Over on his blog, David Hellman has released an update to the Braid Graphics Briefcase that contains animations for all the characters, which you can use as forum avatars or whatever. Check it out!
Category Archives: Braid Development
Updates on the development status of Braid (its completion, where it will be available when finished, etc).
The Art of Braid, Part 9
David Hellman has posted the latest entry in the Art of Braid series, part 9. This entry explains in great detail how we came up with the final look for the story screens in Braid, and shows all the revisions along the way, explaining our thought process. It is possibly the most informative Art of Braid yet. If you’re interested in game development or the art process for a modern 2D game, I recommend looking at the entire series.
If anyone out there is wondering why Braid took so long to finish, then just look at how much work was done here for a single 1280×720 scene, and extrapolate that to every set of graphics in the game.
Misc. Linux Questions
This is not necessarily Braid news. If you don’t do any Linux programming then you may want to skip this posting!
I’m trying to do some basic game stuff under Linux and don’t really know what a reasonable way is to do them, and the cost of experimentation is very high. So I am hoping someone out there can just answer these basic questions…
- What is a reasonable way to read mouse input? Reading X11 mouse events is not sufficient since (a) it’s had GUI acceleration applied to it, and (b) it clamps at the edges of the screen. libGII seems to be one way to do this — is it reliable and useful? Can I “ship” a game with it (to the extent that anything is shippable at all under Linux)? Are there alternatives?
- Under X11, is there a way to constrain the mouse pointer to a window without other undesirable effects (such as stealing the focus and locking the GUI)? Last time I tried this (a couple of years ago) I couldn’t figure out a way to do it.
- For audio output, should I be using ALSA or something else? In a past project I used SDL but the SDL audio API seemed quite lacking for serious game programming.
Thanks!
Braid wallpapers, screenshots, forum icons.
David Hellman has put together a very nice collection of Braid graphics called the Braid Graphics Briefcase. This collection contains a bunch of icons you can use as forum avatars, or program launch icons, or … anything! It’s also got some screenshots and a giant desktop wallpaper. And more.
Here is a small taste of what’s available on that page:
This complete set includes all of the Xbox 360 Gamer Pics that shipped with the Xbox Live Arcade release of Braid, and many images that were not included in those. (For fans of the dinosaur, he’s included this time.)
A Lost Interview
Paul Arzt conducted this interview with Jonathan Blow in late 2007 at the Montreal International Game Summit. Due to the unpredictability of Web-based freelancing, the interview never found publication until now.
The interview discusses some of the design philosophy behind Braid, why innovation in game design isn’t so important, life as an indie developer, and ideas about where we can go when pushing on the boundaries of game design.
(Note: The MMO project hinted at, at the end of this interview, is not the post-Braid project any more. Since then I had an idea for a project I am much more motivated to pursue.)
A Temporary Fix for the Demo Mode Bug
(This is the bug that happens if you try to run Braid from a different console than the one you bought it on, and it thinks it’s the free version instead of the full game).
As comment poster Seth said:
SUCCESS!!
Using Infininja’s advice, I used the license migration tool on xbox.com. Once that was done, I booted up Braid but it was still a demo, well, you have to delete the game and re-download it. Now it runs in full/bought mode!Wooohoo!
Also, Rob Crippin says:
I have another workaround for the bug…
Let the game start up normally then hit the start button to go to the menu. Go down to “Unlock Full Game,” press A, then just hit B (doesn’t have to be done quickly) to back out of the Dashboard menu. The “Unlock Full Game” option disappears. After that, go to “Exit Game” and then to the sign-in screen to get your save back.
It sounds complicated but it’s safe and only takes a few seconds. It works for me, anyway.
We’re still working on a permanent fix, but that will take some time; even after I fix the problem locally, we need to go through another certification process.
Stats: The First Week of Braid
Braid has now been out on Xbox Live Arcade for an entire week, and the week has been a good success. The wave of highly-positive reviews took me by surprise, but the unexpectedly good sales show that this isn’t just a game for critics: a lot of people out there are playing Braid and getting good things from it.
I want to thank everyone for their support over the past week: whether by buying the game, telling friends about it, or just posting here with thoughts about Braid, it has all contributed to a successful launch. I hope this will serve as a useful data point for other independent developers: we can make games that are unusual, experimental, or personal, and there’s a substantial audience out there who will play and enjoy them.
Here are some numbers:
As I write this, there are 62,242 entries on the main leaderboards. I don’t have official sales numbers for the full week, but I would guess about 55,000 people have bought the game so far.
18,141 have completed the game (or at least gotten 60 puzzle pieces, since that is what the leaderboard shows).
528 people have completed the Full Game Speed Run. Of these, 238 have beaten the challenge time, and thus gotten all 200 Achievement points that you can get from Braid on Xbox Live.
Thousands of people have been playing the single-level speed runs. There are 5,098 people on the Leap of Faith speed run leaderboard, for example.
Sales are now slower than they were on launch day, but not too much: the sales didn’t just die after the first few days, as they do with some games. As a result, it looks like I will be able to make the next game, without needing to get a job that would interfere with that. (The estimated sales so far of 55,000 are not enough for this, but extrapolating into the future, the situation looks safe). Thank you, once again, for making that possible.
An open question now is whether sales will drop more steeply now that Bionic Commando: Rearmed is the new game on Xbox Live Arcade. I hope not, but we’ll see! If you have any friends who you think may enjoy Braid, please do let them know about it — perhaps while they are playing Bionic Commando, they can also try out the Braid demo.
Braid is the highest-rated XBLA game ever. (Also, sales data).
Currently, Braid is receiving excellent reception from game reviewers and critics. Both Metacritic and Gamerankings have Braid rated at 92/100:
That’s a pretty good score. In fact, Braid is the highest-rated Xbox Live Arcade game of all time (out of about 150 games!) Geometry Wars 2, released a week prior, is the second-highest. There are some strong games coming up in the next few weeks, so we’ll see if these positions hold.
But 92 is not just a good score for a Live Arcade game; it’s a good score for any game. In fact, Braid is currently the 10th highest-rated Xbox 360 game of all time — including all AAA high-budget games:
If Braid receives just one more Metacritic point, it will jump to 8th place on this list. (Eran and Alex: Let’s get ready to rumble!)
Of course, it’s possible that Braid’s rating will go down, too. Time will tell!
I don’t want any of this to seem like bragging. I do want it to serve as a clear and useful data point: an indie game made by a very small team can compete with giant games that had huge budgets at their disposal. (I don’t know how much Mass Effect cost, but it surely was a lot. Just licensing the Unreal Engine 3, before even hiring anyone or doing any work to create a game, cost probably 3x-5x Braid’s budget.)
This is important — I have been a proponent of indie and experimental game development for a while, but the attitude toward it always seems to be that they are interesting toys, but not real games. Well, perhaps that is changing. And perhaps some of the indie developers out there who are making cheap clones of PopCap games will realize that if, instead, they go out on a limb and do something interesting and different and important to people, their work will be recognized.
Now, about sales. They are surprisingly good!
I have noticed people on forums looking at the number of entires in the leaderboards and multiplying that out to get a total income for Braid. That doesn’t work, for a number of reasons. There are thousands of free copies of the game given out to the press, and once someone buys an XBLA game, other profiles can play from the same xbox and they get leaderboard entries. So the leaderboard is always an overestimate.
However, vgchartz.com has Braid at 28.5k sales currently, and that seems to be in the right neighborhood.
This is a very good sign, for a few reasons! First of all, it means that in addition to getting recognition from critics, Braid is also being played by a lot of people. We’ve all heard of games that are critically-acclaimed but that hardly anyone plays. That doesn’t seem to be happening with Braid so far. But, that could change — a lot depends on what happens to sales on Wednesday when Bionic Commando: Rearmed is released on XBLA. Will Braid’s sales keep up, as with Geometry Wars 2, or will they drop off?
But right now, Braid is selling as well or better than any massive highly-anticipated XBLA game by a major publisher. So, that is very cool. I would like to thank everyone out there who purchased a copy of Braid, for supporting independent and experimental game development.
People have asked me how many sales Braid needs in order to be profitable. The answer is, a lot more than it has gotten so far. (There are many reasons for this, which I may be motivated to talk about in the future). However, things are looking promising now — if Braid keeps selling, I’ll be able to afford to make the next game, and that will be good.
Braid Gamer Pics are up on Live Arcade.
(Gamer Pics are the little icons you can put by your profile name on Xbox Live Arcade).
They were supposed to go up when Braid was first available for download, but there was some kind of problem. It’s fixed now, though. There are two picture packs; here’s what they contain:
The Soundtrack to Braid
Many people have been saying they like the music in Braid, and would like to get a hold of the soundtrack.
I don’t have the rights to redistribute the music, but all of the songs were licensed from magnatune.com, where you can listen to them for free and buy high-quality versions of the albums they are on at very low prices that you yourself choose (if you really like the song and want to support the musician, you can choose to pay a lot!)
Here’s a list of the tracks in Braid and links to the Magnatune pages where you can find them. (These songs are also listed in the credits to Braid).