You Won't Believe One Person Created This Whole Game

xvampire

article link

http://kotaku.com/you-wont-believe-one-person-created-this-whole-game-1442142022


video

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZDXZz_TkrI"]Universum: War Front - Official Kickstarter Trailer [HD] - YouTube[/ame]


wow, amazing!

what do you think of this? is it possible?

aleksdigital

Yes its definitely possible. This guy is pretty talented - (not as much as me however ) and made a good trailer.

This is why everyone needs to take time out of their busy schedules and learn and practice scripting and programming so you can at least trigger and control animations in game and use logic and states. Whats shown in this video isn't as complicated as you would think

JonathanLambert

MainManiac

Pretty believable actually, it isn't as uncommon nowadays

HitmonInfinity

Yeah... I don't buy it. Tomorrow's story: "Man hacks game studio's server, steals game code, makes kickstarter campaign."

snake85027

thats pretty awesome, seems like a lot of hard work went into it

slipsius

I believe it's just one guy. What I don't believe is it was done in only a year... That part seems pretty BS to me.

skyline5gtr

yea definitely doable but would require some serious time

Steve Schulze

I don't know about the article, but does that tabloid style headline writing really, really annoy anyone else?

DireWolf

He wrote the story. He created the 2D art, which then became 3D art. He programmed the game, an RTS in which the player can take direct control of any unit on the battlefield at will. He composed the music.

Probably out sourced the 3D modeling/animation part. Sorry if I'm wrong but I have no sound at my work machine so I can't listen to the interview.

ExcessiveZero

What I don't get is his constant use of terms, like Our,we and Us.

I don't doubt it can be done, but in a year, for the music, textures, coding, models and everything else, that makes me curious, rather curious.

ambershee

I doubt the reality that this was produced in one year, by a completely unknown guy from Ukraine. It's not that it's impossible to do these things, but there's an enormous quantity of assets. What's more, is if this guy is capable of pushing this much content that quickly, why have we never seen or heard of him before? His deviant art and CGTalk profiles only include two pieces of concept art by an artist called Kyrylo Bozhok (though he does have some posts on CGTalk that refer to assets used in his game - some of which are a year old).

lotet

like ppl said, its totally doable, but its highly unlikely.
I would love to believe its true, since ive been toying with the idea myself =P

SHEPEIRO

I don't believe the assets on show could have been created by one man in a year let's alone the gameplay swell. Now if most of the assets are outsourced then that's a different matter.

It looks cool though a bit generic imo

Stromberg90

they also say we and us at the end of the trailer.

Justin Meisse

you're right, I don't!

WarrenM

Justin - Haha, was just about to come in and say the same thing. Unlikely!

Xoliul

Would be a dirty, yet smart trick to drum up some extra buzz: pretend your studio's project was made by one guy

Mark Dygert

1) I don't think one person did all that in a year. "WE are focuses on the quality of OURart..." he has multiple personality disorder? Or just a giant ego like a mountaineer summiting Everrest who doesn't bother to thank the sherpas who lugged his ass up the hill?

2) If he did, he should have outsourced the animation... There are reasons games are made by teams of people who specialize in many different things.

Stromberg90

Mark Dygert wrote: »

1) I don't think one person did all that in a year.he has multiple personality disorder? Or just a giant ego like a mountaineer summiting Everrest who doesn't bother to thank the sherpas who lugged his ass up the hill?

Well that's going to be part 2 of kotaku's article, there is a plan with everything.

AlexCatMasterSupreme

go for all time win

Alberto Rdrgz

JonathanLambert wrote: »

hahaha my first thought

BradMyers82

When he is using terms like "we" and "our" etc. it could simply be a language barrier and he doesn't realize that sorta makes him sound like a liar.

I imagine that he could have made the game itself, but as others have said most of the art has been paid for in some way.

For example programs like speed tree make it easy to build entire forests. I would bet anything he would take credit for making a forest via speed tree, when in reality he did very little of the actual work.

I'm also guessing that he's been working on this for 3 years plus. lol.

Either way I'm impressed.

slipsius

Well, the kickstarter does say the money is to hire more people. And generally when doing promo stuff, when you want to look like a legit company, you do use "we" and "us" and those types of words.

rooster

there's two of them according to the kickstarter, him and a marketing dude. That could be why he's saying we/us. It's extremely impressive if it's all true!

VelvetElvis

365 days times 8-12 hours a day, it seems fairly plausible that one person could do it given his past experience. You just have to assume he really means it when he mentions he lived like a hermit for a while.

Think about what those of you with 10 years game dev experience could create in one year if you could remove most distractions from your life.

Cremuss

Same here, it's doable I think and I'd like to believe it but I'm a bit sceptic. It's weird that he's talking "we", "us" and all, plus I totally see that some stuff could have been outsourced or bought from 3d market places or something. Game looks cool though.

spiderDude

from his website: "When I say "we" or "our” about my project I mean my future team, in which I plan to invite a few talented professionals, our future backers, and our forum community which also will be a part of interactive development...."

I want to believe that he did all of that in a little over a year, but I'm having a hard time believing. That was a lot of art assets....things must have gone smoothly with no technical errors along the way...but if he did, wow.

blankslatejoe

I'd believe it. Most of the models are simple, many animations are very single-bone-minimal-blending rigged stuff (even the organic creatures are sectional )(which is smart and super fast to rig/animate though kind of amateur looking), the animations themselves are very mechanical (potentially even scripted animation in some places) and the models look like they might share much of the texture work between them being textured almost like environments rather than standalone stuff.

Don't get me wrong--I don't feel like those are necessarily negatives--they're just indicative of a single-developer-cutting-corners.
I mean, maybe he's purchased or contracted out some work, but I could completely believe with the right kind of hybrid developer that kind of result is possible.

VelvetElvis

Just look in the GTA V thread and think if those people posting in there who beat the game on day 1 or have an exceedingly high level on online mode put that kind of effort into a project, it's not so impossible to think.

Now, if he has a wife and younger kids, then I would be in line to think it's less possible as a young family takes up quite a bit of your time. That is, unless his wife is the most understanding wife in the history of man.

Gmanx

Mark Dygert wrote: »

1) I don't think one person did all that in a year. "WE are focuses on the quality of OURart..." he has multiple personality disorder? Or just a giant ego like a mountaineer summiting Everrest who doesn't bother to thank the sherpas who lugged his ass up the hill?

2) If he did, he should have outsourced the animation... There are reasons games are made by teams of people who specialize in many different things.

^^This^^

The overall content is very competent but the animation lets it down badly. It could be all one guy's work, but I'd agree that it's more likely to have at least in part been contracted out.

The 'I' 'We' thing - Sadly it seems to be common practice amongst many start-ups in games and other professions that a single person will call themselves a 'studio', or even worse 'studios' (Krapola Studios etc) and use we instead of I to give an impression of a business with more than one employee. Nothing really wrong with that, I just think it's childish.

...of course when I start MY studio, I'll be a legit 'we', because I'll be employing the wife. lol

BradMyers82

Just thinking about this some more... For anyone who thinks this can be done in 1 year time.

Wouldn't it be fair to say there is at least 365 assets in the game including weapons, vehicles, characters, environment props etc.? Oh yea, and don't forget setting up materials with spec, diffuse, normal map, the bakes, highpoly, getting smoothing groups to work properly etc. All the stupid unexpected walls you hit along the way.

Coding, designing, scripting (for the trailer) aside... just the direct art pipeline, does anyone think its possible to make 1 of these assets a day including animations? If you looked at the video and made a list of assets and break down of times, I think it would be damn near impossible for just the art in 1 year. Now add on, the designing and coding. come on, no way!

Again, its not to say that he didn't do it with some help from software (like speed tree) and buying models or whatever, but 100% on his own I would never believe that.

weee

i'm just a bit annoyed that these day some guy pops up saying he did something in a short period of time as if the whole selling point is all about how quickly the project has been pulled off instead of the real quality, why should the rest of us be bothered by how quick you are?? if it's good, people will buy, if it's crappy, just move on.

NegevPro

Definitely not done alone. He might be the only guy on the team officially but I'm 100% sure he outsourced some of the work or purchased assets.

Of course, people love to talk big and inflate their egos, but what else is new, especially in the games industry?

cupsster

I DO NOT BELIVE HE DID THAT ALONE! It is fake and its only purpose is to have crowdfunding campaign sucessfull.

D.Carmine

According to his FAQ page on his website the "We" and "our" refer to the future team he plans on hiring and the backers that will be "helping" build the game through the forum.

I can't believe this was one person's work in one year. Planning a kickstarter alone takes months of work. Composing, programming, designing and art assets all by one guy?

Now there are some marketing agencies that will help promote and market your kickstarter but these services cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. So it is possible that he paid an agency to handle the kickstarter side of the project.

There are so many reason why this just seems fishy. The game is huge and he is only asking for 20k. He knows that this eye catching trailer will easily draw in 4x what he is asking. How long can you run a studio with a budget of 20k? Maybe a month if you're running a skeleton crew.

I did notice that many of the assets look like Star Craft/ War Hammer, just you know generic. Maybe he did outsource them.

I just recently saw a video from Zbrish central where a character artist from Epic games talked about how they streamlined their pipeline allowing them to create a fully finished character in about 2 weeks. That is 2 weeks of 8 hours work days for one character.

Also, notice that most rewards are digital rewards. Might not seem like a big deal unless you want to maximize profits and not bother with mailing out shirts etc.

My gut feeling is that something is not quite right. If this guy truly did do this all on his own more power to him.

- D. Carmine

Mark Dygert

Humm it appears in the "related article" on the Kotaku page, he says he's been working on it for 2 years, which is a little more believable.

Kotaku 7/29/13 11:30pm
Ede Tarsoly today announced Meridian: New World, an old-school RTS game that, he says, is the product of a development team that includes...Ede Tarsoly.P

Seems he's been working on the game for two years now. It's pitched more at the StarCraft II crowd than the Company of Heroes crowd, as he calls it a "traditional RTS", though Tarsoly does also promise some stuff like a Mass Effect-ish "talk to your crew after the mission" feature and a level editor.P

It also looks like he is using unity, so a lot of the ground work has been laid out, he still needs to be moderately well versed in programming and scripting to pull it off but it's not like he cooked up the whole engine with one hand while creating assets with the other. And he did it in 2 years not 1 year.

I think a few people here could pull off something similar given two years.

Look at Jesse "Skanerzero" Sosa's Mutant league challenge, the contest was to create 1 character he cranked out 9. He worked really smart and wrapped up well before anyone else did. Give him a few more weeks and he could have made a few other customizable teams and some fields. If he had access to the Backyard Sports Engine or something similar he would probably have a game up and running in a year without breaking a sweat.

Look at some of the stuff Rich "Rooster" Edwards does.

Yea that's a lot of work, but I'm starting to think its possible. It also looks like his kickstarter is fully funded so his first order of business should be make friends with an animator.



I still suspect clones...

SHEPEIRO

still dont believe it. as BradMyers82 says, you start breaking that down into assets etc and its still pretty unbelievable

kidnapped dev team in the basement i think send in the liberators with pitchforks

peanut™

This doesn't surprise me, the more things are going the more i believe this is the level of production i should be at after all those years.

I could point to a place or two where the collision detection would make me quit playing, but one thing i can tell you is, it wont be too far down the road that this will be the "standard" portfolio for any applying artist.

He probably uses "we" as a way to not sound too idiotic. (ie: i did the modeling, i did the routines, i textured this bit, i, i, i, so to speak)

Justin Meisse

VelvetElvis wrote: »

Just look in the GTA V thread and think if those people posting in there who beat the game on day 1 or have an exceedingly high level on online mode put that kind of effort into a project, it's not so impossible to think.

what, like 30-40 hours of effort? So one character model?

HausFly

I think he did it all himself. He is a wizard, and we should all be ashamed of our inferior skill sets.

BradMyers82

^^^ LOL

ErichWK

This guy works across my street. I went to lunch with him on monday. Super nice dude, He said he started this by himself but he also has a few other people helping him with stuff, like art and shit.

maximumsproductions

Justin Meisse wrote: »

what, like 30-40 hours of effort? So one character model?

This is make or break time, Justin!

Graze

Everyone here who is sat reasoning and justifying how he made this game, whilst dismissing his efforts and achievements, are appalling.

He has used his own money, time, love and passion to make an awesome game for YOU people to play.

Who cares if he used speed tree, or bought pre-made assets, or used unity the guy has made this game by himself. Now take your damn hat off and stop measuring your dicks and appreciate this guys hard work.

Justin Meisse

it's a little white lie but a lies a lie - if he was honest we wouldn't be having these reactions. So put your hat back on and stop looking at our dicks, have a cup of tea and chill.

I take it the "made this much game in a year by myself" line was more for your average gamer who doesn't know better. Makes a good tag line.

NegevPro

Graze wrote: »

Everyone here who is sat reasoning and justifying how he made this game, whilst dismissing his efforts and achievements, are appalling.

He has used his own money, time, love and passion to make an awesome game for YOU people to play.

Who cares if he used speed tree, or bought pre-made assets, or used unity the guy has made this game by himself. Now take your damn hat off and stop measuring your dicks and appreciate this guys hard work.

Nobody here is standing and measuring their dicks with a ruler, so get that fantasy out of your head because it ain't happening.

Nobody here is insulting this guy either, sure he's probably a good artist/coder/etc., but he's trying to get attention by saying he worked alone when there is a high chance he didn't. An above poster apparently ate lunch with him and knows he worked with other people. Where is their credit?

I can't say I've accomplished anything amazing yet. I started developing my first game as a highschool junior two years ago and went in knowing nothing. Since then I've learned a lot of important things, obtained amazing teammates, and have worked minimum wage jobs to build a budget for my game. My game is also going to be 100% free and my team and I plan to spend as much money as necessary to create our original vision (which will not be shown until the game is done.) On an unrelated note, making games is too damn expensive. I've already spent $15,000 and I haven't even purchased mocap animations yet.

TL;DR
Guy wants attention so he can put more money in his pockets. Guy has already gotten attention and will proceed to put money in his pockets. Guy has pockets.

spacefrog

I do not believe it. The art and assets part aside, which might heavily rely on external work, you all people seem to think Unity does game making magic. No it does not, it's a great tool and pipeline (assetwise ), but you have to get your coding hands dirty for all the integration, AI and core stuff, like's the case with every other engine.
IMHO The game mechanics and integration shown in the video, are far too complete and touch almost every thinkable game aspect. Too much for being spit out by a solo-guy in just one year. And there's work needed for all the presentation and UI stuff, plus preparing for the KS campaign , trailer making etc... Even when thinking about buying in most assets and complete game (-mechanics) kits from the Assetstore he would immediatly be in coding/integration hell to knit everything together in a workin manner.
On top of that he created the title music too ?
no, i don't believe the story ...

Octo

Starcraft renegade?
Well, making game art is certainly much faster when you have no one to answer to...no art director that nitpicks on tiny "flaws" that takes a few extra days of effort.

Mark Dygert

Graze wrote: »

Who cares if he used speed tree, or bought pre-made assets, or used unity the guy has made this game by himself. Now take your damn hat off and stop measuring your dicks and appreciate this guys hard work.

I think the guy deserves a lot of praise for what he has pulled off but its his role and the role of others that are a bit foggy. If that was clear then it would be easier to just skip the 2nd guessing and go right to carrying him around on my shoulders.

There is a difference between:
"I assembled this myself" and "I built everything from scratch all by myself".

It's hard to tell what he did and didn't do.

katana

If you all spent as much passion on your own work as you are on this subject...you would all be Pro's...

...oh yea,...nevermind...:)