Blog - Pyrodactyl Games

Thoughts on Education, Part 1

September 1, 2017 · Arvind

The last blog post ended on a slightly depressing note, so I thought I’d share something more positive.

(Warning: This article may contain rants about the Indian education system and coaching institutes.)

Even though I had been into programming and game design for the better part of my life, a part of me had always felt that I could be a good teacher if I wanted to. When I realized I needed a break from Pyrodactyl, I thought the time was right for me to dive into this new line of work and see what I could contribute.

I’m very lucky that I got a faculty position at a university that allowed me freedom to experiment with the curriculum. So far, this has been a surprise in a very pleasant way.

What I learned by teaching (so far)

Adaptive Curriculum
My biggest peeve with my education was that it was 100%, Ambuja Cement style rigid. The curriculum was decided in advance and nothing you (or the teacher) could do would change that.I’ve been trying a more flexible curriculum that changes based on the strengths and weaknesses of the students, and while it is very early to definitively tell, I think it is having positive results. (More on these findings as the semester progresses).

Showing (not just telling) students how they will use this knowledge in the future helps a ton.
In my case, first I got freshman students to analyze their own favorite games, and then I slowly explained how the games in question use the game design techniques that I taught them. While I am still figuring out how to improve my speech and ability to explain things, I think most of them became very interested when they realized they could learn how their favorite games worked – even though I was conducting a dry flowcharts and game states lecture.

Subject (and self) Discovery
I’m learning a lot more about my subjects and myself as I give more classes. Even the games that I made appear in a different light with some of the things that I learned while researching my topics.This is exciting – like Eat Pray Love except someone pays me a salary to do it.

I hope this different style of article is cool with the usual readers of Pyrodactyl. I’ll share more as I finish my first semester of teaching!

If there’s any teachers out there in the comments, what did you learn when you started teaching? Any tips to help out a new guy? 🙂

Status Update

May 12, 2017 · Arvind

Hi everyone, Arvind here.

Ten years ago, I opened up Google and started looking for tutorials on programming video games. While some folks on the Steam forums might argue otherwise, I think it’s fair to say that I have learned a lot in these ten years. I have worked with some incredibly talented people, traveled across the world, met some of my heroes and most importantly – had thousands of people tell me they liked my games.

Left: My hostel room, picture taken on a Nokia brick.
Right: My home office, picture taken on a slightly better brick.
Both: Bad fashion sense.

Continue reading →

Good Robot Postmortem

December 16, 2016 · Arvind

Due to being busy with real life, I completely forgot the four-part Good Robot postmortem (which I contributed to) on Twenty Sided.
If you’re interested in learning how we made Good Robot and the fallout after its launch, visit the links below to learn it first hand from me, Ross and Shamus.

An Even Better Robot

December 16, 2016 · Arvind

The Good Robot team has been working to update and improve the game. The update is currently live on the public beta branch and will go out to all users probably in the next day or so.

I have to say, I loved coming back to Good Robot. There gets to be a point in a long-running project where you’re sick of the whole thing and just want it to be done. Than you get the post-release feedback and you start thinking about all the ways you could have made it better.

I may not like what Lucas did to the original Star Wars movies, but I can certainly understand the temptation to keep “polishing” something forever. Hopefully these are net improvements for people.

Partial list of changes:

The Refrigeration Unit – We’ve added a whole new level with new artwork, new enemies, and a couple of new bosses. I was sad we missed out on the “ice level” motif in our original release of the game, and so I’m glad we’ve finally made that happen. This also smooths out the rather abrupt jump in difficulty people experienced between the breezy Junkyard and the rather unforgiving Neo-Jaipur. The Refrigeration Unit is designed to be a midway point between these two levels in terms of difficulty.
The new Refrigeration Unit in action.
New hats! – Highlights include Seymour’s hair, VR Headset, Pyrodactyl head and last but not the least, and an “Iconic Cap”. Eat your heart out, Ubisoft.

Continue reading →

Bringing Balance to Good Robot

April 26, 2016 · Arvind

Hey guys, I’m Ross. I have a strange job that involves wearing a lot of hats, and recently just involves a lot of hats. I’ve been with the gang since Unrest, usually handling scripting and level design. I also edit together most of Pyrodactyl’s trailers with the same technology I use to play Terrible Terrible Video Games (Glass Houses – Ed.). I’m here today with some insight into the latest update for Good Robot, and hopefully our thought process as game designers to boot.

With QA teams that number in the ones of dozens (baker’s, if you’re exceptionally lucky), esteemed indie developers like ourselves soon become incredibly adept at one crucial step of the modern video game creation process: making mistakes. But perhaps more notably – making mistakes and fixing them quickly. It’s in this spirit that I present you with a commented list of the major changes this time around.

Continue reading →

Good Robot: The Lost Trailer

April 18, 2016 · Arvind

Originally written by Shamus on Twenty Sided

So sometimes ideas don’t pan out. This is one of those cases:

Looking at the feedback on YouTube, I can see there’s a divide between, “This joke totally made sense to me” and “This was awkward and dumb”. Maybe that would be tolerable for an early teaser, but when it comes to a launch trailer you want clarity and a wide appeal.

A common complaint was that the stock footage of robots conflicted with the in-game footage. That’s true, although I don’t know how that could be fixed. For the first half of the trailer you need slow-paced shots. There’s only so many slow pans you can do over the Good Robot, and there’s no way you can fill 40 seconds with that. The game doesn’t have a supporting cast or dialog scenes, which is what you’d use for the slow build in the first half of the trailer.

Maybe that should have clued me in that this idea was flawed and unworkable, but… I dunno. I’ve had a lot of projects that began with a single fun idea and were fuzzy on the details. DM of the Rings is a good example of something that began half-formed and then came together later during production. Sometimes when you’ve got an idea you have to run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.

Good Robot Update 2

April 14, 2016 · Arvind

As we continue refining the game and balancing things, we’ve made a small patch that addresses issues with certain weapons. Here’s what we did:

Electron Repeater DPS output and bounces lowered
Piercing weapons now correctly count a missile collision as a hit, and continue moving if they have hits left
Various misc interface fixes

The patch should now be live on Steam.

Good Robot Update 1

April 11, 2016 · Arvind

Hey guys, I’m Ross. I have a strange job that involves wearing a lot of hats, and recently just involves a lot of hats. I’ve been with the gang since Unrest, usually handling scripting and level design. I also edit together most of Pyrodactyl’s trailers with the same technology I use to play Terrible Terrible Video Games (Glass Houses – Ed.). I’m here today with some insight into the latest update for Good Robot, and hopefully our thought process as game designers to boot.

With QA teams that number in the ones of dozens (baker’s, if you’re exceptionally lucky), esteemed indie developers like ourselves soon become incredibly adept at one crucial step of the modern video game creation process: making mistakes. But perhaps more notably – making mistakes and fixing them quickly. It’s in this spirit that I present you with a commented list of the major changes this time around.

Continue reading →

Good Robot Achievement Bounty

April 8, 2016 · Arvind

When we first thought of putting hats in Good Robot, it made sense to tie in a few achievements to them. After all, people like hats and achievements – combining them was a surefire way to video game stardom.

For reference, you lose your hat if you get hit by an enemy. Yep.

As it turns out, a couple of those achievements are slightly difficult to obtain. And by slightly I mean so difficult that nobody outside of the dev team has done it yet. The achievements I’m talking about are:

We don’t want these achievements stay un-achieved forever. To encourage you to go out there and get these bad boys, we’re putting a bounty on them. Be warned, this challenge is not for the faint of heart. Continue reading →