Believe it or not, Bungie's latest didn't take that long to develop -- oh, you read the headline? Well, aren't you perceptive! Yes, Crimson: Steam Pirates (not to be confused with The Crimson Permanent Assurance) only took 12 weeks to create, believe it or not.
It's the subject of a Gamasutra postmortem by developer Harebrained Schemes' Aljernon Bolden, who worked in the trenches over those dozen weeks to create what is one of the top free iPad apps. His diatribe recounts the last month (it launched on September 1, remember?) and how a team of seven people was able to meet deadline. Did you know the game uses animations originally created as flipbook animations in Flash? Just one of the many interesting tidbits to be discovered!
Do yourself a favor and give it a read. It's not only a great read to learn how a first-time developer was able to come up with high-impact, low-cost solutions to achieve its goal, it's also fascinating stuff for budding developers -- and in this App store world we're living in, that should be at least 75 percent of you.
Reader Comments (15)
Posted: Oct 1st 2011 7:06AM ShingoEX said
More like "not to be confused with Crimson Alliance or Crimson Skies".
Also, "how a team of seven people was able to meet deadline". By now, you should know that Bungie likes the number 7.
Also, "how a team of seven people was able to meet deadline". By now, you should know that Bungie likes the number 7.
Posted: Oct 1st 2011 8:19AM Calatia said
three months
Posted: Oct 1st 2011 11:02AM Fungi said
Pshaw! Atari made E.T. in only 6 weeks! They also did Pac-Man in only 6 weeks! So... there?
Posted: Oct 1st 2011 11:05AM jordanmorganapps said
That's a pretty good dev cycle. My projects take around 4 months for iOS.
Posted: Oct 1st 2011 12:41PM killias2 said
I guess it's easy to do that when you're ripping off other games.
http://www.andymoore.ca/2011/08/the-third-cloning-of-steambirds/
http://www.andymoore.ca/2011/08/the-third-cloning-of-steambirds/
Posted: Oct 1st 2011 7:01PM Fire Walk With Me said
@killias2 joystiq has always been pretty bad with any title smaller than CoD.
SteamBirds is on WP7 and this isnt so SteamBirds for me.
Reply
SteamBirds is on WP7 and this isnt so SteamBirds for me.
Posted: Oct 1st 2011 1:15PM darkinchworm said
Pimps at Sea, it ain't
Posted: Oct 1st 2011 1:57PM AquaShibby3000 said
Meaning of Life reference for the win.
Posted: Oct 1st 2011 5:11PM kilroy214 said
I have to state that Steam Pirates is effing boring. I am a HUGE Bungie fan and I will pay fast attention to anything they are involved in. I downloaded this the day it came out and put it down the same day.
Posted: Oct 2nd 2011 1:58AM mmmfishtacos said
I really wanted to like this game, but i cant. It's nice to see them do something totally different from halo.





