Conducted By – Adam Ames
Lennart Rikk walks us through the development process of his upcoming top down space shooter, Last Jungle In Sector 17.
Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your role with the development of Last Jungle In Sector 17.
Hi, my name is Lennart Rikk, I’m from Estonia and I have been doing graphic design for around 11 years now. There are two people in the ljis17 team. I’m the designer and animator and Tariq Makled is the programmer.
How did you get started in developing PC games?
I have always been interested in gaming and after learning Flash and Actionscript it was the logical next step for me.
Where did the idea for Last Jungle In Sector 17 come from?
About 6 years ago Tariq and I met on the actionscript.org forums and we started exchanging code and creating silly game prototypes. After some time we created a prototype for a boids based space shooter, which later became the Last Jungle In Sector 17. So It all started with a boids experiment and it kept growing.
What are some of the successes and failures you learned from in developing Last Jungle In Sector 17?
The most successful thing on this project has been that I have learned a lot about the gaming industry and how things are done. There have been many failures. First, if we do another game project, we will probably look into an existing game engine rather than writing one from scratch, as we did with the current project. Just too much time went into it. We should have also get a community behind the game sooner in the process. Building a community is very hard. I got banned from so many forums after posting about the game – “No advertising on the forums” was usually the reason.
We are probably not going to make our Kickstarter goal, so another thing I can say is that we should have made some contacts with the press before we started our Kickstarter. Right now we haven’t been featured in any major sites and have only 4,345 video views on the Kickstarter. The biggest failure I think we have faced so far is the visibility factor. I think for an indie game to be successful, visibility is the key. The more people who know about the game, the better. With Greenlight, we initially got thousands of views per day, after a week it was about 20-40 views per day or even smaller and that was not enough attention to become greenlit.
In its current form, how close is Last Jungle In Sector 17 to your initial vision?
Well, right now it isn’t very close, it’s just a prototype. The story, game play and UI are all in an early form.
Some devs admitted their games were too hard upon release because they became experts as they developed the game. Talk about setting the difficulty levels for Last Jungle In Sector 17 and if you faced a similar challenge.
We definitely did. Initially, we wanted the game to have realistic controls and for the player controlled craft to not have a speed limit – the longer you held down thrusters the faster the ship was going because there was nothing to slow it down. Well, after first alphas we added a speed limit and for most people it was easier to control the game. However, I still think it was easier to take down enemies with the first settings, it somehow gave me more freedom.
Were there any challenges you faced in ensuring Last Jungle In Sector 17 would run on the various PC system configurations?
We did face many challenges with optimizing the game for different PC configurations. We upgraded the engine a few time after discovering the game was still too slow. First, we rendered vectors, like most flash games online, but that method is severely limiting. Then we cached the vectors as bitmaps and rendered the bitmaps using software rendering. After Flash introduced Stage3D, we changed our engine again to support hardware acceleration. There are still many more optimizations that need to still take place, such as batch rendering.
Please talk about developing the art style, level design and music for Last Jungle In Sector 17.
Because of the game’s serious tone, the overall art style is set to look realistic. I’m a big fan of manga so the story frames are related to that. We designed the levels using the classic “saw tooth” principle. The game would get gradually harder, but there would still be easy parts.
Outside of creating the game itself, what is the toughest aspect of being an indie developer?
Finding the time to work on the game. We had to sacrifice the evenings after work and school, plus the weekends.
Tell us about the process of submitting Last Jungle In Sector 17 to the various digital distribution platforms and if you encountered resistance in doing so.
We have as of right now submitted to Steam Greenlight only, the process was rather easy… once we paid the $100 fee. It’s a bit like managing a Facebook page – upload new photos and videos, answer the comments, posting announcements. The one big problem I have with Greenlight however is that they are showing the videos in too small a scale. The game’s smaller details don’t come out in the videos.
How important is it to get instant feedback about Last Jungle In Sector 17 from users through online message boards and other social networking sites?
It’s rather important, but it’s also rather hard to choose which answers to trust and which not because often times they are opposing. The most obvious mistakes and bugs show up immediately though.
How much value do you place on the opinions of those who review Last Jungle In Sector 17 professionally?
Quite a lot, we have changed many things in the game based on the reviews. For example, we introduced an additional control scheme with keys relative to the screen because many reviewers brought it out.
How do you feel about the various indie bundle promotions and the “Pay What You Want” pricing methodology? Would you be interested in contributing to a project like that in the future?
I think those bundles and that business model are a great idea, I have bought 2 bundles so far and wouldn’t mind contributing at all.
What are your thoughts on how the PC gaming industry as a whole are dealing with the problem of intrusive DRM and piracy?
As long as I’m not playing online, I don’t think there is a place for DRM. History has shown that no DRM really works and only makes the experience worse for the users who actually pay for the product. Also I want to be able to play my game when I travel to another country.
How do you feel about individuals posting videos of Last Jungle In Sector 17?
I don’t mind that at all and actually encourage people to do so. I have sent out letters to many youtubers asking them to review the game and post the videos online.
How do you feel about DLC and its current implementation in the PC gaming industry?
At first I was against it, because the first DLC’s I saw were just updates you had to pay for. Now however, as long of as the content is balanced with the price, I think it’s a good way to give more to the players who are interested in extra content.
How do you feel about the online modding community in general and specifically if mods were created for Last Jungle In Sector 17?
I think the most innovative ideas in the industry spark from mods and indie games. Too bad not many AAA games feature modding nowadays. Seeing someone making a mod for our game would be really cool.
What advice would you give up-and-coming indie PC developers who are trying to break into the business?
Before you start to build your game, try to already get some community behind it, and when you have something to show for, get the press – visibility and press contacts matter so much in the later stages of delivering the game. Most importantly – don’t give up, even if your project fails you will have learned from the experience and are better prepared for the future. -End
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We would like to thank Lennart for taking time away from his development duties to give us a brief glimpse into life as an indie dev. You can read more about Last Jungle In Sector 17 via the official site.