Hi all!
I’m Tanshaydar, creator of White Night. For those curious enough about who I am, you can check the about me page. English is not my main language; and although I’m careful about grammar, I might make mistakes, or don’t make sense at all. Bear that in mind.
In these postmortem posts, I’ll talk about White Night, its production stage, reactions I got, what I had in my mind, and how’s and why’s of the things I did. If you want to learn precious things about game development, follow Frictional Games’ development blog; because it’s unlikely for you to learn priceless knowledge from a newbie like me. But if you are seeking some side-knowledge about making games and curious about why’s of White Night, stick around, because I have A LOT to say.
If you haven’t played or finished White Night yet, please, DO SO! I forbid you to continue from this point if you haven’t, and no, watching let’s plays doesn’t count. Actually, I personally find it unfair that people only watch LP of a game without actually playing it; and then they have something to say. Anyway, your call 🙂
First of all, and first WHY of White Night, read this. It was my very first design of White Night in mind. Now a fourth character, Dr. Patrick Parr joined the crew; and also I decided to change my way of story-telling to get more interesting reactions.
Well, if you read that, let’s continue.
I guess none of you think that White Night was always like this(I mean an eye-catchy total conversion). If you do, you can watch an unlisted video. What was White Night like in 15th January ’11? You know, it was a custom story, not a total conversion, and it was a bad one. Did you see that castle_ceiling_window props? I was trying to imitate fluorescent lights. What a pity…
Here’s another abomination:
January 25, 2011 02:28 PM; I don’t think it got better in 10 days? But it definitely got better in 10 months!
At the beginning, I was worse than most of you at modding. However, a lot happened in these ten months. I’ll just skip the details about my life and say I got ‘experienced’.
Secondly; I’d like to state that White Night is my first ‘finished’ real game development experience ever. I really like playing games, but creating one is my passion. Since I’m the kind of “learn yourself” guy, I just wanted to see what people like and if I’m up to date. Turned out I am not.
Yes, whole goal in creation of White Night was to see what people are thinking about gaming. Yes, I know that sounds weird, but walking into the scene and saying I have an experimental game design which will test this and these, like some other popular *cough* HL2 mods did, became kinda lame. Also, telling that from the start would cause some prejudice, which I didn’t want (but got exposed to eventually) and which I’ll cover in detail. My intention was not to be under spotlights (yes, I’m revealing my sickest intentions now, mwuhahaha). But really, I just had questions; and I got PLENTY of answers.
And I’m willing to share my answers.
In my next post, I’ll talk about the general reaction to White Night. I think it is necessary to talk about them in order to have a grasp on the points I’ll be covering. Next, I’ll talk about design choices I made. After that, reactions from people with extensive reviews will follow. Finally, I’ll sum up the answers I got. I’m not sure if these posts will include precious knowledge, but I’m gonna make sure they will be some interesting reads.
One last thing. I’ll have an interview with Morfar (for Nordrassil Radio). It’s a bit unusual, because they usually interview with internet stars, which obviously I am not, but hey, thanks for the chance man! If you have any sick questions and planning to ask them here, they probably will not be published. But you can contact and tell him to ask your question, which will probably put me in an uneasy state 😛
