Simon in Kickstarter comments said:

Everyone who buys the game gets all future updates, including any expansions that aren't a sequel.

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PaulLFC said:

(also that the percentage breakdown doesn't add up to 100% )

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Dachande said:

That's because he won't be spending 4% on clinical immortality. But you're not the only person to have missed that.

Anyway, as I mentioned in the new Kickstarter thread, this looks really good and Simon Roth is a very talented guy, so I'm very confident it's going to delivery and people ought to back this. In the end, Simon's making this because it's a game he wants to play that doesn't already exist, which is probably some of the best motivation for him.

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This game is apparently Maia, a god-game in debt to both Dwarf Fortress and Dungeon Keeper, capturing the simulatory detail of the former and presenting its challenges overtly in the style of the latter. The game’s robot helpers are referred to as IMPs in homage to Bullfrog’s fantasy management game.

“The grass in the game grows,” says Roth. “This is such a ridiculous waste of CPU time, but it’s the really little details that the Dwarf Fortress community like. Because, when you’re telling the story of your game, those are the details that give it so much character.”

The game’s character will also be informed by Roth’s wry reverence for retro sci-fi, citing 2001, Silent Running, Alien and Space 1999 as visual touchstones.

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“I love putting really graphics effects in the game, but it always makes me feel guilty,” he says. “Adding visual polish is great, but it doesn’t make the game any more fun. So I went, wait, why can’t it be part of the gameplay?

If I can add millions of lights, why not make it so if you have a really brightly lit colony, the creatures from outside will actually come into your colony to see what the bright lights are? If you light it up with lots of blue lights, your colonists are going to be more passive, but they’re going to work slower. And if you light it with lots of red lights, they’ll be more aggressive, and you’ll get more fights breaking out and this kind of thing.

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Roth says the Dwarf Fortress community wouldn’t forgive him if he didn’t include lava, too – so necessitating fluid simulation – while an experiment with a firstperson mode, like Dungeon Keeper’s Possession spell, was so popular with his community that he was forced to expand its functionality.

“It was supposed to be a small little fun feature,” says Roth of the viewing mode, which is intentionally pixellated to evoke the retro-futurism of the game’s technology. “The plan is you can possess any of your robots – not the colonists – and any of the turrets. Anything that’s robotic. Obviously I don’t want to spend too much time on it, because it’s not a core part of the game, but being able to suddenly possess something and do it yourself might keep people from getting frustrated. It’s also fun to explore your own base.”

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Dachande said:

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/mai...s-dwarf-fortress-on-a-primordial-alien-world/ - PC Gamer interview and details.

Some bits, but read the thing for more juicy bits.

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Our influences are too many to list, but here's a taste: Vangelis, Aphex Twin's ambient works, John Carpenter's intense soundtracks, Carbon Based Lifeforms, The Dust Brothers, Squarepusher, Mike Oldfield, Brian Eno, The Black Dog, God is an Astronaut, Leftfield, Global Communication, Underground Resistance, The Future Sound of London, Tangerine Dream, Biosphere... I'm sure you can probably see where we are going with this.

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Hi Everyone!

Thanks for all the support over the last few days. We are moving towards the target at an encouragingly steady rate.

I've had a few more questions coming in about the Kickstarter:


What are the posters like?

The posters will be prints of our high quality concept illustrations. We are making more all the time, as we flesh out the visual motifs of the different room types. There will be a choice between any of the designs we create.


Take a look at the high resolution versions we have polished off so far [very high-res]:

Science!

Hydroponics

Landing


Is the Soundtrack tier worth it?

Yes! Nick is going to go all out on this. We've been pouring over our inspirations for months, drawing from a massive range of artists. We are going to create something very unique. Just give the trailer a listen.

Like Maia, it will be an ongoing project which will likely span several volumes and also have a rich B-side of experiments and a collection of music from several other artists who have been inspired by the game.

Our influences are too many to list, but here's a taste: Vangelis, Aphex Twin's ambient works, John Carpenter's intense soundtracks, Carbon Based Lifeforms, The Dust Brothers, Squarepusher, Mike Oldfield, Brian Eno, The Black Dog, God is an Astronaut, Leftfield, Global Communication, Underground Resistance, The Future Sound of London, Tangerine Dream, Biosphere... I'm sure you can probably see where we are going with this.

Needless to say, you'll definitely be wanting it.


What happens if the Kickstarter fails?

This game is my baby and I've already put thousands of hours and pounds into it. If we don't hit funding, I will reduce the concept and push forward to the best of my abilities. It will slow us down significantly, but the game has been made with a very tight budget so far and I have constructed a plan for such an eventuality. I will find a way to make this game happen. Maia is inevitable.


What are the post release plans?

Ongoing development with new features, patches and upgrades every few weeks. This will be a long-term project that will grow and improve over time as I flesh out the game and its universe.


So, what next?

New media is incoming, but until that time we need your help.

Word of mouth is our strongest tool for getting news about the game out there. Please let everyone know about Maia, ask your favourite games sites to cover us, talk about it in your forums, tweet about us to your friends, share our Facebook, or run through the streets naked with it tattooed to your buttocks.



Thank you so much for your support,

-Simon and the Maia team

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Can you sell the idea to me as someone who never played theme hospital or dungeon keeper?
Yes yes I can. But it's really hard. This question always stumps me. Annoyingly it's the one journalists always ask. It's like asking "describe the planet earth"... But here goes.

The reason why you will love this game is it rewards your creativity. It allows you to play, plan and manage, without being a spreadsheet or dense and incomprehensible, but it will have the depth to keep you on your toes and the detail to make every play a unique tale of bitter survival.

The look of Maia in first person is quite striking, how did you arrive at it?
I always wanted the view to be pixelated. But I knew if I sent out what looked like screens of Doom people would hate it. I wanted something special so started from scratch.

The technology in the game is 1970s so I thought what would computer vision look like if you did it with science from the era.

Inspired by Terry Cavanagh's latest game I made the pixels hexagons. That immediately made things look cool.

Computer visions like kinect also usually use a depth buffer. That shows the distance of a pixel from the camera. So I used the depth of the scene to warp the colours and detect the edges of objects for the green lines. Much like the vision in our own eyes, I sample the colours and the value of the image at different resolutions. So although the colours are huge hexes, you can still see the detail in the scene.

I then thought the Imps should see in 3d. So I offset the red and blue hex samples, and we ended up with this:


Also, you mention offsetting the blue and red - does this mean if you were to wear old fashioned 3D glasses you'd get an illusion of depth?
Just tried it. I now feel very very nauseous.

Will there be interactivity in first-person mode?
In the first person mode you will be able to do most the things that the computer you possessed can do.

Possess a IMP and go digging, possess a turret and defend your base from invaders or even possess a door and.. well... annoy people.

How hard will Maia be? Will it be a snooze fest, like Gnomorria currently is as soon as you halve a halfway outfitted squad or will it be more like Dwarf Fortress, where FUN is guaranteed. Can you elaborate?
The difficulty of the game won't be measured by a single slider, but a by a selection of different factors. Underneath that there will be hundreds of small variables that tweak the world's simulations in subtle but dangerous ways. Tweaking the amount of sunlight might give you more solar power, but make plants grow faster and feed more wildlife. Increasing the amount of volcanic activity means more lava and earthquakes, but will make precious minerals common. Everything will have a trade off.

Of course, more casual users will be able to pick some standardised settings to make a less threatening environment.

What type of random occurrences are you planning for the game? Are you going for something that just happens that the player can't control? Or more along the lines of random things happening because you failed to protect against it?
With the big, interconnected simulation I am planning there are lots of things that might occur, seemingly without warning. An unbalanced ecosystem might leave you suddenly with a lot of hungry predators invading your colony.

There are some things that will be almost entirely random however. Earthquakes, breaking through into a lava flows/underground lakes, meteor strikes and solar flares are three things that the player just won't be able to plan for!

How much detail and depth will you have? Will it have a lot of replayability?
I'm hoping to have lots of features and depth. I think the simulation will really help that, without knowing what to expect things will develop very differently every time the game is played.

I'm hoping to make a tech tree that is nonlinear and in some places somewhat random. The research outcomes aren’t be predictable so will keep you on your toes and creating new gameplay styles.

One of the reasons for the KS is because I just want to make tons and tons of content.

How does game start? What supplies do we get?
You will start with a functioning airlock to the exterior and a small room. In a standard mission, you will have supplies for twenty or so in game days, ten colonists and five IMP bots.

Colonists do they have skills?
They will, but it won't be advertised to the player via a GUI. You will need to keep an eye on what they like doing and what they do fastest to figure out what their specific skill set is.


Will colonists have personalities?
The colonists will have a whole range of emotions and personalities.

What other bots can I make?
Currently just the IMP bot. However there will be more, whether they are designed by us or build by the player depends on us hitting the stretch goal.

Will it be possible(even if more difficult) to set up your colony above ground?
Yes. The surface will be incredibly hostile. The risks are massive, but also the rewards.

Are there going to be day/night cycles above ground?
Yep! It will affect the wildlife, plant growth, solar output etc. I'm even simulating cloud coverage (you can see them crawling across the opening shot of the trailer).

If you dig a massive open cast pit, will creatures/plants from the surface colonize/spread to the new surface level?
The layers are separated by a large distance. So you can't dig down in the way you can in a block based game. Creatures and plants will spread into your base though. You will need to be careful about how you place your lights to minimize it!


So would you be able to flatten a large area on the surface, by removing a hill/filling in depressions?
Currently the surface is flat but eventually it will be bumpy and I'll be adding a way to flatten it out. There will also be some things that will superficially create pits. Such as archaeological digs and meteorite impact craters.

Will colonists age, and eventually die of old age?
Yeah that is the plan. They currently get old and die, but we still need the graphics to show that happening. Will probably blend between textures and models eventually.

Will there be babies/children? If so will they be somewhat protected from the various dangers, or will they be as fully vulnerable to bad things as in DF?
This is a major issue, not because of game ratings or censorship, but more I am worried that it might break the tone of the humour somewhat. I want it to happen, but I might infer it... I'll find a way to make it fit.

Will there be immigration bringing in new colonists?
Immigration, will exist at the lower level difficulty modes.

Emigration?
Colonists may decide to leave. Wandering off out the airlock. I don't rate their chances.

What kinds of combat will Maia feature? Will there be different kinds of armor & weapons for the colonists/soldiers? I loved the hell out of Startopia, but the combat wasn't much more advanced than building as many security scuzzers as possible and I would love to see a similar game that had a more in depth combat strategy.
Currently we are going for two standard weapons for the colonists, a Browning high power and a Self loading Rifle. (They are standard issue British armaments of the 1970s and fit with the aesthetic, but hard wearing enough to be perfect for use in the future)

No plans for armour yet. Although the spacesuit will offer greater protection, and that can be upgraded.

There will be lots of strategy, with turrets, traps, airlocks and lockable doors etc.


Will there be a mode for Maia similar to My Pet Dungeon from Dungeon Keeper where you can just mess around and build whatever you want?
That is the core of the game. It's a fully sandbox environment!

There will be some mission scenarios to do too though, and a full story campaign if we hit the stretch goal.

With a chocolatey-voiced narrator I hope?
I would give the world for Richard Ridings to do voice over.

What is the ultimate goal or win condition in the game? To keep your people safe? To expand your colony? Or will it be an eternal state with small wins like in Sim City? If this is the case, what factors will enhance replayability? (I'm thinking Sim City disasters, terrain challenges etc.)
In a vanilla game there is no win state. In most cases something will eventually go wrong and everyone will die.

There will be some completable scenario missions that will have requisites, like researching a specific site on the surface, or establishing an exterior base.

If we hit the stretch goal, there will be a proper campaign with missions that have a narrative.

You mean, everyone will die with the exception of Marvin, who will just stand and rust for millions of years with a pain in all the diodes down his left side?
The original trailer was just going to be an IMP wondering about an empty colony complaining how all the lazy humans got themselves killed (when it was blatantly his fault).


Will there be some “end game” research.
Oh yes! It will be some pretty lofty stuff. I'm avoiding spoiling that just yet.

I remember you saying somewhere that the first person view for each or most aliens will be different, similar to what DK1 did. Does that mean different color-palettes/heights (again similar to what DK did) or bigger changes like for example sonar/heat/smell "vision"?
You can't possess the aliens (unless they are cybernetic(this is a potential research path(that is currently unlikely to be in the game unless we get way over the KS target))) With the robots/computers you possess there will eventually be very different views. The turret's and door's vision will be based on movement for example.

You mentioned Dwarf Fortress as one of the sources of inspiration for Maia. How similar will it be? I understand that it's impossible to reproduce in detailed 3D all the features of Dwarf Fortress (and also that it's not the aim), but still?
Yeah. I'd be foolish to even try to create a DF clone.

What I'm doing is trying to replicate the attention to detail that makes the game so unique rather than trying to replicate the game itself.

Of course there will be some pretty hefty bearded nods to the game too.

Is it like Black and White, but better? Can you fling stuff at stuff and watch the physics engine go haywire? Can I be a vengeful god?
You don't have direct interaction with stuff like in Black and White. But there is certainly plenty of space (and lava) for being a horrendous sadist.

I can't believe no-one has mentioned Populous yet, so here goes: Will there be an Armageddon spell/button in Maia?
Doesn't really fit the game, maybe as a cheat code! That would be amazing.

Do you have a rough estimate of the system requirements? It looks amazing, slightly too good for my computer.
Yeah a middle of the range gaming PC can play the game at 60fps easily, even my old laptop manages a playable 30fps.

Will there be a colour blind mode. Will the game be playable for disabled gamers?
I'm going to try to ensure that the game is playable for colour blind users. This might mean changing the values of the lights a bit and perhaps adding a few bits of special GUI for them.

For disabled gamers I'm trying to ensure that the game is 100% playable from the mouse alone. The game will also have full keyboard short-cuts and lots of customisable settings. If you have any special needs that you'd like catered for, please drop me an email and I'll work it into the design.

Why the name Maia?
Since we name our planets after gods I felt that it would be appropriate that we name any one that we colonize. Maia is an interesting name that has a firm routing in Ancient Greek and Roman Mythology.

How much background lore will there be to Maia? Will there be lots of juicy detail for us to pore over?
There sure will! I have a few writers who at chomping at the bit to help me flesh out the details of the mission and planet.

How long did Maia take?
It was a side project since early January. I've been picking at it for ages, but recently took it full time last month.

Will you be supporting linux from the beginning or do you plan to port later on?
I started thinking about Linux from the very start. I learnt a lot from the VVVVVV port. Also all the coding I did in AAA was multiplatform. My engine is pure C++ with a bit of SDL. Should work on Linux almost straight away.


Is it easy for you to make a Linux client ? what made you support Linux ?

Supporting Linux isn't all that hard when you've written your own engine in C++. If I didn't support it, it would only be out of laziness, and that just wouldn't do would it?

Linux is viable platform for games and any developer ignoring it is missing out on a huge market.

When you say "Open Data" for the modding community, does this mean that existing assets shipped with the game are public domain? Or does it mean that the assets can be utilized and modified only if shipped with a mod with the game? (hoping the former).
The assets will be easily decompilable and everything that can be will be editable for modders. I'll also release all my tools and scripts.

They will still be copyrighted though so not really public domain no. I won't rule that out for the future though.

Which games influenced Maia?
Lots of games. Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, Theme Hospital, The Sims, Black and White, Space Station 13. But truth be told, I'm avoiding taking games as inspiration, or taking elements from them.

I'm finding a lot more inspiration in science fiction novels. Making the game is hard, but the real challenge is creating a world that stands on its own and that players can find their own narratives on.

How long did it take you to design Maia? Or is it a process that's been ongoing and developing for a long time?
I was working on a first person surreal horror game as my side project and I got creatively blocked. I started to think about turning it into a survival game, building a base in first person.

I got bogged down in complex tech and decided to start from scratch. Had a few sleepless nights thinking about the game's design. But was far too busy with VVVVVV and then my doctorate to consider making it.

I stewed on the game for a good 5 months, but I gave in to the temptation some time early this year and put together a few bits of code and took a screenshot. Everyone on my facebook got really excited. At that point I realised that I needed to make this game or I'd go nuts designing it in my head over and over.

Did you ever play Startopia and will that have any influence on Maia? It seems very similar in form and function, plus the British humour element.
It blew a lot of peoples minds to find out that I've never played Startopia. I'd heard of it but never seen a video or screenshot.

Now that I know what it is, and made by ex-Bullfrog staff, I'm shocked that I'd never heard of it. I'm going to be setting some time aside after the Kickstarter to give it a good go.

Have you ever played the PC version of Lego Rock Raiders (1999)? Just asking because this kinda looks like a modern re-imagining. Sci-fi management game + caves, lava, roads, buildings and a switch to first person view.
No, but it looks fun though! Tried to track down a copy, but not sure I can get it to run on a modern OS. If anyone can, let me know.

What do you think is behind the recent popularity of the retro aesthetic (1970s and 1980s) among science fiction games? (For example, your game, Routine, or even Mass Effect)
Mass Effect started with the aesthetic, but failed to run with it. It was a cursory nod at best. The nonsensical lens flares irritated me.

Film making in the 70's was still an art. Cinematography was key. It's what makes films look good, not special/visual effects. I really wanted to make my game to the same standards that a 1970s director would shoot his film. Even down to simulating the lens and the film colour response.

The Routine guys are going for a slightly more 80's look. But it is really coming along great, hope they take it as far as they can.

RIP Bullfrog. We're going to get Dungeon Keeper III one of these years ...
Sadly EA have 0 respect for the IP. They farmed it out for a terrible Chinese World of Warcraft clone. I threw up in my mouth the first time I saw it.

Any reason for the 70's cinema inspiration? and how do you want that to come through in the game?
Apart from the visual aesthetic, in terms of the game world the 1970's influence will show though at a fundamental level. I figured that if I were building things from scratch, say a computer, with limited resources, the best I could do would probably be something at that level of technology. You can build a cathode ray tube in your garage, an LCD needs a whole chemical plant!

Not to mention, 70's gadgets last forever, which is important when you can't build spares.

What is your view on Greenlight and Steam as a distribution platform for Indies?
It's great! Hopefully they can fix the kinks in Greenlight. The comment system is quite a mess at the moment and the discoverability of games could do with a boost. Perhaps by incentivising people to find interesting games.

How/When did you start programming? What got you into game engines?
I used to try to make games when I was a kid in Basic, but they were crap and I hated the fact I couldn't make the graphics.

When I was at Uni studying "Computer Animation and Visualisation" I enjoyed coding as a welcome break from all the art side of things. Ended up doing an internship at Natural motion (who make Euphoria, and other cool games tech).

I then attempted to create a game engine for my final project of my degree. It was way too ambitious, but I came away with something pretty cool.

What's with the strange 100,042 goal?
Get yourself this gift for the Holidays.

What is your favourite game of all time?
I really couldn't choose!

Dungeon Keeper, Theme Hospital, Metro 2033, Red Alert, Stalker, Zenoclash, Morrowind, Half Life, Company of Heroes and Mirrors Edge are all games that people NEED to play.

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IamMikeside said:

This looks fantastic, I really hope it makes it - I've upped my pledge from £10 to £25 for the soundtrack.

Surprised this isn't doing better already tbh.

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CitizenGame said:

Indie developer Simon Roth is certainly making a splash in the small-scale development scene. As well as being an outspoken commentator on the scandal of developers who no longer receive royalties for sales of their work, he’s also been garnering a lot of attention for his first major solo project—space colony building sim Maia. The pitch for the game is simple: humanity is taking its first faltering steps out into the galaxy, and you’re put in charge of building the first extra-solar colony. Mine, refine and build structures to feed and house your colonists, and protect them from the deadly world around them.

With art and design led by a single developer and a procedurally-generated world to tempt in detail-oriented players with a passion for creating their own stories, Roth’s game tempts comparison to indie giants like Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress. Those are some pretty big boots for a designer to try on, but Roth could just be the guy to fill them—his previous work includes stints with Frozen Synapse devs Mode 7 and Terry Cavanagh, creator of the fiendish VVVVVV.

Simon launched Maia on Kickstarter last week, offering early alpha access as well as a number of other intriguing rewards for backers. The game has reached almost £30,000 as of the time of writing, about a third of the way to Roth’s goal. Join us as we talk about Maia, the trials of an indie coder and just what players can expect to find out there in space.

Hi Simon, thanks very much for speaking to us about Maia. Before we introduce anyone to the game, how about telling us a little about yourself, your history in games and how you got into the development business?
I’d be hard pressed to define exactly how I got into games development. As a child I had an Acorn computer to mess around on. I used to love playing the games, and since most of them were beautiful Amiga ports they really captured my imagination.

I really wanted to make games and my brother taught me a few commands of BASIC, with which I built a Space Hulk inspired text adventure. It was broken and basically unplayable, but a game none the less. As I grew up I got into a bit of Qbasic and tried to build a city management game, where you’d trade resources like food and weapons and then try to wage war with neighbouring cities. I eventually got stalled at my inability to produce graphics for the game and gave up.

I then didn’t make any significant games for some time. I used a few text adventure generation tools, but became frustrated at impossibility of going beyond the limitations of my tools. The internet just didn’t exist like it does today and I had no idea how to learn how to code in a low-level language.

Parallel to this I had pursued my hobby as an artist. And by the time I was fourteen I was doing freelance 3D graphics over the internet. I ended up running a small business of freelancers after school. By the time I went to university I was working making naval simulators for a massive multinational called Transas, who would fly me around the world and have me build entire cities in 3D.

I went to study for a BA in “Computer Animation and Visualisation” at the National Centre of Computer Animation in Bournemouth. Coding was a small part of the course, but I immediately jumped in head first and started building graphics engines. Using these, I got a summer internship at Natural Motion in Oxford, where I learnt how to make decent production code. I ended up writing my own game engine called “Black Skies” for my major project. With that, I applied for a doctorate and was embedded at Frontier as a technical artist on The Outsider.


In the past you’ve worked for some major studios, including for Frontier Developments on Kinectimals. You’ve also worked with some indie darlings, including Frozen Synapse developers Mode 7 and Terry Cavanagh. I know a lot of readers will have an idea of jumping from sterile cubicles to coding in hammocks, but what was the actual experience of going from one to the other like?
At the end of the day, making games is intense work and the difference between indie and AAA isn’t that big. With independent development there is a feeling of much greater control in what you are doing, although there is a bigger cliff to drive off should things go wrong.

The best feeling in indie development is knowing that you are making the best piece of art possible, unaffected by incompetent people in suits or a slimy marketing department. It’s also great to have the creative freedom to give up on a feature that just doesn’t work or to create a new one without putting your job on the line!


And now you’ve struck out on your own with Maia. What prompted you to take that step? Was there just no prospect of doing this kind of work at a bigger developer, or is it more to do with having creative control?
It was a general stagnation with my life that drove me to create Maia. I’m obsessively creative and passionately driven, but had embroiled myself in a doctorate programme that had drained the life and soul out of me.

I needed to start fresh, cut my losses and go for broke. DIY or die. It’s a massive gamble and a step into the unknown, but it’s completely reinvigorated my creativity.


Your website describes Maia as a game where you “manage colonists and build a prospering community” and “try not to get them killed”. Other commentators have described it as being somewhat like Dwarf Fortress in space. How would you describe Maia to someone who had never heard of it?
Maia is a space colony management simulator. It puts the player in control of a mission to construct a self-sustaining subterranean base on the Earth’s nearest habitable neighbour, Maia.

The game merges complex environmental and AI simulations to create a deep and engaging experience, but keeps the interface transparent and easily accessible, allowing anyone to pick up and play. It brings fresh character, humour and interactivity to the management genre. It has a unique aesthetic inspired by 70′s science fiction, delivered by a unique custom engine, which provides the visuals to rival that of many AAA budget titles.


Management games have been a pretty quiet field for some time – the only big releases being intricate Elizabethan trading sims and so on. Recently however, it’s seemed to open up a bit, perhaps as a result of mobile gaming. What do you think Maia brings that has been lacking in sim and management? Have you ever thought about porting to tablet or phone?
Maia brings back the idea of a “God Game”, taking higher level control of a situation, but having less direct input on the actions of your charges. It should put us back on the track we fell off at the end of the nineties. My frustration with the management genre is that it’s been assumed that the target audience is a bunch of nerds who like to balance spreadsheets. There’s a swathe of titles out at the moment that only really seem to appeal to a specific subset of Germans.

While it seems appealing to developers (especially programmers) to expose so much of the guts of a simulation to a player, they seem to forget that having something out of your control can be more fun. Indeed a little bit of automation or randomness can drastically improve the gameplay.

Mobile gaming has gone entirely the other way, pushing the games into really shallow experiences. I’m yet to find anything in the Android store which really appeals to my creativity as a player. That’s a real shame as phones and tablets are almost as powerful as a Xbox 360 now, so there’s no reason we couldn’t have some deep, complex and interesting games. Maia on mobile is something I’ll certainly consider. It would need to be a tighter experience to work on a handheld, perhaps more akin to Bullfrog’s Theme Hospital.


Looking at the screens that you’ve been sharing as the development progresses, I’m reminded of nothing so much as Startopia, Mucky Foot’s tragically overlooked space station simulator. I’m interested to know whether you are drawing from the same pool of influences I am, or coming from a completely different direction? Can you see a line from what you’ve been reading, watching or playing to the game?
The Startopia thing embarrasses me a bit! All I knew of the game was its name, I’d never even seen a screenshot. As soon as I started showing Maia, people started popping up and comparing the two. I still haven’t got around to playing it, it wasn’t on sale anywhere for years. Now it’s out I just can’t find the time!

I’m drawing from a huge pool of films and books when I come up with things for the game. I love hard sci-fi and the difficult questions the genre raises.


Maia takes place in a procedurally generated world, opening up the possibility of endless variation in setting. Were there particular reasons that drew you to a somewhat randomised world, perhaps in terms of sheer scale? Do you think that this involves a trade-off with a more, for want of a better word “designed” experience, where players are directed to what the developer thinks are important things?
I think, for this sort of game, that its important that the players make their own stories and this means they have to be given unique worlds, where their experience is their own. This plays into the simulation aspect, where a unique world might create a certain set of circumstances that creates brand new game-play events.

There will be plenty of tightly designed components slotted into the overall procedural system. Some things you just can’t write an algorithm for and have to do by hand. Although work intensive, it helps add artistry into the world, which the players unconsciously pick up on and appreciate.


Has there been a circumstance during development where unexpected complexity has produced results that you couldn’t have predicted? Anything that’s changed your plans about how to implement features or systems?
Oh plenty. When you start hammering different simulations together the maddest things start happening. It’s pretty cool and can lead to new gameplay that would have been impossible to design. One of the most recent examples of this is the foliage on the surface level, which becomes unbalanced and grows and spreads faster than it is destroyed. So if you don’t manage it carefully you get trapped inside your colony by a dense jungle, totally unable to maintain your defences against alien critters (who move through the jungle with ease).


It’s probably inevitable that you are going to run up against comparisons to Minecraft, but where Notch’s game trades on the idea of building architecture from simple systems, Maia looks to be more about surviving – starting with a system that is complex but understandable, but becoming eventually overwhelmed. Would this be a fair way to look at the difference? Could you see Maia becoming one of those solitary pursuits that people do together, feeding off each other’s experiences?
There is definitely a lot to tie the games together. Boiling them both down to their essence, it’s about appealing to the imagination of the player and rewarding them for exercising their creativity. The higher levels of gameplay above that are, of course, very different and I think your distinction is right.

I really do hope that people start trading their experiences of the game. I discovered both Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress through reading player diaries of the games and I’m planning to deliver the same sort of personal narrative development in the gameplay of Maia.


At the moment, you’re targeting Windows and Linux platforms, is that right? Was it an important factor for you to be able to launch on the open source platform? It’s true that the Humble Bundle has reported higher average sales figures from Linux users, but have you seen a great deal of interest from penguin fanciers?
Yeah. Windows and Linux, hopefully Mac too if I can raise the funds to put together a development system for the platform.

I haven’t had a lot of interest from the Linux guys yet, but I think it’s a shamefully under supported market. In my case it’s a no-brainer, the Maia code is C++ and getting it running on the main Linux platforms won’t be too much of a problem.

The Linux supporters generally pay more, but to be honest, they can be the most demanding to support. You are looking at four mainstream distributions, with different drivers, windowing systems, file systems etc. When I worked on VVVVVV I ended up running twenty simultaneous virtual machines to test just three different distributions. It felt like something out of the Matrix.


Talking of sales decisions, I understand that you’re going to be making the alpha release available to the people who pre-order through your website. What can they reasonably expect to see in that early preview? Are you at all worried that putting out an incomplete version may turn some potential users off at this early stage?
I’m terrified of it! Especially with a deep simulation like this, you can’t just get it into a semi-working state and ship the alpha. There is no way to provide a “vertical slice” or “minimum viable product” without massively breaking or faking features. Hopefully people will accept that this isn’t a small project and accept the flaws in the alpha. With so many early alphas about I think people are becoming generally more aware of what the world “alpha” really means.

As for what it will contain, I’m not sure. I’m hoping to have basic colony design, some colonists with basic AI, a few room types, the lava and atmosphere in. The benchmark is to get 10 minutes of good playability in the first alpha.


Is it still a no-brainer for indie developers to go to Kickstarter, even as it becomes clearer that backers regard their cash as a pre-order, and not the philanthropy it was originally conceived as?
I’ve warmed to Kickstarter substantially over the last year. When the site had very little traffic, there wasn’t any reason to use their system. Now, however, they get a lot of people browsing the site for projects to back. That transforms the service into a great marketing tool.

Plus, in terms of using it as a sales tool, it’s a really great deal for developers. Selling the game on the usual digital distributors would mean giving them a hefty 30-40% cut. Kickstarter is a fraction of that and still provides most the services such a distributor would. Indeed in some cases it is a lot better, for instance I get a mailing list of all the backers of the game that I can then communicate with. That’s really important to me since this game depends on having a strong community to give feedback on the development.


Last thing, what’s the next step for you? What can we expect to see in the next few months? And if readers are interested in backing the development, where should they go to get more information?
The next step is some really intense development to get us to a semi playable alpha to release in mid-January. Expect to see a lot more videos, game-play and music being released really soon. And of course there will be a funding drive imminently.

There’s plenty to see and find out on the site, but we also have a busy forum, an active twitter feed and a rapidly growing presence on Reddit. I’d definitely get on the mailing list to make sure you don’t miss any of big things that we have coming up!

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Inspired by Dungeon Keeper and Dwarf Fortress, set on a distant planet named after the Roman goddess of growth, and boasting a shiny, ’70s sci-fi exterior, Maia is ticking all the right boxes. We interview creator Simon Roth to find out exactly why we should be excited.


The F5 key on Maia creator Simon Roth’s keyboard is wearing thin. Anyone with a Kickstarter project that hasn’t immediately hit its goal can empathise – every donation is a step closer towards that goal, every cent and every penny an indication that people want to play your game and are willing to put their money where their mouth is. With £42,000 of Maia’s £100,000 goal raised, and 16 days to go, it looks like it’ll come right down to the wire – but Roth’s confident he’ll get his funding.

“I think it’s going to be tight right up until the end, and then at the end, I don’t think any of our supporters would let us not go over the limit,” says Roth. “I think people would jump in and start backing in the last ten minutes… which is going to be good for my blood pressure.”

His confidence is understandable. Maia is an exciting prospect – inspired by ’70s sci-fi, Dungeon Keeper and Dwarf Fortress, it sends you to a not-too-distant future, one where humankind has taken more than just a small step, leaping to the outer boundaries of space, colonising planets and not paying attention to pesky ‘ealth-and-safety regulations as they did so.

The surface of Maia is not safe – with seemingly everything existing purely with the purpose of offing you – but that didn’t stop the government sending people to live there. That’s where you come in: the colonists need protecting, and taking on the role of an almighty presence in the sky, it’s your job to keep them safe by building an underground colony, making sure the dangers are kept at bay and you’ve got enough resources to survive.

And survival is what it’s all about. This isn’t a game you’re necessarily going to ever win – at least not in the core sandbox mode, with a campaign mode that takes nods from Arthur C. Clarke planned should Roth find the funding/time – but rather one where you’re going to fight for survival for as long as possible, before eventually being overrun.

“I think on the standard level of difficulty, it’s pretty much always going to end up horribly. Because even if you create a really strong base set and bunker down inside, everyone’s just going to get bored, and go nuts, and destroy it and kill themselves and things,” says Roth. “So yeah, especially on sandbox mode – sandbox mode will always end on death.”

It doesn’t matter that you lose, though, so long as you get a story out of it.”You can create feedback loops in gameplay that give people dopamine and stuff like all these ‘Cow Clicker’ games do, but when someone starts reminiscing about a game, then that’s when it’s really, really great,” explains Roth, his voice flittering with excitement, as it often does when he dives into the details of Maia. “It’s not even about fun: things that are frustrating at the time can make a great story afterwards, and all the games of the ’90s did that really well. but I think we got too focused on hitting targets and marketing and all that crap.”

Roth’s confidence never comes across as arrogance – he’s worked hard to cultivate a strong community around Maia, and he values this community beyond more than just the money they can support him with, acknowledging that games are now in a place where you really have to listen to your fans and take on board their feedback, especially with indie titles. “Smaller/modest games are better – and they’re better in so many ways because with games now, you’ve got to really engage your community.

“You can’t just release a game and it just floats out there and makes a million pounds or whatever, you really have to be one-to-one with your community, and actually ask what they want, and ask what changes they want, because with games being a service and all that crap, people’s attention spans are zero, and you have to make something really special.”

Roth believes making a project personal is how you make it special: you can’t just market something as ‘special’ and expect everyone to listen. “You can’t make something special just in isolation, or just market it until someone thinks it’s special, you really need to create very personal, interesting projects and hopefully as more developers realise this, they’ll stop going for the big glossy projects, and move into these more bespoke, personal things.”

And Maia does sound special. Just listening to Roth speak about his labour of love, you find yourself being drawn in – his excitement for what he’s creating is contagious, and it bubbles over most when he talks about Maia as a personal project – both in terms of his own vision, and how, through the mechanics that he implements, his creativity will spur the creativity of all those who play.

“The thing is, when you’re working on your own game, it’s so much more motivating than working on anything else. I mean, working on VVVVVV was really, really exciting, but at the end of the day, it’s still kind of work, and you’re still creating someone else’s vision,” says Roth, before the tone of his voice changes, the pitch growing slightly higher and the words flowing out a quickened pace. “But when it’s your own vision, then you can just let your imagination go wild and come up with new things.”

Roth’s personal vision is of a deep simulation game, but one that doesn’t immediately scare players off with the complexity. It’s a hard balance to get right, but one Roth believes he can meet with Maia. “The thing is to make it apparent that these things are going on but not force the player to have to deal with them too much.

” I don’t need a huge interface with tons and tons of stuff – if there’s a complex AI, we can show it via animations, and if certain things are happening we can show them visually. One of the things with my graphics engine, I’m sticking it together with the actual gameplay. So the lighting simulation for example is built into the gameplay – characters won’t be able to see in the dark, but if you place glowsticks down, they’ll be able to see and things like that.”

It’s a hugely ambitious project for such a small development team, but Roth believes that ambition justifies the money they’re asking for, despite some criticising the large amount. “I see the people going for like 16 grand and things, and I think that’s kind of slightly dishonest, because it’s kind of wrong to ask for not enough money to make the game.

“You know, to say I’m going to do all this, and not ask for enough money to do that, because if you do run out of money, it’s kind of a bit rude. And the fact is, realistically, this game does need this budget – I’m going for a lot of polish, really high quality, and I think that’s something that indies sometimes forget about, this extra level of polish. And with a game so crazy ambitious as what I’m trying to do, yeah… ”

Maia stands out as something unique, but its inspirations are also evidently apparent. Roth’s inspiration comes from the 1990s, a time of Spice Girls and Brit-pop, of Pogs and Pokemon cards, and most importantly, a time where Bullfrog reigned supreme. Taking nods from Bullfrog’s genre-crafting god games – Dungeon Keeper being the prime example – Roth is capturing a feeling of nostalgia, but won’t let Maia be defined by it.

“I think that while going after nostalgia is fine, you really have to run with it: I don’t think you can just recreate it, because as soon as you try to recreate nostalgia, it just becomes really awkward, as with any media,” says Roth. “You actually have to re-imagine it and put your own flare on it, because if you don’t then it becomes kind of cynical, and it just won’t have the life that you hope it will.”

Another more recent inspiration is Dwarf Fortress, and again Roth underlines the importance of creating your own unique game, bemoaning the amount of titles that currently rely on Tolkien-inspired fantasy as their backdrop.

“I think that there’ll be more and more Dwarf Fortress clones coming out – you know there are tons already – but I think having something that stands on its own will let people go ‘okay this is a new idea, with its own world and its own story, that’s just so very different’,” explains Roth. “I mean, so many people are focused on fantasy games at the moment, which is a shame, as they’re just making a mash-up of Tolkien and Games Workshop and things, when they could just be imaginative and come up with entirely new universes.”

So, aside from the fact it isn’t set in a fantasy world, what does make Maia so unique? “I think it’ll be the depth,” says Roth. “I mean, if Peter Molyneux came back and made a god game now, I don’t think it would have the amount of interesting little things in it that his older games did – all the little secrets and combinations of stuff that you can do to get something. And I hope that because of that depth, Maia will have this long-term interest, and people will be able to tell their stories, and have their ‘let’s play’ on YouTube, and that each time will be something special to them and their own little narrative which will be really nice.

“I’m going for things like the ecosystem simulation which will make the game different every time you play it, and small things will completely change the outcome of your game, but it won’t force you to make 100s of little decisions, or have that deep complexity that a lot of people find really daunting when they hit Dwarf Fortress.”

This depth can be seen in Maia’s foliage system, with Roth explaining how an oversight from him – forgetting to turn off the collision detection system that prevents you from placing models inside each other on the grass – led to unexpected consequences, albeit ones that ended up shaping a feature of the game.

“What happens is if you place lots of grass inside your base, then the grass from outside starts growing inside your base, and you get this invasion going on, and you can’t place anything down because all this grass keeps growing in your base, and because their aren’t herbivores yet and units can’t destroy the grass, you just get completely blocked in,” explains Roth. “And obviously I’m going to fix that, but if somebody did kill all the herbivores in the game, that’d happen again, and they’d get this really intense jungle, and then in that jungle when all the creatures did start coming back, there’d be no way to clear out that jungle, because it would just be so dense.”

As Sir David Attenborough has taught us, anyone who can talk about foliage at length and make it sound exciting is somebody worth listening to. This inspiration from catastrophe also gives further insight into what Roth thinks makes a game interesting. His experience with Frontier – where he worked on Kinectimals – means he’s well versed in quality assurance and while he wants to insure that Maia is coated in that same AAA level of polish, he also thinks that the odd rough edge can be a good thing, allowing players to experience something they never would’ve expected.

“When I worked in AAA and stuff, we were obsessed with quality assurance, and everything had to be fixed and have no sharp edges, and sometimes the sharp edges can cause things to happen that are quite funny,” says Roth. “And you know bugs that technically aren’t bugs, they’re just unexpected behaviour, and unexpected behaviour’s great from a player’s perspective. Okay sometimes it’s annoying, but if you can give someone a completely novel experience, then that’s actually really great.”

Maia clearly means a lot to Simon Roth. He’s working on it full-time now, burning up his savings to help fund the project, and even if the Kickstarter campaign is unsuccessful, he won’t give up – it’ll simply slow things down. If Roth’s to be believed, though, that’s not going to happen – and if he can convince other people that Maia’s as exciting and as interesting as he thinks it is, he should have no problem meeting his goal. And, having spent thirty minutes talking to him, it’s certainly something he’s capable of doing.

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Hi Guys

Just a quick update to say that I'm tweaking the stretch goals a bit!

Campaign

A lot of backers have said that they really want the full campaign, so I'm moving that lower on the list. If we don't hit that tier, the game will still have a few story missions, but achieving the goal will let us write something really gripping, bring in extra voice work and script some very interesting missions to test your mettle.


Super high-resolution graphics

The super high-resolution graphics mode is getting moved up, and I'll be changing the description because it wasn't very clear before. This tier is to create extra high quality assets of all our art to allow the game to hold up way above standard resolutions. In the next year or so, many PC Gamers are going to be jumping beyond HD resolution. There is a glut of big 27" monitors coming out, not to mention "Retina" displays that are now becoming standard for all of Apple's magical and revolutionary laptops, so we can soon expect other manufacturers to follow suit. It would be fantastic to be the first game built to support them.

Robot creator

I'm not changing this, I'm just mentioning it because it will be awesome. The plan is to create something easy to use like Spore's designing tools, but where the changes you make have functionality and direct game-play applications. It will have chassis, weapons, tools, sensors, legs, wheels, tracks and AI personality cores for you to build your own workers, soldiers, turrets or perhaps just a door with an irritatingly cheerful and sunny disposition.

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PaulLFC said:

I've been wondering lately why this doesn't seem to be getting too much interest yet on GAF. I thought with the influences and how good it's sounding so far it'd have been more popular - am I missing a big turn off somewhere, or has it just been caught up in other big events and/or Kickstarters going on at the moment (CoD launch, Elite and Star Citizen Kickstarters, etc)?

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Zulithe said:

kickstarter wants me to enter my credit card...

i've backed 12 projects this year and all of them used amazon payments up until now

what gives

you can't use amazon anymore?

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Zulithe said:

kickstarter wants me to enter my credit card...

i've backed 12 projects this year and all of them used amazon payments up until now

what gives

you can't use amazon anymoe?

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PaulLFC said:

It's because it's a Kickstarter UK project. I have no idea why, but Kickstarter elected to require credit cards directly and not use Amazon for UK-based projects. From what I remember when I backed it, it works in exactly the same way once you've entered your card details - you get your pledge page and can adjust the pledge and reward at any time, etc.

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Jintor said:

YES. One of my favourite games from the early 2000s was the little-known Space Colony and I love everything on this influence list.

*looks at screenshots*

...Huh.

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Jintor said:

YES. One of my favourite games from the early 2000s was the little-known Space Colony and I love everything on this influence list.

*looks at screenshots*

...Huh.

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Zulithe said:

Thanks. Well, guess I'll go ahead then. Kickstarter has a lot on the line if any CC info leaked out. I hate to even posit that but with all the horrible personal information leaks the last couple years, I don't put it past any company to eff things up.

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One of the promises of the game is I will never do DLC's. Everyone who buys the game gets all future updates, including any expansions that aren't a sequel.

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exmachina64 said:

That's a pretty awesome deal if they have any significant amount of content planned.

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Simon said:

I added the chicken AI last night so they seek out warmth and light:

But what is the warmest, brightest thing in the game? Turns out its LAVA!
Poor bastards waddle up it with such joy before being utterly incinerated.

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Maia: kickstarting the god game revival

There are 12 days to go. 12 days. And Simon Roth needs £50,000 or it’s all over.

This being the indie games business in 2012, we’re of course talking about a Kickstarter project. Roth, an experienced programmer who once worked at David Braben’s Frontier Developments, is now in the process of funding his own game, a sci-fi colony-management simulation inspired by the classic Bullfrog titles of the nineties.

“Maia has been a solid concept in my head since summer 2011, but its roots go all the way back to 2008,” he says. “Its first line of code was written in February of this year and it has grown in fits and spurts ever since then”.

It is 2113 and the human race is reaching to colonise other planets. One target is Maia, an inhospitable lump of rock in the Tau Ceti system, bombarded by radiation and orbited by a colossal field of space debris. But it’s close, and it can contain life, so you’re heading out there to start a new civilisation.

Due out on PC and Mac next summer, Maia is thrillingly recognisable management fare. You’ll need to keep colonists happy by retaining their food and light levels, while fighting back the planet’s vegetation and adding new features to your underground base. Roth cites Dungeon Keeper, specifically, as a major influence.

“One of the great things about god games, especially from the likes of Bullfrog, is that they were years ahead of their time,” he says. “I replayed Dungeon Keeper recently and it felt surprisingly modern. Where I am pushing forward is finding new ways of displaying information to the player. A lot of management games quickly become spreadsheets. To me, that’s completely unnecessary. With my custom rendering engine I’m hoping to impart the majority of the data visually. An angry colonist can stomp his feet, an underpowered lamp will brown-out and flicker or a damaged computer will belch acrid smoke. There’s no need to intimidate the player with statistics and maths”.

It’s an ambitious project; the screenshots and trailer show a detailed, atmospheric landscape and intricate game systems. Impressively, Roth was working on every aspect of the game alone until a month ago. “I’ve now faced up to the reality of modern games development,” he says. “I built a small loose team who I could farm out the labour intensive work to and who could help me expand and develop my ideas. It was initially quite hard to let go of the reigns on what is a very personal project, but eventually everyone fell into sync and I now feel quite comfortable with them taking the game in new directions”.

Having worked on Frontier’s Kinectimals and Outsider projects (I ask Roth what happened to the latter: “I don’t think I can talk about that without being crushed by lawyers! What I do know is the game was looking excellent”), he has also helped out Terry Cavanagh with his cult puzzler, VVVVVVV. “Terry is a genius and working with him was a real eye opener,” he says. “He is incredibly perceptive and in tune with his games. I once added a four millisecond delay to VVVVVV’s controls, he picked up on it immediately. That eye for detail takes what are great games and elevates them to classics. One of the most important things I learnt, perhaps the hard way, is that creativity is not a 9-5 thing and there is no shame in doing your best work at 4am on a Sunday morning”.

So back to Kickstarter. 12 days left, and 50 grand to raise. How does he feel about it all now. “Kickstarter was the natural choice for me,” says Roth. “I’ve always felt it is essential for small studios to engage with their communities and involving them in the funding lets them truly invest in the success of the game. Despite hitting a bit of a slow patch, I’m quite confident that we’ll hit it. I’m not a big name like some of the other developers that make their targets over night, but I know people are really excited for the project and with a bit of hard work I can get Maia funded”.

And Roth has confidence too in the god game genre, that nineties relic that has been picked up, toyed with and mostly fumbled over the last decade. For Roth perhaps there are parallels in the gameplay to his own approach to the game development process, his inability to let go of the project; the god game is maybe the closest most players get to creating games, to the lure of creative control. “Perhaps I’m a megalomaniac,” says Roth. “But the ability to build your own world and create a unique story within it is one of the most amazing things you can do in a game”.

Maia: the key influences

Seventies sci-fi movies
“2001 and Alien are two very direct inspirations, with their exquisite set design, creative lighting and painstaking cinematography. The often overlooked Silent Running is also in there too, it might be a bit awkward, but has a certain personal charm that a lot of science fiction lacks.”

Arthur C. Clarke
“He has had a pretty profound influence. His approach to science fiction is compelling and his stories completely draw you in. They are also scarily prophetic, I was recently re-reading The Fountains of Paradise and was struck by a paragraph where he predicted the strange feeling of receiving an automated birthday message over the internet from a friend who hasn’t contacted you in years.

Philip K. Dick
“Although rarely considered ‘hard science fiction’ his work has had a big influence on the game too. With the sanity of your colonists being an important game-play mechanic, Dick’s way of twisting reality and expectations has provided an interesting mould for how that could work. Not to mention, his dark humour has been key in helping us set the tone of the writing.”

Visit the Maia Kickstarter page for more information

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Hi everyone!

Thanks for all your support so far. Our next big media release is going to arrive on Monday, but in the meantime, I thought it would be interesting to explore something we've only partially talked about before: Maia's audio. So here's Nick Dymond, who has been working hard on the sound to compliment our lovely visuals...

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Simon asked me to write a bit about the music and sound design that I have planned for Maia, so I figure I'll share a little bit of the story so far and then give some insight into where I want the audio in the game to go.

First off, I'd like to say thanks to everybody for their support on this Kickstarter. It's been great watching peoples enthusiasm get sparked by all of the hard work Simon and the team have put in. Hopefully this is just the start - we can't wait to make Maia a place you can go to.

Simon and I first began discussing the project over the summer. During a long chain of emails, interspersed with YouTube clips of all sorts of music and films, it became obvious that we shared the same vision for the game. Soon after, I began initial work on putting together the library of sounds and recordings that were used in the trailer which I'm sure you've all seen by now.

My intention for the music is to draw from the sound and texture of classic 70's science fiction films and electronic music. In order to do this, I'm adopting some recording techniques that mimic the production of the time. This includes using live takes of analogue synthesisers and sequencers, tape noise, analogue delays and so forth. I've got a few rather nice bits of vintage equipment that will do the majority of the work. For those of you aren't huge fans of 70's synth music (and I suspect there are many ;D) there will be a range of more modern influences throughout, so don't panic.

Personally, one of the things that first comes to my mind when I think about 70's science fiction is the glorious sound of the technology. Indeed, THX 1138 was the first film to have a credited 'sound designer', the legendary Walter Murch. Then, later, who can forget the sound of the computer switching on in the opening scene of Alien or the wheezing bellows and squarewave beeps of the Voight Kampff machine in Bladerunner*. The colony in Maia will be littered with all sorts of these sounds that I hope will breath life into the the base.

In terms of the aesthetic and narrative of the music, I'm aiming to emphasise the isolation and desolation of the planet surface in contrast to the encroaching technology and comfort of the colony. There's an element of this in the initial trailer music, where the camera tracking into the base brings a shift from the environmental sounds into the musical realm. This basic premise, the tension between the planet and the colonists, is going to inform a lot of the work I do.

So, without wanting to bore you any more (I could go on about this stuff for days and probably weeks), I'll leave you with a tiny excerpt of some of the sound design that I've put together for upcoming video, a non-too-subtle homage to Vangelis**:

Sound Design Clip

Right, I'm off now to contemplate the sound of a chicken burning-up in lava.

Take it easy everyone,
Nick


* I know this isn't 70's...

** Note: The music in the final game will not have such reverential musical influence as the upcoming video.

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As a special thank you to everyone upping their pledges to push us towards our target, I am adding an extra tier: 'Wintermute'.

This tier is included in all pledges over £20 ($30) and will include a PDF art book, showing off all our concepts, 3d art and development screen shots. It will also tell the story the development of the game from it's conception, to it's completion.

New video is still incoming. Although it might slip to tomorrow now due to some unforeseen, and also terrifying, animation corruption bugs.

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Firstly we have a bit of the IMP bot (place holder art) digging out a new area for the colony. The robots have a complex priority system to ensure that they always carry out their tasks in a useful and efficient order. They also break off into teams to accomplish goals faster and more effectively than when acting as sole agents.

I'm working to build natural, realistic animal behaviours for the creatures: The chickens are seeking out the warmest and brightest areas of your base to nest in and will cluster there to lay their eggs. The AI isn't perfect yet, at the moment they get a bit too overenthusiastic in their search for the brightest, warmest things and end up joyfully, and quite fatally, dousing themselves in lava!

The final part of the video shows an accelerated time-lapse of the planet's surface. I'm simulating day/night cycles, clouds, fog and eventually weather types. The plants grow depending on the amount of light hitting them. There will eventually be a full ecosystem complete with flora and fauna simulated on the surface layer, presenting threats and challenges but also plenty of opportunities for science and exploration.

We are now in the final week of the Kickstarter and we need a really big push to reach our goal. Please spread the word about the game. Thanks for your support!

-Simon

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With only six days to go on its Kickstarter, intruiging god-game Maia has already reached over half its total funding request – though there’s still a fair stretch before it hits the finish line. The game purports to be a cross-blend of classic Bullfrog management in a unique retro-sci fi setting, and will see you excavating an underground colony on a remote planet far in the depths of space. Things are never easy, however, and you’ll have to balance the needs of your colonists against the constant predation of a detailed ecosystem that isn’t at all happy about sharing it’s fruits with the likes of us mere humans.

I had a chat with creator Simon Roth, who’s previous pedigrees include the excellent VVVVVV, about the challenges and joys of working on his own project, his vision for Maia, mod support and how he sees the project progressing if it hits that all important funding total.

PlaySF: Maia seems to take inspiration from classic management games such as Dungeon Keeper and Startopia – was this a deliberate choice on your part, or did the game grow into this role as development progressed?

SR: The game never really grew out of any other titles. Indeed, I hadn’t even seen Startopia until the press started likening Maia to it!

However there are elements, visual cues and mechanics which, as I developed them, started to take inspiration from the classic Bullfrog titles and Maxis games of the nineties. I’m very careful about developing Maia as its own thing though, the temptation to take features from other games is difficult to manage, and if left unchecked would leave me with a horrendous chimera of a game.

PlaySF: What is it about the ’70′s Sci Fi Aesthetic’ that appeals to you so much, and how will that aesthetic come across in the game itself?

SR: The 70′s aesthetic appeals on so many levels, I love how utilitarian it is, the hint of minimalism, block colours, lots of white. It’s a vision of the future based on optimism and practicality. So much science fiction is needlessly “gritty” and dystopian nowadays.

The aesthetic is the core of all our design. Everything that goes into the game is carefully considered and iterated on over and over until it “fits”. Even the lens the player sees the game through is simulating an anamorphic lens and the colour grade and grain is an attempt to match the rich film stock of the era.

PlaySF: How did the idea for the game come about?

SR: The idea has been in my mind in some form or another since about 2008 when I was at University. However it really came alive in 2011 when I started laying down the core mechanics in my head. I was working on VVVVVV at the time and I ended up having two or three sleepless nights designing little elements in my head.

In February I finally found myself with some free time to start hammering out the basics of the engine, whilst putting the games design to paper. At that point the idea was cut down substantially into something manageable and refined.

PlaySF: Tell us more about Maia’s hand-built rendering engine – has it been a challenge to code? Were there any pitfalls? Why not use an existing engine?

SR: The engine has been the most insane thing I’ve ever attempted. Indeed, in comparison, the game itself looks like a cakewalk. I didn’t want to compromise on anything, and despite a few wrong turns, I managed to get something that performs well, makes coding the game much simpler and lets me make the game look very beautiful.

The benefits of writing my own engine outweigh the costs in time and development. Firstly the speed is striking: Without the overhead of lots of complicated features that I’ll never use I can outperform even the fanciest of off-the-shelf solutions. The design only gets expanded if I have a need for it, so it absolutely shines against the bloated generic tools.

Secondly having access to even the lowest level code lets me do some really interesting things in linking the graphics and gameplay. For instance, when the lighting of an area has a direct influence on the moods of your colonists and the plants and solar panels, it’s actually a true sample of the light energy hitting them.

PlaySF: You plan to support Maia ‘indefinitely’ with regular content updates on a monthly basis – this is an impressive commitment. What form do you envision those updates taking?

SR: I have so many ideas to chuck into the game and it would be terribly sad to just leave them in the design documents, however attempting to put them all in the core design would take me years. Regular updates will help me develop the game creatively, without the pressure of a ship-date introducing stress and the inevitable bugs that causes.

PlaySF: Your Kickstarter page mentions ‘dark humour’ and ‘bi-polar androids’. Given that many classic sci-fi stories depict the potential problems with complex human-robot relationships (HAL9000 springs immediately to mind, as does Asimov’s robotic colonisation fleets), will you be using that humour to explore these concepts? Will we need to juggle the psychological needs of our androids, as well as our colonists?

SR: I certainly will! Indeed the robots having personalities is an important foundation to the humour. The IMP’s and other robotics malfunctioning and taking on new personality traits and emotions over time will make for some pretty funny situations.

That said, psychological needs of the robots will be far more subtle than those of the colonists and it will be a challenge for the player to investigate and solve the problems that arise. It will be pretty easy to figure out what is eating at your colonists (figuratively!), but finding out what’s making your colony’s doors depressed might take a little bit of detective work.

PlaySF: You plan to provide full mod-support for Maia, and your Kickstarter stretch goals include campaign and robot editors. Are there any plans to incorporate some of the best player-made mods into the game over time, perhaps through the regular update system?

SR: Totally. If players find a way to tweak the game that makes it more enjoyable I’ll definitely work with them to get the features built into the game as standard.

PlaySF: You’ve mentioned in previous interviews that environmental effects such as lighting will affect the mood of your colonists – this is quite a unique concept for a game of this kind. Will there be other environmental factors to consider when building our colonies?

SR: The environment is your main adversary in Maia. The game hosts a detailed ecosystem simulation that you will need to carefully manage and exploit to meet your needs for food, water and energy. There will be food chains that if unbalanced, will lead to hungry animals wandering into your base or swarms of herbivores overwhelming your defences and damaging your equipment. The primordial jungle outside your base will slowly start to creep inside, following the light. If left unchecked it will make the colonists unhappy, and worse utterly ruin your airlocks.

There will be a detailed atmosphere system in your base, and maintaining it via generators and airlocks will be crucial. I’m hoping to expand this at a later date with a pressure system too. Combine lava and water and you might end up with a steam build up blowing out a wall section, de-pressurising your colony.

PlaySF: What part of Maia are you most excited about?

SR: I’m really excited to see what happens when the game is released and all the players start building from their own imagination. There’s no way to predict the crazy things people might try, and the complex simulation might turn out some amazing situations and stories to share!

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PaulLFC said:

Pledges have picked up pace a bit now, but it's going to be a big ask.

Currently at just over £60,000 with 6 days to go, I think if it can get to £80,000 or so with 2 days to go it has a chance, because then the target looks a lot more achievable to anyone who's on the fence.

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flowsnake said:

That mentality is weird to me. If a project is obviously going to be funded, there's little chance I'd want to pledge, as I'd rather just buy the product later on. It's the ones like this, where every pledge matters and you're actually helping make it come to fruition that really interest me.

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Atomski said:

Blows my mind stuff like this sneaks by me. Only 5 days left and its the first Ive heard of it..

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flowsnake said:

Well, it's not like you lose anything if it doesn't in the end. And if it does, then you're vindicated. Not exactly a gamble. I suppose it's just a psychological thing.

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flowsnake said:

Should be another interview up on RPS tomorrow. Should give it a bump, not sure how much though.

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