Play Heavenly Bodies in our Games Lab
Transcript
Jini Maxwell
I'm Jini Maxwell. I'm a curator at ACMI, and I have the great pleasure of being joined by AP and JT, who are 2pt Interactive and who made Heavenly Bodies.
Before we get started talking about your history of working together and the design of the game, I'd like to acknowledge that we're meeting on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people and the Bunurong people of the Kulin Nations and to pay my respects to their elders past and present. The First Nations people of this continent were the world's first creative technologists and have been sharing culture and stories to play for tens of thousands of years and continue to do so today.
They were also the world's first astronomers, which I mentioned, because today we are looking at a game made here on Kulin Country, that's set in the vast expanse of space. Heavenly Bodies is a game that the more I think about it, the more I understand how it defies genre signifiers. In it you play either alone, in single player or cooperatively with another player as a cosmonaut who's given a series of tasks on a spacecraft inspired by spacecraft design sensibilities of the 70s and 80s, both in the US and in the Soviet Union. By following detailed instructions in your operations manual, your cosmonaut negotiates a series of delicate mechanical tasks in zero gravity from mining minerals from asteroids to unfurling solar panels on the outside of your shuttle.
This month, as I said, we have two new displays on the game, which focuses on the quality of light in the game, and one focusing on the design of the shuttles themselves. First of all, I would love to know how you two feel about seeing your work in a museum context.
Alexander Perrin
Bizarre. Mind blowing to have it behind real glass, is very, very special.
Joshua Tatangelo
Yeah. I think the glass element really kind of adds to it. Yeah, it's particularly strange because we're so close to it and we're still kind of working on it. It's strange that being from the computer to the museum and seeing our work again, it a bit of a double take, it's a big life goal for us. This is pretty crazy to have it-
AP
Especially within ACMI, which is I think personally for both of us has some real... We have a long relationship with ACMI, coming here since kids. So, to see games as kids in ACMI and being able to play them and then being on the other side of that, it's magical.
JM
I was saying earlier that it really shocked me how detailed your journals and process work were. When I visited your studio, I was expecting more bits and bobs, like armfuls of scrap paper, which is sort of what my process looks like, but yours is incredibly precise and iterative. So, lends itself very well through display.
JT
Yeah. I guess you did give us a heads up on visiting as well. So, you have a chance to tidy it, but yeah, it's just part of the process of how we work really. That iteration of getting all our ideas out, working through them and then taking the bits that work and assembling that into what you see in the game.
JM
I think these slides might be slightly out of order, because while I do want to go back to this historical stuff, I thought we might play a clip of the game itself first.
So, as you can see from this clip, the game combines incredibly fine motor control over the cosmonaut or astronaut themself, with the totally unbound space of zero gravity, which is what I find so, I suppose odd about it. It's a puzzle game, which gives you all of the solutions to every puzzle. And it's a physics game set in zero gravity where the rules don't entirely apply, which is a fascinating and confounding set of design decisions to have made, that I think only makes sense if you go back through some of the old work that you made as students, because you've been working together for some time. I thought Josh maybe we could start with you. With this game I found, by trawling through the archives, a student project called ‘Matter’, where you play as a scientist who's ripped a hole in time and space and you're desperately trying to remember what happened as I [inaudible 00:16:34] on you.
JT
A good refresher, yeah.
JM
And it combines a fictional approach to quantum physics, with physics platforming mechanics. I just found this fascinating, partly because you can't really see it from here, but the colour scheme immediately struck me as familiar. It has that warmth and that softness and that analogue quality, which you definitely see later in Heavenly Bodies. But also, that fictionalised approach to science, I wondered if that's always been an interest of yours?
JT
Yes, it has. For the both of us, we're quite technical and into the reality of science, how things actually are. But I think it's equally as fascinating getting into faux science and creating things that are referential or inspired by real things, but just extrapolating them in a way where it makes them fall into this realm of like, well, it could be plausible, it could be something that exists, but it's not. We've just completely made it up. And I think it's just fun to work within those kinds of constraints as well and not always just recreate things as they are, to just sort of skew it in a way where it can have its own little narrative, I suppose.
JM
Heavenly Bodies was pretty heavily influenced by a kind of historical period and by factual material. But I want to know what the biggest science lie in Heavenly Bodies is. Are there any good ones in there?
AP
Woah. I reckon the number of iterations we did on the level six energy-
JT
Energy.
AP
...That vibrating machine that you encounter and have to assemble bit by bit and get operational, absolutely just made that up out of thin air and was like, "Why would there be a giant kind of washing machine power generator on a space station beside a giant tube of maze of air ducts essentially." It was bogus. Didn't make any sense at all.
JT
Even in our file names and design ducts, it's changed names five times, from the drawing, to the handbook, to the mesh. I still don't think we even call it the same thing when we talk about it.
AP
No, no, it's been a communication nightmare.
JM
Can I know some of the names for your wonder machine?
AP
It was-
JT
At one point it was a thruster.
AP
Yeah.
JT
Currently it's an oxygen generator, at one point it was a turbine.
AP
Yeah, it was almost like a cold fusion reactor at one stage.
JM
Sounds like science to me. It really sounds like some science.
JT
The words are all in there, but it's not actually doing anything.
JM
What kind of drew you, I suppose this is a question for both of you, maybe while we look at another early project, which is quite adorably called Noirmittens. Also demonstrates an early interest in extremely delicate machines and helping them manoeuvre around space by Alex. What drew you to game design as a discipline that up in place?
AP
It's a very funny seeing this up on this very screen. I actually presented this game for the first time in this very room however many years ago, must have been four or five years at the first parallels. But I think for me, I always had growing up and for many, many years just loved illustration, loved capturing, or trying to illustrate intricate detailed systems, whether they involved life or machines or just maybe a street scape or I don't know, a Rub Goldberg machine or something like that with trying to detail motion and systems within a static way, which is with graphite illustration.
Then coming to uni, I think it was in Jen Leyd's class who's with us today, managed to get this prototype for a little hot air balloon. All just learning little bit of program programming at the time, picked up a game engine and I was suddenly able to create this very simple physical behaviour using basic physics and basic scripting, which emulated a real-world physical behaviour, but in a playful way. And I was like, this is the bomb. This is so cool. This is what I've been wanting to do. I can actually bring to life all these systems I haven't had in my head, which were all just on paper. So, for something like bizarrely named Noirmittens and all the other various games I've created, and cats on pogo sticks and fighting umbrellas and various things, that they've all been created with the intention or with the goal of simulating a really playful physical system, which you probably not going to get actually in reality but are based off roughly physically accurate laws I suppose, or rules.
JM
You told me once that you don't like drawing people, that you like drawing machines and you like drawing windmills, at least you went through a phase, but not such a fan-
AP
Absolutely big windmill phase.
JM
And fair enough too, until you found out that they all light on fire.
AP
Yeah, it's terrifying. If the wooden Dutch windmills, if they caught in a storm and they're not tethered down, then they spin so fast that the inside ignite and cause this spinning fan of fire and doom and it's just not serene at all.
JM
Wild. And looking at your early work like this, while there, and a short trip, which is in a similar style, there are figures in it, but there's certainly, I would not describe them as the feature of the work. How did your workflow change when you put a person in the middle of it? Did it change?
AP
Like with Heavenly Bodies? Thankfully we have a very good artist who can take that on. Well, I suppose that was a, even just keeping the helmet on that character was a consideration from day one.
JT
Oh yeah, it was never going to come off.
AP
It's the same reason Mario has a hat, right? Because they couldn't do hair. It's quite true apparently. But yeah, we had a helmet on because it's too many implications. Suddenly you take the helmet off and who is that character under there? What does that say? It's complex.
JM
I have to say I remember the first time I played, I lost my little cosmonaut into the vast expansive space. I think it was data, where you have to assemble this data tower, leave the space craft to do so. And they just flipped back into the middle of the shuttle, and I was like, "Do I have feelings about this? I'm not going to engage with them. I'm just going to keep playing." So, I'm also grateful that-
AP
You're always safe and sound in reality.
JM
Exactly.
JT
In reality of the game.
JM
You mentioned Jen Leyd earlier, who is our celebrity guest. She played a critical role in Heavenly Bodies actually, if I'm right. She introduced the two of you as your university lecturer.
JT
Yeah. We both studied the same course at RMIT, but we were a year apart, two years apart?
AP
Yeah.
JT
So, we never actually really crossed paths as students, but we were both being taught by Jen. And I think she saw that we had similar sensibilities or that we'd get along. And I think we were set up on some kind of play date, but it was actually to make a piece of music for somebody. So, I think one of Jen's colleagues or friends was making a video piece and Alex at the time, I don't know if you still do, but you were playing violin. And I make electronic music, so we got together, and we made this soundtrack for a short film. Well, short video-
AP
It was like a generative art piece or something.
JT
Yeah.
JM
How quickly did that translate or I guess develop into a game making partnership?
JT
Pretty quickly.
AP
Yeah. It was day one. It was like, "Woah, we're going to get along." It was like once we're done with this music, let's go make some games.
JM
What was it that you recognised in each other? What was that compatibility creatively?
AP
It came down to, I think a style in even what we were making was there are things you could compare, but let's say quite different. But I think even just down to liking each other as people and we could both see that and we had a certain work ethic, not in like, "Oh, you're going to be a valuable worker." But just that if we wanted to make things together, we would just click. We'd be able to just communicate really well and just understand and just work really harmoniously. And also, just have similar values at the time for what games could be. And back however many years ago that was, to have in new games were still in a quite juvenile sort of period. I think we're both making games about nebulous terms, experiences and what does something feel like and trying to create a feeling inside the play instead of just entertainment.
I think we were both really exploring that concept at the time, and we could both see that in each other's work. At least this is how I certainly feel.
JT
Yeah. And I think it was probably during your cat and windmill phase, but I do remember just thinking, like seeing Alex's work and how he did it. I was just like the conviction of cats and windmills and they're going to be perfect. It's going to feel nice to play. Everything was just so considered and coming. I saw it as always coming from the right place. Because back then it was easy for people to be quite openly derivative of, "Oh I want to make a big shooter, or I want to make a whatever." And then opposite end of the spectrum, I saw someone like Alex making stuff or it had so much to say and so much heart and it was just good stuff. When you see good stuff, you just know it. It's kind of hard to articulate it, but it was a bit like that.
JM
The first project you worked on together, I believe was Ropejacks, which was also a cop, weird physics-y game. Could you tell me a little bit about what that game is and how you started making it?
JT
Yeah, so we did that at a game jam. So, when we made that we were a team of three, so it was Alex, me and Thomas Ingram. And I think it was, I can't remember what game jam it was, but it was a 48-hour kind of thing.
AP
Like when games jams, were like so cool. It's a lot of fun.
JT
And there was a theme, I don't remember what the theme was. I can't remember how we quite got to this as a mechanic.
AP
I cannot remember at all.
JT
I don't know if you got more to. I'm trying to-
AP
Yeah, it was really just I think the first time that we'd just been able to be in a room together and just have free license to make the game, like we're both working. I think I was doing hits of contract work and Josh was working full time at another studio. So, we didn't have many hours in the day really to just make a thing. So, it was like, "Oh, let's go do it, let's give it a shot."
Yeah. I think it was the first time that we divvied up our kind of natural roles of time. I was interested in physics and programming and Josh was just doing just beautiful art. So, I was like, all right, let's carve out our spaces and just give it a go. I don't know how we came up with the idea for this. It's quite remarkable, but just what if we just put two giant sticky hand lumberjacks between a length of rope and get them to fell trees with their bodies? I don't know, we had some wacky brains.
JT
But even looking at it again. I think the three of us were drawn to that kind of, I guess, the tactility of it. The fact that you need to work together to swing and get that kind of momentum. It was all down to the feel of it again, I'd say that was kind of what, if we're trying to draw a link between early work and now, I think that's kind of the thread, just this trying to capture this tactility and second to second movement that feels good before you've even been told to do anything. And I think we're always-
AP
The cool movement was just gripping and funny and just silly. It was another of those local co-op games, which would then bring around to events, and people [inaudible 00:31:54] like kids were cackling at it. Something I think we found in all our games, just that having a physically faced, a system of motion, combined with some sort of intuitive manipulation of that motion and something that's really direct and very tactile is just immediately entertaining for people who pick it up there. People just get it, even if they're not good at it, all that they need to understand is this kind of one motion. And so, it's a very direct form of entertainment, it seems.
JM
Yeah, I think we just saw an example of that. We just did a tour through the gallery, looking at these freshly instituted displays. And when we saw the playable demo for Heavenly Bodies, there was two people playing at co-op just cracking up with laughter. We couldn't get anywhere near it because it's been one of the most popular playable displays. But I'm interested, there's a tendency, it's something I've been guilty of too, is talking about Heavenly Bodies primarily in terms of its visual influences. But looking back through your previous work, both together and separately, that interest in movement and the body and the world is so apparent and is done so satisfyingly in Heavenly Bodies, I am really interested in your decision to move a physics game into a zero-gravity environment and where that came from, the constraints and opportunities that provided?
AP
Totally. We can start with how you originated the-
JT
Yeah. So, I think the very, very inception of the game was purely from mechanical focus. It was about trying to boil down the controls of human body with its gangly limbs, the awkwardness and everything about it, into a zero-gravity environment. I think space was just always there. I think that's kind of how he came to that, because there was also an element of just wondering why it hadn't been done. I think once we started controlling the body and seeing how you can grip onto things and swing around and shift your momentum and just how granular and animated you could be, then thinking about other game set in microgravity or zero gravity, we were kind of like, "Why is the player always so mobile and powerful?" It's like you've got this really interesting context, but you're given these things, whether it's a jet pack or you'll be in environments where gravity's taken away, so you can walk around the spaceship. And I think that made us just knuckle down on it even more and just really try to nail that granular movement of the hands and the body.
AP
Yeah, I think we had this super early prototype where you had this humanoid like form and we designed these articulated arm systems, which allowed you to almost experience almost like a muscular like force where you push in one direction with one stick and where it's gesturing your hand outwards and it's actually using physical forces to move both your shoulder and then move your forearm and then move your wrist in this computer direction to reach in a certain direction. I think in a context, in an environment, in a physical environment with gravity, it's going to look wonky. It's going to be co-op, it's going to be wacky, and it's going to be just like there's too many factors at play in a world with gravity to isolate that movement in a meaningful way. But stripping gravity away, suddenly it's like you can feel the mass of everything.
You can feel inertia, you can feel velocity. I think the first test we had where this very
complex muscular system for this arm actually allowed you to grab onto a wall and push your body away from it and have that surface perform that classical every action has an equal and opposite reaction kind of behaviour to it. It was, "Haaa." It was really, really, really incredible. Never seen it before. You wouldn't really get it. If we have gravity, gravity is such a domineering force in our environment. And so, trying to move tables and trying to push things around, it's all like now it's too hard because of gravity. But zero gravity context, all those forces are so meaningful, and every single force has a real, what's the word, real implications, real consequence. You apply a force in a particularly wrong way, everything's going to go haywire because there's no gravity to keep things grounded and safe and boring.
JM
Something I think's really amazing about the experience of the game is falling in and out of alignment with yourself. I would get into these slow states doing one incredibly specific task. And then as soon as it was done, I was just some guy flopping around. I had no idea what I was doing again. But you have a quote, I'm going to quote you back to yourself, I hope that's okay. But in an interview with Nick Kennedy for Games Hub, you kind of compared Heavenly Bodies to a car racing game, which I think is really interesting because I had also heard the "It's co-op in space," comparison, and it had never landed to me. But this quote, I think really distilled what's going on in Heavenly Bodies.
You compared it to a car racing game. "Where you're given this really complex set of controls and complex set of parameters for how you're meant to control a body, which in a racing game is a car. And you've just got to do one thing, but what makes it so satisfying even after hours of playing is this elegant beauty that comes from the curves and finding the optimum line," outside of I suppose co-op, and janky, silly physics games, I wondered if there were other video game experiences that you'd had that helped you fine tune this experience of the optimum line?
AP
That's really interesting. What comes to mind?
JM
Is it a filter or?
AP
So yeah, there's probably so many inspirations there, but I know what, for some reason I've just got Osmos in my head. I've been thinking about it a lot recently, but you're familiar with Osmos? It's like this, like one of the first kind of like iPod touch games that really blew up and you're like this little, you would circle essentially, it’s kind of like a bacterial blob sort of thing. And you have to shoot tiny pieces of yourself, essentially get rid of tiny pieces of yourself because you're in zero gravity and you're essentially exerting, you're using a change in mass to accelerate yourself. It's a game about velocity and finding arcs and you essentially have to absorb all these other orbs around you to grow bigger and gain enough masks, which you can then use to push yourself around further.
But you have these, I just remember these beautiful, beautiful levels it has where you're revolving around a sun like thing, which gives you a little bit of gravity, but it's all about performing the tiniest little actions, which is getting rid of a tiny little bit of yourself in order to adjust your trajectory by millimetres, so you just avoiding one hazardous object and putting yourself on this harmonious trajectory, that comes to mind.
JT
Yeah, I like racing games anyway, but I think what the thing for me is what you mentioned there about flow state. I think that's the one kind of ingredient that is. What's nice about it, it's the fact that you're at that level where, I don't know whether it happens in Heavenly Bodies, maybe for some people, but you almost need to not be thinking for it to go right.
And I think that's so kind of hypnotizing about racing games. Whether you like cars or not, it's once you're out on the track, all you're trying to do is go fast. It's like from one corner to the next, you're thinking about that flow. And yeah, it happens in our game, I guess. Once you get a grip on the controls, that's the best place to be when you're not thinking about which hand is which, or which way you were trying to go when you've finished something, or you realize you're at the end of a level and you forgot how you got there. I think that's the nice feeling. That's the goal. That's the goal.
AP
That's where you want to be. It certainly takes a lot of practice to get like that.
JT
Yes, it does.
AP
I think that maybe that was a really hard thing in... I suppose it's probably challenging to communicate that to other people and get other people to experience that because this is a magical experience, which we probably only had after however many dozens, 100s, eventually 1000s of hours of playing this thing, you do start to, you feel like a puppeteer, or a cross between a puppeteer and a gymnast. And you can carry those curves like...
JT
And it still even happens to us. Half the time we're sloppy or whatever, but we'll be play testing or implementing a new mechanic and I'll be watching Alex, or he'll be watching and there'll be moments where you go, "Whoa, that was nice." And it's just someone plugging something in or taking a turn, but there are these little glimpses into it, just being kind of elegant, I suppose. It goes back to why we kept chasing the prototype, just like that feeling of watching people on the ISS gracefully, some assaulting and tumbling around that. That doesn't just happen as soon as you get to space. And I feel like there's a bit of a parallel with that game. You think, because it's a game you'll pick it up when you master it, but it really does take a bit of time to shake off that clumsiness.
JM
And an attitude shift as well, I think. The first time I started playing the game, I started on assisted because I assumed I had this concept that I would be bad at it, but it was probably going to be really hard, and I was probably not going to be very good at it. But weirdly I found the game way more approachable on Classical Newtonian because it just changed the way I... Particularly on Newtonian, it's just impossible to think about anything. You just have to be a body, you just have to be a body, it's all you can do, which is perfect.
I'm interested in how you kind of, though also love assisted mode, particularly getting down from the data tower into that level. I turn it on every time. I'm like, "We're not doing this today." But I'm interested in how you fine-tuned those three settings to facilitate that experience or to facilitate the game for a wider variety of players. I imagine that was complex process.
JT
Yeah. You can probably speak to that what's going on under the hood with the physics.
AP
Yeah, it was very, very challenging and I think still to this day there's probably things we trying to do better. But yeah, I think from the beginning it's been very, very hard to identify what people find difficult about the game. It's not because it's not a get good kind of attitude, but it seems like some people the brains just wire into it straight away and just get it. It's almost like this strange brain plasticity kind of thing. It's just like, can I explain it? Some people just pick it up and like, "Yep, let's go. Let's do it." And some people don't. So, I think we obviously started with this system of physics driven motion and in a humanoid form and tried to get that sort of working as a base, like a base system, just get it stable, just get the things moving about how they should. And then from there we did our best to try and identify what people found the most challenging limitations of having a body in zero gravity.
JM
There's actually a note here in your sketchbook that really made me laugh. That just says, in a production meeting from two years ago, "Moving in void doesn't feel great."
JT
You probably should have canned the game at that point.
AP
It does not. It's terrible.
JM
How did you approach the pretty fundamental problem of moving in a void, not feeling great?
JT
I feel like that specific note that I took was when I think we were prototyping new spaces and I think we were trying to see what happens when you travel further away from structures. And really quickly we realized that as soon as there isn't something within a meter or two of reach, like if you've made a mistake and you're moving in the wrong direction and you're forced to live with that for too long, there's nothing fun about it. It's just frustrating. So, it became a bit of a design constraint. I suppose that from that point on, it was either going to be give players plenty of opportunities to grab onto things and have their movement back or make it really easy to correct things and have momentum that pushes them back. Because if you just stuck in the middle of a room spinning with nothing to grab-
AP
It's a very humid, it's like it's claustrophobic but in the inverse way where you've got this... What worse a nightmare is of being suspended in a space where-
JT
The infinite way, the harsh-
AP
Laws of physics and you can't move, you can't go. You just stuck.
JT:
Yeah. It was like getting akin to having a fear of being in the ocean or something. You just feel so stranded and isolated that you just say, "I don't want to play anymore." Yeah, it's not nice.
JM:
And in the end, the classic mode is pretty forgiving. You can have a little slim. Yeah. You'd have a little slim in space in classic mode, which is a bit more forgiving.
JT:
Most people really don't seem to comprehend the idea that you can't, again, zero gravity, you can't just rotate your body arbitrarily, you can't just gesture it something and hope to spin, to orient in that direction. So even in classic mode, we've got this ability to point your hand in the direction that you want to go, and your body will tumble in that direction. Because again, it's another infuriating and just like, "I should be able to do this," but it just makes people very upset, which is reasonable. Yeah, fair.
JM:
I imagine there would be a few expectations that you had to break down with this game. For one thing it's very warm. It's not scary. I would say looking at a lot of space games they either kooky or scary and I would not categorise Heavenly Bodies, probably closer to the kooky end of the spectrum than the scary end, but neither, absolutely not either, which I suppose is partly to do with the visual design visual and identity of the game. I wonder if you could, I know the game began with physics and with movement, but how quickly did you start looking at those architects and designers of spacecraft in the 70s and 80s? It was a visual reference.
JT:
Yeah, really early on. I think looking back, I guess, mid 60s and onwards when everything was starting up. I think what compelled us to that sort of era is just this level of, I guess the unknown, as in everything genuinely was being attempted for the first time and things were being romanticised and there was quite a naive mentality towards this sort of exploration that was going on. And there was just a lot of things that were actually being done in real life, just felt fake. They were quite fascinating or magical, and we'd often look at references or old space programs and we're just like, "They actually did that, it's bizarre." We're doing it as a game, which is one thing, but humans were actually attempting this in the 60s, so it was just fascinating.
And then the visual aesthetic is just something we've always been drawn to, that 60s, 70s. You can see with our earlier work that more tactile kind of warm use of mediums was just more what we aligned with. And the speaking to what you said just before about the scary sci-fi elements of space, we just never really considered that. We never wanted it to be a cold, hard surfaced modern space game. Not that there's anything wrong with that. We just wanted to see a game that looked like all the nice kind of illustrations and artistic interpretations of what it was like to go into space before anybody did it. So, we're trying to take those sorts of elements of it.
JM:
And one of the ways you brought that in was through reference to this Soviet space, architect, Galina Balashova, who did these pretty incredible aquarelles for various Soviet spacecraft in the period that are so warm and inviting and colourful. It must have been kind of a relief being like, "Oh great, somebody's figured out how to make space look fun."
JT:
Yeah, remembering that it's humans going up there and that they need to be comfortable, and things need to look nice as well. It's been really interesting just because designing the game, we've always kept a pretty healthy balance I suppose, between the influence of the Soviet space program versus something like the work of NASA. It's always been kind of half and half, but it has been interesting looking at the parallels, sorry, the differences between the two. When you look at Galina's work, it's very approachable from the outside. I think you wouldn't really assume it's the work of a big team of engineers and people building a spacecraft. You kind of just want that radio at home. Whereas when you look at stuff that NASA was doing, it's sort of two extremes. It's either a really cool, but harsh technical illustration, that's quite cold and just minimal weight, totally efficient.
And then at the other end of their work, you've got more artistic sort of renderings of things to get the public on board with what NASA was doing. There really wasn't much in between except for these outside artists. Whereas with the Soviet space program Galina's the champion of it, or the face of it. Her work always comes to the top and it's just hard to ignore the great work that she was doing. So, it was a big influence when we came across her stuff.
JM:
Yeah, I think she is an architect, not an engineer. And I think that distinction is so apparent. Again, I have a quote from her from My Life Under the Stars, where she describes her relationship with the engineers being that, not just colour selection, though I do want to talk about colour more, but the understanding that a specific interior must be created for a spherical room and features designed in proportion to the shape of the room was essential to match these features to the body height of the person. And in my opinion, this constitutes the actual difference to the work of the engineers. For them, the relationship between man and machine was irrelevant. Which speaks just seems to synthesize the last 10 years of the stuff you've been making independently and together so perfectly. This incredibly close understanding of the relationship between the body and the machine. And you can see visually the influence in this screen shark from one of the opening sections of the game and the comms terminal itself.
I still can't believe that you naturally work this way. It's made my job so easy that. This is just the document you made and worked with.
But to get back to Galina, one of the things that she's known for is using colour coding to recreate the illusion of an up and down or direction. I'm wondering how much you borrowed from that in the game.
JT:
Yeah, colour definitely corresponds to systems in our game. So, whether something is, for example, if a cable is running power, it's always orange or red. If it's running data, it'll be blue. All of our grabbable utilities are usually yellow to hint that they're non-critical, but you might want to consider using it. And then I guess colour for orientation as well, just like differentiating between sections of a level, because once you've been doing something and you spun the camera around a few times, it's hard to keep that sense of orientation. So yeah, just using them as big visual cues of where you were compared to where you are.
And also, just readability trying to keep things quite big and bold because the actions that you're performing are so granular, it's just with your hands, you really need to be able to see at a distance what it is that you are about to use or encounter. And because it is quite tedious, even just moving around, we don't want to compound that confusion. So yeah, we bring everything forward with colour in that way.
JM:
That's something you were speaking to before our interview as well, this idea that you weren't just visually or aesthetically inspired by this design sensibility. But on a functional level, it was an approach that you had to take. You [inaudible 00:57:53] parallel design process.
JT:
Yeah, just given the constraints of trying to make a game where you sit down, and you can read it and then it's just about figuring out how to do it. That's definitely why certain things are just, whether they're bigger than what they would be in real life or whether they're more gestural or an interpretation that's like, that technically wouldn't work, but I understand what it's trying to do. A lot of that does align with the Soviet approach to how they tackled their spacecraft. Everything was quite readable and logical and it's just how we had to really go to make things make sense. It's a good approach. If you can read what something does at a distance, if it's communicating its function, that's always a good start.
AP:
Yeah. It was a very harmonious intersection there.
JM:
You had a similar story about the belt loops.
JT:
Oh yeah. So, from developing it and testing it once we started bringing in tools and other things that you needed to carry, your two hands are your main vehicle for moving around, so if one hand is holding something, like a spanner, it really only leaves you with one hand. And so, we are thinking there's got to be another way to take things with you that don't introduce a more conventional game inventory or menu or something like that. And then we thought, well, it would make sense to just kind of like you'd put it in a pocket, like you'd clip it to your belt. So, we had this idea of adding just hoops or key rings to your space suit and then flicking through reference one day, like through museum photos, we found an old cosmonaut suit, and around the waist they had the exact same thing. Just carabiners buckled onto it.
And then I was flicking through a Smithsonian thing of all things they bought back from the Apollo missions, and they just had this huge buckle, because they were wearing their gloves, so everything needs to be big and oversized. So, they had this huge buckle that you just hook on. So, we took, well, we'd already designed it, I suppose-
AP:
It was the same design.
JT:
Then we saw the reference. It was like, "Okay, we just solved the same problem that they had to solve back in the 70s." It was kind of validating as well.
AP:
Yeah, there's this weird parallel about us having to create a game which is readable and user friendly. We're basically creating the same technology that space scientists did in the 60s. Just through the necessities of what these astronauts are having to use with giant oven, mid gloves. It's this similar scale of interactivity, which seems to be parallel exactly to what we're making.
JT:
It was a good lesson too, in that solutions to things really don't need to be that overcooked or designed. It was nice to just be like, "Yeah, just clip it to your pants. That's all you need to do, and it'll work."
JM:
My final question before we open up for audience questions also relates to parallels. You were talking about the 60s, 70s, 80s, being this particularly 60s and 70s, being this period of space optimism and a period where the idea of space was exciting, but there was also a huge amount of pressure on the idea of space to be exciting. We are in a similar period now I would say, when there is a lot of media being generated about the idea of space as a commodity or a resource.
I was particularly thinking about this playing the level mineral the other day when a little cosmonaut goes to an asteroid field and starts mining them for ore. While Heavenly Bodies would broadly be categorized as a non-violent game and violence in video games is a bit of an overplayed topic, I think there's something to be said about video games and their potential propaganda elements. Both spacecraft are machines of functions, either military machines or in the case of SpaceX and Blue Origin, capitalist machines. And I'm just interested in how, and if you thought about, the social ramifications of making space games?
JT:
Yeah, for sure. I think we definitely did go in with the same sort of pure and naive intentions and visions for this sort of portrayals of space that the public is experiencing in the 1960s. But indeed, pretty much as we were starting up this project, like SpaceX and all this is really coming into the forefront of conversation and clearly just becoming a horrible issue. It's Laden with issues about being about colonialism and there's a minute just mining and it's so flawed.
And I think from the very beginning, space exploration and research here require this level of capital, which is often backed by the military or by mining or by just nasty characters, making nasty deals. So, it's not a particularly positive space in many ways. And I think certainly with something like minerals, that particular mission, in hindsight probably wasn't a great take. And I think we even received a little bit of feedback about the planting of the flags on the little asteroids and how this very sort of colonial act of chucking your national flag on unknown soil or whatever, was just not a great image. So, we try our best to recontextualizes what those flags were all about. But even then, probably didn't nail it. And in retrospect we probably would've tried to be a little bit more critical. What do you think?
Yeah. I think we definitely will be more conscious of that stuff moving forward. I think we were very just so focused on the mechanics. I mean that level specifically was about extending a reach of where you go in the game and giving people access to this vehicle. And it was like, "Well, what do you do with it?" "You explore." What do you find? You don't know. That's why it's exciting. So, you grab it, and you bring it back. But yeah, reading it from a distance, it can have very different messages and we put a flag in there because it was a way pointing thing. So, you could put it down to remember which way you went, but someone looking onwards is like, you just claiming that rock and I think we do it differently. Bit of a tunnel vision. Whirlwind development through a weird few years as well.
JM:
Well, I will say as beautiful as the game is it did not encourage me to go to space. I have been a long-time space hater and I like it that way. I lied; I have one more question. You're working on one final update; you're working on an update to the beginning.
JT:
Yeah. More content.
JM:
Currently.
JT:
Yes.
AP:
Don't quite know when yet it'll be out, but soon enough hopefully.
JM:
I mean that feels very soon after a lease. How does it feel to re-tread that territory?
JT:
It's difficult. It is tricky. Our main drive has been going back and trying to find the things that we never had room for that we wish made it into the base game. And that's how we're finding the fun in it again.
AP:
Not that bit is cool. It's nice that we know that anyone who's going to be playing this additional content has played and most likely enjoyed the first half. So, they know how to move their bodies in out of space already. They can take a little limit some liberties. Yeah, indulge themselves a little bit. So that's how we frame it, but it's been a long time working on this project. So, I think we're both pretty keen to get that out and see what's next.
JM:
Get out of space for a bit.
JT:
So sick of space.
JM:
If we have just a couple of minutes for audience questions, there's a live mic going around. So, people watching the live stream will be able to hear your questions.
Audience member 1:
Hello.
JT:
Hey Michael.
Audience member 1:
Big fan. Thank you very much for that talk. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your process as a team and as collaborators, I know that you loosely fall into these two roles of the artists and the engineer or whatever, but there's obviously a lot of other stuff that goes into making a game that isn't just making art or programming. I'd be curious to know how you negotiate that stuff between you, how you divide that up and how you work together?
JT:
Good question.
AP:
It's pretty organic I suppose.
JT:
Yeah, do you mean in relation to the development or just everything outside of like the-
AP:
Workflow.
JT:
The running, yeah.
Audience member 1:
Like how you'd go about designing a level and who does that? Is it just one person's job to do that?
JT:
It's a bit of both, but I think I dump ideas a lot more. Like the comms terminal concepts, I think once we know that we're going to tackle something new, we vaguely like, "Okay, we're making a new level. Here's a bunch of various things that we could do and that it'll usually be way more than what we need." And then it's a process of both deciding what's interesting. I'll see something you wrote, and it'll be like, "Oh yeah. How about we do that?" Or vice versa. Nothing's really isolated until it comes time to program or start building assets.
AP:
I think particularly with Heavenly Bodies, I think that's kind of the reason why our initial play date meeting was so successful, it was like we just had this weird sort of hive mind energy. We always just resolved things like exactly the same conclusion when it comes to any sort of design consideration or challenge or even references or whatever. This is a lovely kind of mind reading ability. So, when we are putting together design docs, we'll be writing the same sentences half the time. But otherwise, we've had to become very good at using collaborative software, remote collaborative software over COVID, God forbid we mention it.
As you say, dump it all together and then just sculpt something out of it. Maybe one of us will do a sketch or a...
JT:
And then I think too, from the process of working on something for so long, it just becomes intuition, really. Like you can just tell straight away that's not Heavenly Bodies. You can have a million and we get a lot of suggestions and stuff that are related to space or to physics games or whatever, but pretty quickly both of us will just be like, "No, that's not what the games about it."
AP:
It just ain't cricket.
JT:
Yeah, so it's just intuition, I suppose.
AP:
It's not a helpful answer.
JT:
No.
Audience member 1:
Sounds nice.
JT:
Well, I mean the downside to that is when it doesn't work, it really doesn't work. If one of us comes to a halt, always stumped, productivity just really like.
AP:
Yeah, and the depression sets in.
JT:
So that's the hard part of it.
JM:
I think there was one more question up the back.
Audience member 2:
Hello. Hi.
JT:
Hey.
AP:
Hey.
Audience member 2:
I was just wondering what the process of actually controlling and interacting with the game, how that came to be? Because as a game, it feels very sort of designed for controllers first and foremost. So, I was just wondering, was there a lot of experimentation or did you know what you wanted to do pretty much immediately with that?
AP:
I think we he had a drawing in your book for what it should look like initially.
JT:
Yeah, the initial prototype was one stick or the mouse, would just point your limbs where you wanted them to go. And that worked for a controller or for keyboard, but the downside there is you don't have independent control and you also couldn't really bend your arms as much when you don't have that. So yeah, for a good year or two, we were just developing for controller and then keyboard, and mouse became a really serious consideration where we considered that people have different needs to play the game and they're going to need to potentially rebind controls or just remap it in a way that we haven't thought of for accessibility purposes.
AP:
But I think in all of our games that we've made together; I think we always imagined that we're going to be playing them with controller. And I think, because it all comes back to disconnect desired as a create and simulate and then control, find physical motions and keyboards are inherent, like their binary systems where the key is on or off.
But analogue is by definition, it says analogue input where you can apply a very natural dynamic level of force upon your virtual character or avatar or whatever that might be. So being able to control these arms with the two analogue joysticks, it's a very important relationship there. Not to mention the fact that it's this symmetrical input device, which naturally maps to the symmetry of the human body, so it always made sense. And it's playing with the keyboard, real tough, don't recommend it.
JM:
I think it makes a lot of sense that Sony snapped it up for PS5. Given that organic analogue.
AP:
Funny is that, isn't it.
JM:
All right. I think that's all we have time for. Thank you so much for joining me, Alex and Josh. That was delightful. Thank you for making such an excellent game.