Rapture Game Studios

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02 Nov 2012 17:25 #28347 by Lersar
Rapture Game Studios was created by Lersar

titleThose who have been to one of our LAN parties know that our location is central to many larger cities, Fort Wayne being one. We’ve attended a few LAN events in that area, including one hosted by member Reaper from Fort Wayne Gamers. It was exciting enough to hear that John had volunteered his coding expertise for an indie game studio just on the heels of releasing their first game, but we were even more so when we learned the studio was local, operating out of Fort Wayne. We quickly made contact, and were invited to sit in during one of their weekly meetings.

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02 Nov 2012 17:29 #28348 by garfi3ld
Replied by garfi3ld on topic Rapture Game Studios
A look inside a local indie studio.

Also here is a link to their game on Steams Greenlight if you would like to support them.

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetai...02189583&searchtext=

Wes
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02 Nov 2012 18:22 #28349 by Arxon
Replied by Arxon on topic Rapture Game Studios
Amazing read. These are the people who push the games to new levels and are not all about pushing 20 games out that suck. Instead they push one with less bugs and more fun. I am going to buy their game just to support them.
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02 Nov 2012 19:36 #28350 by Lersar
Replied by Lersar on topic Rapture Game Studios
This was such a great experience. We're looking forward to working with Rapture in the future, too, they shared some info on their upcoming games that we can't talk about, but we're really excited for it. It's no understatement to say they are going to keep busy, especially with Ouya on top of everything.

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04 Nov 2012 03:26 #28358 by Reaper
Replied by Reaper on topic Rapture Game Studios
Geeze am I really going that bald?!?! Ok, perhaps that's a bit rhetorical...

Thanks for coming to check us out, guys! Anyone wanting to know anything else (within reason) feel free to ask. I'm a programmer on the team, and I'm really one of the "new" guys but maybe if someone asks a question I can't answer I can convince the right person to sign up on here & answer.
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04 Nov 2012 11:18 #28360 by Arxon
Replied by Arxon on topic Rapture Game Studios
What type of game is your next release?

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05 Nov 2012 19:11 - 05 Nov 2012 19:32 #28364 by Reaper
Replied by Reaper on topic Rapture Game Studios
What types of games would be a more accurate question, because we do have multiple projects on the burner. Unfortunately I don't have the authority to disclose any information about upcoming/unannounced titles, though as mentioned in the article we have projects in the works that "spans RPG, first person, third person; we’re already developing the functionality of something else." (from the interview).

The real reason is even if I did tell you today what we envision for some of our projects, the release may not even be close to what we have in our design docs & source control today. We're not trying to feature creep, and we're definitely NOT shooting everything with the nerf cannon, but we are constantly evaluating what is fun to us and every week making sure something is as fun as we can make it.

I can say that one of our major initiatives is to take Gunblitz and port it to iOS & Android ASAP. There's talk of getting on the major consoles, as well but don't hold me to that one. I'm not involved much on that project, but am told it is underway. If you look around for us a bit, you'll see that Gunblitz is also announced to be a launch day title for Ouya, which we're pretty excited (and nervous) about. So, once we get the dev kit for Ouya, it's going to be all hands on deck doing whatever we need to do to make sure the release on Ouya is as smooth as possible.

Anyways, good question, sorry I couldn't really give you exactly what you were looking for on an answer, though!
Last edit: 05 Nov 2012 19:32 by Reaper. Reason: "definitely NOT shooting everything with the nerf cannon"
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05 Nov 2012 19:22 #28365 by Arxon
Replied by Arxon on topic Rapture Game Studios
I understand, can't blame a guy for trying =D
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05 Nov 2012 19:33 #28366 by Reaper
Replied by Reaper on topic Rapture Game Studios

Arxon wrote: I understand, can't blame a guy for trying =D

Not at all man. Trust me I'd love to tell you guys everything I'm working on!
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05 Nov 2012 19:47 #28367 by Arxon
Replied by Arxon on topic Rapture Game Studios
If you need a beta/alpha Tester let me know. I do a lot of them for all different types of games.

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06 Nov 2012 06:49 #28370 by Lersar
Replied by Lersar on topic Rapture Game Studios
John, one of the things you mentioned was being worried about the DRM, with even AAA-budget studios miss-stepping on their releases, its a very understandable concern. It sounds like much of that responsibility for Gunblitz was yours, what was that like?

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06 Nov 2012 11:17 #28380 by Reaper
Replied by Reaper on topic Rapture Game Studios

Lersar wrote: John, one of the things you mentioned was being worried about the DRM, with even AAA-budget studios miss-stepping on their releases, its a very understandable concern. It sounds like much of that responsibility for Gunblitz was yours, what was that like?

First off, let me say DRM in any form is never fun for anyone! Its only purpose in my opinion is to help keep honest people honest. The DRM for Gunblitz (and likely for future Rapture games) was totally on me, and I had 2 weeks to get it done, having never done anything quite similar before. Some might think that is stressful, the thing is, I like challenges, and there were certainly plenty with this. First off, coming up with a system that wouldn't put the majority of people off. Our system does require an online activation during your first play, but it doesn't do any type of phoning home or "double checking" after that. If you copy the game to another computer, or certain aspects of your hardware change (the parts that would generally mean basically a new computer) then you're going to get the activation prompt again, and our web side will run some logic to decide whether or not to allow that activation.

This thought was in my head the whole time, knowing Gunblitz was going to be around a $5-$10 product: Anything can be hacked & any security can be bypassed given motivation & time. If there ever was a model against this, it would be MMO's, and yet look at all the private servers there are for games like WoW. So, my goal was to try to make it complex enough that there was really just not much reward for anyone wanting to do that. And, really, if we saw a cracked Gunblitz on a torrent site, is that really so bad? Obviously our name is getting out there at that point.

Going back to the challenges I mentioned... Obviously there was the time constraint of having to design a program that would protect, activate, and launch the game within 2 weeks. Along the way I had to battle with:
  • The fact that 2 machines running the same OS may not give consistent results based upon minute differences in their setup
  • Windows APIs (functions that Microsoft provides so you can interact with Windows) can behave very differently between WinXP -> Win7, or 32 vs 64 bit
  • The engine Gunblitz was programmed in had a builtin lightweight DRM that my DRM would trigger from time-to-time
  • The DRM was tripping up antivirus programs due to "unusual runtime compression" for a while

May not seem like a lot, but certainly was enough for 2 weeks. I probably have no less than 75 builds from my initial version to what is in use today, based upon team testing and my own internal testing against ~10 VM's running everything from WinXP to Win 2k8 R2 server.
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12 Nov 2012 08:07 #28411 by garfi3ld
Replied by garfi3ld on topic Rapture Game Studios
thanks for all of the answers

Wes

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13 Nov 2012 09:17 #28419 by Reaper
Replied by Reaper on topic Rapture Game Studios

garfi3ld wrote: thanks for all of the answers

My pleasure!

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13 Nov 2012 18:12 #28421 by Lersar
Replied by Lersar on topic Rapture Game Studios
Is Greenlight going looking any better?

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13 Nov 2012 18:29 - 13 Nov 2012 18:29 #28422 by Reaper
Replied by Reaper on topic Rapture Game Studios

Lersar wrote: Is Greenlight going looking any better?

From what I heard it's still hovering somewhere pretty low. I think we are having the same blues in the same regard as this guy was: www.joystiq.com/2012/10/09/not-getting-n...-incredipedes-story/ . I expect it will take a few more games out there from us to make a huge difference, either that or a huge marketing campaign. Since I have never been a marketer myself (how many of my LAN parties had any bit of sponsorship?) don't look to me to solve that particular problem ;-).

We're in the middle of launching on Desura as well, which is a smaller community but seems to be really focused on indie game projects. Their review process is much like Steam's old one - submit a game, have someone review it, and then pass/fail launch. We've already got approval through the first step and are in their reviewer queue for the final phase.

We also had unfortunate timing with the release of our game - after September many people are thinking of those huge AAA titles and saving every penny for whatever game(s) they can afford and interest them the most (guilty as charged, here!) . I think Ouya's planned release in April 2013 is super smart because that's when a large enough percentage of gamers will be ready to spend more money on games.
Last edit: 13 Nov 2012 18:29 by Reaper.

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15 Feb 2015 00:50 #36269 by Lersar
Replied by Lersar on topic Rapture Game Studios
Wanted to give this a bump as Rapture Game Studios announced today that Gunblitz has been greenlit! If you haven't already, give them a follow on Facebook and show them some support, stay tuned for information on when the game is available. Congratulations guys!

www.facebook.com/RaptureGameStudios

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15 Feb 2015 04:24 #36271 by garfi3ld
Replied by garfi3ld on topic Rapture Game Studios
awesome news!

Wes

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