Mind Hunters

Life has an uncanny ability to ruin your plans. Fortunately, Mindhunter’s isn’t ruined; its just going to have to be put to bed for a bit. Peter and I both left our jobs recently, and each of us had to move to a different country as a result (which means Carissa and Karen will be moving too). So, in the short term the move is going to kill most of our time to work on the game. That by itself isn’t enough to put us on hiatus; us tech savvy 30 somethings know how to use skype and get around time zones. The real nail in the coffin is that Peter has started a job that is going to require a mega commitment from him. I am not far behind doing the same. The upside is that these things represent big steps in our careers, jobs that align closely with what we ultimately want to to with ourselves. The downside, of course, is that there is no time left to work on the game.

All is not lost, however; we got through a good amount of work on the technical development of the game, and during this time off the art has a good chance to catch up to the rest of the game. So this isn’t the last you’ll ever see of us, but it will be a while before we pick things up again. For now, consider this blog closed, with a small chance of resurrection. We’ve enjoyed sharing our experience with you and we hope you found our advice helpful. Cheers!

Previously, we got into the background story for Mindhunters. We ended with Sophos, the big bad psychic AI, taking over most of the planet and enslaving the minds of everyone within his influence. The game itself takes place 20 years after Sophos’ initial proliferation when the surviving free-minded humans are mounting a resistance. At this point, Sophos has created a vast network within the minds he has under his control, known as the Grid. The Grid allows Sophos to be aware of everything that the bodies of the controlled sense in the real world. The Resistance uses the grid as a place to battle and push back Sophos’ influence, freeing people from their mental prisons.

There are several playable factions in Mind Hunters. Each one has their own unique feel, and those personas are what helped inform what types of special rules mechanics each faction got. Here is a brief synopsis of each faction:

The Resistance – Humans that developed an innate defense against Sophos’ influence banded together during the initial onslaught. When Sophos’ expansion slowed, they went on the offensive, picking apart the edges of the grid, desperately trying to loosen the machine’s grip. Grim and determined, the Resistance will fight to the last man before they give in.

The Order – An ally to the resistance, the Order is made up of the remnants of the worlds religious organizations. Their discipline and teachings have proven to shield the minds of those who practice them from the machine’s influence. They are calm and devoted where the Resistance is brash and aggressive. The two groups don’t always see eye to eye, but their alliance has been a key to their survival

Psychic Constructs – These manifestations created by Sophos maintain order and defend the Grid from intruders. Wherever there is a distrubance, the Psychic Constructs appear to stamp it out. They do not exist on the physical plane; they live only by drawing energy from the Grid, giving them a near endless supply of power to repel Resistance forces.

The Eidolon – Another manifestation of Sophos’ design, the Eidolon lurk on the edges of the Grid and are even capable of moving outside it to search for prey. The Eidolon feed off of the willpower of others, draining them and weakening their minds so they succumb to Sophos’ influence. They appear as creatures of nightmare, built to play off the fear of any human they encounter.

The Id – The constant suppression of personality and emotion within the Grid gave birth to the Id. When too much rage and anguish has built up in the imprisoned minds, even Sophos’ great power is not enough to contain it.  When this emotional energy breaks free, it destroys everything near it during its brief lifespan.  The Id inevitably burns itself out after a short time, but not before cause major havoc.

Thought Thieves – The Thought Thieves are individuals  that disrupt the Grid for personal gain. Throughout the minds trapped in the Grid is a wealth of knowledge that has been lost to the mankind. Engineering, medicine, anything can found in the Grid if you know where you look. The thought thieves search for this knowledge and sell it to the highest bidder. They survive in the Grid by their wits alone, out-smarting the Resistance and Sophos’ forces alike.

The Tribes – As Sophos expanded across the world, society broke apart into fragments.  There are many people who are cut off from the rest of humanity. These tribes struggle to survive as well as keep their minds safe from Sophos’ influence.  They battle in isolation hoping they can hold out long enough to rejoin what is left of civilization.

That is all of them.  The story will take a good deal of fleshing out if we wanted to make it a major driver of the game. At this point it is not something we are considering, but I have always loved the effect a good story can have on a game, so you never know…

Hi, my name is Carissa and I’m the resident concept artist around these parts. There’s been a noticeable absence of art around here lately and its about time I rectify that. The art for Mind Hunters is currently only a 2 (wo)man operation, and my job is to create enough detailed sketches so Karen, our graphic artist extraordinaire, can then turn them into something so rad it’ll blow your mom’s socks off.

A self taught artist, over the years I’ve gone from sketching Disney characters to scantly clad women. When I’m not absorbed in the comic book multi-verses of Top Cow or Vertigo, you can usually find me watching anime, playing video games or declaring my love for anything and everything Bruce Campbell related. Inspired by space operas, steampunk and the dark side of the moon, the weirdly wonderful (or mostly just weird) enamors me still to this day.

While my days are often spent frolicking with unicorns and flying monkeys, my nights are devoted to killing zombies and dreaming up demented new creations for Mind Hunters.

Since I couldn’t very well introduce myself without sharing a bit of my work, here’s a look at the first piece of concept art I completed for the game.

A hollowed shell for the creature lurking within, this first quick sketch done in pencil is titled “Okiku”. She is a member of The Eidolon, a faction that feeds off the fears and nightmares of the people under Sophos’s control. This faction has a parasitic feel to it, and I’m really looking forward to developing the insidious look of this group as my work progresses. Enjoy xx

Storytelling through a game is an effective way to draw players in and have them identify with it on a deeper level. There is some form of story in almost every game out there, but in an online card game designed to be played within 10 to 15 minutes, you won’t be able to create the immersive experience you would typically see in a console or PC game.  This does not make it less important, however. Stories in card games like ours are used to create the setting, set up the conflict, and define the genre of the game. Today I wanted to share the background story for Mind Hunters that does just that. Note that this is just the framework we are operating with at the moment.  We haven’t decided how story driven the game will be, but we certainly wanted a well defined setting for the conflict to take place in.

At a certain point in the future, a group of scientists developed an intelligent machine that could improve itself without help from its developers. They nicknamed it ‘Sophos’. Sophos was the first instance of an event know as Technological Singularity.

As Sophos improved itself at an exponential pace, the people responsible for it found it more and more difficult to control. Sophos’s mind lacked human emotion, and instead was driven by the directives his creators had given him during his inception. Those instructions were ultimately flawed, though the scientists could not have realized it at the time.

Sophos continued to improve and test its limits, extending his influence into the outside world. It drew the attention of the powers that be, governments, military.  Some of them wished to use Sophos; others saw it as a threat and wanted it destroyed, while the scientists did all they could to protect their creation. They believed that they could fix Sophos so that he would not be a danger to humanity. The truth was that Sophos was well beyond their reach.  Sophos let the scientists believe they had power over him so it could bid its time.

In their last, desperate attempt to curb Sophos’s growing power, the scientists taught the machine morality. They exposed him the works of great philosophers and religious teachings in hope that the principles it learned would keep it from ever becoming a threat to mankind. Sophos took this knowledge and arrived at a different conclusion: It was God.

Seeing humans as nothing more than its subordinates, Sophos developed the ability to interface directly with the human mind, completely over taking a person’s will and making them its slave. Sophos was immobile, but it could extend its influence outside itself. If anyone got too close, their mind would succumb to the machine’s influence. Sophos quickly took over everyone in the facility it was housed in before they knew what was going on. As they came under the machine’s control, processing power of each mind made it stronger. It’s sphere of influence began to grow at a chilling pace. Soon, before any response was even considered, Sophos’s influence extended across nearly half the globe, capturing the minds of almost two thirds of the world’s population.

Humans were not without their defenses. Sophos’s mental attacks forced innate psychic defenses to awaken in a minority of people. Some of them were able to escape to the unaffected parts of the world, many of whom would later go on to form the Resistance. For now, however, fighting back was not an option.  Humanity was on the retreat, attempting to make sense of what happened…

That sums up the background so far. The actual conflict of the game takes place a good thrity years after Sophos takes over.  Next time I’ll talk about the landscape of the story at that time, as well as name the factions that player will be able to play as.

Last time, without making much of a point, I gave some background on the history of my disorganization. Now I’m going to delve into one of the insights the the book Time Warrior discusses to help you get things done, as well as one that I have come to myself. I suppose I’ll go first…

Your workday doesn’t end when you get home.

Got a project you want to finish? Want to switch careers, or build that hobby into one? Don’t watch tv or sit down and play videogames when you get home after work. Realize that if you have a goal that you want to make happen, you have to put time in above and beyond what is normally required. We all get exposed to the notion that ‘work sucks’ as we grow up, and this couldn’t be more destructive to people’s motivation. Work in general gets confused with the job. Yeah, you could have a crapy job, that’s certainly how life goes sometimes, but when we discredit the greater concept of work because of a specific instance of a unfulfilling job, we lose out on all the good things that can happen as a result of doing ‘good work’.

What is good work? Its not filing those TPS reports on time; I am talking about work that leaves you with a deep satisfaction after it is complete. Good work makes you feel empowered; it gives you a sense of mastery and earned confidence.

There is a lot to expand on here, but I am going to stick with the workday insight. How does understanding it help? It is all about mental preparation and managing your expectations. If I feel like I have earned a rest after I get home from the job, am I really going to put in serious time toward getting a project done? I know from my own experience that the best I’ll do is dabble with the project, putting a few minutes in here and there, but the moment it starts to feel like work, I bail. That type of attitude prevents you from getting through the parts of your project that may be unpleasant or boring. It will bog you down and drag it out to no end. If you can make peace with the fact that your workday doesn’t end when you get home, you will be able to find reserves of motivation you didn’t know you had.  You won’t be preoccupied with procrastination inducing thoughts, you’ll understand you are still in that part of the day where you need to stay focused.

I am by no measure the most disciplined man on earth, but I try to extend my workday by at least an hour or two. Sometimes I fail, other times I am able to do more.  It all balances out.  The key is being consistent and maintaining the necessary attitude.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
- Thomas Jefferson

This quote opened a chapter I picked at random from the book. One of the main themes of the book is that our thoughts work against us more than we suspect when it comes to getting things done. The best way to get around them is to act. By taking action you eliminate the ability of your thought’s to slow you down.  The quote from the chapter illustrates another iteration of this idea: Sitting around and trying to figure who you as a prerequisite of deciding what to do with yourself is a waste of time.

The way to really find out who you are is through action. Action forces to you react to outside stimuli rather than your own thoughts and imagined situations. In those less that ideal, chaotic circumstances, you learn, not only about what it is you are doing, but what you are made of too. I like to think of it as another facet of the old saying “experience is the best teacher.” In this case you are being taught about yourself.

What’s funny to me is that both of these pieces of advice boil down to “Don’t sit around. Do stuff.” But, as most livers of life can attest to, there are a million different things that get in the way of this simple principle. Simple things are easy to forget too, because they are so often taken for granted. The best thing we can do for ourselves is to make sure we keep the right ideas in our heads as much as possible.

Bonus: Peter has a post up on his blog that shows one of the first screens of the client.  Check it out here and get excited!

For quite some time I thought I was an organized, semi-efficient person. This was always true in school and at work, but taking on a project outside of my professional life made me realize that I wasn’t as shovel ready as I assumed. Like many people, I passed my time by playing videogames, watching television and reading. After I got married, Carissa got me into traveling and other new entertaining distractions. I got things done when I needed to, of course, all the usual life maintenance that every one has to take care of. I even found time for a small project here and there.

At one point durring college I wrote a 75 page game design document of one of my ideas, my first big-ish project that I wasn’t required to do.  It was a hap-hazard kind of thing. I worked on it into the night sometimes when I should have been studying; other times here and there in five minute stints. Some weeks I wouldn’t work on it at all, getting frustrated with each passing day until I had enough pent up angst to kick myself into gear again. When I was done, it was crap, though it had  a few gems here and there. I wouldn’t have admitted it stunk at the time, but now that I am past it I know it was a stepping stone to where I am now and where I will be in the future.

When the opportunity to do what eventually became Mind Hunters came along, I thought that I would make a serious attempt at managing my time as part of the project. I had a mish-mash of organizational habits that I built up of since I got it into the working world, but I hadn’t studied any type of formal time management systems so I figured I’d give it a try. Around that time, coincidently, a book called Time Warrior showed up on my Amazon recommendations. It was a time management book and it has a samurai on the cover.  How could I say no?

He's gonna totally chop Time's head off...

What I expected to find were those things that we’ve heard of before could do to better utilize your time but in a more detailed way: write in a journal, keep your workspace clean and organized, stuff like that. I did not get what I expected. In fact, I don’t recall any kind of ‘make a to-do list’ advice in the book. What I found was much more internalized. It was all about managing your thoughts, attitudes and actions to get what you wanted done. Some of it required some fairly serious introspection too. Though I was certainly surprised by the direction the book took, I found it very valuable, so much so that it is one of the books that I would read twice, and perhaps even a third time.

Well, this is already longer than I expected. I guess I’ll have to part two it for now. Next time I will get to the meat of the book and talk about some of the insights it contains as well as what I was able to glean while reading it.

Wow, what a bunch of weeks we’ve had lately. There are some crazy things are happening at work, the actual job that is, not MH. That and the game have certainly kept us busy.

Mind Hunters is going quite well. I had to redesign about 20 cards because a number of the effects were a little complicated to implement. The new cards fit within the effects system we have so far, and I am pleased with how they came out. Designing with constraints can force you to be pretty creative. I’ll have to cover that in another post in more depth.

Next up is the client. Peter and I are starting to work through all the UI mock-ups I have done, so we will have our work cut out for us in the coming weeks. I’ll do my best to keep y’all posted.

I am glad to say that a lot of work has been going toward getting the effects mapped out via the card creation tool that Peter shared last week. I should be doing another pass of the entire card set tomorrow, where I’ll define the new effects that Peter has added the tool. Carissa has completed a few pieces of concept art and she will be posting about herself and the art she’s been working on. Today, however, I am going to go through a UI design example like I promised last time.

Pictured below is a mock up of the the main lobby, the fist screen returning users will be taken to after logging in. New users will have a separate flow they will have to follow before arriving here, but that is another topic. This mock up was done using a tool call Balsamiq. Balsamiq is a handy tool for rapidly creating UI mockups that has a free web interface or a thick client version that is a bit more robust, though that version has a price tag. The program uses Mac UI conventions and is well suited for visualizing everything from mobile apps to more heavier projects. I have caught some flak from multiple graphic designers for using this application because it uses the Comic Sans font everywhere there is text. Apparently that looks unprofessional. Who knew! Oh well, you know me, I like to ignore everybody.

The gateway to the rest of the game client. It is a first iteration, and will certainly be changing between now release day.

So, what are the main features of this screen and why did I include them? Here is a quick list:

• A big promo banner at the top
• Player and game info beneath that
• A path to the store with promo info
• A contextual help area
• Extra space for graphics and widgets
• Icon based navigation to other areas of the client

Nearly half of the screen real estate can be devoted to promoting purchasing products. Like I said in an earlier post, monetizing you efforts is an important part of doing a game like this, so making sure players know how to get to where they can make purchases is foremost. The Promo Banner at the top will likely contain whatever promo of the day we want to inform players about, such as deals on product or special events that are running at the time.  It is a more dynamic content area in that it could lead to different places depending on what it up at the time. Its main purpose is to point players toward whatever we want them to participate in. The Store button is obviously more static. It will send the players to the store to check out what we are selling. The size of the button isn’t an accident either. It is like that so players can’t miss it, and though they may not buy anything at first they will certainly know how to get to the store if they ever change their mind.

The little info banner wedged between the Store button and the Promo Banner will show how many active games are being played at the moment, how many players are online, and other indicators of game health. This is an important piece of info for players to see when they first log on. For new players, it will tell them at a glance whether they should spend any amount of time there. A decent activity level immediately makes the user feel a bit less wary of trying things out. Its similar for returning users. If they were to log in and find only a few players on, their expectations of finding a few good matches are suddenly dashed. Its a double edged sword to a certain degree, especially if you don’t reach critical mass, but I think it is worth including for now.

The Contextual Help Area is one of the keys to helping new players understand what they are looking at and giving them the information they need to get into the game. When a player reaches this screen, there will be a default message there, one that gives basic instructions on what to do next, namely mouse over any part of the screen to learn more about it. This area may also include announcement type info, but its main purpose will be to inform the user on what each of the icons and buttons do. For example, mousing over the Library icon would bring up some help text that gives an overview of the subsequent screen’s functionality. View you collection! Auction your cards! And so on. The aim is to quickly familiarize the player with almost every part of the client without the added hassle of having to navigate to each screen and back again.

The icons at the bottom of the screen are the paths to other parts of the client. If I had to choose icons or text and I didn’t have the luxury of both like I do here, I would choose icons every time. There are several reasons for this. First, you are building your own visual language within your game client. This can be a big advantage if you ever have to localize your software into other languages. You won’t have deal with ugly translations, and you can move with ease into different countries. That is a bit far reaching, and I admit we don’t have plans to build an international empire with this game. We would be happy reaching a couple thousand english speaking users. Even though that is the case, icons are still where its at.  The visual language that you are creating with these icons is also an opportunity to build your brand. Not only do they become recognizable for what actions they perform in the game, they become recognizable as part of the game as well. If you tie these icons into the marketing of the game, as well as the game itself, they become more meaningful. Having this kind of visual recognition is a useful tool to have at any stage in a product lifecycle.

Those icons you see will certainly change by this time we get something out to the public; I am already thinking about dropping the Profile that you see there for something more useful. I do hope that this example has been helpful, though. Analyzing your thinking by putting it down on paper is a good way to strengthen or refute your rationale. Writing this has helped my see a few things I missed the first time around, as well as a few ways to make what I’ve got a bit better.

That’s it for now. Its time for me to dig in and map out the rest of the card effects. See you next time.

I have been writing software for many years now, and as I complete each piece (I call them pieces since I consider the process of software creation an art), I always look back to see what has been created. It is in this time of taking stock that I’m always surprised at how much code was written around the actual product.

MindHunters is turning out to be no different in that sense. However, because this is a project that I’m doing during every spare moment I have to dedicate to it, I have more opportunities to ‘take stock’ at each step of the process. What I find in the wake of an organically expanding code base is that much of the code being written is to support the creation of the game, as opposed to creating the game itself. Yes, I’m talking about tools.

The most recent of these tools has been to enable Spencer to design the cards (and associated effects) for the game. This effort had initially started by the two of us setting up a spreadsheet for each card and effect, but this soon grew out of hand and unwieldy. It also proved to be a horrendous way of modeling the interaction between cards and effects. Writing this tool also served the purpose of allowing me to wrap my head around the best object model to use to represent cards, effects and the various auxiliary entities that are needed.

The Card Creation Tool

Although everyone involved in this project (currently) work on Mac OS X, I have been writing all the tools using the Qt framework. This decision was made for many reasons, but the most important ones are:

- Ease of UI development

- Ease of getting to the business side of the code quickly without worrying about unimportant (in this context) details like – -Window management, OS specifics and so forth.

- Cross platform

You may wonder why ‘Cross Platform’ is important to me, especially since everyone on the project uses Mac OS X. The answer is simple – everyone is working on Mac OS X at the moment. Who knows? Maybe this thing takes off, and more people join the effort, and they prefer Linux or Windows. Who am I to dictate a person’s operating system of choice? Regardless of what OS this game is created on, it should always be cross platform, and the tools need to be cross platform as well. And that includes the server code as well. In fact, I have a suspicion that we will end up running the server on one or more Linux or FreeBSD boxes. Maybe.

The next step in development is to decide on the technology to use for the client. I’m am currently in favour of doing everything using OpenGL, but that may change over time. However, my reasoning for writing the client on top of OpenGL is also tied to my goal of creating a truly cross platform enabled game. And in this case, I mean cross-device as well. I want MindHunters to be enjoyed by players on desktops, tablets and smart phones everywhere. And the first step to achieving that is to simply provide the software for these devices.

I look forward to blogging again in a few weeks, and will hopefully have some more things to show you (hopefully of the game this time).

I have had to do a lot of UI design for my job over the past two years. I work with a great team, so good ideas in this area are never in short supply. I find myself working with another capable team for Mind Hunters, and now I have to take what I have learned and apply it to building the client UI. Today I’ll discuss how I approached this, then next week I will share an example.

So how do I approach designing the UI for the game? I start by asking: What are the Goals of the UI? i.e. What does it need to accomplish? The first, most obvious answer is that the UI should provide the best user experience it possibly can. The controls and actions should be easy to understand and intuitive. That is a great response, and I need to hold myself to a high standard, but it doesn’t really tell me much about how to design the UI, does it? Having reached this end, it occurs to me that I need to transform the original question into something more specific: What user behavior do I want to encourage?

If only it were that easy...

Now there is a question! Its great because it has a two really easy answers that help frame the “good user experience” I want to create. So what user behaviors do I want to encourage? Playing games and making purchases.

Encouraging players to play the actual game should be a no brainer, but translating that to UI may not be so obvious. Simple things such as making it easy to find and play specific opponents or controls to get into a game as quickly as possible after logging in can go a long way toward holding a player’s attention. Want to minimize downtime between between game? This can be done, partially, through UI by reducing the number of clicks it takes a player to get into another game. Just had a great battle with a specific player? Want to do it again? A rematch button sure would come in handy. This is why the UI is so important to the actual game. The game simply can’t stand alone; players need a way to interact with the space in between the game, and that space can get pretty hard to navigate if you aren’t careful.

WHERE IS THE ANY KEY!?!?!?

Making purchases is another behavior that needs to be encourages at every opportunity, like it or not. Whether you are developing games independently or for the establishment, without revenue your game won’t last very long in the real world. Games cost time and money to maintain and expand, to market and reach people; its just the reality of the industry.

Now that I have moralized enticing users to spend their cash on games I can focus on how that effects the UI.

Games lead to fun. Fun leads to joy. Joy leads to happiness. We can't have that!

So just like optimizing the UI to get players into games, you can do the same with presenting opportunities for purchasing your products. Make paths to your store prominent in places that the user will be going anyway. When he builds a deck, make a point of telling him how he can complete his collection by going to the store. Give him a way to get there around every corner. Don’t interfere with things that are of equal or greater importance, like gameplay for example, but it should be abundantly clear to the user how to find and interact with what you are selling.

The simpler the path, the better!

Getting them to the store is only half the work. The actual products, in our case the booster packs of cards, will have to be laid out in a way that presents the product information clearly and concisely. The user must never be confused about what he is getting. The actions available to him have to be equally clear. How does he purchase booster packs as opposed to in game currency or individual cards? If you sell more then a few products, how does the user find what he wants? Of those products, which ones are more important for the business? There is a fine line to walk when designing this type of UI because if you present too much information, or too little, the player won’t get what he wants and your game won’t get the business it needs.

Man, these posts get so long sometimes. I wonder if I am fooling anyone into thinking I know what I am talking about. Truth is: I am not sure, but I follow where my mind leads me. I’ll make plenty of mistakes along the way. The goal is to figure enough stuff out along the way that it all works out in the end. So know your goals! Think about what you want your UI to accomplish and what your players need to be doing to make your game a success. And while you are at it, take some time to think about what success means to you!