Developing The Travel Fanz PC Game

During the Covid lockdowns of 2020, I developed the Travel Fanz PC game.  However the original version I made wasn't very popular.  There were some technical mouse movement issues with it.  The image quality was inconsistent and it just didn't catch any interest.

At the end of 2021, as Covid restrictions were being relaxed, I rented out my property and went travelling around Europe for 18 months.  I had a great time.  I visited Scotland, Portugal, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, France, Croatia, Cyprus and the Canary islands.  Videos of my trips can be found on the Spaghetti Code You Tube channel.

On my travels, I decided to redesign Travel Fanz.  Whilst abroad, I had a think about what I was trying to achieve with the game.  I'll try and explain my thought process.

But first of all some numbers from the internet.

1. Over 3 billion people play computer games worldwide on all platforms.  1.75 billion play PC games.  The highest proportion play mobile games and then over 1 billion also play on game consoles.  3 billion is still less than half of the world's population (over 8 billion).  Most people do not or cannot play a computer game.  Many people may view computer games as a waste of time or they simply don't have the hardware to play them.

2. I sell my games on the Steam gaming platform.  I use Steam because they handle copyright protection, regulations and tax payments.  For this service, they take a 30% cut of the sales income.  I consider that a fair deal.  The internet says they have 120 million active users.  That's a big audience.  However 120 million is only 4% of the total worldwide player base.  And less than 2% of the world's population.

3. The most popular AAA PC games are games like Grand Theft Auto and Call Of Duty.  Both have sold over 400 million copies of all versions.  That suggests that there are about 100 million active players of both games.  But 100 million is still only 6% of the entire PC gaming user base.  So even the most successful PC games barely scratch the entire player base.

And then I asked myself what my limitations were.

I make games with a micro budget of between £100 to £200 ($130 to $260).  Successful PC games made for gamers have development budgets from $100k up to many $millions.  I am a one man band.  Most games are developed by a team of 10 to 20 people.  AAA games are made with a team of 200 to 500 developers including programmers, 3D modellers and graphic artists.  It takes me a minimum of 500 hours of work to develop a PC game with Godot.  And that's just coding, configuring and testing the game.  All of the graphical and audio assets I buy off the web.  In conclusion, there is no way I can compete to produce a game that hardcore gamers are going to like over a true commercial game.

So, while I was sipping a beer outside a bar in the Winter sun of Portugal and Cyprus, I asked myself what my strategy should be.

After exploring a few ideas I came to the following conclusions:

I should turn Travel Fanz into a game that almost anyone can play, not just dedicated gamers.  The rules and interface needed to be as simple as I could make them.  Card games are probably one of the simplest and popular designs for making a game.  So, I turned it into a casual, easy to play card game.  And it had to require low hardware resources, so it could played on even low end spec computers.

But having a casual card game isn't by itself going to generate a reasonable revenue.  There is a second part to my strategy.  Travel Fanz is obviously built around the subject of travel and tourism.  Travel is very popular across a broad section of the world's population.  So, the second part of my strategy is to overlap an enjoyment of gaming with the enjoyment of travel.

I intend to do this by connecting the Travel Fanz game to external websites that generate non-gaming revenue.  Most PC computer games are based around the genres of war or fantasy.  Connecting them to  external activities is much harder.  This is why they have to resort to selling in game loot boxes and pay  to play upgrades.  The only genre that succeeds at an external connection is perhaps the sports genre games.

However, there is also a third part to the strategy that I conceived whilst sipping a beer outside a bar in the Med.  I should design the Travel Fanz PC game so it can be easily converted to another subject other than travel and tourism.  I have written the code for Travel Fanz so that it can be reconfigured to another subject and another game.  Subjects I have in mind include science, history, art, medicine and industry.  Maybe even language learning.

I am hoping that this strategy will mean that I can access a very large part of the world's population.  Not just the 3 billion gamers but also the other 5 billion non-gamers.

And finally, I want Travel Fanz to be educational.  Most people struggle to afford travel to foreign destinations. So I wanted Travel Fanz to be a game of discovery, revealing what else is out there in the real world.

Today's Videos Are A History Of The Modern World

Like many people, I have given up watching scheduled television programs.  The thought of having to sit in front of a TV at a particular time of day to watch a program now seems ridiculous to me.

Instead, all my viewing time is now spent on YouTube.  I pick what I want to watch, when I want to watch it.  And I often get on with other computer work whilst listening to a YouTube video.

The YouTube channels I watch include financial, travel, technical, review and news channels.  The choice is endless and the quality of amateur videos is improving every year with better quality technology.

You Tube channel creators are encouraged make videos to grab todays viewers.  The more eyeballs the better.  The bigger the audience, the more money they make from monetisation of advertising on their channel.  Over time they will make a back catalog of videos that people binge watch.

My point is that these videos are created with today's audience in mind. 

What is not so apparent, is that the majority of a video's viewers haven't even been born yet. 

These videos will be watched by generations many years into the future.  Certainly decades into the future, probably centuries.  The size of this future audience will far exceed the size of today's audience.

To those future generations, today's videos will show them what living in the world was like back in the early 21st century.  They will be a valuable historical archive of life in the past.  Imagine someone in the 23rd century watching one of today's video reviewing an iPhone.  They will find it fascinating and hilarious at the same time.  Perhaps even shocking.  Today's technology will appear so antiquated to what they use.

Or imagine someone in the year 2150 watching a walkabout video of London in 2024.  It's like us watching grainy black and white early movie footage of 1900 and seeing all the horse and carts on the streets.  The difference is that the quantity of video they can watch of the past will far exceed the amount we can watch.

What will someone in the 23rd century make of us in the early 21st century.  Will we sound odd to them in the way we speak?  Will they even understand a lot of the slang and technical words we use.  Computer keyboards maybe antiquated and obsolete in their world.  They might have to visit a museum to see a real one.  Just like we now view typewriters. 

The videos on YouTube and other platforms like TikTok will provide a vast historical archive.  Much of it will seem confusing or plain silly to future generations.  But it will make it easier for them to see how the world got from here to there.  Every significant event between now and then will have a video about it.

And it makes me wonder if You Tube creators should make videos for these future generations.  They make plenty of videos about the historical past.  Why not make a video explaining to future generations how life is today?  Probably because they won't make any ad revenue from future unborn generations.

Developing The Geology Game

The Geology Game was my first attempt at making a PC computer game.  I am a computer programmer but I've never worked in the gaming industry.  I built the game using the Godot game development engine.  It took me 6 months from scratch to complete.  During the process I was on a learning curve on how to use Godot and write GScript, its Python based scripting language.  I began designing the game in 2017 and it was ready for release on Steam in early 2018.

The micro budget for the game was about £100 ($125).  This was all spent on buying images and photos from Dreamstime, some music and sound effects.   I have no graphics design experience so buying images was a necessity and a time saver.

My objective was to design a 2D turn based game that was both educational and playable.  Geology is a subject I studied at school.  I've never worked in Geology, but I've always been interested in it as a hobby.  I live along the Jurassic coast of England so I have varied geology on my doorstep.  I grew up with it all around.  An interest in Geology is a great excuse to go exploring.

Geological discoveries are made up of three main types :  Rocks, Minerals and Fossils.  Rocks are defined by how they are constructed and from which minerals.  Fossils are often categorized by the period of Earth's history in which those creatures lived.  99% of them have since gone extinct.  Minerals are defined by their atomic elements and molecular structure.  Some are single elements, like Au (Gold), though most are a combination of elements.  I wanted to represent all of this in the game in the simplest possible way.  So each player is given a museum with exhibits organized in this geological format.

I also wanted players to experience how geological discoveries are made.  This is normally done by cracking open rocks on the ground.  Sometimes you find something inside a rock, sometimes you find nothing.  So each location is a photo of that location with rocks spread randomly around that you can crack open with a geological hammer.  Your geologist then returns the discovery to the museum to be exhibited in its correct category.

I spread locations all over the world based upon research I had done to determine where each discovery could be found.  Some discoveries are very common, such as sandstone rocks. Others are only found in a particular location.  Some fossils are widespread, others are only found in one location.   For example, Trilobites and Ammonites are common worldwide but a dinosaur species might only be found on one continent.

I also added "decoration" to the game.  

The first was to include tools.  Tools are required to travel, open locations and find discoveries.  Every time a geologists travels to a location, opens a location or opens a rock requires an expenditure of tools.  Tools are gained each turn and tools can be found when opening a rock.

The second was developing the skill of the player's geologists.  The more they travel, the more locations they open, the more rocks they open, all provide a gain to their skill level.

Thirdly, I added facilities to the museums to increase the number of visitors, income and prestige.

I also built a simple competitive element into the game.  Essentially the player is competing against other museums for income, visitors and prestige.

I didn't hit too many technical difficulties developing the game.  My main issue was the map of the world on which the player sends their geologists.

I didn't have a spinning globe to work with.  And just finding consistent terrain map images of the world wasn't easy at the time.  The best design I could come up with was a clickable map panel.  Clicking on the panel shifts the focus of the screen onto a different part of the world.  Not an ideal design.  But it did allow me to display different parts of the world at different scales.  Africa is far larger than Europe.

The other limitation was that there were only so many images available for purchase.  There are thousands of minerals and fossils but I could only find a small fraction of those as images.  

I've only sold about a 1,000 copies of the game so far.  At the least, I hope it has increased some people's interest in the science of Geology.   If I designed it now, no doubt I would make some changes.  I developed it using version 2 of Godot, so it would take some work to upgrade the code to the latest version of Godot.

The game is available on Steam here :  The Geology Game

Video playlist is here :  The Geology Game On YouTube

Making PC Games With GODOT

I'm not a game developer.  I earnt my bread and butter cutting computer code for banks, insurance companies and hospitals.  But I was an experienced programmer when I started my PC game developemnt journey.  So I knew the process I would have to undergo to produce a finished product.

20 plus years ago, I had developed an online multiplayer horse racing game.  I developed this using Javascript and SQL Server as a backend database.  After 14 years I sold it.  This time I would be developing PC games to be downloaded from Steam.

I began by selecting a game development platform.  I was only going to make 2D games, so I didn't require a complex 3D development environment like Unreal Engine.  I downloaded various game development engines and watched numerous reviews on You Tube.

In the end it came down to a choice between Unity and Godot.  I had played around with Unity a year before and could see its appeal.  But then I downloaded and tried Godot.

After a day of use I found I much preferred Godot.  I liked the layout of the interface and the concept of game elements designed as scenes that could be instanced within other scenes.  And it had events that could be triggered by one scene and captured by another scene.  Like Unity, it also had a mature online community, extensive help files and technical manuals.  The other thing I liked about it was that it ran without trouble on Ubuntu Linux, my developemnt computer's operating system.

There would of course be a steep learning curve.  I had to become familiar with Godot's scripting language based upon Python.  But Python is a comfortable language to learn, particularly since I was familiar with other languages such as Javascript and C++.    

It took me 6 months to complete my first PC game in 2018, The Geology Game.  Though much of this time was spent on configuring text and images and resolving the inevitable bugs I had inadvertently introduced into the code.  But Godot made the entire process much more comfortable than I had expected.  Since then I have developed four more PC games using Godot.

In 2023, I discovered that choosing Godot over Unity had beed the right choice.  Unity went through a bit of a crisis by altering its pricing plans.  This upset many Unity users.  I am pleased I avoided this.

After 35 years of coding, I've hung up my programming boots. But if you want to try designing and making your own PC game, I can highly recommend Godot as the game development engine to begin with.  It can be used for developing 2D and 3D games.  I would even recommend it just for learning computer programming.

My Beelink GKMini Computer

 

In 2021 I bought this Beelink GKMini computer.  I was travelling around Europe for 18 months and I wanted a computer I could easily transport from place to place.

I was travelling with one small shoulder bag and a suitcase.  I needed a computer I could put in the bag and take on the aircraft cabin.  A laptop would have been too big and bulky.  Keyboard and mouse went in my suitcase.

This computer weighs less than a phone.  At any AirBnB, I could easily connect it the television and use that as a monitor.

And when I went out for a day exploring, I could easily find a place to hide it in the AirBnB.

It went with me through a dozen airport security checkins without damage.

I configured it to dual boot into Windows 11 and Ubuntu Linux.

When I returned home from travelling, I used it to develop my Travel Fanz PC game.  It can run most software though it's not a gaming PC because of its limited graphics capability.   But for everything else it's just fine.  I still use it today as my primary computer.

Testing Out Screen Recorders

I spent 2 hours today testing 8 varieties of screen recording software on Windows 11.

I wanted reliable software to make screen recordings of my games.  I thought...this will be easy.

Instead it became a very frustrating experience.

All of the screen recorders I tried failed to successfully record playing a game.  I started with the Windows 11 Snippet recording tool.  This recorded the image ok but no sound.

I then downloaded 7 different screen recorders off the web.  Each and every one failed for different reasons listed below:

• Missing Codec configuration files
• Script errors
• Recording the Windows background not the game
• Not recording the mouse on screen
• Not recording popup panels
• Failing completely with screen flashes and requiring a reboot
• No sound

At this point I gave up and stepped away from the computer to do some household things.

So none of this software worked on Windows 11 for me and yet most of them wanted a payment to record full length videos.  No thanks!!  Not a penny from me.

Instead I dug out my trusty old Fujitsu laptop from a cupboard.  12 years ago I had bought this laptop to go contracting in London.  It's not the fastest machine so I installed Ubuntu Linux on it instead of Windows.

I installed the free Simple Screen Recorder and a few of my games from Steam.  Boom!!  It worked a treat.  It recorded the games without issue and included all of the game sounds in the video.  It saved to OGG and MPEG.  

Happy man!  Now I can make recordings of gameplay and post them on YouTube.

Hello

Hello, I have just started out setting up Blogger for my little software company called Spaghetti Code Ltd here in England.  I'm still on the learning curve of how Blogger works.  I should get the hang of it in a few weeks time.😆

Stevo