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 redo them. No moves and hexes, no hard real-time). The fact is that after buying it, I sat down to play “a couple of missions”, and woke up in the morning when I tried to complete all the levels with the maximum number of stars. Further more, and as a result I began to find out about the publisher’s firm (what if they have more 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 tangible knowledge base to develop their own game.
TL; DR - game trailer (currently the graphics in the game look a little different):
And then comes the interview with them:
- Hi guys!
- Hello! (With you Dan Dimitrescu and Mihai Gosa )
')
- First, please tell us about your team. I know that Dan is the founder of KillHouse Games. Who else is working with you?
MG : He works with me (Mihai Gosa, programmer), Catalin Saitan (programmer) and with our full-time artist, Adrian Crubrio.
DD : Yes, we founded the company together and we are co-owners.
- As I recall, before KillHouse Dan worked for Ubisoft. Did your team already have experience in game development, or did you have to learn while developing DoorKickers?
MG : Adrian is the only one who hasn't worked in the game development industry, but as far as you can see, he is a damn talented artist!
DD : You can see our names in the credits of the following games: Silent Hunter 3/4 / - a submarine simulator 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 does not eat bread in vain. Development start:
End of 2013:
- What did your relatives tell you when you told them that you were going to a startup?
DD : To be honest, I don't remember. I think I remember the enthusiasm, but maybe it’s my brain that hides the violence that includes the griddle and my head.
MG : Wife: Oh no! Parents: Oh no!
- Did you have any savings for the first time, or did you work all 2 years only for the money received from the game?
DD : I had no money, I let them all down into airsoft, computers, and other junk. But my wife had, because, as you can see, she does not work as the chief designer of the largest game studio in Romania.
MG : I had savings for the first year of work without any profit. I started keeping records of finance about 4-5 months before being fired from EA, and figured out how much money I need to stretch for so long. Fortunately, the game began to make a profit (when selling through our website) after 6 months of development (although it could start making profit even earlier).
- One more question, the answer to which I waited 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 the Police Quest Open Season right onto SWAT3, which was really cool. Needless to say, at one time I sat up with 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, like 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 this financially justified?
DD : Many players buy the opportunity to add their portrait to the game, and this is good for you as a developer, because they start to play again and again when they see themselves in the game. This leads to the fact that the players brag to their friends, and they are involved in the game :) We also have some sold “insert-your-home-in-game”, but so far no one has bought the maximum service “to be hostage / bad a guy / special unit. " I think if we were more famous, sales would have gone better, but in our opinion, the current result is also quite good!
Self-author
- What development tools do you use? Do you practice Continuous Integration? Bugtracker? Which IDE is your favorite?
MG : We use Visual Studio, Photoshop and 3D Studio Max for development, SVN for storing code, and Google Docs for documents. About once a month we use Xcode and kdevelop for Mac / Linux builds. Favorite IDE: Visual Studio, unloved: Xcode.
Bugtracker: bugs.txt which I edit with Notepad ++.
We use some principles of Continuous Integration, which help to develop as quickly as possible with minimal 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 are less chances to start doing something wrong.
- Do you use static code analyzers of the PVS-Studio type or something else besides the standard compiler output? BTW, which compilers are you using to build a project?
MG : We use the free cpplint and cppcheck analyzers, but not as often as we would like. We use cl (Visual Studio), gcc (Linux) and llvm (OSX) to build. We do not support the standard c ++ 11 because we did not find how to build the game for OSX <10.7 with support for c ++ 11. 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.
- What kind of VCS are you using? Do you often do brunches (I mean, brunch for each feature / bug and merge when everything is ready) or use one branch for each release? What about code review?
MG : We use SVN. No brunches, commit directly to the master branch. I review all commits (both code and data). The game is built using a very simple toolchain, and this helps minimize the loss of time for branching and large testing. Even in the current Alpha version, our users are surprised at how stable the game is. We very rarely receive bug reports (called crash-report) or bugs that do not allow us to play the game.
- Do you use automatic testing (or unit tests), or manually play a hundred times to find a bug? By the way, do not bother to play 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 portion of the programmer’s time, which we are not yet ready to take. In general, we rarely play old missions. I hope that these are the consequences of a lot of programming practice and game development, which allows the game to be stable and without tests.
- What model for development do you use? Agile, RAD, just write-this-code?
MG : I think I need to come up with a new terminology, but this will be something between Agile and RAD, interspersed with simply writing this code. In my head, I plan a lot of the code side, but often unexpected places appear in the design / graphics that need to be changed due to the wishes of users or the market.
DD : We had Agile at Ubi, but now we are very far from it. We do not have many resources to spend on numerous iterations. We think a lot, we try to do it right the first time, or we just break into small tasks and watch the reaction of users.
- One of the possible purchases on the site is to buy the source of the game. Not afraid to give them to someone, knowing that this someone can make a game that can surpass yours?
MG : In general, we have added a non-competition clause to the license agreement, but I think that it can be safely thrown out, because we will not give up the sources before the final release of the game. Looking back, I think that this was not a very competent proposal - who would be waiting 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 about open source? Would you be able to write DoorKickers only for donations?
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 moved us to the top of more than 1,400 games before we hit the Steam itself. One of the things we did was released a free (but trimmed) version of the game for promotion in Greenlight. It had a lot of “vote for us on greenlight” buttons.
- I found your game only on the Steam and 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 are closer to the release. Personally, I am 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 website: it was one of the reasons to continue development, because then we could not sell the game on other platforms. By the way, the most 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 sources / binaries, or rewrite some of the “casual” logic?
DD : The military version is a bit “podunen” and several special levels have been added to it. In the long run, we want to add a few improvements to the replay so that the instructor can explain "what went wrong" and "how the plan can be improved."
In addition, we probably remove some elements of the random house, 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 - without cover, with an empty magazine, and one against three. Raccoon is not a tenant
- What is your relationship with colleagues? Do you just work together, or periodically go out to a bar, barbecue, etc.?
MG : We worked together in other companies, and we are comfortable surrounded by each other. By the way, will anyone tell me, is there really anything else besides work ?!
DD : Being an indie developer means that you depend on yourself, and all the time available should be spent on the game. But in my case it is difficult, since I have a small child who needs attention. Still, the good relations that we have developed since the days of Ubi mean that we have learned to accept each other and to believe that everyone is doing everything possible to develop the game.
- How long does it take to manage a KillHouse? In large companies there are individual managers, how is it with you?
MG : We are a team that consists of three full-time workers and 5-6 part-time contract soldiers. I can handle this amount on my own, leaving development at the head of working time. In addition, I and Dan 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 life when you have to pay a salary not only for yourself, but also for your employees? There was no thought to drop everything and say: “Let's go to hell, I'm leaving back to a big company”?
MG : Personally, I have a huge tolerance for pressure from work, so I never had the desire to give up everything. Although I want to say some things “Go to hell” :) A sense of responsibility for employees severely limits the growth of the company. Despite the fact that we can accelerate the development of hiring a couple of developers, we will not do it until the budget will not be at least their annual salary.
- Can it happen that the employee has no 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 something that I often saw in the days of work for a large company, and something that I have always hated. If this happens, I will give myself a smack, because either I have poor control of the company, or I have started programming, and the designer has gone far ahead.
- It so happens that an employee “burns out” - does not work well, becomes sluggish. What are you doing in this situation?
MG : Threats usually work. Just kidding, but in fact in startups (and especially in game development) there is no place for those who have “burned out”, since this requires titanic efforts. It may sound hard, but this job is not for everyone. In addition, we try to work with self-motivated people.
- Can you remember some funny bugs / situations during development? I know one game (we are talking about the Baglo post) where the pig was given a pistol without ammunition, since the “Pig” inherited the “Soldier” class. I hope the hostages in your game - this is not a Stormtrooper-Without-Patrons?
MG : From a 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 Stormtroop-Brainless. In all seriousness - we removed their brains.
- What advice can you give to novice 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 the network, sound, GUI, etc., without any division into want / do not want.
For designers / artists: write a lot of games
DD : Motivation is the level of fuel that you have to keep track of, not only your own, but also your command one. When you run 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 for those who read to the end.
MG : Congratulations! Not many have reached this place :-P And buy our game!
- And finally: Thank you, for what you opened the editor and started writing Door Kickers
DD : Thank you for the interview.
Update: Used libraries:
- OpenGL (ES) for rendering
- OpenAL for sound
- tinyxml read / write .xml
- libpng to read .png
- Curl to download news (which, by the way, also in xml)
- ffmpeg to export battle record
- In the future new libraries may be added.
PS If you have any questions for which you want to get answers - write them in the comments, I will gladly pass them on to the developers.
TL; DR - game trailer (currently the graphics in the game look a little different):
And then comes the interview with them:
- Hi guys!
- Hello! (With you Dan Dimitrescu and Mihai Gosa )
')
- First, please tell us about your team. I know that Dan is the founder of KillHouse Games. Who else is working with you?
MG : He works with me (Mihai Gosa, programmer), Catalin Saitan (programmer) and with our full-time artist, Adrian Crubrio.
DD : Yes, we founded the company together and we are co-owners.
- As I recall, before KillHouse Dan worked for Ubisoft. Did your team already have experience in game development, or did you have to learn while developing DoorKickers?
MG : Adrian is the only one who hasn't worked in the game development industry, but as far as you can see, he is a damn talented artist!
DD : You can see our names in the credits of the following games: Silent Hunter 3/4 / - a submarine simulator 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 does not eat bread in vain. Development start:
End of 2013:
- What did your relatives tell you when you told them that you were going to a startup?
DD : To be honest, I don't remember. I think I remember the enthusiasm, but maybe it’s my brain that hides the violence that includes the griddle and my head.
MG : Wife: Oh no! Parents: Oh no!
- Did you have any savings for the first time, or did you work all 2 years only for the money received from the game?
DD : I had no money, I let them all down into airsoft, computers, and other junk. But my wife had, because, as you can see, she does not work as the chief designer of the largest game studio in Romania.
MG : I had savings for the first year of work without any profit. I started keeping records of finance about 4-5 months before being fired from EA, and figured out how much money I need to stretch for so long. Fortunately, the game began to make a profit (when selling through our website) after 6 months of development (although it could start making profit even earlier).
- One more question, the answer to which I waited 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 the Police Quest Open Season right onto SWAT3, which was really cool. Needless to say, at one time I sat up with 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, like 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 this financially justified?
DD : Many players buy the opportunity to add their portrait to the game, and this is good for you as a developer, because they start to play again and again when they see themselves in the game. This leads to the fact that the players brag to their friends, and they are involved in the game :) We also have some sold “insert-your-home-in-game”, but so far no one has bought the maximum service “to be hostage / bad a guy / special unit. " I think if we were more famous, sales would have gone better, but in our opinion, the current result is also quite good!
Self-author
- What development tools do you use? Do you practice Continuous Integration? Bugtracker? Which IDE is your favorite?
MG : We use Visual Studio, Photoshop and 3D Studio Max for development, SVN for storing code, and Google Docs for documents. About once a month we use Xcode and kdevelop for Mac / Linux builds. Favorite IDE: Visual Studio, unloved: Xcode.
Bugtracker: bugs.txt which I edit with Notepad ++.
We use some principles of Continuous Integration, which help to develop as quickly as possible with minimal 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 are less chances to start doing something wrong.
- Do you use static code analyzers of the PVS-Studio type or something else besides the standard compiler output? BTW, which compilers are you using to build a project?
MG : We use the free cpplint and cppcheck analyzers, but not as often as we would like. We use cl (Visual Studio), gcc (Linux) and llvm (OSX) to build. We do not support the standard c ++ 11 because we did not find how to build the game for OSX <10.7 with support for c ++ 11. 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.
- What kind of VCS are you using? Do you often do brunches (I mean, brunch for each feature / bug and merge when everything is ready) or use one branch for each release? What about code review?
MG : We use SVN. No brunches, commit directly to the master branch. I review all commits (both code and data). The game is built using a very simple toolchain, and this helps minimize the loss of time for branching and large testing. Even in the current Alpha version, our users are surprised at how stable the game is. We very rarely receive bug reports (called crash-report) or bugs that do not allow us to play the game.
- Do you use automatic testing (or unit tests), or manually play a hundred times to find a bug? By the way, do not bother to play 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 portion of the programmer’s time, which we are not yet ready to take. In general, we rarely play old missions. I hope that these are the consequences of a lot of programming practice and game development, which allows the game to be stable and without tests.
- What model for development do you use? Agile, RAD, just write-this-code?
MG : I think I need to come up with a new terminology, but this will be something between Agile and RAD, interspersed with simply writing this code. In my head, I plan a lot of the code side, but often unexpected places appear in the design / graphics that need to be changed due to the wishes of users or the market.
DD : We had Agile at Ubi, but now we are very far from it. We do not have many resources to spend on numerous iterations. We think a lot, we try to do it right the first time, or we just break into small tasks and watch the reaction of users.
- One of the possible purchases on the site is to buy the source of the game. Not afraid to give them to someone, knowing that this someone can make a game that can surpass yours?
MG : In general, we have added a non-competition clause to the license agreement, but I think that it can be safely thrown out, because we will not give up the sources before the final release of the game. Looking back, I think that this was not a very competent proposal - who would be waiting 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 about open source? Would you be able to write DoorKickers only for donations?
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 moved us to the top of more than 1,400 games before we hit the Steam itself. One of the things we did was released a free (but trimmed) version of the game for promotion in Greenlight. It had a lot of “vote for us on greenlight” buttons.
- I found your game only on the Steam and 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 are closer to the release. Personally, I am 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 website: it was one of the reasons to continue development, because then we could not sell the game on other platforms. By the way, the most 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 sources / binaries, or rewrite some of the “casual” logic?
DD : The military version is a bit “podunen” and several special levels have been added to it. In the long run, we want to add a few improvements to the replay so that the instructor can explain "what went wrong" and "how the plan can be improved."
In addition, we probably remove some elements of the random house, 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 - without cover, with an empty magazine, and one against three. Raccoon is not a tenant
- What is your relationship with colleagues? Do you just work together, or periodically go out to a bar, barbecue, etc.?
MG : We worked together in other companies, and we are comfortable surrounded by each other. By the way, will anyone tell me, is there really anything else besides work ?!
DD : Being an indie developer means that you depend on yourself, and all the time available should be spent on the game. But in my case it is difficult, since I have a small child who needs attention. Still, the good relations that we have developed since the days of Ubi mean that we have learned to accept each other and to believe that everyone is doing everything possible to develop the game.
- How long does it take to manage a KillHouse? In large companies there are individual managers, how is it with you?
MG : We are a team that consists of three full-time workers and 5-6 part-time contract soldiers. I can handle this amount on my own, leaving development at the head of working time. In addition, I and Dan 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 life when you have to pay a salary not only for yourself, but also for your employees? There was no thought to drop everything and say: “Let's go to hell, I'm leaving back to a big company”?
MG : Personally, I have a huge tolerance for pressure from work, so I never had the desire to give up everything. Although I want to say some things “Go to hell” :) A sense of responsibility for employees severely limits the growth of the company. Despite the fact that we can accelerate the development of hiring a couple of developers, we will not do it until the budget will not be at least their annual salary.
- Can it happen that the employee has no 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 something that I often saw in the days of work for a large company, and something that I have always hated. If this happens, I will give myself a smack, because either I have poor control of the company, or I have started programming, and the designer has gone far ahead.
- It so happens that an employee “burns out” - does not work well, becomes sluggish. What are you doing in this situation?
MG : Threats usually work. Just kidding, but in fact in startups (and especially in game development) there is no place for those who have “burned out”, since this requires titanic efforts. It may sound hard, but this job is not for everyone. In addition, we try to work with self-motivated people.
- Can you remember some funny bugs / situations during development? I know one game (we are talking about the Baglo post) where the pig was given a pistol without ammunition, since the “Pig” inherited the “Soldier” class. I hope the hostages in your game - this is not a Stormtrooper-Without-Patrons?
MG : From a 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 Stormtroop-Brainless. In all seriousness - we removed their brains.
- What advice can you give to novice 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 the network, sound, GUI, etc., without any division into want / do not want.
For designers / artists: write a lot of games
DD : Motivation is the level of fuel that you have to keep track of, not only your own, but also your command one. When you run 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 for those who read to the end.
MG : Congratulations! Not many have reached this place :-P And buy our game!
- And finally: Thank you, for what you opened the editor and started writing Door Kickers
DD : Thank you for the interview.
Update: Used libraries:
- OpenGL (ES) for rendering
- OpenAL for sound
- tinyxml read / write .xml
- libpng to read .png
- Curl to download news (which, by the way, also in xml)
- ffmpeg to export battle record
- In the future new libraries may be added.
PS If you have any questions for which you want to get answers - write them in the comments, I will gladly pass them on to the developers.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/221919/
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