Plan for David "RM" Michael

Eulogy to a Project

I believe that anything that begins in public, should also end in public. For that reason, I'm using this .plan to formally announce that the Paintball Net project, based on the Torgue Game Engine, is officially ended.

It saddens me to have to do this, but it's time. The Paintball Net project has been in limbo for over a year. 2 years, by some reckonings. And that's just too long. Good sportsmanship requires that the wounded animal be hunted down and killed to prevent unnecessary suffering. Should wounded projects be treated any less humanely?

The Paintball Net project started with a suggestion by Jeff Tunnell in early 2002. Over the spring and the summer of that year, we made a lot of progress: Lars Ricaldi, David Franson, Jeff Hail, and myself. By late fall, we figured we had Phase 1 done, and could move on to Phase 2.

We had the basic game in place: When you logged in, you were given a marker, some paintballs, and a few paint grenades. You hung out in the field server's "waiting area", where you could chat with other players. When a game started, you were transported to a random starting location on the paintball field, and it was "survival of the fittest." One splat, and you were back in the waiting area. Winner would be declared, and the timer for the next game started. A long way from finished (one player model, one gun, one grenade--that didn't roll over in the air when thrown--and one field map), but the shape of the game was there.

A great beginning. But yet ... very little happened after that.

Why?

Ah, excuses reproduce like rabbits. Better, really. Because you only need one to start a whole new litter. Here are a few of the highlights:

* 1 house burned down
* There were at least 2 team members who suffered severe financial crises
* At least 1 baby was born
* There were several new jobs, new contracts, new books to write

In summary: Life happened.

The scope proved to be too large for our lack of funding, I think. Look at it this way: It took us nearly 6 months of 2002 to complete Phase *1*. Out of *5* (five) phases. At that rate...even if we had continued to work on it...we'd still only be on about Phase 4, or just starting Phase 5.

That's a big scope. Much bigger than anticipated.

If we'd had more full-time team members, if we could have afforded to pay for some of what was needed upfront, if ... if ... if ...

"If your uncle had been plumbed a bit different, he might've been your aunt, mightn't he?"

Progress on the game did move forward again, some, in the summer of 2003. But it was short-lived movement, and quickly petered out again.

This year, 2004, I planned to finish up a couple of my outstanding projects and be able to spin up Paintball Net again in the late summer and fall. 2004, though, went a bit different than planned. Mostly in good ways, so it's hard to complain, but everything happening kept pushing back the restart date of Paintball Net. Add to that paying a new artist money to create game models, and having that artist just take off with the money like a *thief* ... and, finally, toss in a shift in my own goals as an independent game designer and software developer, and it all boils down to: It's not coming back.

Do I think the Paintball Net project, using Torque was a good idea: Yes. I do.

Do I think it's *still* a good idea: Definitely.

The problem, though, is that I'm no longer the right person to build it. Too much water under the bridge, too many changes in where I want to go and what I want to do.

My thanks to all the team members who helped out, and also to those for who provided support and encouragement.

May it rest in peace.

Eulogy Addendum

As an aid to anyone else who might be interested in creating a 3D paintball game, here is my advice:

* Fuck realism. It seems that everyone who starts out to create a 3D paintball game, starts with the premise of absolute realism: real markers, real squeegees, real masks, real nauseum. Every commercial paintball game has gone this route. And every one of them has *tanked*. Why? Because people who want real paintball, grab their real marker, their real mask, their real tubes of real paintballs, and they go out into the real world and run really wild. So, if you're going to make a paintball game, give them a reason to play--something they can't get playing in the real world. Don't try to be "just like real paintball." Instead, be "like paintball with all this cool extra stuff.". Use your imagination.

* Track player statistics. Track *everything* about the players: # of shots, # of splats, # of games played, EVERYTHING. Put up rankings. Have Top 10 lists, Top 100 lists, etc. These are competitive people, and they *love* to know how they stand. Hell, they *demand* it.

* Allow customizing. I can't stress this one enough. If you don't let your players make their mark on their equipment, you won't keep them interested. They want to customize everything, to create the unique equipment that is obviously *theirs*. Give them tradeoffs to consider (burst mode, or a hair trigger), let them tinker with how the markers work, and so on.

Those are the main points I wanted to pass along.

-David

PS I, personally, ain't going anywhere. Still an indie to the core. Just needed to take care of this final bit of bookkeeping on this project.