Jeff Hangartner – Revealing the Path Less Travelled in Video Game Industry
Jeff Hangartner, the founder of the gaming start-up, Bulletproof Outlaws has been a professional developer of games over the last half a decade. Creator of Pixelation, the 1st Pixel Art Forum and also originator of the Pixel tutorials which have been published in the form of a book. Jeff has always been a pioneer of the gaming industry.
CG Today is proud to present Jeff’s exploration as he shares the whole process of creating a start-up right from day 1. With the belief that gaming development is coming back to its original “one programmer in the basement roots” idea, Bulletproof Outlaws is chronicling every step of its start-up process from strategies, to marketing, setting goals and outsourcing, successes and failures. The aim is to help other developers who have ideas but are intimidated by the whole start-up process and are not sure how to go about it.
You can visit his website Bulletproof Outlaws to know more about him or send an email to get connected.
So today I wrote up a bit more detailed version of the project, basically the list of core features for the game. I have the full GDD done but I don’t really want to hand it out all over the place, especially when I know I’m only hiring 1 out of like 6 people for the project. I’m not bothering with Non-Disclosure Agreements because, well, I’m writing all about the game on here as it is…it seems kind of silly to worry about an NDA.
Hell if anything, I WANT my programmer to talk about the game and promote it as we dev haha Everything is happening kind of fast, I’m juggling E-Mails and stuff on top of still working on the art, so I’m just kind of winging this right now. Anyway, here’s part of the follow-up I sent out:
These are the main components of the project:
- Getting the art to show up
- Making the ninja slide to the player’s finger
- Spawning objects randomly (need to be able to adjust what spits out when over time, so the first 30 seconds throwing-stars come out 100% of the time, the next 10 seconds throwing-stars come out 90% of the time and dynamite comes out 10%, etc.)
- Detecting if the objects are hitting the player and taking the player’s lives away
- Playing music and sound effects (some of the sound effects would need to be random (so it will choose between 5 different sound effects for the ninja shouting, etc.)
- Timer counting up and saving out the final time to a Leaderboard/Facebook/Twitter
- Menus (standard stuff, quick Retry pop-ups, Options menu, etc.)
- Sound Test (this can just be a default simple screen like the iPhone’s “choose a ringtone” page)
- Pop-up window encouraging reviews
- Play the logos and title-screen
And that’s it!
I figured this would be enough to get a general estimate (2 weeks, a month, 2 months, etc.) so I can figure out who to go with. I’m looking at spending around $2000-$2500 for this. It’s really not a complicated project when you break it down, especially if the programmer has already made games with music/sound, logos, menus, etc.
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it | Web: Bulletproof Outlaws
Bulletproof Outlaws Diary
- I’m back, and with a new project in production!
- Indie Game Marketing: ARTICLE IV – Psychology
- 50% Off “Back-To-School-Boredom” Sale for Elusive Ninja!
- Indie Game Marketing: ARTICLE III – Game Related & Maintenance
- Quick break from Marketing Articles to make my Touch Arcade banners!
- Indie Game Marketing: ARTICLE II – Traditional Advertising
- Indie Game Marketing: ARTICLE I – Social Marketing
- The trials & tribulations of marketing as an indie gamedev!
- Back to kickin’ ass & making games!
- Days 116 to 117 – Elusive Ninja officially launched! Final update before E3!
- Day 115 – Elusive Ninja approved! Plus E3 promotional stuff!
- Day 114 – Elusive Ninja: The Shadowy Thief – official trailer!
- Days 109 to 113 – Elusive Ninja for the iPhone submitted to Apple!
- Days 106 to 108 – So close to submitting to Apple!
- Game1: Days 104 to 105 – Using basic human psychology to balance videogame difficulty curves!
- Game1, Day 103 – Stress management! I never expected to write this haha
- Game1, Days 100 to 102 – Big news! Elusive Ninja is in its final stages!
- Game1, Day 99 – All art/animations complete!
- Game1, Day 98 – Ahhh powers of two…you’re still around, eh?
- Game1, Day 97 – Just ’cause it’s bigger doesn’t mean it’s more powerful!
- Game1, Day 96 – Testing, testing, one two three!
- Game1, Day 95 – iPad art complete! Two versions down, one to go!
- Game1, Day 94 – My art is fat, time to put it on a .PNG reduction diet!
- Game1, Day 93 – Choppin’ and loadin’…sounds like the title of a bad NES game haha
- Game1, Days 72 – 92 – MegaUpdate Part 2, Music and SFX
Bulletproof Outlaws
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