Interview with KillHouse Games
I don’t remember how I came across Door Kickers - a two-dimensional tactical simulator of a special forces team with a free pause (yes, you can draw attack paths, pause the game at any time and remake them. No moves and hexagons, no hard real time). The fact is that having bought it, I sat down to play a “couple of missions”, and woke up in the morning when I tried to go through all the levels with the maximum number of stars. Further more, and in the end I started to learn about the publisher’s company (all of a sudden they have similar projects?). It turned out that the game is being made by a small company from Romania - KillHouse Games , which is less than two years old, but the developers already had a lot of knowledge for developing their own
TL game ; DR - the game trailer (at the moment the graphics in the game look a little different) :
And then comes the interview with them:
- Hi guys!
- Hello! ( Dan Dimitrescu and Mihai Gosa with you )
- First of all, please tell us about your team. I know Dan is the founder of KillHouse Games. Who else works with you?
MG : He works with me (Mihai Gosa, programmer), Catalin Saitan (programmer) and with our full-time artist, Adrian Cruceanu.
DD : Yes, we founded the company together, and are its co-owners.
- As far as I remember, Dan worked at Ubisoft before KillHouse. Has your team already had experience developing games, or did you have to learn during the development of DoorKickers?
MG : Adrian is the only one who hasn't worked in the game development industry, but as far as you can see, he's a damn talented artist!
DD : You can see our names in the credits of the following games: Silent Hunter 3/4 / - a simulator of a submarine from the Second World War; Assassin's Creed Brotherhood; Tom Clansy's HAWX 2, Ghost Recon Future Soldier; Zombie U and many others.
The artist really is not in vain eating bread. Start of development:
End of 2013:
- What did your family tell you when you announced that you were leaving for a startup?
DD : To be honest, I don’t remember. I think I recall the enthusiasm, but maybe it’s my brain that hides the violence that includes the frying pan and my head.
MG : Wife: Oh no! Parents: Oh no!
- Did you have any savings for the first time, or have you been working for 2 years all the money received from the game?
DD: I didn’t have money, I put it all down for airsoft, computers and other stuff. But my wife did, because, as you see, she does not work as the chief designer of the largest gaming studio in Romania.
MG : I had savings for the first year of work without any profit. I started keeping financial records about 4-5 months before leaving EA, and figured out how much money I needed to last so long. Fortunately, the game began to make a profit (when sold through our website) after 6 months of development (although it could start to make a profit even earlier).
- Another question, the answer to which I was waiting for a very long time: did you play SWAT-2? How many years have I been waiting for a similar game before I found DoorKickers!
DD: I played it, but not so long ago - I missed it when it was new. I jumped from Police Quest Open Season right away to SWAT3, which was really cool. Of course, at one time I was sitting around Rainbow Six, Rogue Spear and Ghost Recon.
PQ1 and 2 were very difficult to find at the current time, but thanks to gog.com I bought them. I remember a lot of good old games, but then we spent all the time on games, to the detriment of every little thing, such as preparing for exams.
- In DoorKickers, players can purchase additional “buns,” such as their own portraits as stormtroopers / terrorists, houses as cards in the game, access to night builds, etc. Do many players buy such things? And is it justified financially?
DD: A lot of players buy the opportunity to add their portrait to the game, and this is good for you as a developer, because they start playing again and again when they see themselves in the game. This leads to the fact that the players brag to their friends, and they become involved in the game :) We also have a little bit of “insert-your-home-in-game” sold, but so far no one has bought the maximum service “to be a hostage / bad guy / special unit. " I think if we were more famous, sales would go better, but in our opinion the current result is also quite good!
Self-made author
- What development tools do you use? Do you practice Continuous Integration? Bug tracker? What is your favorite IDE?
MG: We use Visual Studio, Photoshop, and 3D Studio Max for development, SVN for code storage, and Google Docs for documents. About once a month we use Xcode and kdevelop for builds under Mac / Linux. Favorite IDE: Visual Studio; Disliked: Xcode.
Bug tracker: bugs.txt which I am editing with Notepad ++.
We use some of the principles of Continuous Integration, which help to develop as quickly as possible with a minimum overhead.
DD : It may not sound very Hi-Tech, but with a small group of programmers and a very self-motivated leader (MG) - it works. In addition, there is less chance of starting something wrong.
- Do you use static code analyzers like PVS-Studio or something else besides standard compiler output? BTW, what compilers are you using to build the project?
MG : We use free cpplint and cppcheck analyzers, but not as often as we would like. For assembly we use cl (Visual Studio), gcc (Linux) and llvm (OSX). We do not support the c ++ 11 standard because we did not find how to build a game under OSX <10.7 with c ++ 11 support. Once we released an update that required OSX> 10.7, and you would be very surprised if you knew how many people still use the old versions.
- Which VCS are you using? Do you often make brunches (I mean, brunch for each feature / bug and merge when everything is ready) or use one branch for each release? How about Code Review?
MG : We use SVN. No brunches, commit immediately to the master branch. I do a review of all commits (both code and data). The game is built using a very simple toolchain, and this helps to minimize the loss of time on the allocation of branches and a lot of testing. Even in the current Alpha version, our users are surprised at how stable the game is. We very rarely receive error reports (meaning crash-report) or bugs that prevent the game from playing.
- Do you use automatic testing (or unit tests), or do you manually play hundreds of times to find a bug? By the way, not bored playing your own game again and again?
MG: No unit tests. When 1 person writes 80% of the code, it gives its results. As I said above, we very rarely get bug reports. In addition, games (and game engines) change so often that writing tests will take up a significant part of the programmer’s time, which we are not ready to go on. In general, we rarely play old missions. I hope that these are the consequences of a lot of practice in programming and game dev, which allows the game to be stable and without tests.
- What development model are you using? Agile, RAD, just write this code?
MG: I think I need to come up with a new terminology, but it will be something between Agile and RAD, interspersed with just-write-this-code. In my head, I plan a lot for the code side, but often unexpected places in the design / graphics come up that need to be changed due to the wishes of users or the market.
DD : We had Agile at Ubi, but right now we are very far from him. We do not have many resources to spend them on numerous iterations. We think a lot, try to do it right the first time, or just break it into small tasks and look at the reaction of users.
- One of the possible purchases on the site is the purchase of the game source. Not afraid to give them to someone, knowing that this someone can make a game that can exceed yours?
MG: In general, we added a clause on non-competition to the license agreement, but I think that it can be safely thrown away, because we will not give the source code until the final release of the game. Looking back, I think that this was not a very competent proposal - who will wait for the source code for 1-2 years? In addition, I doubt that someone can make the game better than ours :-P
Hardcode Geek!
- What do you think of Open Source? Could you write DoorKickers for donations only?
MG : I doubt that the open-source model will work for any games, especially for Door Kickers, because (despite very loyal fans) we have a very narrow niche.
- Was it hard to get from Steam Greenlight to the main Steam store?
MG: No, simple enough. Greenlight quickly pushed us to first place in over 1,400 games before we hit Steam itself. One of the things we did was to release a free (but stripped down) version of the game for promotion in Greenlight. It had many “vote for us on Greenlight” buttons.
- I found your game only on Steam and the Humble Bundle Store. What other stores do you use? Which one is more effective?
MG : We sell the game on our website ( inthekillhouse.com ), Gamers Gate and MacGameStore. We also plan to add the game to several more stores when we get closer to the release. I am personally impressed with the Steam developer interface and their update system, and I believe that this contributes to the success of the platform itself.
The most successful store is our own site: this was one of the reasons to continue development, because then we could not sell the game on other platforms. By the way, most of the money comes from him.
- I heard that Door Kickers is used as a simulator for the military. Can you tell us more about this? Did you just give them the source / binaries, or rewrite part of the “casual” logic?
DD : The version for the military is a bit “tightened up” and several special levels have been added to it. In the long run, we want to add a few improvements to repeat the battle so that the instructor can explain “what went wrong” and “how the plan can be improved.”
In addition, we will probably remove some elements of the randomness, but in truth, the military is not concerned about the gameplay. They use the game to demonstrate the correct CQB (Close Quarters Battle - melee) and tactics.
An example of bad tactics is without cover, with an empty store, and one against three. Raccoon is not a tenant
- What is your relationship with colleagues? Do you just work together, or periodically get out to the bar, for barbecue, etc.?
MG : We worked together in other companies, and we are comfortable surrounded by each other. By the way, someone will tell me, is there really anything else besides work ?!
DD: Being an indie developer means that you are dependent on yourself, and all available time should be spent on the game. But in my case it’s difficult, because I have a small child who needs attention. Nevertheless, the good relationship that we have developed since Ubi means that we have learned to accept each other and believe that everyone is doing everything possible to develop the game.
- How long does it take to manage KillHouse? Large companies have separate managers, how is this with you?
MG: We are a team that consists of three full-time employees and 5-6 part-time contractors. I can handle this amount myself, leaving development at the head of working time. In addition, Dan and I do all the work related to support, community management and marketing. I think that at the moment a separate manager will only slow us down and create a barrier between us and the players.
- How much harder is it when you have to pay a salary not only for yourself, but also for employees? There was no thought to quit everything and say: “Let's go to hell, I'm going back to a big company”?
MG: Personally, I have a great tolerance for pressure from the work side, so I never had a desire to quit. Although I want to say some things “Let's go to hell” :) A sense of responsibility for employees greatly limits the growth of the company. Despite the fact that we can accelerate development by hiring a couple of developers, we will not do this until at least their annual salary is in the budget.
- Could it happen that an employee does not have tasks (the designer has nothing to draw, etc.)? What are you doing in this situation?
MG: A small team has the advantage of not having “bottlenecks” in communication with each other. This is what I often saw during my days at a large company, and what I always hated. If this happens, I’ll give myself a slap in the head, because either I do not manage the company well, or I started programming, and the designer went far ahead.
- It happens that an employee “burns out” - works poorly, becomes lethargic. What are you doing in this situation?
MG : Threats usually work. I’m joking, but in fact in startups (and especially in the development of games) there is no place for “burned out”, since it requires titanic efforts. It may sound harsh, but this job is not for everyone. In addition, we try to work with self-motivated people.
- Can you recall some funny bugs / situations during development? I know one game (it’s about Baglo ’s post ) where the pig was given a gun without cartridges, because the “Pig” inherited the “Soldier” class. I hope the hostages in your game aren't the Sturmovik-Without-Cartridges?
MG : From the developer's point of view, I don’t know any “funny” bugs :) But I think that players find situations like this funny:
In fact, our hostages are the Sturmovik-Bez-Brainless. In all seriousness - we removed their brains.
- What tips can you give for beginner game developers?
MG : For programmers: write a lot of games from scratch (without the help of any Unity), otherwise you will not learn anything. Write logic, render, work with network, sound, GUI, etc., without any division into want / not want.
For designers / artists: write a lot of DD games
: Motivation is the level of fuel that you should monitor, and not only for yours, but also for your team. When you start a project, try to make it playable as soon as possible. If you do not let people play the game (or even better - pay for it) in 6-12 months, you will fail it. When players put their hands into the game it motivates you, and makes it clear that you are moving in the right direction.
- Please say a few words in the end for those who have read to the end.
MG : Congratulations! Not many came to this place :-P And buy our game!
- And finally: Thank you for opening the editor and starting to write Door Kickers
DD : Thank you for the interview.
Update: Used libraries:
- OpenGL (ES) for rendering
- OpenAL for sound
- tinyxml for reading / writing .xml
- libpng for reading .png
- Curl for downloading news (which, by the way, is also in xml)
- ffmpeg for exporting battle recordings
- In the future, new
PS libraries will be added If there are any the questions you want answers to - write them in the comments, I will be happy to pass them on to the developers.
TL game ; DR - the game trailer (at the moment the graphics in the game look a little different) :
And then comes the interview with them:
- Hi guys!
- Hello! ( Dan Dimitrescu and Mihai Gosa with you )
- First of all, please tell us about your team. I know Dan is the founder of KillHouse Games. Who else works with you?
MG : He works with me (Mihai Gosa, programmer), Catalin Saitan (programmer) and with our full-time artist, Adrian Cruceanu.
DD : Yes, we founded the company together, and are its co-owners.
- As far as I remember, Dan worked at Ubisoft before KillHouse. Has your team already had experience developing games, or did you have to learn during the development of DoorKickers?
MG : Adrian is the only one who hasn't worked in the game development industry, but as far as you can see, he's a damn talented artist!
DD : You can see our names in the credits of the following games: Silent Hunter 3/4 / - a simulator of a submarine from the Second World War; Assassin's Creed Brotherhood; Tom Clansy's HAWX 2, Ghost Recon Future Soldier; Zombie U and many others.
The artist really is not in vain eating bread. Start of development:
End of 2013:
- What did your family tell you when you announced that you were leaving for a startup?
DD : To be honest, I don’t remember. I think I recall the enthusiasm, but maybe it’s my brain that hides the violence that includes the frying pan and my head.
MG : Wife: Oh no! Parents: Oh no!
- Did you have any savings for the first time, or have you been working for 2 years all the money received from the game?
DD: I didn’t have money, I put it all down for airsoft, computers and other stuff. But my wife did, because, as you see, she does not work as the chief designer of the largest gaming studio in Romania.
MG : I had savings for the first year of work without any profit. I started keeping financial records about 4-5 months before leaving EA, and figured out how much money I needed to last so long. Fortunately, the game began to make a profit (when sold through our website) after 6 months of development (although it could start to make a profit even earlier).
- Another question, the answer to which I was waiting for a very long time: did you play SWAT-2? How many years have I been waiting for a similar game before I found DoorKickers!
DD: I played it, but not so long ago - I missed it when it was new. I jumped from Police Quest Open Season right away to SWAT3, which was really cool. Of course, at one time I was sitting around Rainbow Six, Rogue Spear and Ghost Recon.
PQ1 and 2 were very difficult to find at the current time, but thanks to gog.com I bought them. I remember a lot of good old games, but then we spent all the time on games, to the detriment of every little thing, such as preparing for exams.
- In DoorKickers, players can purchase additional “buns,” such as their own portraits as stormtroopers / terrorists, houses as cards in the game, access to night builds, etc. Do many players buy such things? And is it justified financially?
DD: A lot of players buy the opportunity to add their portrait to the game, and this is good for you as a developer, because they start playing again and again when they see themselves in the game. This leads to the fact that the players brag to their friends, and they become involved in the game :) We also have a little bit of “insert-your-home-in-game” sold, but so far no one has bought the maximum service “to be a hostage / bad guy / special unit. " I think if we were more famous, sales would go better, but in our opinion the current result is also quite good!
Self-made author
- What development tools do you use? Do you practice Continuous Integration? Bug tracker? What is your favorite IDE?
MG: We use Visual Studio, Photoshop, and 3D Studio Max for development, SVN for code storage, and Google Docs for documents. About once a month we use Xcode and kdevelop for builds under Mac / Linux. Favorite IDE: Visual Studio; Disliked: Xcode.
Bug tracker: bugs.txt which I am editing with Notepad ++.
We use some of the principles of Continuous Integration, which help to develop as quickly as possible with a minimum overhead.
DD : It may not sound very Hi-Tech, but with a small group of programmers and a very self-motivated leader (MG) - it works. In addition, there is less chance of starting something wrong.
- Do you use static code analyzers like PVS-Studio or something else besides standard compiler output? BTW, what compilers are you using to build the project?
MG : We use free cpplint and cppcheck analyzers, but not as often as we would like. For assembly we use cl (Visual Studio), gcc (Linux) and llvm (OSX). We do not support the c ++ 11 standard because we did not find how to build a game under OSX <10.7 with c ++ 11 support. Once we released an update that required OSX> 10.7, and you would be very surprised if you knew how many people still use the old versions.
- Which VCS are you using? Do you often make brunches (I mean, brunch for each feature / bug and merge when everything is ready) or use one branch for each release? How about Code Review?
MG : We use SVN. No brunches, commit immediately to the master branch. I do a review of all commits (both code and data). The game is built using a very simple toolchain, and this helps to minimize the loss of time on the allocation of branches and a lot of testing. Even in the current Alpha version, our users are surprised at how stable the game is. We very rarely receive error reports (meaning crash-report) or bugs that prevent the game from playing.
- Do you use automatic testing (or unit tests), or do you manually play hundreds of times to find a bug? By the way, not bored playing your own game again and again?
MG: No unit tests. When 1 person writes 80% of the code, it gives its results. As I said above, we very rarely get bug reports. In addition, games (and game engines) change so often that writing tests will take up a significant part of the programmer’s time, which we are not ready to go on. In general, we rarely play old missions. I hope that these are the consequences of a lot of practice in programming and game dev, which allows the game to be stable and without tests.
- What development model are you using? Agile, RAD, just write this code?
MG: I think I need to come up with a new terminology, but it will be something between Agile and RAD, interspersed with just-write-this-code. In my head, I plan a lot for the code side, but often unexpected places in the design / graphics come up that need to be changed due to the wishes of users or the market.
DD : We had Agile at Ubi, but right now we are very far from him. We do not have many resources to spend them on numerous iterations. We think a lot, try to do it right the first time, or just break it into small tasks and look at the reaction of users.
- One of the possible purchases on the site is the purchase of the game source. Not afraid to give them to someone, knowing that this someone can make a game that can exceed yours?
MG: In general, we added a clause on non-competition to the license agreement, but I think that it can be safely thrown away, because we will not give the source code until the final release of the game. Looking back, I think that this was not a very competent proposal - who will wait for the source code for 1-2 years? In addition, I doubt that someone can make the game better than ours :-P
Hardcode Geek!
- What do you think of Open Source? Could you write DoorKickers for donations only?
MG : I doubt that the open-source model will work for any games, especially for Door Kickers, because (despite very loyal fans) we have a very narrow niche.
- Was it hard to get from Steam Greenlight to the main Steam store?
MG: No, simple enough. Greenlight quickly pushed us to first place in over 1,400 games before we hit Steam itself. One of the things we did was to release a free (but stripped down) version of the game for promotion in Greenlight. It had many “vote for us on Greenlight” buttons.
- I found your game only on Steam and the Humble Bundle Store. What other stores do you use? Which one is more effective?
MG : We sell the game on our website ( inthekillhouse.com ), Gamers Gate and MacGameStore. We also plan to add the game to several more stores when we get closer to the release. I am personally impressed with the Steam developer interface and their update system, and I believe that this contributes to the success of the platform itself.
The most successful store is our own site: this was one of the reasons to continue development, because then we could not sell the game on other platforms. By the way, most of the money comes from him.
- I heard that Door Kickers is used as a simulator for the military. Can you tell us more about this? Did you just give them the source / binaries, or rewrite part of the “casual” logic?
DD : The version for the military is a bit “tightened up” and several special levels have been added to it. In the long run, we want to add a few improvements to repeat the battle so that the instructor can explain “what went wrong” and “how the plan can be improved.”
In addition, we will probably remove some elements of the randomness, but in truth, the military is not concerned about the gameplay. They use the game to demonstrate the correct CQB (Close Quarters Battle - melee) and tactics.
An example of bad tactics is without cover, with an empty store, and one against three. Raccoon is not a tenant
- What is your relationship with colleagues? Do you just work together, or periodically get out to the bar, for barbecue, etc.?
MG : We worked together in other companies, and we are comfortable surrounded by each other. By the way, someone will tell me, is there really anything else besides work ?!
DD: Being an indie developer means that you are dependent on yourself, and all available time should be spent on the game. But in my case it’s difficult, because I have a small child who needs attention. Nevertheless, the good relationship that we have developed since Ubi means that we have learned to accept each other and believe that everyone is doing everything possible to develop the game.
- How long does it take to manage KillHouse? Large companies have separate managers, how is this with you?
MG: We are a team that consists of three full-time employees and 5-6 part-time contractors. I can handle this amount myself, leaving development at the head of working time. In addition, Dan and I do all the work related to support, community management and marketing. I think that at the moment a separate manager will only slow us down and create a barrier between us and the players.
- How much harder is it when you have to pay a salary not only for yourself, but also for employees? There was no thought to quit everything and say: “Let's go to hell, I'm going back to a big company”?
MG: Personally, I have a great tolerance for pressure from the work side, so I never had a desire to quit. Although I want to say some things “Let's go to hell” :) A sense of responsibility for employees greatly limits the growth of the company. Despite the fact that we can accelerate development by hiring a couple of developers, we will not do this until at least their annual salary is in the budget.
- Could it happen that an employee does not have tasks (the designer has nothing to draw, etc.)? What are you doing in this situation?
MG: A small team has the advantage of not having “bottlenecks” in communication with each other. This is what I often saw during my days at a large company, and what I always hated. If this happens, I’ll give myself a slap in the head, because either I do not manage the company well, or I started programming, and the designer went far ahead.
- It happens that an employee “burns out” - works poorly, becomes lethargic. What are you doing in this situation?
MG : Threats usually work. I’m joking, but in fact in startups (and especially in the development of games) there is no place for “burned out”, since it requires titanic efforts. It may sound harsh, but this job is not for everyone. In addition, we try to work with self-motivated people.
- Can you recall some funny bugs / situations during development? I know one game (it’s about Baglo ’s post ) where the pig was given a gun without cartridges, because the “Pig” inherited the “Soldier” class. I hope the hostages in your game aren't the Sturmovik-Without-Cartridges?
MG : From the developer's point of view, I don’t know any “funny” bugs :) But I think that players find situations like this funny:
In fact, our hostages are the Sturmovik-Bez-Brainless. In all seriousness - we removed their brains.
- What tips can you give for beginner game developers?
MG : For programmers: write a lot of games from scratch (without the help of any Unity), otherwise you will not learn anything. Write logic, render, work with network, sound, GUI, etc., without any division into want / not want.
For designers / artists: write a lot of DD games
: Motivation is the level of fuel that you should monitor, and not only for yours, but also for your team. When you start a project, try to make it playable as soon as possible. If you do not let people play the game (or even better - pay for it) in 6-12 months, you will fail it. When players put their hands into the game it motivates you, and makes it clear that you are moving in the right direction.
- Please say a few words in the end for those who have read to the end.
MG : Congratulations! Not many came to this place :-P And buy our game!
- And finally: Thank you for opening the editor and starting to write Door Kickers
DD : Thank you for the interview.
Update: Used libraries:
- OpenGL (ES) for rendering
- OpenAL for sound
- tinyxml for reading / writing .xml
- libpng for reading .png
- Curl for downloading news (which, by the way, is also in xml)
- ffmpeg for exporting battle recordings
- In the future, new
PS libraries will be added If there are any the questions you want answers to - write them in the comments, I will be happy to pass them on to the developers.