Developing Games for Mobile by Arash Keshmirian (Limbic)
The first talk of today was taken by Arash Keshmirian and he wanted to talk to us about how they got into the mobile app industry and how they came to look at zombies, sheep, aliens and gunships in particular. They saw, when the iPhone first came out, that there were gaps on the screen and spaces for more apps to be added, in which they though well what if we can fill that space with our own content? So there first game was about making the get the ball into the cup game into an actual mobile game.
At the same time some of his friends were creating a tower defense game, so they decided to collaborate with them. They used OpenGL, which where the 3D graphics they used to create their own 3D game engine so that they could build there first 3D game called Tower Madness, which was about saving sheep from aliens using tower defenses.
Obviously they took complete advantage of micro transactions and made custom game items that were only available for purchase separate to the game, which meant that they were making more money and they knew that they had opened up a market here for the future of gaming. They started teaming up with other companies, who were also creating games, and started promoting their games on theirs and vice versa so that they were broadening their audience and therefore getting even more money. The second game that they created with was called Nuts! and they came up with rough concepts where you would tilt the phone, while your squirrel character is running up a tree, to collect the items and dodge around the branches. They then designed the character further and started working on what kind of perspective they would need to ensure that player can see everything ahead and have time to dodge. They did the testing for this by taking it coffee shops so that they could get the necessary feedback and learn how to improve it further. This worked well and they got really good feedback.
The first game that they created was influenced by Modern Warfare 3 for a gun ship scene that they created. They didn't want to kill humans so they decided to kill zombies so they started doing research into the A31 gunship to base their game from. Another big part was watching things from the war where people show up as white using heat vision so they used this, making the humans white and the zombies black, creating a big difference between them. They started looking at environments and character concepts where they introduced larger zombies, and they ended up using very low-poly houses that were only made from about 40 triangles.
They progressed throughout the years and when Andriod came out they began working with them and tried to re-release Tower Madness but found that the graphics weren't as good as they should be for 2013 so they ended up just making Tower Madness 2. They completely redesigned the art work and as they have a bigger company they have an artist working for them now. At one stage the models where very jumpy and moved with a very jerky pattern but they were able to produce a better walk cycle for free with better programmer knowledge and a better and more successful working environment.
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