Tech Over Tea - Reviving The Combat Demolition Derby | Desert Beagle

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

Today we have Jake from Desert Beagle on the show, the developers of Crush Zone Demolition Derby an arcady car combat game taking place in a demolition derby setting. ==========Support The Channel========== ► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson ► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo ► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF ► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson ==========Guest Links========== Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2318660/Which_Way_Up_Galaxy_Games/ Website: https://whichwayup.info/ Twitter: https://whichwayup.info/ ==========Support The Show========== ► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson ► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo ► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF ► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson =========Video Platforms========== 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBq5p-xOla8xhnrbhu8AIAg =========Audio Release========= 🎵 RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/149fd51c/podcast/rss 🎵 Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-over-tea/id1501727953 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IfFpfzlLo7OPsEnl4gbdM 🎵 Google Podcast: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xNDlmZDUxYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw== 🎵 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/tech-over-tea ==========Social Media========== 🎤 Discord:https://discord.gg/PkMRVn9 🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechOverTeaShow 📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techovertea/ 🌐 Mastodon:https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/1093345 ==========Credits========== 🎨 Channel Art: All my art has was created by Supercozman https://twitter.com/Supercozman https://www.instagram.com/supercozman_draws/ DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation.

Good morning, good day, and good evening. I'm, as always, your host, Brody Robertson. And I want to say this is... number... seven of the post-Avcon game developer interviews. Today, um, our guest does not feel like using a webcam, so we'll give you a picture of the, uh, studio logo, that being Desert Beagle.

Welcome to the show, Jake. How's it going? Hi, Brody. I'm just going very good over here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolute pleasure. I had a lot of fun playing the game that you guys were showing off, Crush Zone Demolition Derby. So, I guess before we get into anything else, give a brief explanation on like what the game is and what like what someone would expect from playing with and for anyone who does find it interesting there is currently a steam demo available yeah so with crush zone demolition derby pretty straightforward crash cars into other cars use customizable weapons. We tried to aim for definitely more like a party vibe kind of game with this one.

But yeah, you can also customize your cars and drivers as well. A lot of people compare it to Rocket League with the gameplay. As cars, they like to go airborne. as uh cars they they like to go airborne so i guess what was the inspiration for the game because there are certainly like arena combat car games in the past but nowadays the genre kind of doesn't really exist that much like the only thing that frequently gets new games is like mario kart has like a mode for it and that's pretty much all you get but like back on the ps2 there are a lot more games like this yeah that's actually very good points that's part of the uh main inspiration behind it when i pitched it to the group. When I first pitched it, I was like,

so guys, there's not a lot of Demolition Derby games. And this was back when the, what's it called, Battle Royales were taken off, like 2018 and such. I was like, let's make a Battle Royale car game. And since we're only a team of three we've we quickly realized how bad of an idea that was okay so we kind of scaled down a lot of other developers where they'll get this idea where it's like i want to make an mmorpg and then they realize wait we have a team of two people how how do we do that yeah um yes so yeah we had to like scale back real quick from that like all right let's make it about eight players have a local multiplayer game and some online play if we get to that point um and yeah it's just like you said like there's not a lot of like

out there apart from like the myrocar battle modes and such. So we thought, all right, let's bring it back and let's make it distinct, you know? Get the classic PlayStation 2 gameplay vibes and such. Yeah. Yeah, for me, I grew up on that era of gaming. I didn't have Nintendo consoles. I had an Xbox way later, but pretty much all my gaming up until...

I think most of the way through the PS3 lifecycle, actually, was on the PS2. And it's probably just nostalgia, right? But to me, there is something special about that era. Yeah, there definitely is. Maybe it's also just the fact that games were a lot cheaper to make back then so you had even like you know big companies now making these in some cases like very experimental titles and just trying out stuff which now really only exists in the indie space

yeah with that i think um indies like to be experimental because there's not as many stakeholders within that whereas like triple a studios they sure they could experiment a little but they have to produce results basically right yeah with indies yes more expressive i believe if you have a 100 million dollar budget you kind of need to make at least 100 million back otherwise it's a very big failure yeah whereas you know an indie title yeah you want the game to be successful sure but like the stakes are way lower like you're you're not going to have a thousand people lose a job if a game absolutely flops. Exactly.

Like, with our team, we're all pretty much self-sufficient and work on the games when we can. So whether if the game does well or not doesn't matter because, like, we're still fine off as is. But still, it's good to be able to experiment and have a game that does perfect like does well yeah so how many people are working on the game uh we're a team of three so there's jesse martin joshua jennings and me jake carter so i'm the lead programmer we have josh as the lead 3d artist and

jesse as the quality assurance how is the uh the the quality assurance been going have you was there any we're getting more into the avcon stuff afterwards but did anybody run into any like unexpected issues with uh with the avcon build or was that just the demo you have available um yeah so with our demos we make a custom build per convention so you say we can slap a logo in there and such and have it so people can't actually back out of it because our first time at PAX last year, I accidentally forgot to take out the quits game button. So the amount of times people coming up to the game

thinking, oh yeah, this is similar to Switch Controls, I'll press the circle button, which is our back button. Right. They instantly left the game. But yeah, so from there on on with the quality assurance of builds. So yeah, it's got it there. Did you guys notice any problems playing at Avcon? Like, you know, you could obviously be testing amongst the team

and you probably have like other people testing it as well. But sometimes people do things that just you never expected.'re like wait you can do that why does that work i feel like there was but i can't remember um no not coming to you no i think our build was pretty smooth for avcon actually that's good yeah i always like seeing like random little bugs as like a player but i'm sure as the developer you're like oh no especially if it's surprisingly common how how you can activate it and you just never considered like you know maybe some like weapon combination behaves in a weird way and things start causing the cars to like flip out and just do things that just shouldn't be happening but you know it's nice when things

actually work well yeah it is definitely nice, but I still gotta agree. It does make a great story for when bugs occur. I always like when a game intentionally leaves in kind of wonky things. I always... One of my favorite things

with a game is when they just don't bother to deal with corpses, and it's like, let's just make them ragdoll. Like Dark Souls 1, where you can get a corpse attached to your foot. and it's like let's just make them ragdoll like dark souls one where you can get a corpse attached to your foot like that's that it doesn't matter no but everyone was sad it was taken away in dark souls 2 and that's why it was brought back in dark souls 3 oh my gosh um that

reminds me one of the bugs i did notice which I still haven't patched yet, unfortunately. So sometimes when a player ragdolls out of the car, it will respawn without the ragdoll. I think it's because of a performance tweak I had, so it would cull it. But since it went out of view when respawning, I forgot to uncull it. So basically, you're driving like a ghost car with no driver I see stuff like that is fun I enjoy that

it doesn't affect the gameplay so it doesn't affect it at all it's just like it probably should be addressed but like it's not a crucial thing like you know you hit a car at a certain angle and then it just flies off the map. Like that's kind of more important. That's like game breaking stuff there.

Actually, my other favorite one with ragdolls is have you ever played the Yakuza games? Yakuza games? No, I haven't, but I've seen and heard a lot about them okay um in kiwami 2 they switched from their original engine to the engine they're using on their modern games the dragon engine and that was one of the first games using that engine and they had no idea what they were doing it was oh boy so they went from if someone collapses there's like a preset animation to ragdolling based on how they land and it went really bad so if you kicked an enemy in the head they would fly around the map for a couple of seconds and then just land on the ground. Or if you...

There was a lot of grabs in that game, so you would throw enemies and all manner of things would happen. Like, there was never any indication of what was going to happen. The same thing happened to the player as well, which could become a problem because if you fight near...

There's, like, a river in one of the areas. If you land in a river, you just die. It's just a river in one of the areas if you land in the river you just die it's just like instant ragdoll when they touch the water yeah you just like if you throw the enemies in there they die but so do you so like you don't want it to go really badly there you get used to it when you're playing the game but the first time it happens especially because the opening the opening introduction to the combat is like in a graveyard you're going there to visit someone and people decide to like come and attack you because you're like the leader of this organization or you were and so you're seeing this ridiculous combat happening in what would have been like a few seconds ago a really

serious moment and it's just this the entire game is this like the entire series really is this juxtaposition of a super serious with kind of like wonky and funky things happening just randomly out of nowhere and i said i really enjoy that stuff yeah i love that stuff too i try to put that into our game. So with the story for our game, it's got a bit of a serious tone. Oh, you actually have a story for the game. Okay, I wasn't sure. Yeah, part of the campaign. So each of the levels and characters have part of their own lore and such.

But my main focus is the gameplay. But what was I saying? You were talking about the serious nature of the story of the campaign. Oh, yeah, the serious nature, yeah. So while we do have some serious bit of the story to it, our gameplay is pretty wacky, as you can tell. Literally one of the front weapons is a plate of jelly. Yeah, yeah, that's one of the ones on the GIF on the website.

Or the video on the gif on the website or the video on the website so with that yeah like it is a bit serious but we do have a bit of comedy in there which is I guess in its way how would you say this I guess it just plays off itself really right like it's a a comedic moment feels especially

when it's done well it feels funnier if it's like right next to something super serious like yeah exactly yeah like as i was saying before about like the yakuza stuff like you know you're at a you're mourning at a funeral and then suddenly people are just flying around the map he's like what's going on um so with the with the game right now how many like arenas are there how many characters and cars are there and i guess the the weapons as well if i know it might be difficult to remember the exact numbers off the top of your head for some of those but if you have a rough ballpark. Being the lead program, I've got a good sense of the amount of numbers and such. Fair enough.

So we have 12 arenas, 12 characters, 12 base cars. We currently have 8 front weapons, and I think six back weapons and six side weapons. Was all of that present in the Avcon demo? Because I don't remember there being that many areas. No, actually. We do have some cutouts as they aren't publicly ready,

but we also want to be able to just show the best of the best in the demo, but also entice players to want to see what else we have in store. So while we could have every level in our builds for the demo, it's just better if we don't. Right, right, right. Yeah. And you mentioned having the different demos for different cons, so i would imagine you maybe swap out some of the arenas for different cons as well yeah i actually um we've definitely considered that but uh

um yeah we just stuck with the four base levels because um it's just simple for us i guess so i would assume those are probably some of the more polished ones then, and maybe some of the ones that have been around for the longest? Definitely. With the fourth level in the demo, the Helicarrier, that is the longest level that's been developed before. Is that the one that has the fans on it? That's right.

It's up in the sky. The fans pull you in. That one's gone through a couple of iterations. Before, it used to have, like, a toxicity symbol kind of layout. So it was, like, split up into six areas. But we thought, nah, the gameplay is a bit too spread out. So we made it a bit tighter and a bit smaller. Yeah. nah the gameplay is a bit too spread out so we made it a bit tighter and a bit smaller yeah so when a i know this isn't like your main thing you are like the programmer but i'm sure you still get involved in this as well like when there's a new arena being worked

on like sort of what thought process goes into this like what do you what are you guys trying to like have in the arena what do you want to avoid doing because they all seem to be like these like circular arenas where you're coming from the edges um but like what what really goes into the like especially the hazards and things like that yeah that's actually a very good point, really. So when we first started the core concepts for the games, we thought, okay, so this is going to be built around the idea of Battle Royale, right? So we thought, all uh we realized that with bigger arenas even though it would be more in par with other car games we thought there's not a lot happening because like all the uh fighting's like spread out people just driving around having like downtime we thought now let's let's bring all the uh action into a nice concert a concise space so that way like if you hit someone you bounce out and then literally within seconds you could be hit out of the arena

or you could like quickly drive back and do more damage instantly um yeah but with the terms of uh obstacles and such that's actually part of the idea we had with our levels. We wanted so each level has its own specific what we call gimmicks. Because there's one of them with, like, the mushrooms, and you, like, bounce off of them. Yeah, that's right. So the jungle. Yep.

With the jungle level, we intend that to be a, like, starter level while people, like, get the controls without worrying about death so much. Right. The jungles do bounce you, but they do zero damage. And the level's in a tight ball. So that way, if a player falls in or gets pushed away, they're not going to go out of the barrier. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Whereas with the more advanced levels like in helicarrier the level's literally pulling you into death yeah i i think when i was playing that level i died more times from the hazards than other players yeah that's like a part of the idea though we wanted so like it does actually track uh whether if you are pushed by another player into the arenas so it like the level does allow for more death but allows for you to get more kills in a way right right yeah okay so right now what is is the range of levels? So you said there's 12 and some are being worked on. Is it like a mix of easy, medium, hard levels?

Or is it more focused towards one side? Are you aiming for a more casual audience with it? Or do you want there to be this higher skill ceiling for those higher levels? Yeah, that's a good question actually so with the skill ratings of it all while the levels do have some skill uh variance with them it's somewhat minimal but we try to account for that allowing like high school players to use the set of movement mechanics say we have this feature that we implemented not too long ago actually what's uh what's the we call the nudge

basically allows you to send your car flying in a certain direction whether you're airborne or not it's once you figure out how to use it it's a it's like a whole new ballpark of a game, you know? Because even if you're not on your wheels, you can still somehow drive. Right, right. I guess that's kind of why some would say a Rocket League comparison there. Yeah, a little bit. bit um additionally we also account for the the skill range by having the weapons be skillful because there's timing there's uh aiming with it as well and just like uh with all the fast-paced action of the cars you can use those weapons to assist you get that higher skill points

whereas a more novice player might use one of the easier weapons which does lower damage but it's a bit more consistent you know right but yeah as for the levels they do have some range in the skills but uh they're more or less pretty similar so with the weapons did you find that people tended to gravitate towards a certain set of them like a certain set seemed like they were maybe the easier and also still really effective or did you find people just picking what they thought looked cool because i know obviously if like when this game comes out people eventually find the things they really like and you know all that stuff but at least

with the the demo that this uh this demo avcon and demos you've done in the past um did you find that people tended to just try things out yeah so i think it depends on the person too because say if the person is just a young kid they'll pick uh the laser beam or the what we call the missile which just shoots out a big bomb and blows up cars nearby but uh with i guess with older players they tend to just pick what's looked coolest like specifically the jelly they're like oh that's cool what does that say is that jelly no um but yeah once they've done a round or two they definitely experiment with the other weapons because they say oh all right i gotta see what all these other weapons see because this is kind of cool right right yeah i don't remember which ones i ended up trying i i'm pretty sure i used the missile

and then there's also the like the saw blade one i'm pretty sure i definitely yeah the power is pretty good i reckon i think that's one of the more straightforward weapons to use. Cause you just ran people and that does damage. Yeah, that's right. So we, we made it. So it's like a close contact weapon. I should probably also mentioned this with,

um, with our game, we tried to avoid having long range weapons cause we wanted, uh, the focus to be more on close range impacts and such so you'll notice like weapons like the laser beam chainsaw the pretty close range the missile i found was a little bit like awkward to use because it like slightly angles up and then hits down um i'm sure i could get used to it but did you find that especially with that one

or if there are any other weapons that people found a bit awkward to use one of the ones that i think plays or first time players have struggled with um or first time players had struggled with for the front weapon, I would have to say probably the power sword, actually, because people didn't seem to know when it was on or off. Ah, okay. Yeah. But recently we've added a whole bunch of animations,

particle effects to it. So hopefully that helps it. But yeah. Right. a whole bunch of animations particle effects to it so hopefully that helps it um but yeah right because even if you have like audio cues especially in that con setting it's going to be difficult to or even just if you're playing with friends like if you have a four-person land party with it it can be hard to tell like like differentiate the sounds from what other players are doing yeah that's true because also especially on like a split screen with the screens even smaller it would be hard to see right yeah that's actually a good point i thinking back on it yeah i've i've the saw is the saw is cool but yeah i i don't i don't really know how you could properly indicate that it's happening.

Because it is, on a lot of the vehicles, kind of hidden by where the camera is facing. Yeah. I guess it's just like I said, we recently applied a whole bunch of animations and particles to it. So hopefully that helps make it more visually indicating that it's active. But maybe we could look into other ways to see what we could also add onto it. Okay, so what about the back weapons?

Because I don't actually remember what most of them are. Yeah, so with the back weapons, currently in the demo, there are two movement weapons and three trap like placement weapons um so the two movement ones being a thruster which is

very similar to rocket league just gives you continuous thrust based on how long you hold it down but there's this other movement weapon we have the jump starter very good for getting powerful rams in I reckon yeah based on how long you hold it down. But there's this other movement weapon. We have the Jump Starter. Very good for getting powerful rams in, I reckon. Yeah. As for the three trap weapons,

there was a Stinger, which stuns cars if they land on it. Tie Spikes, which gives them a bit of slip but a lot of damage. And the Oil Slick, which sends them flying. Yeah. Whenever you have whenever you have back weapons in a game like this they always naturally feel less i guess maybe not intuitive but less interactive i guess because a lot of them especially the ones that aren't like a boost, for example, it tends to be you put it down and then you just kind of forget about it.

Yeah, that's one of the tricky things we've noticed when making these weapons. They're not instantly noticeable in the terms of their impacts. but surprisingly enough we track the stats of each weapon that wins and we find that those weapons outperform the thruster and jump starter so

we had to convey that through sensors of like I guess a heads up display with the notification saying oh yeah you got a hit plus 25 points you know is that also because maybe the traps aren't as clear to other players and they accidentally bump into them yeah that's true like in the heat of a battle like if all the cars are

colliding into each other it's like just messy You can't really tell what's happening in that. So I guess some players would possibly hit other cars then hit spikes and then like fly out of it. But yeah. Okay. Okay. I really enjoyed the game. Like when I was

playing it, I had a lot of fun with it. I'm glad to hear it. Like it's a very simple game really like it's yeah but it's one of those games where you know it's it's fun to just sit down for a couple of rounds and just you know it's one of the games you bring out if you're having like a party or something and uh exactly you want to stop dealing with the person who no life's Tekken and put them in a game that you could actually beat them in. That's part of my inspiration too. I'm terrible at fighting games,

but car games, you name it. There's always that one person, whether it's Smash, Tekken, Soul Calibur, there is always one person who just, they play the game they know how to play the game and they're gonna show you they know how to play the game yeah jesse's our tekken guy he always brings that game out with parties i'm gonna bring out crush zone i'll show him yeah as i said um i think it's cool um yeah so i lost my eye um oh that's not good no it's not good uh what was i saying um

i forgot what i was saying uh uh shit oh actually one thing i was gonna ask is you mentioned that it was gonna be I forgot what I was saying. Shit. Oh, actually, one thing I was going to ask is, you mentioned that it was going to be a, like, battle royale at one point. So, how big of a battle royale were you thinking that made you guys realise, no? So, the idea was 100 cars enter, one leaves.

I see. That's how big we were thinking. Okay. And then once we realized... Actually, before we got to that part, I was doing a prototype for the game and I slapped 100 of the same car into one dummy level, I suppose. It actually worked pretty well.

Performance wasn't too bad. But I realized, hmm, how am I going to test this with a team of three? Right. So, like, hmm, nah, let's just drop it down. Well, you could fill it up with bot players,

I guess, and that's that's true and then like proper testing you could eventually hope like if you get enough people interested do some like closed alpha and then you could do something with that but yeah that's true but building levels for that like building a level for eight players is one thing building a level for 100 players that's quite a bit more effort. It is definitely a bit more effort, especially considering when we started this project, we were students, actually. So we have very limited experience with that. So what is your background?

So what is your background? So my background personally, I've been making Flash games since I was like 10 years old. And from that, I've said, yeah, I want to get into a career like this. So I took the course at GMC for game development back in 2016 to 2018. And that's where I met Jesse and Josh actually and

so from there we formed this group called Desert Beagle and we've been making games since so that's a bit of my background yeah awesome so you've have like long before making this you definitely have at least

played around with doing stuff in the past. It's not like this is your first attempt at trying to make something. Yeah, definitely. This is probably the biggest game that I've made in my life, I'd have to say. As the other ones are pretty short in comparison. It's like one single level, basic prototypes here and there. Yeah.

So, okay, let's talk about this campaign. That's not planning to be there in the launch the launch right or is that or is it and maybe depends on when you guys feel like releasing yeah so with the campaign we're aiming to have that one released in the early access by the end of this year yep so with the early access, it's pretty much what you see in the demo plus everything else, minus the online multiplayer, which we'll spend the next year getting the multiplayer working. Okay. So that way people can play the base game quicker and sooner for a slight discount. And if they want to wait for the full one they can and get a full price but uh

no we just wanted to my place to see what we've made so far so what is the campaign going to entail so you mentioned like some somewhat serious story but how long are you guys aiming for do you does does anybody on the team have writing experience? Or is it going to be... They certainly do. Okay, okay. Yeah, so with Josh, while I did say his job is a lead 3D artist, he also has a background in writing.

He's got a bachelor's in writing, I believe. Okay. Yeah, so as for the length of the campaign, it's going to take you through each of the levels and give you a brief background of how the level came to be and such. Like what's the overall purpose of it and such. And throughout each of the levels, there will be a small cutscene explaining the character's purpose in that scene.

We also do have mini-bosses and a final boss. Okay. Yeah. That's interesting. So, what is the... What would be a boss like in a game like this? That's a good question. So, with our boss they will have generally like a

i guess a harder difficulty for bots with the uh performance and how they play but with our final boss we're coughing a little bit of something from crash team racing so i'm not sure if you played that game i definitely played it yes yeah then you definitely know what i'm talking about um so for those who haven't played it's uh in crash team racing the main boss nitrous oxide in the very final race he pulls out cheats like he gets a head start and all that i thought that's perfect i need that for my boss in the final level. So with the final boss and final level, they may pull a little cheat here and there,

but that's for you to play and find out, I reckon. I completely forgot. I entirely forgot there were bosses. It's been so like, this is another game that I really enjoyed. I haven't played the, I is another game that I really enjoyed. I haven't played the, I have not played the reboot, sadly. Oh, you should.

It feels so much like the classic, and it's even better. Okay, okay. So, I do have the reboot of the, like, the platformer games. I haven't touched that either. I did get around to doing the Spyro games and I really enjoyed those because... Spyro Reignite was perfect. Mostly. Mostly. I played it on PC.

Did you play on console or PC? Yeah, I played on console. When I tried it on PC, I was like, there's a couple bugs here and there. Yeah, so there's a couple bugs here and there yeah so there's a you'll enjoy this one um some of the game logic is tied to the frame rate specifically certain animations like doors opening and bridges oh no so if you play the game on not i i would have thought if you played it on anything besides 60 bit no if you play it on 60 hertz 60 fps doors probably won't open bridges probably won't appear you have to play it at 50 that's terrible i didn't realize this so there was one

part where i stood there waiting for something to open for five minutes like oh no i didn't know what was happening but also some of the enemy ai is tied to the frame rate as well so it also breaks um i i knew it was bad but i didn't realize it was that bad like the only bug i've seen like was if you set it to like 144 frames spiro starts like gliding across the ground but apart from that i didn't realize it was that bad yeah it was a besides that i had a fine experience... Oh, okay. This was just a bug generally in the game. There was one bit where an enemy got stuck in the ground, which was just always amusing.

One of the levels where you have a character following you and they just decided not to follow me. When you played this was this like after the launch of it or was very recently oh my goodness like I can accept when there's like some graphical rendering bugs because I play most of my games

on Linux so there's going to be additional stuff with like I don't know the proton and wine stuff the Vulcan calls no ursa fine but like game logic shouldn't be affected hopefully yeah like i can understand how it happens from a programming side of things but it could be avoided in certain ways. Yeah. Just for any programmers out there, if you are thinking of tying anything to your frame rate,

don't. Stop it. Bad. Tie it to time. Time is good. Frames are not. I think you'll be happy to hear with Crushed Land Demolition Derby, I tried to make it future-proof so you can play at any frame rate

you can play at 1, you can play at 1,000 but it doesn't affect the gameplay I always love classic, especially ports of PS2 racing games, a lot of them they were tied to the frame rate, so if you went

higher to the frame rate, cars you went higher than frame rate cars went double speed oh no way on the playstation 2 yeah yeah there were a couple of really bad ports of a couple of games oh actually no maybe i'm thinking a couple of ps3 games because i know during that era like pc porting was a bit funky a lot of games were a bit oh definitely yeah um part of that was obviously might have been playstation 3 right yeah one of the two i'm not 100 yeah actually i think it was um i feel like it was one of like the one of the ps3 or the the that generation of need for speed games which was really bad for that. I don't remember which. Doesn't matter. My point is don't tie any

logic to framerate. Good advice. Actually, no. Worse than tying it to framerate is going even older when games tied things to the CPU speed. Oh, yes. And how they had to

actually physically implement the turbo button to account for that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That would have been such a weird era to play games. And, like, you upgrade to this new, more powerful Intel CPU. You have 60 hertz. And all of a sudden, speed running the game yep uh

i could only just imagine though like back then programming probably wasn't as uh widespread i guess so like information was pretty sparse yeah so i i can understand the struggle they probably went through. Well, yeah, nowadays it's easier than ever, not only to learn how to make a game, but easier than ever to have access to good tooling. Like, I was looking up the other day, Unity came out in 2005. Before then, and even then, like,

Unity was not popular back then. took a while to like pick up speed but before then like if you wanted to write a game you were learning how open gl calls worked and writing a game directly through that exactly there were some libraries that exist or you work you make it your own engine if you want to do that or you work at a company pretty much i believe there was um one big widespread game engine yeah there were things like the early 2000s but definitely were a couple and like rpg maker and stuff have existed for a long time um but yeah i see your point it's certainly not like today where you know You can go just download Unity Or Unreal or Godot

Or Especially with the countless tutorials out there Yeah yeah YouTube is YouTube is your friend Definitely was my friend When I was at university That's for sure Honestly half the stuff I learned at university, that's for sure. Honestly, half the stuff

I learned at uni wasn't even from the course itself. Most of my classes, I think it's under LinkedIn Learning now, but it was lynda.com back then. Most of them just link to external resources. I'm pretty sure lynda is still

around. Is it? I feel like there's a merger or something Oh Yeah yeah it's part of LinkedIn Learning now It's still Linder.com but it's called It's LinkedIn Learning with Linder Hmm That's pretty good

But yeah like my class is like It would There would be a bit like we go over some like Chapter or whatever Oh we're gonna learn how i don't know i'll raise work in c++ or whatever but then most of the other content was just go watch this online course like what why am i paying you can't i just pay the course exactly it's even worse when they just read straight off a powerpoint to you isn't it oh there was there were so many classes i had where they didn't even write their own slides

they just copied text from the textbook and put it on their slide oh it's even worse when the powerpoints like um from like previous years like you can tell the age and it's like yeah yeah this is definitely from uh 2012 i reckon yeah yeah i had courses that were kind of from 2012 as well like my my web dev course um they've updated it completely now it was i always do that just as he finishes. He's like, oh, yep, he's gone, let's make it better. Mm-hmm. It was... What is the Microsoft C... Razer.

It was Razer Pages and jQuery. Oh. Which is... It's functional. It'll work, but, like... Yeah. which is, it's functional. It'll work, but like, yeah. And we had like a Java course running like six or seven versions out of date Java, which fundamentally works for Java. But like, yeah.

And then we did GUI development in Java as well, which was... I could just picture how that goes. There's a reason why they, when they refreshed everything, they just deleted all of it. It's like, you know what? We're just going to teach you Python now. If you want to learn another language,

there's some later courses. You do some C++ there. Sure. But we're going to teach fundamentals in Python now. No more worrying about all this Java nonsense. I haven't heard many good things about Java. I'm so glad I didn't have to learn that. When you were going through your study,

what was stuff based on then? What were you going through? When I was studying at JMC, this was actually when i was studying at the jmc they this was actually when unity was transitioning from javascript to c sharp ah so they had a bit of both but uh thankfully we learned in c sharp c sharp is c sharp is as close as i want to get to Java. It's Java with a Microsoft skin, basically, is the way I describe it. Like, the entire reason C-Sharp exists is because Java came along and was absolutely eating up market share from Microsoft.

And they're like, nope, can't do this, can't have that happen. Let's just copy it. Let's just do it slightly better. I never realized that. Yeah, there's, like, a lot of history behind the two of them back when they were first coming around. There's a... Like, if you go, like, try to write some Java,

it's going to feel fairly familiar, but with some things that are just, like, why is this so wordy? True. I think it's a good way to describe java it's very wordy like every library import is like seven different sub libraries long to get to work out where it is oh i i personally haven't had much experience with java but i can definitely see that yeah there's a reason why um there's other languages that are jvm based so you can do java stuff but have a nicer front end to work with that's good at least yeah if it means i have less java in my life that's that's all that matters i'm thankful that i don't have to touch Shava. Just keep doing Unity stuff.

Just keep doing C Sharp. Shall do. I'm keeping my head down. You'll be happy. We'll talk about the campaign before. Was there anything that we hadn't really touched on there? So you're going to have bosses. You're going to have like this overarching story what are you guys sort of is it gonna be like a fairly short thing or i want to have like some

sort of extensive story here like is it gonna be like a one hour thing you just go through it and just done and just like kind of there or is it supposed to be more than that? So with our game, our main focus is just having the arcade and gameplay as polished as it can be. Right, right. Some may say the story is a bit of a side thing, but we don't want it to be the main focus. So while the story will be there, it's going to be a pretty short one. The campaign goes for around one hour or so, I believe. Okay. But yeah, we try to focus on just making the gameplay fun.

That's our main thing. I think it's always important. Like, gameplay is king. If you don't have solid gameplay, it doesn't matter what else you have. Like, you can have pretty graphics, you have all this other stuff if the gameplay sucks it the game sucks like yeah we definitely want to avoid that so we're talking about the um triple a games before and i think a lot of games sort of fall into that where

you see a lot of big marketing material about hey look at our face animations look at our lighting hey uh look you can see their toes like it just makes you think oh dang i'm gonna have to get the next graphics card up i know yep yep whenever a game i always have a lot of respect for a developer where the trailer is the game. Like, there's no CG trailer. There's nothing like, it's just like, here, game, enjoy. Here's 20 minutes of raw gameplay footage. If you like it, you'll play it.

I don't know. Like, it's a bit tricky. Like, personally, as, like like a consumer myself with um games seeing trailers that just show gameplay it's not very enticing but i can also see the appeal behind it because like it shows you what the game is right right but i still feel like that's uh i guess a bit of a cinematic does help in a way like Like, oh yeah. A perfect example I saw of this was Beats Per Minute, actually. It shows the best of both.

It incorporates music and gameplay as well. So they made the trailer full on performance. Oh, Bullets Per Minute, I think. Yeah, Bullets Per Minute, that's the one uh ah yes yes i know this game yes yeah oh yeah okay yeah i do know this one um right i don't think i've ever got around

to playing that one it's pretty fun give it a shot it definitely looks fun uh right right this was the uh the rhythm game shooter right okay yes the, yes. With the trailer, it's like full on, incorporates like the gameplay into a cinematic, I guess. Right. Yeah. No, I can see the value in that as well. I'd certainly get that. What I sort of mean is the games where,

especially when it's one of the yearly release games where they just released like here is a three minute cinematic there's no gameplay there's nothing it's just like we know you're gonna buy it we don't even need to tell you what the game is anymore like i like i get it right like it's it's cool to me and i know oh yeah those ones i i agree with you on that like definitely includes some form of gameplay at least and like absolute respect to the artists and animators and like the sound people they usually make something looks really really good but i don't know if you were paying attention to back uh back then but i remember when the first cyberpunk 2077 trailer came out or like the cinematic teaser i do

remember that everyone was hyped up about it yeah and then i just thought to myself it's the gameplay yeah for anyone who doesn't remember i think it was just like a girl sitting on the ground and that's that was the entire thing it's like cyberpunk like yeah i think i remember like when i first heard about it i was like all right i'm gonna check out and uh have a look at their previous videos and i saw like one of the very very earliest trailers for it and i think it was just like a close-up of a blade of some sort and then it said the title like oh okay but i I think of games like Black Myth Wukong is a really good example of a game that it doesn't need a cinema. It's had cinematic trailers,

but now they usually just put out his gameplay. I think the game is just about to come out very soon. Have you seen anything about that game uh no i haven't actually uh it's a souls like game with a chinese mythology aesthetic oh um yeah that does sound familiar actually now that you mention it yeah you play as um like uh in it yeah you play as um like uh what i wukong it's in the name you play as wukong the uh the the character that like goku was based off of um monkey dude he has like a extendable pole um so you it's it's it's just the chinese mythology part it doesn't go the dragon ball route which it completely forgets

that it was ever based off of that. But yeah, it's like very fast paced. And it's, they've shown off like really cool tech. Like when you walk through the snow, it creates a path through the snow. It's cool looking. But yeah, that is kind of cool, I guess. It is really, especially like when they first showed it off

because it was one of the, it was one of the games that was shown off back when the PS5 was first coming out. So it was like, wow first showed it off. Cause it was one of the, it was one of the games that was shown off back when the PS5 was first coming out. So it was like, wow, look at this, look what we can do with this hardware sort of situation.

Yeah. It's good to see like, well, while it is more focused on just the graphics and not the gameplay, it's still good to see the improvements that they can do in the technology and like what they can do with it as well yeah i don't know i'm kind of with two minds about like the improvement of artistic quality because i feel like a lot of games rely too heavily on like that realistic look

and we've lost a lot of games having very memorable art styles yeah i definitely feel that's too that's um part of the reasons why we try to get like that playstation 2 look in our game yeah yeah i definitely i definitely did notice that um like i i think obviously, it's not the, you know... A lot of people confuse artistic fidelity with artistic quality, right? Like, I think this game looks good. Oh, thank you. With its, like, the style it's going for. It's not trying to look like some realistic... It's not trying to look like, you know, some...

It's not Forza, right? Like, it's not trying to look... you know some it's not forza right like it's not trying to look definitely not trying to be like forza but like it has a style that is going for and i think like how i was saying like gameplay is king like style is king as well like a game that has a great style i have um what's it ps2 uh ps1 game actually rayman Rayman. There we go. Oh, yes, Rayman. Rayman still looks incredible, right? Yeah. Or, you know, actually, I think an even better example

is like Super Mario 64, where it, if you look at it fidelity-wise, frankly looks terrible. It has very, very low poly models. However, if you see a screenshot from super mario 64 you can immediately tell where that is from because that game has such a an iconic look to

it that you always know where it's from but if i show you a screenshot of generic first person shooter like it's hard to tell which game it's from and such yeah when we've lost all style it's really hard to tell what is what and I think the indie game scene is what keeps this alive right like and I think it's also

it's like limitation breeds creativity when you have effectively infinite resources you can make a game that looks realistic and has realistic lip flaps and all that stuff when it's three dudes who just want to make a cool game you have to really think about what you're actually going to do with it it makes you actually consider what is it that we want our game to look like and what is it we want our game to actually do yeah that's true like

sure we could just go the photo realistic route and just get 3d models online of like generic cars and put them into our game but we didn't want that for our game we just wanted it to be distinct and custom made to us as we see fit so yeah part of that style as well like i like i said the playstation 2 look right we go for that look because it's also nostalgic in a way and like allows us to relive uh playing those classic demolition derby games like on the playstation 2 era yeah yeah you can't really get that with photorealism no it's honestly why i play honestly i tend to play a lot more indie games than i do really most of the triple a games that come out like the last i think what's the last game considered triple a that i actually played i

i for me personally i it would have been the autumn automata yes that's really good yeah oh that one's good but that's an example of a game that has a big budget that but they tried to do something that actually is very unique like it has a weird art style it has very weak if you pay attention it's definitely got style that's for sure if you pay pay a lot of attention to how they frame, there was a lot of weird use of camera angles where in any other game, like there's so many cut scenes in that game where it's just basically set up like a 2D side-scroller.

It's just out of nowhere. You're like, okay, it's 2D side-scroller now. That's cool. I love how they did that. I was like, oh, this is a change of pace. Or like when you're in the base area where it's this giant ring, like it's like the first time you go in there,

like it's such a weird feeling. And I think it's just always going to stick with you. It's definitely memorable. That's for sure. Now the thing about, I think the last AAA game I played, Sekiro. Sekiro is really good. what's that game about uh that's the um uh samurai game made by from software

oh yes yes yes i haven't played elden ring yet i need to do that uh i haven't had a chance to play Outer Ring it looks pretty good though yeah so you want to have online multiplayer in this game that's right so what

have you had an attempt at doing online multiplayer before or would this be like hey let's try to work out how this goes let's go to YouTube and how do we do online multiplayer before would this be like hey let's let's try to work out how this goes let's go to YouTube and how do we do online multiplayer honestly a bit of both so at first it did start off all right let's just make a online multiplayer game straight off the bat it didn't work out too well so what I ended up doing was I did some demo projects just like some

prototypes of some other games just to get the understandings of how online multiplayer works and such now that I've done those I've got a bit more experience with that and now I can set up the game as need be but since all that time we've been developing this game we

thought we should probably release it sometime soon so we're not stuck in development hell that way we decided just to early access this year and then before release next year so we'll have a proper online multiplayer how long has the game been in development for at this point about three years okay yeah yeah i can see why you want to why you want to release it some way yeah because that's part of the um development process if someone stays in development too long the game does technically become outdated and then you don't get the core id you wanted with it suppose. It just becomes a blur of IDs. Right.

Yeah. So, does Unity provide... I've not done, like, much with Unity. I've done, like, a couple of little things here and there. But does Unity provide you tooling in the way of online multiplayer? Or are you... I assume some people are doing stuff entirely custom as well but like what really goes into that yeah so with the networking

in unity uh unity is pretty modular so it's based on like game objects and components and they just plug and play so while you can use unity's built-in system they recently released it's within the past year i think it's um game services which just covers everything like analytics online multiplayer um we personally don't use that for crash zone we use a third party solution called mirror so there's a couple of those out there some do peer-to-peer some to peer to server and etc um but so we picked that one because we thought that best suits our projects needs and the game we would like it to be in the game we would like it to be. Yeah, so you can do custom builds and go, I want to say, low-end instead of high-end.

But no, Mirror allows it to be easily done high-end for us. Yeah. The number one open-source Unity networking library is what they say on their GitHub. For Mirror? Yeah. Yeah, it is pretty good. And I guess because it is something that does exist already, there's content out there.

That's the other thing. Going to YouTube, there's content out there on how to use it. Exactly. Even if it might not 100% apply to what you're doing with your game, you can adapt that and test it out with other demos and try to make something that actually fits together. Yeah, that's right. And additionally, with it being a third-party solution, they're always constantly updating it too.

So if there is a bug, I don't have to worry about programming it. So I'm already done with someone else. That's always nice. It definitely helps when it comes to development time. The less time you can spend programming on your game, the better, I reckon. Well, that's not for everything,

though. There's definitely things you have to do custom, but for solutions such as networking, it's definitely helpful. Right, right definitely things you have to do custom but for solutions such as networking it's definitely helpful right right unless you have a a networking background whatever you put together probably wouldn't be better than anything that already exists yeah that's true considering my level of uh experience with that too networking is not something I've personally ever had much excitement

to mess around with I will deal with the higher level stuff and the lower level stuff but I don't want to touch the networking part it's not that scary once you have a proper look into it like it does have its uh hiccups here and there but once you figure out how it works it's uh pretty straightforward

but i guess i could be said about anything really right right yeah if you have experience with it and you know how it works it's easier to deal with it i'll just say it's magic yeah yeah i think you should be more afraid of people who say they don't have any concerns with uh with developing something like someone who is overconfident i'm more worried about than someone um who admits they just don't know what they're doing yeah that's true it's like um that one experience curve i think it's like you start off saying oh i don't know anything you get into it and say oh i know everything and then once you get past that point you realize you don't know anything yep and then you slowly go back up i forgot what that curve's called but um i i know what you're talking about yeah i am blanking on it i'm probably gonna remember as soon as we

finish recording but uh it everyone everyone listening knows exactly what we're talking about as well and someone's probably gonna leave a comment yeah the person listening this oh yeah i definitely know that i know everything yeah you know what good point those who know know so what is the plan for early access is there plans to introduce more arenas more characters or is it just that getting the campaign and multiplayer done like what what is really the goal there uh yep so early access that will be just the base game the online multiplayer so it'll have like all the levels campaign done the different game modes for the local arcade so that way you can like play with your mates and do the different modes but the full release is that plus online multiplayer

once we have that sorted out is that oh yeah is that gonna have like additional are you gonna work on additional levels was that not really decided just yet we were considering additional content in terms of characters and the cars and weapons as for, not too sure on that one yet. Okay. If there's time for it, we'll definitely incorporate it, but if not, it'll probably just come out later as

additional updates as we progress through the development cycle. Yeah, time is always the problem. It's time or money. One of those is always the problem. Usually both. Yeah, time is always the problem. It's time or money. One of those is always the problem. Usually both. Yeah, definitely for us with the time aspect. Because we're only a team of three, right?

And we have to self-sustain ourselves through other jobs, such as side gigs and such. But yeah, I'd definitely say it would be time for us. So if you win the lottery, the game will come out quicker yeah pretty much either that or we just don't make the game we just go to uh bali and have a nice holiday you don't just go to bali just uh go live in bali you rent cheaper there then you can uh exactly exactly yeah go live somewhere get save a bunch of money go live somewhere that's like very very cheap and then get the game done like that i'm sure that's uh i'm sure that'll work out well yeah i'm sure it'll work out pretty well that reminds me that

one uh game dev youtuber he goes by randy he made he's making this like survival game and took a laptop to bali and he just lived there and worked on it i believe i respect that yeah it's pretty respectable it's cheap may as well i i i don't know what it is with especially in australia people like i've i know so many people who've gone overseas only to go to Bali. Like, nowhere else. They haven't gone, like, you know, Europe, US. No, it's only Bali.

Yeah. I guess it's probably because it's, like, somewhat close, eh? Yeah. And pretty cheap, too. Yeah, well... But you definitely would want to go to other places, though, I reckon.

Yeah, I would like to go to other... I haven't been overseas myself, but I definitely... Me neither. Like, I've had some people ask me to come to some conferences in the US, so I've definitely got some considerations there. But the only problem is it's just so expensive to get anywhere from here. Yeah. Maybe we'll go to New Zealand.

That's not super expensive. What am I checking out in New Zealand that's not super expensive I don't mind checking out New Zealand I haven't been there myself yeah I haven't either I'll just keep slowly going to the places slightly further away hmm so

okay let's see where were we? We talked about the online. We talked about the campaign. And we talked about early access and full release. Yes. I had...

Again, I had somewhere I was going to segue here, but I just... I lost it again. This is... It's one of these days I think we're talking about timings the early access winning the lottery

that sounds pretty good yeah I got randomly sidetracked by that oh actually one thing that you did mention earlier was the 2024 Melbourne International Games Week. I wrote it in the workplace. Yeah, so recently we applied to, yeah, as you said, the 2024 Melbourne International Games Week

for the Steam Page Festival. Literally just today we got accepted for it. Yeah. I wish I could tell you more about it, Steam page festival Literally just today we got accepted for it Yeah I wish I could tell you more about it But I personally don't know a lot about it Myself As that was handled by Josh Okay

Um Let's have a look It is between the 3rd and 13th of October I've never Heard of this event myself between the 3rd and 13th of October. I've never heard of this event myself. Yeah, me too. Let's have a little Google, shall we?

Victoria's celebration of games for players makes an enthusiast return. Okay, yep, yep, yep. This is great content. It's perfect. Join Australian and international influencers, businesses, and industry for Melbourne International Games Week, Asia

Pacific's largest digital game celebration. Victoria's nine-day celebration of games for players, makers, and enthusiasts will return. Industry with industry-connecting favorites such as a game connect asia's pacific high school composition and sound art for gaming games will change asia pacific the australian game developer awards and more join us for a series of innovative and inspiring live events in melbourne i like how you mentioned this and you just didn't have anything you You just were like, hey, we had this.

You didn't have anything to add to it. Yeah, that's how it goes. There's a big old team. We just roll with it. Yeah. You know what? I can respect that, yeah. So I remember what I was going to bring up before.

The game modes. The game modes, yes. Yes, yes. What are the game modes yes yes um what what what what game what are the game modes what what what exists here and what is our plan for the future that's good uh question you got there so the biggest question we get a lot for our game is will there be a team mode everyone's always asking about team mode so So we're definitely going to have team deathmatch. What other games?

We have a bomb tag. So one person has a bomb and they have to hit other people with the car to get rid of it. And it's like hot potato. We had this mode called God Hunter. So basically one person is really overpowered and they're triple the size basically everyone has to team up against them but if they get hit by it they go flying funnily enough um josh this is a funny story right um so josh he was interviewed one time and since he doesn't focus on the programming as such, he just ramped off on the game modes. One game mode he suggested for our game was Capture the Flag.

I was just going to mention Capture the Flag. You reckon Capture the Flag for a Demolition Derby game? I don't know. It could be interesting where it's like if you kind of, it would kind of be the opposite of Bomb Tag, where you hold the flag longer and it builds up a certain number of points. Oh, yes, that's right. One of the other game modes we have is King of the Hill.

Oh, well, yeah, that's effectively what I would be suggesting there. Yeah. So why wouldn't it be tied to the car per se? It would be tied to, like, fixed points around the map. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But yeah, the reason why I can't suggest

capture the flag for our game is because the arena is too small to account for that. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Yeah, okay, I guess that could be a problem then, because it might end up swapping between too quickly. Either that or we just have to make it so you get 50 points or so, instead of the typical three. 50 points or so instead of the typical 3 or it could be similar to the King of the Hill where

if you hold the flag every second you get a point sort of situation fair point if it was you had it and then you had to take it to a location I could see how that probably like that doesn't really make sense

in such a small arena but if you've already got I could see how that probably... Like, that doesn't really make sense in such a small arena. Yeah. But... If you've already got King of the... Like, how's the King of the Hill gonna work? So you just sit there and then you capture a point? Yeah, so if King of the Hill, it spawns a fixed point in the arena, say, about 15 metres wide in radius,

and probably diameter diameter my bad um so you'll spawn around a point in the arena basically any car that's closest to the center point will gain the points and since this game already is like very physics heavy and like knocked back and all that it's very uh sumo like i guess so basically you're playing sumo for the point and uh whichever car is closest gets the most points and they won so i assume those are going to be using the same arenas for like as the like the other modes yeah so all the game modes will be based in the same arenas. I could see it maybe being interesting to have, like, a... At least, like, one arena, like, specifically dedicated to certain game modes.

Oh, yeah. Because then you could, like, really build it around, like, emphasizing that mechanic and maybe have... I don't know, maybe, King of the Hill actually specifically introduce higher ground that you can capture. I do think it's obviously still good to have the other ones, but I guess it depends on whether there's interest

in doing the other mode. Like, additional maps as well. Again, it was down to time and money on whether something like this happens. Yeah, that's true like that's uh main uh cost is time for us so whether we can make another arena for that type of mode it would stack up pretty considerably sure the arena is a pretty tight but we still want them to be of good quality you know know? Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. And feel different as well.

Sorry, you go. No, yeah. I was just going to say you want them to not only be high quality, but also just feel different. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Like, yeah, definitely want them to feel different. But, yeah, as I was going to say, I don't know. I've blanked.

No, I've lost it, sorry. Well, with the high-quality arenas, it would be easy enough to make, like, one arena and then sort of re-skin it in different ways. It's still a high-quality arena, but, like, you know. Yeah different ways that it's still a high quality arena but like you know yeah it's like there's no fun in just having it especially

like making something right like it's not just a matter of it being fun for the players but actually interesting for the people working on it to build something that they actually like themselves yeah that's true oh i just remembered um the thing i was going to say was um why we could make different arenas for the different game modes

we find currently for what we have the game modes feel pretty okay with the current arenas we've got so far right right okay that's what i wanted to say. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So the main game mode is like the free-for-all, but... Hmm. Are these other game modes in the demo right now, or... Not in the demo,

but they are currently in the game. Okay. Have you shown them off at a con before? No, we haven't. Okay. Just getting the bouncing out before we show off those ones, because, like, the team match mode, everyone goes for magnets because, like, pulls everyone

together, and it's, like, it's pretty messy. I guess with the team mode, you also have the challenge of properly indicating the teams in a way that like the easiest way is just have the

cars be the same colour as the other members of the team. Yeah, but that removes the player's expression of customising and such. So we get around that by doing a coloured outline similar to Overwatch, how they have theizing and such. So we get around that by doing a colored outline, similar to Overwatch, how they have the red and blue.

Okay. Yeah, I guess that works, yeah. And also with the name tags as well, since they fly above the cars, we just give it a colored background. Right, right, right, right, right. Okay. Because, yeah, like, like i think rocket league for example

like yeah rocket league they're just like ah just color it like most of the games are pretty much just like you're on the red team you're on the blue team you're now red or blue like maybe you have some games maybe they have like some expression of shade of color but a lot of the time it's just like clear color sets like yeah i can see like why they would want to do that because like it's easy to set up and it makes it even more clearer to the player what they're looking at too so like it does have its benefits but we still want the player to be able to customize how they look and such we opted to not do that i guess that is something you can test like if players find it confusing with the system you have

um i guess you could always go back to the drawing board and maybe consider doing the colors because if it if it doesn't work and people are constantly going after their teammates and aren't really sure what's going on like there's probably no reason to be dead set on that even though yeah you did say player customizability but if it ruins the gameplay um i would still say it's probably best to at least consider it i'll admit there have been a couple times times when we've been playtesting privately and a friendly fire has happened. Like, oh no, it's wrong teammate. It's pretty chaotic, but it's still kind of funny in a way. So whether we keep it or not, we'll see. Yeah, changing between those isn't the biggest of changes.

It's not like you have to like fully redesign some like complex system like a recolor is considering that there's already a system for doing like the coloring anyway like it's not yeah it wouldn't be a crazy endeavor no it'd be pretty straightforward just slap it to the team colour and Bob's your uncle. So, what was the Avcon experience like? So, have you guys been to Avcon before? Ah, no. That's actually our first time in Adelaide.

Okay. For most of the team, I believe. Yeah, no. That was our first time at Avcon. Oh pretty good i would have to say i like to i don't know it's like i didn't have any downsides with it at all it was like pretty good there okay since it is uh you were new to that one then. What did you think about the noise that was going on? Because they had, the speakers turned up pretty loud for like the main stage and the esports stage.

Now that you mentioned that, I just, sure they had a couple of blown speakers here and there a couple of times, but apart from that, I didn't really notice any other hiccups. I think the game devs had like the best of it this year because in definitely in previous years avcon um they've had the indie games room in like this dark core area off to the corner where if you knew it was there like you would go to it. But a lot of people... I definitely know that.

What was it? Sorry? I definitely know about that. Being in the side corridor away from the main event. The past couple of cons we've had something similar to that happen. Okay. Yeah, last year they had the free play on one side and you games room on the other side and they also had just way less games i think there's like 10 maybe 12 games last year maybe a bit more oh yeah definitely much more this

year i can yeah yeah this was their biggest year just all around like they're the biggest artist alley their biggest indie games room and they had the new venue as well previously they were at a smaller location it was a smaller location but they had different things in different areas so like the main stage they could be louder because it was in its own dedicated room um yeah so i think i think they'll learn from what happened this year and deal with those problems but I do think I think the only problem that I've had

people tell me about the indie games room is there was a lot of sound leakage from the other games so there are a lot of games that have like music playing and because the speakers on a TV are on the back All of the sound blasted into the other side Luckily for us, we didn't really notice that we had a smaller

Speaker placed onto the table. So it's directed right at the player, right? Right, right That would be a pretty easy problem to address so they could just put like a backboard along like the without hanging it and that would be i reckon that would just deal with most of the problem yeah but they did i'm sure that they'll probably play that next year they did have a lot more equipment available this year like they didn't have this nice like big metal framing last year like it was all it was all pretty uh pretty haphazard last year it worked but like yeah but it's also we're presenting to the public you don't want to be presentable right right yeah oh well i guess they could only do what they do with a budget so

yeah and as i said it was like in a new venue as well so yeah they were trying some new things out and just seeing what works and i'm sure that i'm sure a lot of people have given them feedback on like different things that could be improved just the honestly the main thing is turning down the speakers on the main stage it was definitely pretty loud when we were setting up we were like oh hopefully it's not that loud for the whole weekend yeah it was uncomfortable being near the main stage like that's how loud it was like i i went to a couple of things there and like it was a bit much especially when they had the concert going on on the um at the the start of saturday when they had the concert going on. On the start of Saturday, when they had the... Yeah, with Babybeard?

Yeah, yeah, the Babybeard concert. Yeah. The death metal concert. And you could hear it everywhere in the entire con. As bad as it is, it does make for a funny story. Like, just walking around and just hearing someone screaming down the mic. Yeah. I like Babybeard, but i don't like baby bit that much where i want to hear it the entire room i could just imagine like a family taking their kids there like oh this looks like a nice friendly cartoon place to go let's take the kids in and then they go in and they hear that so when you're actually

demoing at Avcon or even like previous cons what has the reaction to the game been it's been we've seen the mix of reactions actually we've seen people that love it and they keep

coming back and playing it for multiple rounds and such and then we have the other people that love it and they keep coming back and playing it for multiple rounds and such. And then we have the other people that say, oh, yeah, it's a start. So, but for the most part, we see a above average response to it. Like people enjoy playing with other people. They get competitive and they're like, oh, well played and such. And yeah. What's always good like you're always gonna have people who it's just not their kind of game like that's that's the end of the day yeah that's fair yeah like for me personally like i'm not a fan of

fighting games so if i play them yeah it's okay but uh yeah everyone has their preference i'm a fan of fighting games i'm just not good at them and i don't have the time to get good at them that's the problem yeah i don't like them because i'm not good and i think with a game like this though like it's it's fairly easy to pick up and understand like if you've played any sort of any any game that has driving mechanics in it not even like a demolition derby like if you've played any sort of any any game that has driving mechanics in it not even like a demolition derby game like you've played a bit of mario kart you've played some rocket league you've played just like a regular racing game like you have a general idea of the controls at least from the start you can pick it up pretty easily and then getting your head

around like how the weapons work and how um the movement works like it's it's not a crazy ask for people to at least give it a shot and when they do especially because there was always people at that booth um at least from when i was going by maybe there were parts where it like died down uh yeah it's pretty easy to try it out and there's certainly as i said there was something some of the weapons felt a little bit like the missile i personally wasn't a big fan of um i always felt like i i don't think i'd i'd hit anyone with it um and as you said like the saw it it needs some work because it was not clear that it was being used. But I think at its core, it's got a really good game there

with some things that need polish to make them more clear what's going on. Yeah. With that said, part of the playt testing process i have over here for making it easy and accessible to new players is testing on my dad he doesn't play any games at all so i try to make the demo as like friendly to like barebone beginners who actually haven't played games so that's like why you see like at the start of the match it says press accelerates ready up that way players know which one is the xr right button

right some people press circle or the x button thinking oh yeah this is gonna say press the go but then they don't realize the accelerates on the right trigger and um with the main menu as well actually shows you how to navigate with a controller. So I do try to make it accessible to new players, but as well as having the skill ceiling raised for more experienced players such as myself. But yeah, with the readability of weapons too that's a very major factor with um experiences with new players because if they don't know what they're doing it's uh not good but for the most part even when people don't know what they're doing

they're still having fun by the looks of it so when you're deciding on your weapons how does it show it again is it just show you the weapon you have it tells you the name of the weapon it shows you the weapon there like yeah so in the customization screen like you select the driver car and the weapons and each which category you're on it zooms in onto that on the actual car you have and then it gives you a list of items you're on it zooms in onto that on the actual car you have and then it gives you a list of items you can replace it with which also shows the name of the weapon i think something that could help out with uh explaining the weapons is maybe have like a little visual demo of like what each weapon does when the player like selects it or something else that indicates like i i'm thinking like um in in like devil may cry uh in

devil may cry 4 when you're in the shop and you're buying upgrades like next to each upgrade before you buy it it plays a little video of that ability being used so you know like what you're grabbing when you try to do that yeah that's actually a really good idea it's um definitely suggested before that people like say oh yeah you should uh show how the weapon functions in the game like a little repeating gif of some sort yeah and i don't know if you'd want to do this because it might be difficult to really i guess do in a way that's conveys like useful information but i know a lot of games would display like oh this is how much damage it does like a certain number of like stars or circles or something like that or like the ease of use of the weapon and things like that

i think having a demonstration of like how it works is a lot more important but believe it or not in in the early prototypes, the weapons did affect the car's weight and handling. Oh! And it actually showed the stats for that. Okay. But once we realised, this is a bit too advanced for players,

we'll probably make it a bit more simple. Because back then, they actually had four weapons you could pick from, so on the sides as well. Okay. So you could go from on the sides as well. So you could go for an armor build where your car was literally just like a tank, but it moved so slow. And the jump button used to be R1 for that. Because since all the side weapons were on the, I guess, symbol buttons. Say like X, square, circle, triangle, or X, B, A, Y on Xbox. Yeah. symbol buttons say like x square circle triangle or xb ay on xbox yeah but um not back then actually

you should show like the different stats and weights of each weapon um but we thought nah that was too advanced and complex for new players so we decided to make it a bit more simple and arcadic but yeah that is that is a good point with having the symbols for like difficulty and stats and such four weapons would be i i can see why you'd want to keep it simple um but i i i do think that would be really i don't know maybe if you try out like a another game in the future i think doing something that actually could be obviously it's a lot more work to have all the weapons then um but definitely could be like interesting to play around with um well like it was definitely fun to play around with but there was one downside to having four weapons around the whole car

the problem was um if you tried hitting someone on the side, you would do damage. So it means there was like zero chance of you doing damage to another car without receiving damage. So we wanted to make it so you have a chance to hit them on the side and do damage with no consequence. Right. So that's why you see them as pick-up-able throughout the match.

Okay, that's fair. see them as a pick up a ball throughout the match okay that's fair yeah I don't know how you get around that actually now that I think about it it's a bit tricky but I think we found a pretty suitable solution for it just like temporary power ups what were the temporary power-ups? I actually don't remember those. Yeah, so there's a couple.

The first and main one is bumpers. Anyone that hits them bounces straight off. We have armor, which nullifies any movement-based weapons and gives you five times the amount of health you have. So you can tank any damage. Another one is spikes. So rather than pushing the car away it does a lot more damage and such um another one was toxic barrels you may have seen like a green sphere whenever you go into that you receive damage over time yeah i feel like there's a couple more, but...

You feel like it, but you're not sure about them? Yeah, I can't seem to remember. It's all good. It's all good. So one thing I want to ask about is, because your game does have bots in it, what actually goes into tuning bot difficulty? Because there is a lot of different ways that you could write bots for a game like this you could just have it so they go shortest path make a

beeline to like other cars and it's always trying to like instantly crash into them but that might not be the most exciting way of doing it. How have you approached this problem to make it at least seem like they're trying to do something somewhat sensible? You're going to love this. When I first started the bots, they used to just use a

raycast at the front, and if it saw a wall, it would literally do an FL statement saying, if wall's here, turn. That was the very first iteration of the bots we had. So, I imagine there are probably situations where

especially if you wanted to have walls as like a hazard, where you would just have them just spinning. Pretty much. So sometimes they would literally just drive straight off a cliff because there was no wall. They're like, ah, there's no wall here. I'm literally just drive straight off a cliff because there was no wall they're like ah there's no wall here i'm gonna drive straight but um yeah with the more later revisions like the bots you see in their current version they try to follow a determined path in the arena so it's um less likely for them to drive off but we've seen them drive off sometimes i'm not sure

why maybe they just go a bit too fast and lose control but um for the most part they do try to follow the path if there's a car in front or nearby they will target them and make uh the path follow that car so they hit them and when they them, they go back onto the nearest point in the path. In certain events, like say lava's rising on one side of the arena, you'll say, oh, I'm not going to go in that area. I'm staying this side. But if it's like the charge pad in the middle,

if that turns on, all the cars will try to get to that path. Yeah. So currently our bots are using a pathing system are you again this is probably going to go back to the time thing um are you considering having like a bot difficult oh yes um difficulty um yeah with that, I guess the way we would tone that would be how they use the weapons. Would they predict where it's going to hit and then actually use it then? Because at the moment, the bots,

all they know how to do is just hold down the weapons. Okay. It's not the smartest, but sometimes those bots do win. Yeah, I have been killed by a couple of them yeah but um no with the difficulty parts it would definitely count like how to use the weapons when the time if they use movement abilities such as nudge i haven't had the chance of code the ai using Nudge yet but they could probably use it for like ramming and such yeah

have you played around with anything like this in the past? have you done bots for a prior game or is this very much just a learn as you go for this one? um that depends on when you would consider bots back in like the flash games right i've

made very simple enemies that go back and forth okay but as for like full-scale bots like playing and such i guess this would be considered the first one yeah did did you like learn from anything that you find online or is it just like trying things out and see how they feel let's definitely start off with uh just trying how wins with the uh detect wall kind of thing oh sure okay that one yeah yeah once i figured out oh there's actually a smarter way to do this i looked at some tutorials i'm like all right i'll go through those tutorials see what the core concept is and then i applied the code in myself yeah and now you have something that at least seems like it plays relatively well At least seems like it plays relatively well.

I certainly didn't notice anything really bizarre with the bot behavior. Yeah, it is a little bit random, the bots, though. I want to make them a bit more readable, because I believe that's what makes a great AI player, being able to read what a player is going to do, you know? Like, you can predict what a human would do, say, oh, they're driving over that way and that's a weapon, they're going to go pick it up.

You can, like, anticipate that. Whereas the bots may, like, no, I'm going to turn away because this path is the better path. Right, right. So, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So if there's, like, I guess especially in, like like King of the Hill as well you probably want them to actually care about the objective oh yeah of course

so the AI bots do go to the current target it's pretty similar to with the charge pad like when that charge pad charge pad activates they go to there but in like the King of the Hill modes they'll say oh the hill's over here now time to go to there but in like the king of the hill modes they'll say oh the hill's over here now time to go over there yeah because i could imagine the uh trying just the the regular

death match ai um yeah probably probably wouldn't go too well for that one definitely especially if they're holding down the weapons aspect of it so what about the um the the prior games that you guys have released yep so with the um prior games we have we started off by releasing a mobile game called jerry's jungle struggle that was uh breaking into the scene as a official studio um on apple and android as for the other games we've done some experimenting with prototyping a VR game called Bad Hair Day, where you use garden tools to cut people's hair. And in between those games and this game, we did a couple of game jams for YouTubers such as Brackies,

which is a Unity tutorial guy um game makers toolkit which discusses a like theory in the games i guess you could say um we made games such as weasels real estate where the theme of the game jam was holes so we thought why don't we why don't we make a whack-a-mole game but literally you whack-a-moles when they go through your lawn trying to make holes because you're trying to like present a uh property to an upcoming customer and they're like minutes away that's actually a cool concept i like that yeah we have considered making that one a mobile game as well but since we're working on this game uh it's been on the back burner right right one game at a time

yeah no i could definitely see how this would be a fun mobile game um i've personally never gotten myself involved in a um in a game jam i would like to do there's a lot of things i would like to do more of right like i would like to i would like to focus on sort of like do some more game development stuff because i do enjoy it when i've done so in the past like only a little bit here and there nothing like actually that serious just like you know it's good fun little fun things um yeah i i know this is everything comes back to it there's only so much time in the day that's true thankfully with game jams they only take 48 hours depending if you go for the short ones well it's not even just that like it's just generally wanting to mess around with stuff like

yeah whether like i i want to learn um i've been slowly but surely uh learning rust because i've known about rust for a long long time and had never just gotten around to touching the language um uh yeah i i want to start messing around with godot at some point because i've heard a lot of good things about it and yeah i've actually heard many good things about kudai too like i've considered checking that one out with the not so recent unity problem you know about that one right yeah oh yeah yeah yeah but um we decided to stick with you unity since we're pretty close to launching right right, right. Yeah, porting over to another engine, it's not a matter of, hey, copy and paste over. It just works. If only it was that easy.

I have to learn the engine. I have to get the code in, make sure it's translated into... I'm not sure what language they would use. I think their main language is a custom thing called GDScript Ah, that's right I think they have I feel like they have

C Sharp support but obviously libraries are, yeah they do, libraries are entirely different though, so like, you know You're not using the Unity libraries, but at least the language is similar. But GDScript is their main thing.

Fair enough. I don't know what that language is like. I've heard it's similar to Python in the simplicity of it. Yeah, that's what it looks like. It's Python, but there's some stuff in here that's more explicit like you actually define you use a variable keyword use const to things like that instead of it just being implied by the um context is being used in so python but with more explanation about what's going on. Fair enough.

Because Python is effectively... It's effectively pseudocode, really. I know there's some more complicated syntax in Python you can get into with higher-level stuff, but at a fundamental level, Python is basically pseudocode. Yeah, that's true now that you mention it. It's pretty close to it. Which is good, right?

Like, that's not a problem because it makes Python a fairly good teaching tool. Oh, definitely. It's definitely the language I would suggest to beginners. Yeah, I know a lot of people who actually started with some of those graphical drag and drop languages before. They didn't, like, learn as a kid. i've i know some people who they wanted to learn programming as an adult and like that's what their first approach was personally i never messed

around with them uh but i can certainly understand like why they've gained such a um such an audience around them for these like like educational use cases yeah oh yeah i forgot about visual scripting that one that one is definitely more user-friendly because it does show people like how to use them visually and such but yeah i don't know personally it's good to have the visual indicator i reckon yeah my my first language was java uh which is very sad um actually it was with my first time program was actually java in with a a game library called um greenfoot which is this like educational focused game library it's very very simple uh but it teaches you some basic stuff about game development like it's it's not crazy complex of course people have wrote doom clones in it because they do that

in everything uh but for like if if you're just interested in game development it's it's not the worst place that you could start i think a lot of people and this is true for not just not just game stuff but really anything they they want to learn it but they jump in way too far to the deep end like you want to learn game development the first thing you do is install unreal which you can do sure like yeah you could but it's definitely overwhelming because like you have the interface and such and you gotta figure out how it interacts with everything else that's how i felt when i um tried to learn 3d modeling and i installed blender it's like oh boy it's like how do you control this

thing yeah luckily there's so much good content on blender like it's good old uh blender guru with the donut absolutely yeah i did i did make the donut oh me too i made a couple donuts put them into a little blender model i didn't get much further than the donut but i think it will leave that nice i'll stick with programming programming is more up my alley i can i can work with that yeah i if i were to choose between programming and modeling i think i would choose programming as well because i do have the experience of the 3d modeling as well but uh i definitely understand the programming much more. Like, I... If I did decide to

actually get off my butt and actually start working and stuff, I would have to learn. To be fair, right? Like, there are some games where the art is so simple, it doesn't need... Like, you don't need that much knowledge. If you're a one-person team and you're just making your first game,

especially if you're not releasing something, you don't need it to look good. It just needs to be functional. You just need it to... The art needs to be enough to indicate what's going on. You can learn more after that point and you want to do more with it.

Speaking of functional, have you heard the story about Undertale's code? No. Undertale is a big Switch statement. Supposedly. Uh-huh. Let me have a proper look into it. Undertale Switch.

Yeah, since, like, the developer... Of course it shows nintendo switch switch statement yeah apparently undertale has a 1000 plus long case switch statement okay no if we're gonna talk about people who have done things in a really dumb way i i can see where this one's going uh are you aware of uh yandere dev i sure do it's part of uh my inspiration in coding better yeah god i wish there was an easier way to do this private bull is even number equals one equals one true false else if number equal to return true but i think that's funny though like there's two sides to coins one you can code very badly and it ends up being one of the top selling games on steam but two if you code very badly

well we just know what happens there for anyone who's not a programmer or doesn't have a math background um there is a thing called a modular which will you can say if this number is divisible by this number in this case you want to know if it's even or not divisible by two if it's divisible by two it is even if it is not it is odd that is a one it's actually a one-line statement but here's the thing right like yes we can laugh about dumb things like this but i guarantee that you've written code maybe not this oh yeah definitely like uh really stupid ai bot that uh avoids walls with an if else statement like i do you have some of i i sadly have deleted a lot of my old stuff but do you have some of your early projects still around uh i feel like i would uh back like when i

was first learning unity with like javas JavaScript and such I think I've got those backed up on a hard drive somewhere well even going older than that like you're when you're doing like flash stuff uh true like with the flash stuff since I was like new to that I think I was more like a

script kitty so I was just like copying and pasting stuff right right right so it'll look a little bit cleaner than your knowledge would otherwise indicate yeah yeah like i one of my uh my first assignments in uni um i think it was like a rock paper no there's a blackjack assignment we had yeah blackjack there's like a smaller class thing for like rock paper scissors but blackjack was one of the assignments and i guarantee whatever i did in that code

it technically it worked i got a good grade in the class but it was not good code i guarantee it you didn't do what's uh yonder you didn't code out each possible game possibility did you But it was not good code. I guarantee it. You didn't do what Yonder, you didn't code out each possible game possibility, did you? No, I know what math was. I didn't do that. That's good. But I remember... When I learned how to program in Java...

I've told this story before, but my teacher, he didn't know Java. He wanted to do a programming class, and he was reading the textbook a week ahead of the students. So, yeah, it was a situation. And, like, I was confused about how to index an array. I was like, wait, how do you get the thing if you don't have a variable for it?

Like, it's an index. You just... Well, like, when I first came across, like, enums, I was like, how does this work? And, like, it's just... Like, especially Java. Java en? It's just... Especially Java. Java enums are literally just... I think they're actually just a list.

They're just a list of numbers in Java. A list of const numbers. But I was so confused about this and how this worked. Obviously, looking back, I'm like, yeah, this is a really simple concept, but those basic things... Yeah, that's like to a beginner,

that's like learning it. Exactly, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, it might seem complicated later on and you might laugh about these stories down the line, but especially now, because there is so much resources out there, you can pick stuff up pretty quickly. I think what's important though is don't just watch videos. Especially now, because there is so much resources out there, you can pick stuff up pretty quickly.

I think what's important, though, is don't just watch videos. I think this is a problem that I definitely had when I was learning stuff. Watching videos and not doing anything with the information. Like, yeah, that's definitely one of the pitfalls of online video tutorials. Like, sure, you can can just watch them but it doesn't actually apply to the brain i would say like yes you're just doing what the video tells you to but you're not applying it and not just not applying it i think it's also important to apply it in different ways than what the video shows you exactly like this I think this is why I didn't keep up with the blender stuff after the donut.

I was basically just one-for-one copying what I was being told in the video rather than playing around with stuff. Yeah, actually, now that you mention that. Like, once I did the video, I made the blender, and I'm like, hmm, all right. I made that, and then I never opened up blender again and I've already forgotten all the controls

yep, yep I can probably pan around the scene and that's about as far as I'll get I might be able to delete the cube what is it, right click? I maybe, that sounds right that's what opens a context Maybe. That sounds right.

That's what opens a context menu and everything else? Probably that's what is going to do it. I remember the controls in Blender just being weird, though. Yeah, it's so different from all the other applications. In Unity, you'd use your right click to move the camera around and such then you'd like use your left click to select and all that but for some reason i think well no maybe left clicks the context menu right clicks them rotate i think that's what it was all i know is it's weird. Yeah. Learn a tool and then you can learn other tools. Like, it doesn't look... It's all well and good that...

If you don't know how Blender works, and you don't know how Blender works, you can make a 2D game. It's fine. That's right. Yeah. You don't have to make something 3D. Or with recent improvements in ai technology you can do one

of those ai generated 3d models i'm sure it might be rough but you got a 3d model i i love what's happening with that because do you remember when the air stuff was first coming out and people like oh look it can't draw hands. And now it's like, oh my God, this is really good. And the people are doing the same thing with the model. Like the first one that came out, it was like,

it generated this basic looking table. It took five minutes and people were like, yeah, but I could make the table in five minutes. Like, do you not remember the hands from last year? It wasn't that long ago. Like we're going to be at a point.

Well, no soon enough. I don't want it to? It wasn't that long ago. Like, we're going to be at a point... They'll know soon enough. I don't want it to get good. That's the thing. Like, because this is actually displacing tons and tons of people in this industry. But let's not pretend that the problem doesn't exist. Like, if you pretend it doesn't exist,

it's not going to go away. Yeah, that's right. I think... I don't know if you heard, but within the gaming industry, there's people rallying up in the... What do you call it? Unions like to say, no, I generated art.

Yeah, there was stuff with that. I know in the cinema industry last year, they had big strikes. That was for the writers, I believe. Oh, yeah, yeah, writers, writers. They had like big strikes. That was for the writers, I believe. Oh, yeah, yeah, writers, writers, yes, yes, yes. I wouldn't be surprised if it happened for others as well.

Recently, within the game dev industry, there's been some for fighting for the rights of concept art and such. Just general artists, I would say. And I think what people need to realize is even if it's not good, it will get to a point where it's good enough

that your boss doesn't want to pay you. Unfortunately. Yeah. But that's part of capitalism, right? What server's cheapest that gets the game out? That's what they got to do. And in Desert Beagle, there is no ai because of the ai that you did have it would just cause them to maybe i am an ai maybe do you do you spin in a

circle imagine that thinking that you're a game developer because you are an AI program to think you are. I don't know how we got to this. Black Mirror. I actually haven't ever seen Black Mirror. I don't know how that's ever happened. I need to do that. You should watch Black Mirror. It's very... It makes you question things.

To be fair, I still haven't finished Mr. Robot either. I have an entire season left. Mr. Robot's so good. Yeah, I know. I think I ended up dropping it, though. Because after the first few episodes or seasons, okay, the gimmick's kind of worn off a bit. Right, right.

It's pretty good, but I don't want to watch it anymore. Well, the initial opening and such, bit right right it's pretty good but i don't want to watch it anymore well the first like the the initial opening and such the first couple episodes like it's very uh enticing but towards the end it drops off that's fair that's fair um personally that's what i think but i think we've pretty much covered everything i want to talk about we're coming up on the uh two hour mark as well we're coming up on the two hour mark as well aye so um let people know where they can

find the game and anything else you want to direct people to righto so people can get the current and free to play demo of Crashland Demolition Devil on Steam you can search for it by that title or you can search for

Desert Beagle which will show desertbeagle.com.au and that will have the links to the games there and every other game we've made and yeah that's the two main links I want to share are you guys going to be at any well there's the Melbourne thing

the international games week so the Melbourne's Game Week. That's happening around the time of PAX. Let me check the schedule for us. Are you guys going to be at any cons later in this year? Yep, so we are aiming to go for PAX and

South by Southwest, but that's up to speculation for the current moment. Still waiting on acceptance and such. But those are the probable two next ones. Okay. Okay.

Righto. The Melbourne thing I think was the start of October, something like that. October... Melbourne's Game Week happens... I had the thing open before i closed it um um fifth to the 13th of october there we go awesome yeah nothing else you want to direct people to um not just those two ones all our main links are on the website there's beagle.com.au so if you want to find our facebook instagram discord uh tiktok we got literally every social

media platform on that website do they all get used rarely our main ones is definitely instagram and facebook Facebook but we also use stuff such as X or as people know Twitter yeah okay if there's nothing else you want to mention I'll do my sign off and then we'll end it too easy, thank you for having me

absolute pleasure so my main channel is Brody Robertson I do Linux videos there 6ish days a week check it out, see what's over there the gaming channel is Brody Robertson. I do Linux videos there six-ish days a week. Check it out. See what's over there. The gaming channel is Brody on Games. I'm probably done by Devil May Cry 4 by the time this comes out because I've got a lot of episodes backlogged post-avcon.

So see what's over there. I don't know. If you're listening to the audio version of this, you can find the video version on YouTube at Tech Over Tea. If you want to see the audio version, we hear the audio version. There is an RSS feed. It is on all of your favorite podcast platforms.

So check it out and give it a listen. I'll give you the final word. What do you want to say? I just remembered. Social handle is dbeaglegames. Is that on everything? Cool. And yeah, thank you for having me.

That's everything I would like to say. Awesome. Goodbye.