Why is water wet?

I did at one point have Ultratron running as an applet, but I've since backed out half the code that made it reasonably easy, as I don't want to be beholden to browser frolics. Apple, I mean you. Also there is the small problem that RotT is about 60mb which doesn't make for a great first time experience, and applets are all about that instant fix. I could spend a whole load of time figuring out how to stream the thing down dynamically on-demand but... meh. This is what gakai is for.

Staying focused is not easy. We lose focus a lot. Occasionally I have to do Real Work to pay the bills, or have babies, or just get really sick of a game, or get distracted by a new game. Revenge is on its fourth almost total rewrite. Every time we got close to something complete we decided it was crap and scrapped the whole thing. I'm glad we did now. But I'm a bit grimly disappointed that I just don't quite have any natural talent in the area of game design that lets me knock out brilliant games in 5 minutes like some people around here. Kev, Markus, etc. I'm looking at you. The only way we can succeed is by doggedly plugging away at it bashing it with hammers until it looks OK.

Persistence is perhaps the most important ingredient in this business if you don't have much in the way of talent or skills.

Cas

I offered to join you more than once, but I couldn't convince you I guess.  Maybe my latest multiplayer game will change your mind.

1. Because I wanted to do some live TV graphics and Java graphics were rubbish back in the day. Hm in fact they still are in many respects, though there's some good stuff hidden in there. Hidden being the problem. It began life as a thing called jglib, and got changed to LWJGL after discussion with crazy Danes.
2-4. Hah, that's a whole blog post's worth of answers. The tl;dr version is, you have Matzon, Elias, Spasi, CaptainJester, and various others all from JGO (all mentioned on the lwjgl page) to really thank for it all, I just got it started originally. The real breakthroughs came from Elias (who got the Linux and Mac versions working) because before that it was just crappy old Windows-only and not much use. Matzon now does a fantastic job of administering it all and Spasi gets new OpenGL APIs in there usually within hours of being announced.

Cas

Hey Cas, quick questions:
1. Are you a female?!?
2. You started LWJGL?!?!?

How did you end getting into the Humble Indie Bundle? As in, who did you contact and/or who contacted you?

I really like the artwork on your games.  Is it all prerendered as bitmaps, or done with OGL shaders?

Hey, Cas is just down the road from me (Farnham).  I often go to Basingstoke and shop in Festival Place.  There's quite a good sports centre, although I haven't been there for a while.  There was a ice rink, which I staggered round a couple of years ago.

I live in Winchester, and often pass through on the train on the way to London... rarely have any reason to actually go to Basingstoke, though.  The Anvil (concert hall) is good.  I've been around the ice rink a few times in my childhood...

If I knew that I'd be successful too To put hard figures on it - "releasing a game" brings in about 100x more money than any other activity we've tried to date. After that, advertising is basically the only way to go. Special offers like the Ultrabundle are good for little boosts. And getting to know people like TimW etc. from indiegames.com and so on is crucial. Networking!

If you're lucky you'll have a game with something new, unique, addictive and also viral in it that arrives to fill a hole in the market of people's desires, like Minecraft had. But most of us aren't lucky or have different games inside us that don't possess all those qualities.

Cas

Now that you're writing games as a profession rather than a hobby, has all the fun been sucked out of it?

Looking at the success of the Humble Indie Bundle, I guess ROTT has been your most successful game to date. Do you think this is because the game itself is inherently superior to your previous titles? Or is it simply due to better marketing?

Do you get lots of support issues for ROTT? What's the most pant-wettingly stupid support issue you've had?

Can i borrow your brain for, say, 6 months?

If you were stuck in a lift with Colonel Gaddafi, Idi Amin and British Prime Minister David Cameron, how many times would you punch David Cameron in the face?

Re: source code - good stuff lad.

Why are there so many British people on these forums?

How do you make your sound/music? Any suggestions for someone with absolutely no musical talent? (i was thinking of using a kazoo)

1. Not exactly, I've been doing this all my life. Doing it as a profession just makes it more panicky and stressful.
2. No, it's entirely down to the Humble Bundle. Revenge is actually otherwise a complete failure, worse than all our other games by a factor of 3 at least.
3. Nope. Although the most irritating support issue was my own doing - the original Humble Bundle installer installed a desktop icon that didn't work. Whoops! 200 emails.
4. I need it
5. As many times as necessary.

Cas

Sad confession: I play my own games incessantly, mostly to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. Half of the time it's playtesting or finding bugs, the other half it's looking for ways to improve the game. I am really quite sick of Revenge now though I'm halfway through Amnesia which I plan to resume in a day or two.

Cas