June 21, 2014 at 14:42The developer spent 13 years to complete the game.
13 years ago, an English teenager, Adam Butcher, came home from the premiere of The Lord of the Rings and firmly decided that he had to make a game in which he realized everything that was missing in all the other silly games. There must be adventures and puzzles, a real story and a fight against evil.
The guy was 14 years old, he had just mastered the popular Multimedia Fusion program - and the same day he got down to business, drew the main character of Tobias and object number 1 - the sword.
13 years have passed, Adam recently turned 27, of which he spent almost half, remaking and perfecting the “childhood project”. But still he finished it! It’s clear that such a game cannot have a price, so it’s free: Tobias and the Dark Sceptres .
Adam talks about the history of creation in a wonderful 7-minute video.
Summary. In 2000, the 14-year-old Adam already made a couple of simple games using Klik & Play and Multimedia Fusion - the first handy game development tools available to everyone. Then the unfinished construction began.
The developer names six reasons why the project took so long.
1. Ambition. The game should be complex and multifaceted, and not a simple walker with conventional mechanics.
2. Inexperience. The code written on the Klik & Play and Multimedia Fusion platforms had to be modified manually later. Symbiosis did not come out, and work again began almost from scratch.
3. Complex graphics. Adam all the time seemed to be able to do better: he was constantly improving something. And he drew the main character too big, so at each level I had to do better detail.
Another thing is fair coverage. If the character turns his back to the light source, then his sprite should change accordingly. So every sprite and every frame had to be drawn twice.
4. Years and evolution of computer graphics. Over time, the old quality of the graphics ceased to suit the author, so he remade the game several times so that the graphics corresponded to his new requirements, added new features that became possible.
5. Determination of compliance with the plan. Initially, the author planned 13 levels with certain characters. He could have finished the game several years earlier if he had reduced 4-5 levels. But no: a plan is a plan.
6. The burden of past years, which is perceived as a debilitating burden or as a curse. Or you can call it determination. You can’t give up now, you can’t give up a project that has spent so much effort. Come on, a little more!
Adam says his example is a warning to all indie developers who are overly passionate about their business.
The guy was 14 years old, he had just mastered the popular Multimedia Fusion program - and the same day he got down to business, drew the main character of Tobias and object number 1 - the sword.
13 years have passed, Adam recently turned 27, of which he spent almost half, remaking and perfecting the “childhood project”. But still he finished it! It’s clear that such a game cannot have a price, so it’s free: Tobias and the Dark Sceptres .
Adam talks about the history of creation in a wonderful 7-minute video.
Summary. In 2000, the 14-year-old Adam already made a couple of simple games using Klik & Play and Multimedia Fusion - the first handy game development tools available to everyone. Then the unfinished construction began.
The developer names six reasons why the project took so long.
1. Ambition. The game should be complex and multifaceted, and not a simple walker with conventional mechanics.
2. Inexperience. The code written on the Klik & Play and Multimedia Fusion platforms had to be modified manually later. Symbiosis did not come out, and work again began almost from scratch.
3. Complex graphics. Adam all the time seemed to be able to do better: he was constantly improving something. And he drew the main character too big, so at each level I had to do better detail.
Another thing is fair coverage. If the character turns his back to the light source, then his sprite should change accordingly. So every sprite and every frame had to be drawn twice.
4. Years and evolution of computer graphics. Over time, the old quality of the graphics ceased to suit the author, so he remade the game several times so that the graphics corresponded to his new requirements, added new features that became possible.
5. Determination of compliance with the plan. Initially, the author planned 13 levels with certain characters. He could have finished the game several years earlier if he had reduced 4-5 levels. But no: a plan is a plan.
6. The burden of past years, which is perceived as a debilitating burden or as a curse. Or you can call it determination. You can’t give up now, you can’t give up a project that has spent so much effort. Come on, a little more!
Adam says his example is a warning to all indie developers who are overly passionate about their business.