MAKING OF

1. Contents
      2. "Space Game"
      3. Race Rage
      4. European Hero; The Beginning
      5. Unique Features
      6. Development
      7. Difficulties
      8. Saga Completion


2. "Space Game"
European Hero was created by two students from the Netherlands, who liked to make a game together. Before we started working on the game, we both had some vague ideas about wanting to make a game set in space. But at that time I did not have the programming knowledge to make this reality. Therefore we kept the idea in the back of our heads, while I made another game called breakout . This was a breakout clone with a twist. A lot of people questioned me why I would waste my time on just another breakout clone, but for me it was purely a learning project. After I managed to get a ball bouncing in a box in the JAVA language, I was so fascinated by it, I decided to create breakout. I started working on breakout in the beginning of April of 2002. During the creation of this game, I learned a lot of things, mostly by trial and error, and by looking at source code from others. Pretty soon I was able to implement all elements that were necessary to make a game. During this time, Thomas and I came together frequently to put things on paper about the space game we wanted to make. Both being very much influenced by classic DOS games like Tyrian, Piranha, The Settlers and Ascendancy, we wanted to create something that had a lot of gameplay, was strategic, had a money making aspect and was mysterious and atmospheric at the same time.

3. Race Rage
The first concept we tried was to create a game in the same style as Piranha, an asteroid type game, which we had loved to play so much. The main reason for choosing this type of game, was the fact that I had no idea on making a "scrolling" type game. Working from this, I had made a crude start in a week's time. At this point the game was called Race Rage (see screenshot).

First concept: Race Rage


After working on Race Rage for a while, we realised that making a non-scrolling type game was probably going to be harder than we had first anticipated. The problem with an asteroid type game was that all objects had to rotate as they moved within the arena. Since I had no knowledge to make images rotate, we created separate images for key positions the ship could be in. Not only was this a very time-consuming matter, it also looked like shit because it made the animation look very choppy. We then realised this was not working out for us, and abandoned that idea.

4. European Hero; The Beginning
About half a year later, by the end of January of 2003, I had finished Breakout. From that point on we could spend a lot more time working on our space game. A couple of days after the completion of Breakout, we met up to try the concept of creating a vertical shoot 'em up. Thomas started to draw the artwork while I tried to figure out how to make a scrolling type game. It all really started as a joke. But by the end of the day we had a ship flying across the screen and we both became very enthusiastic (see screenshots).

Ingame Impression(first day)	Menu Impression(first day)

From this point on the game would be known as European Hero. Due to this boost in confidence, development entered a slipstream.

5. Unique Features
Because we could never create a game that could compete with today's 3D shooters, we tried to make the story interesting and implemented other elements to make up for it's lack in graphical splendour. We hoped that this would be enough to get players interested in this "simple" game. Both being perfectionist's, we wanted to cram a lot of elements in European Hero that had never been put together yet. We decided to create a stock exchange, a shop and a loan shark. Besides from that, we wanted to make unique levels that had a true connection to the story line. We were pretty disappointed in the fact that most shooters had absolutely no logic to the location the player was placed. What we did was really devise a game that we had always wanted to play, but couldn't because it didn't exist.

6. Development
During development of the game we would usually come together in weekends and vacations to continue collectively on European Hero. During these times we really lifted each other's work by giving suggestions and/or comments. Thomas his work was improved by my input and visa versa. Everytime we had finished one tiny aspect of the game and brought it to life by placing it in the game, increased the nostalgia we felt towards the product we were creating. We had a lot of fun coming up with all the races and their history, and giving them all of these human like characteristics. Most of the races are actually named after Dutch fruit names which we than freely translated to English.
After five months of work we had completed the first stage and made a basic setup for the shop(see screenshots).

Ingame Impression(July 2003)	Shop Impression(July 2003)
		Thomas on artwork All the pictures I made were done in MS Paint. Every pixel is animated manually and this was a lot of work, however it learned me how to get the maximum out of this program and I have used paint on multiple occasions. Many people laugh when they hear that it is all made in paint, but the program allows you to make small pictures of only 40 X 40 pixels and animate it really detailed. The thing that costed me the most time, was Jennifer. This babe in a bikini took me about a week to draw, but I am pretty amazed about the result. It was really cool to see the artwork, which I made, being animated in the program. After a while it became clear that Chris would need a lot more time than me, so I tried to do some addtional work. I learned to work with Gif Animator to animate my pics. This also allowed me to make more complex pictures. The Tentaal Sea is the animated picture I am most proud of. This picture looks very good, also considering it only took me one day to draw. It was really cool that I could come up with more complex becoming ideas, which were being implemented by Chris and being brought to life.

By then we realised that completing the game would require a huge amout of time.

7. Difficulties
Part of the slow progress was caused by the fact that my programming skills were lacking. I also bumped into all kinds of technical problems that really put my motivation to the test. By that time I had only been programming for three years and it started to show. Apart from that, we really wanted every aspect of the game to be great. Because of that we spend too much time on such futile details it could be distincted as "pretty insane". When we show the game to people and point them out to some of these details, they are like: "What? That dot over there is an animated character working in a labour camp, screaming for help? Ooh sorry, didn't see that..."
Eventually we did not really drop too many elements from the original concept and were secretly hoping that development would become easier and quicker... it didn't. Continued technical difficulties pushed back the release date again and again. Because of these difficulties, my motivation for the project was dropping. Luckily we eventually overcame all of these difficulties and could continue development. If you want to make your own game, it is really important you are willing to finish what you start. I believe this is best summed up by Thomas Carlyle:

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

After a while we were both laughing our asses of because of the ridiculous amount of effort we had invested in the game, that it almost became somewhat of a farce. We steadily continued developing and decided to split the game into three separate sagas. This was determined after we had noticed the amount of work that still had to be put in. Because the game had been planned with 18 levels, which was completely unrealistic, we decided to have each saga contain six stages.

8. Saga Completion
About two years into development we have completed all six stages for the first chapter of the European Hero Trilogy. These stages all contain some unique features that, we believe, set us apart from other games in the genre. Also we have implemented all of the elements that we thought would really make this game special (shop, stock exchange, story line, etc.). But I guess you just have to play the game and decide for yourself...

- Chris Jager, 15/05/2005