Sleepy Sushi Service

Caitlyn Meeks-Kloecker kindly took the time to answer the questions for this interview.

Q: What type of game is Sleepy Sushi Service? What does the player have to do?

A: Sleepy Sushi Service will be, I hope, a colorful, edgy and fun platformer action / adventure in the spirit of games like Banjo-Kazooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and Psychonauts.  The prototype currently features a lush, detailed hand-painted environment and exciting gameplay kinetics. The final product will take this aesthetic and gameplay further while incorporating the story, character development, more highly stylized characters, quality animation and challenging action/adventure puzzles to pop a vein in your forehead. Figuratively. I hope.

The gameplay is centered around a story. Soda, the player character, is a coffee and kitsch TV-show addicted, smart alley cat slacker living in a messy, everything-infested house in Divisadero Forest. Everyone in this game is like a cartoon cat, sort of like Yogi Bear is a bear, I guess anthropomorphic - but not like those creepy big breasted furry-art drawings of sexy 6-toed in a hot tub you can find on the internet everywhere. She delivers part time for Mr Sock's Sushi, and it's always been a pretty mellow but low paying job.  But tonight, her Napoleon-complex, tightly-wound sushi-chef employer, Mr Socks (called Socks because of his cute little socks-fur patterned paws, you know what I'm talking about)... Mr Socks talks Soda into covering the spooky night delivery shift for a sick coworker. Divisadero Forest is a really odd place at night to be walking around alone - and things become very surreal on Soda's night shift! As the night progresses, it seems like fate itself is doing every weird little thing it can to keep her from doing her job.

You'll help Soda figure out what's going on and why, to avoid some sticky situations, get through the night and most critical of all - get back home in time to watch the Bollywood Robot Monster Movie Marathon with her best friend Seven. To make it through this very bizarre evening, Soda must run, jump, climb walls and buildings, skitter up and slide down poles, avoid hazardous obstacles and figure out how to solve some problems which only can be handled socially.  And of course plenty of collecting random stuff to pad the game out - err - to make things even more exciting.

Q: What tools (besides 3DGS) are you using to create the game?

A: Originally I was creating models outside of the 3DGS tools and laying out the levels in WED.  I was frustrated by this process, and eventually was lucky enough to find the help of  Thomas Oppl ('ventilator' in the 3DGS community), who wrote a brilliant and effective tool to convert Maya scenes into A6 levels. First you model the level as you want it, follow the special naming convention we've devised, and when you execute the tool it automatically turns every object in the scene into a .mdl, with textures, mapping and everything, and then puts together a .wmp with everything in the right place, then runs the compiler ad executes! With a little MEL scripting on my side, we've managed to create a one-click solution - one button exports the scene, builds it in the map compiler, and executes/opens it in A6 about a minute later, for even a complex scene! No WED required - brilliant! The recent development of this excellent tool has created a new atomic-powered art path, which has hugely sped up development time and been a great boon for the quality and look of my work. I only wish I had this tool a year or two ago! It's a dream to go straight from Maya into A6 in just one step.  You can set all the behaviors, actions, skills and everything right there in Maya.  We've even figured out a way to implement paths and substitute other objects in place of dummy objects, it's very powerful.

Q: How did you manage to create that cartoony look in SSS? Can you tells us some of the tricks?

A: Yes!  I originally started prototyping the models using the deceptively simple '3D drawing' tool, Teddy, by Takeo Igarashi. It's an amazing freeware application that looks like a toy. The trick is: be creative and play around with it, figure out what you want to model and create small pieces which you can later stick together. It exports crazy, messy little .obj files which usually need cleaning up, but they're quick and intuitive and organic in a way that seems impossible in grown-up programs. It is an incredibly intuitive way of working if you are an artist - especially with a Wacom tablet, which I use a lot...  I made as many '3d sketches' in Teddy as I did on paper, a lot in both cases, and it really opened things up.  The main character model, Soda, is in fact designed from pieces generated originally in Teddy, shoes, paints, gloves, hat, head, carefully put together and reworked in Maya, in some cases re-modelled, making a tidy polymesh which I painted carefully. In most cases I use Teddy to play around with forms and shapes that would be too organic to play around intuitively with in more professional programs - then re-create them in tidier, hand-planned models. I absolutely love Maya as my workhouse program - but to answer the cartoony-look question - that's thanks to Teddy.

The textures were hand painted in Painter 7 and sometimes in Deep Paint 3D, some objects used automatic UV layout while others were laid out by hand. I'm really fond of the Image Hose brush in Painter - when you use it sparingly and create layers, and mix it with hand painted graphics, you can get a very lush and organic feel.  I've worked with Painter (from version 2!), so like Maya it is close to my heart.  I'm addicted to working with a pen / tablet - it has a different feel from a mouse.  I even do everything in Maya with my tablet.

Q: Can you describe one of the features that you feel proud of and how did you manage to implement it?

A: I am really proudest that I managed to find some talented people to contribute code and advice, and managed to put all their help together to create what I hope will be a unique, indie 3d platformer experience. I owe a lot of thanks to 3DGS forum members, especially ventilator, testDummy, Gnometech, msl_manni and countless others. I'm proud that this project could attract the help of intelligent and talented people, who have contributed so many ideas, a lot of advice and problem solving, and some excellent scripting!

I  like the direction the art is taking, that sort of evolved naturally, and I'm very excited about the story; it's not yet visible in the prototype, but it will be in the first publicly distributed demo. I wrote the story based on my own sense of humor - I just hope that other people out there have similar tastes.  The plot gets pretty weird at points, like Ren and Stimpy weird. I'm pretty sure it will cast a unique light on the game. I am a huge fan of storytelling in games-- inspired by Lucas Art's adventure games and many more... Sam and Max, Grim Fandango. I enjoy great storytelling - not only verbal storytelling acted out with cut scenes and NPC conversation, but things like cause-and-effect, where the story directly affects the game world.

Q: What is the average number of hours per week that you spend working at the game?

A: I used to work as a full-time game artist, prototype and media developer "back in the old country"  but now I'm in a quiet, wine-producing town in a German forest somewhere.. I'm not sure exactly where, but it's near a barn and some trees. And Mennonites, there's real Mennonites here!  So when I am not milking cows with the Mennonites, I work on my game, as if it were a full-time job, Mennonite style!!!

Q: What is the biggest mistake you’ve made while you were developing SSS?

A: So far its been about 3 years from the original idea to a working prototype that I am finally pleased with.  But the biggest mistake by far was getting sidetracked in the gameplay mechanics. Originally, it was going to be a 3D platformer just like it is today, but in the second year I began to drift away from the original platformer concept and went more towards RPG, then to a very Animal Crossing inspired social mechanism concept. Fortunately when I found the help of a few talented programmers (testDummy and Gnometech from the A6 community), I was finally able to use the 3D platforming movement / camera code that originally inspired me. This brought back the fresh and original ideas that I had in the very beginning. A lot of creativity, enthusiasm and excitement came back.  Putting aside the other gameplay mechanisms wasn't a total loss - I plan to reuse what I can from the RPG and Social Networking systems with a very flexible and powerful dialogue system than I'd expect in a platformer and a pretty cool inventory system.  But ultimately because my plan wavered,  I wasted a lot of time in that second year. It's good to be back on track.

Despite these sidetrack moments, the feel and concept of the game, characters and world never really changed that much. I did learn something very useful-- you can take a cast of characters, an environment and its ambience, a whole abstract concept of a fictional world, and put it into different gameplay mechanisms without losing the original spirit.  If it were an RPG, a social networking game, a point and click SCUMM type game, or even something in Flash, the main motif, the most important creative elements  (story, the characters, the world) could also live and prosper there.

Q: Did you start looking for a publisher or are you going to go the indie way? Why?

A: I'm not sure what I will do when I'm finished. For starters I will try the shareware route - like one level is free, but register to unlock the other 4-5,  unless I'm lucky enough to find a publisher. Really, I am developing a game that I would personally love to play and if other people enjoy it too, I'll be satisfied.  A fancy pants publishing deal would be fantastic, but I haven't got my hopes unrealistically up. I think it's a little foolish to get into independent game design with dollar signs in your eyes, really the right way to do it is with a lot of enthusiasm in your heart...

Q: Please give us a few tips for the beginners out there.

A: I've thought a lot about some of the mistakes I've made and mistakes I have seen in other independent games, so I have some suggestions... but I think it might turn into an excited, incoherent rant like those made by the megaphone preachers who are always standing in front of the 16th Street BART station in San Francisco.

Most important: Make a game that you really want to play.  Don't be afraid to deviate and experiment. Keep a notepad or sketchbook handy especially when in boring situations, write and sketch out your ideas.  I like to work from a loose vision of a game world, what it feels and looks like, and who lives there, and then think of the gameplay mechanism later. This is probably a good idea - instead of starting with a genre, try starting with an idea first, and then fit the genre around it.  Everything I read on game design emphasized the importance of design documents. I think I've written 4 or 5 design documents over the last 2 years, and it got to the point where I realized  it was hindering my creativity. For me, my sketchbook accumulated several ideas which I later picked out and laid into an informal plan. I think when the game is about 80% finished, THEN I will write the design document.  So I guess what I am saying is: be loose and floppy at the beginning, then tighten it up as you go along.

Here is my megaphone subway-station preacher moment: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY, BE CREATIVE. There is so little creativity in current game design, it's just bizarre! Don't settle for being a game technician, but instead try to be a creative game developer!  Creativity has its own reward - but it's also a huge opportunity. Look at the success of films like Napoleon Dynamite, Blue Velvet, Clerks, A Scanner Darkly - these kinds of films would never come from Hollywood, and they're artfully crafted, superior to many mainstream films, and also made tons of money. I think there is a lot to learn from independent film design.  Creative games like Samorost just blow me away with their ingenuity.

Most people are a little bit more programmer than artist, or more artist than programmer. It's important to find the help of someone who can complement your skills to produce quality stuff.  But I think for an independent developer, it's critical to strengthen your weaker skills. This means artists would be well off to learn scripting and get a real grasp on how game engines work, and learn to do some very basic movement scripting, and it means programmers would benefit from making storyboards, reading up on color theory and looking at some books on character design. It's fun and then you and your co-conspirator share a vocabulary. Learn about digital video and audio too - games need all this stuff, so it pays huge dividends to learn these things, play around with Premiere and Soundforge.

Be sure to ramble incessantly if George Pirvu asks you some interview questions for Acknex User Magazine, and don't forget to raise your forum user status by posting lots and lots of questions in the 3DGS community forum, and make them especially stupid questions if you are using A6 pro 6.22.

Thank you a lot, Caitlyn.