Before I dive into my creations on the program, allow me to introduce you to Klik & Play,
the game development software released in 1994 that changed my life forever.
Really, even today I reckon that so many peoples' lives could be made better by this program.
After an absolutely kick-ass introduction animation sequence you were greeted with 4
options.
The program came with pre-made games that you could play and study.
This included Hungry Hedgehogs, a program that combined education with the orgasmic
moans of exasperated mammals.
There was the most generous slot machine game ever invented.
My sister would play it for hours, just clicking on the buttons until she had maxed out her
money.
Gracillis 5 was a fully working space shooter, by far the best of the games and even complete
with a Hungry Hedgehogs bonus level where you could finally exact justice on those kinky
creatures ...and then there were others as well.
You get the idea.
Hours of endless fun and the perfect thing to get you motivated to create your own game.
And it wasn't hard to do.
You didn't have to know ANYTHING about anything to be able to make your own games.
You see, instead of coding, you simply run the level and it pops up notifying you when
a button is pressed or when something happens.
All you have to do is to decide on what it does at those stages.
It's so simple and if it hadn't been I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten very far with
the program.
Of course, it has its limitations.
You can't, for example, do the same thing twice so if you miss your opportunity the
first time you have to start making the game all over again.
Hence why it was better to learn the much more powerful and flexible event editor, which
I eventually did, which is like a big grid where you do pretty much the same thing but
at your own pace.
But trust me, it gives you the flexibility to do what you want.
I just wasn't very good at it back then.
Sadly, I no longer have my earliest efforts.
They have long since been wiped through countless reformats.
They tended to be side-view, heavily scripted screens sort of like this one.
I'm not sure what exactly I was trying to achieve.
I'd rarely get past the first 'cutscene' of my game and when I did there was seldom any
gameplay.
And they certainly weren't that fun.
But I enjoyed making them and they let me get to grips with the game maker.
In fact, although I have many fond memories of Klik N Play I eventually upgraded to the
Games Factory since it was clearly Klik N Play's fault that I wasn't able to make the
next groundbreaking title.
Since mid 2002 I've kept a comprehensive archive of everything that I made using it.
This is when things get exciting!
Now armed with an even more powerful game making tool, my name on the game making scene
would soon be known!
Having spent my life planning the games I was going to make, you'd think that when I
could finally make them that I would have been somewhat prepared.
The world simply wouldn't be ready for my unlimited enthusiasm and ambition!
Nothing would compare with what I was about to make.
What did I choose for my first ground-breaking title?...Well, it seemed that I went straight
to mercilessly and blatantly ripping off every proper game that I was interested in at the
time.
The Atari had a game called Rick Dangerous, an unforgiving side-platformer.
I replied with Rikki Man, complete with incredible voice acting.
Max Payne's gritty noir inspired me, so I went and tried to make that as well.
The Thing traumatised me so I retaliated with a rubbishy remake in the form of an above-view
game.
Sorry Hyperpaint, you've met your match.
My Metal Gear Solid rip-off, Plastic Cog Floppy, showed real potential but still had no gameplay.
Those system requirements sure were high!
In fact, I think that the PC I was using at the time was only slightly better than that
in every way.
What are the odds.
Wow, it's just as well I was 13 when I made this game!
The excessive gore of Soldier of Fortune fascinated me for longer than I'd like to admit so I
ripped that off as well.
I was somewhat obsessed with real-time lighting back then.
That and shooting pipes and having steam come out.
I wonder where I got that idea from.
Don't even get me started on ragdoll physics.
I played UT 2003 for hours just to chuck my character down the pits to see the next-gen
physics in action.
I even made my own but they were always limited and buggy.
The Jedi Knight 2 imitator was perhaps the closest I got to being fun since it actually
had enemies that you could kill.
Plus real-time shadows, which of course made it a better game.
Definitely.
I refined this in a Lord of the Rings rip-off where you had to duel a hardcore orc using
a sword, bow and arrow and overpowered magic spell.
Compared with the other ones, my Final Fantasy knock-offs seemed pretty decent, displaying
some degree of artistic talent and potential.
But alas, I didn't stick with those projects either.
Any way, you get the idea.
A lot of unfinished projects.
Nothing to show for it other than a poor reflection of the games that inspired me to make my own.
I very quickly discovered that trying to make your own version of a game you like doesn't
end well.
Back then I blamed my lack of experience and kept trying.
Now, I know that if you want to remake a game because you like the original then it's only
ever a poor imitation of the original, which is always a tough act to follow, particularly
for a lone 13 year old armed with klik n play. ...hence why I teamed up with Tom!
Tom is my friend.
I've known him since before we even started school and we have a huge amount in common.
And we both loved computers.
We called ourselves the 3 klikateers because we wanted room to expand, but we never found
a third person.
He called himself Tommyttk, as in, 'Tommy the Three Klikateers' and I settled on 3kliksphilip.
At first we made projects separately but later on we collaborated on some complicated and
exciting things.
More on those later.
Although I was useless at finishing games, some people were much better.
THE best game made on the klik products was 'Triumph War', an awesome multiplayer war
game where you have to defeat the enemies to progress to the next level.
Even to this day we enjoy booting it up at LAN parties.
It's a great way to kill time and is remarkably balanced up until the final level.
And, of course, we ripped it off with our own games.
Perhaps the first decent game that I made and completed was 'Doom of the World', which
was strangely like Triumph War, only much, much simpler.
For the AI I had a load of invisible objects bouncing around the screen and when they touched
somebody, they'd fire their gun at an enemy.
It worked!
Okay, the game was extremely basic and short-lived but it served as an important point in my
game-making career.
I had now finished a game.
I didn't care about its quality.
The fact that I could now put it behind me and focus on another project was one of the
best feelings in the world.
I quickly followed it up with Doom of the World 2 which was bigger, more complicated
and worse in every way.
It turns out that a large, scrolling screen isn't fun if you have more than one player.
The controls were messy and the game often forgets to update what's going on outside
of the visible area.
But once again, I completed it and even included an awesome diary journal of the journey.
I even threw in some easter-eggs and gave it a bit of polish.
For a while I was so proud of this game, but looking back, it was a bit rubbish.
Tommyttk also made his own games.
He had a few years' head start on me since he had had a PC from an earlier age and his
projects often reflected that.
He made more historically accurate games, complete with ammo, reloading and better scenery.
The first game we collaborated on was for a Christmas 2002 competition.
We titled it Christmas Combat and it was to be a Tekken-style fighting game.
Tom came up with the idea and drew the characters while I focused on the background and special
effects... and I think that my Dad made some music for it, but we may have opted for Street
Fighter music for the final version.
We both took part in coding it.
However, the day before the deadline I took a look at it and decided that there wasn't
much gameplay, so I hastily threw together an experience system where you could upgrade
your equipment.
Anybody who has ever worked on a project knows that it's a BAD idea to start on any new idea
so close to the deadline, particularly one so game-changing and complicated.
...and yet, despite that it worked perfectly.
It added a LOT to the game experience.
Do you replay the same fight a couple of times to get amazing equipment, or do you try to
limp through with underpowered weapons and armour?
Granted, some of the things weren't very well implemented but they all sort of WORKED and
meant that even a bad player could complete the game if they were willing to invest enough
time into it.
I was proud of it at the time but looking back, I failed to understand the true significance
of what I had done.
I hadn't just added QUANTITY, I had added complex gameplay elements to the game.
I had no idea of balancing at the time and was unaware of what I had done but I walked
away with important knowledge of what worked and what didn't.
For instance, to this day I dislike the idea of armour, when its only benefit is to reduce
damage by a certain percent.
It's unrewarding and you often don't FEEL the connection between investing in it and
being saved by it.
In Counter Strike you'll hear a DINK which pretty much tells you that it's saved you
from an instant head-shot, but all too often its benefits are too subtle or hidden to appreciate.
I would much rather boost the amount of health you have instead from 100 to 150, or to make
armour completely deflect the occasional attack.
These were things I discovered serendipitously with Christmas Combat that have shaped my
projects ever since and will no doubt continue to do so into the future.
All of these projects were in 2002.
2003, by comparison, was quiet.
I continued to refine how I made games and started ripping off my new favourite game:
Deus Ex.
But this time, there was a difference.
It wasn't just a total copy.
It also borrowed bits from Hitman and changed it into an above-view game, once again with
some degree of depth in the form of a levelling system, which I could now do since I had learned
how to carry values across from different levels with Christmas Combat which opened
up countless new options.
I called this one Deragon Eremine, partially inspired by how foreign Deus Ex looked and
partly because I like names that come up with 0 search results.
It was a landmark game for me for a number of reasons.
It successfully (if a little clumsily) split a level up into multiple screens, looked better
and had more polish than my earlier games.
You could choose how to play it, either by lockpicking the side-door or by shooting your
way through the level.
Not that it was balanced- Tom quickly discovered that maxing out your speed stats gave you,
uh, a bit of an advantage.
But then came 2004.
I returned to the Triumph War style games and in the space of the month had completed
Doom of the World 3.
It built on the strengths of the first game and added better targetting, graphics, balance
and AI to the mix.
Invisible areas in each battlefield instructed soldiers where to go so they appeared to advance
across the map toward the enemy base.
I had finally created a game that I was proud of.
With hindsight, it can be frustrating when one team begins to crush the other and you
end up feeling fairly helpless, whereas Triumph War's appeal was how influential your effort
was on the battle's outcome.
I didn't realise this at the time and thought that better AI meant it would be a better
game.
But I didn't stop there.
In the following month I began on Deragon Eremine again, this time with even better
graphics and gameplay.
Somewhat controversially I switched to a scrolling screen.
It didn't work for Doom of the World but it allowed for this sort of game to be in a seamless
world where your actions had lasting consequences.
One of the first things I added was the ability to blow holes through walls.
It sounded faddy but really shaped how this game played.
You could now study the base you had to break into, find a secluded spot and blast your
way through.
You could even use them to blow guards up even if you were nowhere near them when they
went off.
You could pick objects up to form walls that would obstruct enemies' vision.
Alternatively, you could use them as cover that would gradually be worn away as you fought.
I even added grenades which were perfect for lobbing around corners.
With precision accuracy they could even open up holes in walls like the mines could!
Just as better AI doesn't necessarily equate to a better game, better controls don't make
it more enjoyable.
With Deragon Eremine you could either aim or move, not both at the same time.
This sounds stupid but it made it less about run-and-gun and more about finding alternative
solutions to situations, using weapons as a last resort rather than the means to completing
the game.
Sort of similar to the limited ammo in Human Revolution, if you will.
Now here's the question: which game was THIS ripping off?
Was it Deus Ex, or was it the earlier version of Deragon Eremine?
I believe it's a combination.
It borrowed what worked from Deus Ex, but also learned from the mistakes of the older
version to make it work better with the 2D format that I was working with.
The result was an ambitious, slightly buggy but incredibly fun game with a lot of replayability.
I didn't finish making it but I managed two full-lengthed levels, the latter of which
was capable of testing even the best of players.
At the pace I was making them in early 2004 I could have been churning out 12 games a
year, but it never works like that.
After Deragon Eremine I put my feet up and went back to little creative projects again.
Tom and I discovered that placing lots of 2D objects on top of each other created a
cool, 3D-looking effect which we then used in future projects.
At one point I put Deragon Eremine on all of the computers in the music suite at school
and every lunch time I'd visit to find about 5 people playing the game.
It was very rewarding.
I made my own 'virus' at one point that would load up versions of itself on startup until
it crashed the computer, but realised how much trouble it could get me in so I deleted
it.
I never emptied the recycling bin though, and the next time I visited the music suite
the computer was out of action, awaiting an engineer to fix it.
I felt so guilty and imagined going to jail for the sabotage I may have played a part
in.
A few months later I made The Best Game Ever, a project that I made for a joke when Tom
was around at my house.
It's utterly rubbish, yet strangely appealing to play.
I've already covered it elsewhere so won't do so here.
And then Half Life 2 came out and I stopped making games.
I switched to maps and for many years, Klik N Play and The Games Factory remained unused
as I toyed with the idea of 3D design. ...but it wasn't the end.
But it is for this video.