.

Tonight’s When I Say Goodbye

Lancaster: I just read your song lyrics, and man wow! In Tonight’s When I Say Goodbye, is that a message from God to us? Your lyrics are so powerful, it seems to express the desire and yearning of the heart of God. Is that at all close to what you intended?

Stevenson: Exactly – God speaking to someone who “goes to church on Sunday” and has “never killed anyone” who thinks that since they’re a “good person” then they’re going to heaven. The problem is – it has nothing to with how “good” we are – but has everything to do with how perfect our savior is. If we’re not relying on Him, then we’re not going to come close.

Written in the perspective of a guy (God) who’s wife/girlfriend (the lukewarm “Christian”) isn’t faithful, and the guy has known all along, but has given all kinds of opportunities for her to straighten up and start fresh. At a certain point, it’s too late – and words are useless because actions have shown what she wants. She’s upset, but even though she’s always known she was in the wrong, she never said she was sorry because she just assumed that the guy would always deal with it. On the Day of Judgment, many will say “Lord, Lord!”, but God will say “Depart from me – I never knew you” . We serve a loving and forgiving God, but people often forget that he is perfect and just.

Listen to Manic Bloom’s music

Hi readers and fans of Rebel Planet, been a while since anyone has posted so I’d like to give you guys an update.

We have been working with Gil and Kendall, two great artists, on various projects. Orion has been put on the backburner as we now attempt to gain the resources we need to complete it. I haven’t touched it in a few months. I can’t say much about the projects we are working on except that we are excited about their potential.

I’ve also been programming a Christian casual game with Brethren Entertainment, it’s been 6 months since I started and it will be finished soon. Will give you more details once it’s available.

David Stevenson the voice director of Axys Adventures and actual voice of Axys (and half of the characters in the game) is now the lead singer of band Manic Bloom, they are just about to release their EP and once they do I’ll fill you in with an interview I’m currently undertaking with David.

The Monster Island game we attempted to make a while back (until we hit yet another dead end), will soon be released free as a proof of concept game as per it’s last state in beta. Peter’s working on the installer so if you’d like to spam the forums asking him to hurry up you’ll get to check it out sooner. It has been a long time since Axys and even though Monster Island isn’t a Christian game we hope it will be a fun and safe alternative for you to enjoy.

Games prototyped since Axys:
Galedor
Orion Version 2
Axys Chaos Trigger
Wicked Mansion
Monster Island
Orion Version 3

The future is quite promising yet unknown, Gil keeps mentioning how he doesn’t know what’s going to happen with everything we are doing, but he knows it will lead to something good. The process has been long, and we’ve gained much experience from it all, hopefully the experience we have now will make whatever we do next a blast! Everything we do is a process, and our uncertainty with the future is similar to your unknown knowledge of the inner workings of Rebel Planet which you now have some more insight on You may or may not be aware but back in August 2007 myself and Peter hit a dead end with everything, and we decided to let go and move on from Rebel Planet. It wasn’t until a few months later when I started working on the Glorious Combat code and met up with Gil and Kendall that many many things began falling into place. It has been a great journey, we’re all excited about everything that has and will happen this year

Thanks for reading and thank you for being a fan of Rebel Planet!

David

I sit here and try to figure out what it is about this game. It strives neither in the graphical or gameplay/polish aspect, but it has this fun factor that although I didn’t find lasting, the initial surge of fun I had was so overwhealming I just couldn’t stop laughing. Here’s the video:

Zoo Race Trailer

What this game is to each individual person is what makes it worth something. To me it’s not a game that I can sit down with and play like any other game, but it was a game that I played for a good 30 minutes and could not stop laughing. It was such an enjoyable experience that I wont forget it. The zany idea of humans turning into animals to race in some abstract areas doing the most abstract and unexpected things. I have not played a game like this ever. A game which could crack me up this much in such a unique and new way.

Zoo Race is great, you continually run into new and exciting things, Randall’s efforts into making the player constantly see new things throughout the game shows, as it’s a racing game the experience doesn’t last long, but the effort put into it shows and the experience I had with the game I enjoyed.

To others Zoo Race doesn’t quite do the same as I’m sure you can see from the negative responses in that video, it’s nothing new to the internet world that people lack the articulate words to express what they say in an intelligent and meaningful manner, and it always makes me question the state of humanity when I see such degrading unconstructive criticisms being thrown around. Especially to a good friend Randall of mine who one day, decided he wanted a hobby, put everything into making it come true, then when he releases it to the world gets hit with this junk. If people were truly assertive and confident in what they believed they would maturely challenge what someone else believes, not degrade the person or use foul language.

Randall put alot of work into this. He had limited resources, skills and experience yet dedicated and committed himself to a project for two years to complete this, a feat very rarely seen by any developer. It’s hard enough to dedicate yourself to a project, but having no resources and no hope of recovering what you put into a project. That is what true committment is and it takes the right person to do such a marvel. As a developer I empathise with such struggle. Rebel Planet is an indie company and to this point in time we have lacked resources, we aren’t getting paid for what we’re doing. The main reason we’re able to bring our next game to distribution is because of myself and Peter’s endless pouring into this venture. It’s a part of our lives outside our day jobs and we have to constantly give to make this work.

So what does it take to get youtube fame? Not a grand fantastic game but something controversial or entertaining enough to get people talking about it and watching it. Zoo Race being an entertainment product does what it does best, entertain. Without wanting to sound like a broken record, someone who watches the video, plays the demo but doesn’t do more than that isn’t doing much, Randall really needs your support if you desire to give it, and I know that there are some few individuals willing to really give it, but most people don’t (as is life). I encourage you to, please buy it:

Zoo Race Home Page

David