Designing a New Oddworld Experience (Thank You)
Hi! Most of you probably have seen me around the Oddworld Forums on a regular basis for the last seven years, but for you who don’t know me, my name is Tim Cottenham. I am 20 years old, finished a study as Game Designer last year and am currently study Game Design and Development at the Utrecht School of the Arts in the Netherlands.
In this blog I will tell a bit about my experiences I’ve had while trying to design a new Oddworld experience. I have never written a blog before so please bear with me.
My passion for Oddworld is a big one. Oddworld is definitely my number one game series and I’ve loved it ever since I first played Abe’s Oddysee on the Playstation 1. The thing that appeals to me is the story and the rich environments and I’ve always wanted to create a Oddworld related fan game. This was even before I got into college so I had no knowledge on how games were made, I started out by learning 3ds Max on my own using tutorials and books. In the following period I created a lot of Oddworld Assets. And so I learned and learned.
Fast forward five years, June 2011. I graduated as a Game Designer. During this four year long study I created countless Oddworld 3d assets, written game scenario’s about Oddworld and made a lot of digital artwork related to Oddworld. I did post a lot of stuff on the forums but not all. The truth is I am kind of a perfectionist, and I will gladly delete anything that I’m not happy about. Which actually sucks when you are creating a game.
I’ve seen a lot of my Oddworld project fail or just did not have the motivation to continue it, there are various reasons why this happen. One is my life as a student, I have school, and to earn money to rent my apartment I have to work, which unfortunately costs a lot of time.
So why do I keep trying? It’s a combination of my love for the Oddworld series and the great people on the Oddworld Forums. I want to create a new experience for you guys. One that you will enjoy as much as I did creating it.
Did you know that I have been very close to releasing a game to you guys? Sure it was a prototype, but it was a game. A multiplayer game where up to 6 players could choose a Mudokon character and shoot each other like any regular deathmatch game. The first build only had a first person screen although I’ve experimented with 3rd person.
Why have I never released it? I honestly hated it. I really did. I loved creating the level, which was the Sloghut level from Munch’s Oddysee but modified with a lot of new pathways around the level and some other adjustments to balance gameplay. But it was deathmatch. I wanted to create a multiplayer game so you guys at Oddworld Forums could play Oddworld while still being in this social environment with other members.
I chose deathmatch because it was the one mode that any student is taught to create. But it did not feel right. The other issue was that to test the game I played a lot of beta matches on a local network and it worked like a charm, once I tried testing it with a couple of friends over internet it just broke. And I had never learned how to create a non-local network game. At this point I just gave up. It was a great experience, and I might come back some time and give it another shot sometime in the future, when I can improve the gameplay. I want it to be like Oddworld. Not some random shooter. It has to have the Oddworld feel.
So what now? That last game is more than 8 months ago. (I wonder if I even still have the source files.) The answer to what now is: I don’t know. I worked very hard on some cool stuff Oddworld related the last few months, but there is nothing solid yet that is worth sharing. I also launched the Oddworld Vector Gallery (See:
http://timcottenham.nl/TOVG/) in an attempt to support other fan project on these forums. I quit my job a couple of weeks ago so I could focus more on school and projects like these. I earn my money with my recently founded company, making game assets for other indie developers, designing and creating websites, logos and other graphic design, which gives me a lot of more time to do the things I love.
With this blog I want to thank you for all the support you guys have put in me all these years and to give you guys a small look into my life. I feel great, my personal life is better than ever before and all these thing motivate me to get to work on Oddworld. I will continue working on designing a new Oddworld experience.
Thank you for all the support. You are the best.
-Tim
