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Space Station Managing, Post Mortem
M0b1u5 writes "Mistaril is a small company with an intriguing product: Space Station Manager. It's a finalist for the Independent Games Festival and a follow-up game is planned: Luna Base Manager. However, the SSM project has a developer post-mortem which is well worth a read if you're thinking about launching a game development company, or are just interested in game development."
When you are playing the MIR simulator, don't forget to go into the galley and press the "A" key 3 times in a row. It instantly replenishes your vodka-cannon.
Also, due to MIR's rather porous hull, the game is by default set to "noclip ON". Make sure to turn "noclip OFF" if you want to stay inside the ship.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I played a game pretty much like this (with less stellar graphics, of course) on my C=64. I think it was one of EA's "Blank Construction Set" titles.
Does narcissism count as a hobby? --Shawn Latimer
I love it when the kardassians come and turn on their secret hardware and the station turns against you just at the time when the Narnians invade.
They write "Many times the tasks themselves took just some hours or days worth of effort, but researching and learning to understand the backgrounds and making the right choices took much, much longer." in relation to underestimating the e-commerce costs. But if you've taken the time to understand and evaluate before you make those quick-to-implement choices you've surely won a lot compared to an on-the-spot decision.
I believe that the title that you're thinking about is EOS: Earth Orbit Stations . I played EOS on the Apple long ago and had fun for quite some time. The idea behind EOS was to run a company building stations in orbit. There were different types of stations that could be built depending on the number and type of modules included.
I like reading about behind the scenes stuff after games are released. Its just so cool. I want to be involved in that. It seems like working on games is sort of like a wild-west thing. It isn't obvious what will work or how best to do anything so you have to play it by ear a lot. Shoot from the hip. Stuff like that. I dunno.. it just excites me in some strange adventurous sort of way.
:-)
Maybe because I've never worked in the games industry....
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
It may of interest to note that they used XP, and talk about it some in the Post Mortem.
- Jodiamonds
The sweetest, juiciest quote of the whole article:
The game found an appreciating target audience and managed to generate enough profit to let the company continue developing games.
This goes to show, people are finding indie games, and done right they can generate enough profit to sustain a small development studio. They did have a little help from the IGF nomination, but still its an incredible achievement given they worked full time and risked it all.
Is that a light I see at the end of the tunnel?
A few years back CogniToy came out with a really unique robot design/combat game called MindRover:The Europa Project. You would start with a simple chase (tank, car, or hovercraft) and outfit it with weapons, sensors, and propulsion. However, the real meat of the game was in the programmer's window. Each piece of equipment had to be wired together with a network of logic gates in order to get the robot to anything meaningful. If your radar sensed an enemy robot, you could signal the weapons to fire or just ram him at full speed. If the radar sensed enemy fire you could signal the motor to move in reverse and fire your own weapons to try to intercept. The smarter the bot, more complex the logic network had to be. The development capital seemed to have dried up for them as well since MindRover was their one and only product of interest.
I wonder if this simulation includes budget cuts, cost overruns, failing equipment, space accidents, drunken space tourists, space programs failing to uphold their obligations, and copious undeserved drunk, incompetant, Russian cosmonaut jokes, which seem to be popular with American media.
It would sure make it more entertaining.