Salvation Prophecy [update: Steam Release]

[Jabberwocky]

@TheSHEEEP @Zonder @spookyboo @kneeride @Yati @dark_sylinc @realaxis @sleo @chaosavy @yapdakilla @Slappy @areay @Mind Calamity @bstone @BTolputt @duststorm
Thanks for posting guys, much appreciated.

I assume it's in digital download form only? Will you be able to get it to disk too?

Yeah, just digital for now. I've certainly got no issues with a disk version, but we'll see if the right deal comes up.

Remember, the licensing of Ogre3D (the current MIT & previous commercial ones) don't require you tell people that you are using it.

Interesting comment. Do you think people would ever have a reason not to announce that they're using Ogre?

While we're on the subject, how does an independent game developer support himself without funding ?

It's tough.
1. I saved up a bunch of money at my last job.
2. I lived in my family's small cabin for much of the development.
3. debt.

how does an independent game developer support himself without funding ?

Pick one or more!
* a day job
* a rich spouse/friend
* kickstarter
* government social welfare
* prostitution

Dang, forgot to try prostitution.

The demo is now available on GamersGate, Mind Calamity. It's only about an hour of gameplay, so you just get to see the fairly simple intro missions, but it's enough to give you a flavor of the game.

awesome stuff! the space scenes look fantastic - you can really notice the depth of the scene. btw, did you do the graphical content yourself?

The artwork was contracted. I also did a fair amount of stuff using just freely available or low cost texture packs. I built a few trees and rocks myself while sculpting the landscapes, but certainly nothing very substantial.

Will you be giving out any figures after it's peaked? I know a lot of people are interested how well indie projects actually do.

That's a good question - I'm not sure yet. GamersGate doesn't have the subscriber base of Steam by a long shot. So sales will certainly be less impressive unless I manage to land on Steam. That being said, I've been really happy with how GamersGate has handled everything so far.

[Mind Calamity]

Great! Downloading now. As soon as I'm able to buy stuff online, I'm going to buy the full version.

[syedhs]

Look very polished from someone who has great interest in developing game + invest time & money immensely. I really wish for your success!

[Klaim]

Congrats! Not much time to play now as I'm working on my game too, but it's always a pleasure to see people around achieve this kind of thing!

[areay]

I've been stalking your game on the 'net Jabberwocky. I've witnessed your battles with pirates hatin' on youtube and been looking at all the reviews too.

One thing I was wondering about is how long do you have to play to get to the spacecombat & RTS elements of the game? I only ask because most of the reviews I saw only get up to the fps part (one lazy guy did a review only up to the tutorial where they learn how to move the character around! WTF is that? laziness on their part!).

If you don't mind can you tell us a bit about how you're spending your time now? I see you're very active on your own forums and youtube too, but what else behind the scenes? Patching already? Did you sleep for 24 hours straight? Have a celebratratory beer or 5? Spending all your time sending copies to review sites etc?

I realise you're very busy but if you don't spill now you might forget some of the interesting details that you'll need for your autobiography or subsequent reviews

[BTolputt]

Remember, the licensing of Ogre3D (the current MIT & previous commercial ones) don't require you tell people that you are using it.

Interesting comment. Do you think people would ever have a reason not to announce that they're using Ogre?

A couple of them come to mind. Mostly it boils down to there being no real reason to announce it. The license doesn't require it, there isn't much (any) extra sales/publicity in it, and not everyone creating something with open-source is going to turn up to the forums to announce it. Telling people your game engine is based on Ogre3D is an active decision, which generally means the person needs a reason to do it in the first place. Not everyone uses Ogre3D because they love open-source & sharing; alot of people use it because it works & costs them nothing.

Personally, I like to share how I did things. I talk to people about my use of Blender, Ogre3D, Bullet, & Detour/Recast, amongst other apps/libraries. However, that is because I actively want people to use them and make/keep them popular. If I didn't actively want this, I wouldn't bother sharing the information unless actually asked.

[CABAListic]

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

Actually, the condition can well be interpreted to require inclusion of the MIT license terms even in binary redistributions, which kind of makes it an attribution clause. I don't know what a court would say to that, but our licensing FAQ does recommend that you include the Ogre license with binary distributions. I think that's only fair

[BTolputt]

It could be interpreted that way, but it could also be interpreted that one does not need to provide attribution for binaries. Stallman himself has commented in the past on the ambiguity the MIT License has as opposed to the BSD with Advertising Clause. Of course, he hates anything but the GPL so he's not the best source of info on the matter, but he deos tend to be right about these things.

Even assuming one does need to provide the copyright declaration & license text, it can be buried almost anywhere in the distribution. Unlike Unity, UDK, CryTech, etc - there isn't instructions that require you to the attribution obvious to the end user. It can be buried anywhere in the distribution, from tiny text in the middle of the EULA through to a file hidden amongst the rest of the stuff your application uses. Given this and the fact that prior to 1.7, there was the option of the commercial license, I'm not convinced we know that there is a popular game out there using Ogre3D we don't know is doing so

Personally, I don't mind attributing Ogre3D / Torus Knot Software. Hell, I'm happy to be upfront & blatant about it's use. I'm simply saying that it is possible that another popular game legally uses Ogre3D and we just don't know it does. This is not to take anything away from Jabberwocky's achievement (and it is a great achievement). I love space-fighter games and were it OSX compatible, I'd already have it.

[Xavyiy]

That's really awesome!
Indeed, your 5 years of hard work are totally worth!

Btw, Salvation Prophecy deserves a big entry on the Ogre3d home page!

[TheOnlyJoey]

Great news!
I have followed this game around for quite a while and am very interested in giving it a playthrough.
Any planning to do a Linux version?
Maybe Desura is also interesting for digital publishing.

[Jabberwocky]

I've witnessed your battles with pirates hatin' on youtube and been looking at all the reviews too.

One problem I found with going DRM-free is that the game is instantly in the hands of a lot of pirates. That leads to some extremely crappy youtube video review footage that gets posted to pirate websites. And pirate audiences can be a nasty sort.

One thing I was wondering about is how long do you have to play to get to the spacecombat & RTS elements of the game? I only ask because most of the reviews I saw only get up to the fps part (one lazy guy did a review only up to the tutorial where they learn how to move the character around! WTF is that? laziness on their part!).

Totally lazy. See above. It takes about 30 minutes to get to the space combat.

If you don't mind can you tell us a bit about how you're spending your time now? I see you're very active on your own forums and youtube too, but what else behind the scenes? Patching already? Did you sleep for 24 hours straight? Have a celebratratory beer or 5? Spending all your time sending copies to review sites etc?

That's a pretty good list. Handling some support issues - everything has been pretty rock solid so far though. And emailing out some review codes. Also talking with an indie publishing company called Desura. And some celebration too - my birthday was on Thursday so I used that as a double b-day / finished game celebration day. It was an evening worthy of being called a double celebration.

[Jabberwocky]

Any planning to do a Linux version?

Maybe. My linux coding skills are WAY out of practice. We'll see if I make enough money off the game to continue working on it.

Maybe Desura is also interesting for digital publishing.

Good call - talking with them already.

[CABAListic]

What about gog.com? Apparently they have now also been accepting a couple of new indie game releases, could be worth a try.

[TheOnlyJoey]

Any planning to do a Linux version?

Maybe. My linux coding skills are WAY out of practice. We'll see if I make enough money off the game to continue working on it.

Maybe Desura is also interesting for digital publishing.

Good call - talking with them already.

No problem, happy to help!
The guys at desura are quite awesome, prefer the service over something like Steam personally.

Regarding linux support, If your using c sharp, just throw it through mono and gcc and see what happens, and if its c++, just throw it through gcc and see what happens
I have experience in build maintenance between different platforms, if you need a hand just send a PM and I will be happy to look at some things.

[Wolfmanfx]

Forget linux i would focus on getting out in the mac appstore and inneed if you are using c++ its easy to port - ogre has good osx support

[Sovaka]

Huge congrats Jabberwocky!!

Well done mate, hope you reap the rewards

[loath]

congrats jabber! purchased a copy so i can play over the usa holiday ... a few copies sold here at the office as well thanks to ben.

[Knotanalt]

Looks really great.

[duststorm]

Forget linux

Don't forget about it! Think about us
At least, if a port is feasible within the given effort/gains constraints. But if you're going to do a MAC port then linux is not such a far stretch.
If I can be of help, just let me know.

[Faranwath]

It really looks like high-quality stuff. Congratulations to the team for the making of such a piece of fine work!

[WingnutWilson]

Wow, this looks nice I will buy it next month. How many people made this? Just you and some sub-contracted artists?

[Nauk]

Congratulations, looks damn nice and very interesting game concept, makes appetite

[DominuZ]

All hail to Jabberwocky, you inspire the indie community with your success.

[scratchyrice]

Well done jabberwocky on releasing - Seriously!

Can I ask what is involved in getting onto gamers gate? I've been developing a game for about 3 years now (I still havn't released anything public really) and its getting to the point where I want to at least start thinking about methods of digital distribution. Also you mentioned steam is hard to get onto - Why is this? What is involved?

Cheers

Scratchy

[Jabberwocky]

Can I ask what is involved in getting onto gamers gate?

For Salvation Prophecy, GamersGate contacted me. I had a good preview on a PC gaming site called Rock Paper Shotgun. So if you're able to get any decent reviews/previews, that seems to help a lot.

I also sell the game on a very indie-friendly site called Desura. Their installer set-up is a little more complicated, but I enjoyed working with them. Desura contacted me as well, but after I had set up an entry for Salvation Prophecy on their site. Desura allows anyone to create an entry for their game (completed or in development), regardless of whether you're published by them. They have a nice little website system where you can upload screenshots, videos, and news, so that's a good option to get a little publicity for your game.

I'm pretty sure both Desura and GamersGate have contact emails for submitting your game, but I didn't have to go through that.

Also you mentioned steam is hard to get onto - Why is this? What is involved?

Steam used to have an online submission form. This was problematic in a lot of ways. Sometimes they would reject games, then accept them on later submissions. Sometimes you wouldn't hear back anything at all. If you are rejected, I've read that their policy was not to give any feedback as to why. Some indies made it through the submission process, but only after a delay of many months. There seemed to be a tendency for them to mostly accept games that already had a lot of publicity. I think they likely had too few evaluators for the vast number of game applications they received.

Steam have recognized this as problematic, and are replacing the submission process with something new called Steam Greenlight. This should be going live any day now, and you can read more about that here: http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight/faq/

Anything you can do pre-release to publicise your game is a big help.
Things like:

• good website
• active community (e.g. forums)
• public alpha builds
• game site previews
• placing well in game competitions (e.g. Ludlum Dare, IGF)
• game conventions (e.g. PAX)
• kickstarter campaigns
• regular news updates, or development videos (youtube)
• active twitter feed
• desura game write-up
• other game forums - e.g. Ogre showcase

This is all much easier said than done. It's time consuming, and it's not like indie devs have a lot of extra time. Also, you never know what's going to work, and what's not - for example losing a game competition, or having a dev blog that noone reads ain't gonna help. I guess it's a combination of being persistent, and getting lucky.

One last thing - try to make sure the beginning of your game is polished and fun. First impressions are important, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of games get rejected after being played for only a few minutes.