Michael Weissenborn from indie developer Rhock & Rholl Studios has decided to give iPhone Achievements an exclusive inside look at game conception and development. This real-life success story is a must read for any indie development team.
Storm Attack [App Store]
Storm Attack Lite [App Store]
The Bear Market
My entire life has revolved around never having a real job. My latest ploy was trying to make it as an independent stock trader.
It was a chilly Minnesota day in early 2009. Like many others, traders or not, I had just given up another small fortune in the market. When I crawled into bed to cry myself to sleep (okay not really, but I was pretty depressed), I *knew* my quest to make it as a professional trader was done. Pro traders make money – they don’t use it as kindling day after day.
I had a few months left until graduation. Reality, it seemed, was setting in. And it sucked. Kinesiology majors generally don’t have the most lucrative job prospects… couple that with a dwindling job market, and you’ve got a kid with a problem. I needed something to cling on to. I needed another dream to chase, so to speak, if for no other reason than to delude myself a bit longer.
I’ve been a gamer my entire life. I must have been around 5-years-old when I turned in one of the most epic gaming moments of all time. My dad had taken my brother and me out to a pizza place. I took mine with pepperoni and green olives. Delicious.
Pepperoni and green olives don’t taste too good when they’re half-digested and marching up the esophagus. Long story short, I planted my own pizza-topping garden on the floor that night. No matter, when I woke up the next morning, I was feeling much better. Nintendo was beckoning from the basement. I scurried downstairs to load up my favorite NES game at the time, Pro Wrestling.
No computer player dared stand in my way, lest they face the wrath of Starman. Unfortunately, mostly for the unsuspecting NES, a new wave of vomit was about to be let loose. I unleashed the full fury of my stomach all over the console, but it didn’t matter. I was focused. Determined. I kept on playing. While the NES was covered in a silky-white… something – don’t ask me how pepperoni and green olives turns into a white coating – I’m pretty sure I still managed to get the pin.
I was a gamer. A true trial by bile.
I’d dabbled with creating my own little games every now-and-again, but never anything too serious. It was time to change that. I knew this iPhone thing was getting pretty big, and it was fairly easy for indy devs to get in. As I lay in bed that night, I started formulating a plan. My stream of consciousness that night follows:
“What would be fun and make me some money? Puzzler, Tetris-y games are always fun, and those have mass appeal… Hmmm, what could I do there? How about a game where squares fall from the top, and you have to drag them around, and you can tap on a block to destroy all the same-colored blocks around it? And maybe the blocks fall faster every minute? Yeah that sounds fun – roll with it, Wiizy (my affectionate nickname from the track team)”
On a cold winter night in Minnesota, in the darkened confines of my 1-room apartment, Storm Attack was born. Some good was gonna come out of that miserable bear-market beat-down.
The Coders
I wanted a quick prototype to see if this idea was gonna be any fun. Having not even looked into what I needed for iPhone development, I loaded up my Java editor and started cowboy coding. For those not familiar with programmer lingo, “cowboy coding” refers to writing code with little to no thinking/design beforehand. It works alright if you’re on your own with a small project… but you generally end up with a riddled mass of code that doesn’t make sense and looks like it got into a fight at the flagpole with the meanest kid in school. Think 3-year-old after 10 Mountains Dews, armed to the teeth with finger-paints.
A few days went by. I hit up my buddy Sean, now graduated and two time zones away. He got out of college in 4 years like a good boy. It would take me 6. We’d talked in the past about possibly making a game, but nothing solid ever surfaced. Basically, I let him know that I had a sweet idea, and that I’d talk to him in a few weeks once I had it fleshed out. My first obstacle was making a successful pitch to Sean, as he was busy living his life and working on his own educational algebra program. I knew this thing would not happen without him.
As the weeks went on, I found myself having trouble putting work into the game… because I just sat around playing it. I took that as a good sign. Java Storm Attack v1.0 was finally sent to Sean, who seemed pretty impressed. As I kept fine-tuning, he eventually accepted the offer to “port” it to the iPhone. I say “port” because the final product would be much more. I had no idea, but life was about to get substantially more stressful.
The Gnomes
As the school year faded and that dreaded “reality” nonsense started creeping in, it was time to chug some more delusion juice – time to get the truckin’ on the iPhone version!
One of the first things I had to do was form a company. Let’s not kid ourselves, it’s a single-member LLC (me), but it looks cool to have a company name. I have my brother the lawyer to thank for helping with the setup – thanks bro!
But I needed a name. I didn’t want some random nonsense. I wanted something with a story.
Sean and I have been on-and-off World of Warcraft players/addicts ever since release. One of my fondest memories of college was getting up early on release day and driving out to EB Games with Sean to pick up our preorders. Yes, that was one of my fondest memories – unfortunately (fortunately?), my college days would not have made the script for Animal House.
Anyways, during one of our on-again periods, Sean decided that we should make gnome warriors named Rock & Roll. Unfortunately, either both names were taken, or the name filter was being fickle. We skirted the system by making some simple spelling changes…
…and Rhock & Rholl were born.
Together, we were the terrors of Warsong Gulch, Rhocking & Rholling our way to victory. None could withstand the fury of two frenzied gnomes wielding axes twice their size. Not even the Taurens.
So that’s the story behind the name. Two little gnomes trying to take over the world – decent metaphor, yeah?
The Transformation
So it was time to hunker down on the actual iPhone development. I recall telling my family that Sean was a genius (he is) and that he could have the port done in “like a week.”
Turns out I’d eat that statement rather quickly.
The iPhone version underwent a pretty substantial transformation from its Java roots. In addition to all the general stuff we added/changed (The Java version had no Row Clears!), the iPhone brought with it a few unique challenges of its own. For example, a computer affords pixel-perfect control via the mouse. Block-grabbing is very accurate. You don’t have that luxury on a touch screen. Consequently, the answer to “What’s the optimal block size for the iPhone?” was a pickle that took us weeks to solve.
The true pickle, however, would be the online leaderboards. We both knew that we wanted… needed… online high scores. How to implement them was another story. Would we need our own servers? How much would they cost? How would we deal with hackers? It felt like a separate project in itself.
Enter AGON Online by Aptocore, at the time a budding social networking service for iPhone games.
I want to stay away from shameless plugs, but these guys deserve a shoutout. If you’ve ever played an AGON-enabled game, then you already know that the end-user experience is great. The interface is clean and simple. Same deal from the development side. Crazy easy to integrate, equally easy to tweak things as needed. Add to that a courteous, thoughtful, and blazingly fast support staff – our request to move Storm Attack to the production servers was literally answered within 15 minutes – and you’ve got a winning combination. The AGON team members deserve mad props for their creation!
So we were set. This thing was actually gonna happen.
