Create 3D Games With Jumala

 Who wants to be able to create their own video games?  I think the answer is almost all of us.  With Jumala, it's a possibility.

The first day of PAX found me wandering around the convention center and city taking everything in before my appointment for a demo of Jumala and an interview with their CTO Frank Savage. 

If you’re like me, you’re asking, “What is Jumala?”  Well, I asked the same question and did my research before the interview, but nothing prepared me for what I saw at Starbucks that morning.

To put it in my words, Jumala is a game that lets you create games, lets you play games you and other people have created, lets you redesign games other people have created as well as being a game itself.  You can get achievements for playing and making games, you have a social chat to chat with other game developers and players, and, more importantly, you get a chance to get feedback on your games and see what other people can do with the base game you’ve created.

So long story short, it’s a game about making games.  How cool is that?

However, Frank explained the game to me even more since I had never seen it and was a great help in getting me to understand it.

Kayhynn:   Tell me a bit about Jumala.

Frank: So the short stick is that we wanted to enable making a game for people who don’t have a lot of programming skills but want to be able to make 3D games and haven’t had a chance to be able to do it.  It’s not school.  It’s really a game about making games.  We don’t want people to sit down and open something up that feels like 3D Studio MAX or even something like Unity or Unreal.  We want something that feels like a gaming experience, that feels fun like a game so that instead of being intimidated about making the game they want to make, they can feel like they’re actually playing something and they are having fun while they’re creating their game.

Download is about 20 MB and is currently PC only.  We do plan to get to as many platforms as possible in the long term.  To get in, you have to create an account on the website.  We are now in limited open beta, so anyone that registers gets to participate in the beta.  We stream all of our 3D content down as you need it, so there’s no giant download down for all the content you need.  There’s a real 3D engine running behind it, with shadows and all of that, but we do scale it back to run on almost any machine you have.  

Kayhynn:  Will this work on Netbooks?

Frank:  Well, we can give it the good college try and see.  We do run on the low end video cards out there, it won’t look great but it will run on it.  On the higher end laptops and computers, you’ll see much better graphics.  

Kayhynn:  What is the reason behind having to login to create games?

Frank: Part of the reason we make you log-in to play is because we track your progress in a number of different ways.  This includes tracking how you level up.  Leveling up is determined by how many games you’ve played and completed.  We’re also going to track how you have been building in a number of different areas as well.

Kayhynn:  So any game you build is shared with everyone else?

Frank:  It can be, but not by default.  You have your own private area of games that you’re building and working on.  Once you publish it, it will show up for everyone else to play.  No one is going to jump in and play on your works-in-progress and start critiquing you before you are ready for it to be out there.  Once the games are live, they can start playing the game, giving you advice, telling you what is really cool, what they didn’t like, what they thought of different things, share ideas etc.

Once you get into the arcade, you can clone a lot of the games in the arcade.  So if you decide you want your friends to be able to modify your game, you can allow them to copy it so other people can start designing it and working on it.  However, we want things to get more collaborative than that.  For example, you and your friends can create a common game that three of you are working on together and it’s blocked off for just the three of you.  So you could be working on the terrain aspects of it.  Your other friend is working on the logic and design of things, such as how the gates are opening, how the triggers are firing, how the enemies attack and those kinds of things. The other friend could be working on the special effects and how it’s all going to fit together.

We have a lot of seed games already in place.  We’ve been in closed beta for a while, so our community has already built a number of games.  So you can get an idea of what has been done already by a lot of people.

We have a lot of quests and those are on both sides of the fence.  There are both play quests and build quests.  So on the play side of the world, we have a quest to killing pumpkins. One of the enemies available for the games are these little pumpkins that chase you, squish around on the ground behind you and try to kill you.  You may get a quest to kill X number of pumpkins, so all you have to do is kill them in various games.

We also have achievements in the game.  So if you kill a certain number of pumpkins between the games you play, or complete some of the games we have,  you can unlock an achievement.  

Now both quests and achievements have an equivalent on the build side as well.  Planting a certain number of trees, editing some amount of terrain, painting a certain amount of terrain, placing or changingskyboxes, changing water levels, changing the lighting, placing game objects, wiring and logic, and more.  All of those things will give you achievements.  So you’re not building a game just to create a game, it’s about playing and building a game at the same time.  It makes you want to get in and play the game as well.

There is a commons area as well which is where the social aspect of the game is.  I have two friend requests waiting for me to approve them .  So we have a complete friend system and chat system.  You can see when they’re online, see who have played what games, see who have played your game last and more.

There is a Reward system as well.  There are two currencies inside the game.  There is a currency, called sparks, which you get for playing and finishing games.  Then there is a currency you get for when people play your games as well.

These currencies can be used to purchase items to be used in the game.  You go into the store which will show you all the things you can buy. You can buy things such as props, which range from trees and rocks and grass type things to place in the world to decorate it, to interactive objects like platforms, collectibles gems, or trees that have special effects.  Or you can buy enemies which can range from humanoid enemies which throw things and shoot things at you, or pumpkins that squish along and try to kill you to crocodiles which chase you and try to bite and kill you.  

There are also a ton of hazards you can purchase.  These can be skulls that bounce up and down and try to kill you.  It could be a static hazard, like a cactus that if you run into will kill you.  Floor spikes can pop out of the ground to kill you or shooting darts that you place on the walls to shoot at your players to attempt to kill them.  There’s a lot of hazards in the game.

You can place skyboxes to change the mood of your game depending on the feeling you want for it which can be purchased and placed into the game.  There’s different types of materials available in the game to change the color of things.  So if you want a pink-polka dotted cactus, you can do that.

Kayhynn:  Tell me a bit about the avatars available to players in the game.

Frank: You are free as a player to pick whatever avatar you want when you play games.  However, in the future, game designers will be able to choose which avatar will be allowed to use in games. You can decide  your game is only able to be played with a specific avatar, or you can allow any avatar you want in the game, it will be up to the designers.

Frank then demonstrated Jumala to me, both the building a game aspect and how easy it was to start building a game, as well as what playing an existing game was like.  The game runs smoothly, considering that you stream down content as you're building your world instead of loading it all to your machine.  Considering we were very near PAX at Starbucks, it was amazing to see how well the game played on a wireless connection.  Creating logic in the game was extremely easy, some things being as easy as dragging and dropping things where you want it to go. He did mention to me that everything I’ve seen in the games will be available for purchase in the store when the game goes live, from campfires to patterns etc. and they will be adding to it constantly.

Kayhynn:  With the ability for players to give direct feedback and interaction with developers of new games in Jumala, are you seeing a lot of interaction between players and developers?  If so, what kind?

Frank:  What we have with Jumala is an interaction between the gamer and developer that we’ve never had before in this industry.  People can start working together to make the game better which hasn’t been done before.

One of the things that’s very different about this game is that at any time while playing I can pause and go into build mode.  What that means is that everything inside this radius here, I have the full set of build suite tools, minus a few features.  For example, I can select this and have some of the properties here that I can edit and do stuff with.  So I can try something different.  So like if I had another gated area here in the radius and try wiring stuff up to see what would happen in this game they’ve made.  Then I can tell the developer to try this to make things better and how to do it.  And once you’re done, you can move out of build mode and continue playing the game.

We’ve seen a lot of communication happening on the forums.  With the friend system, we hope to see more interaction.  We hope for players to interact with each other and help each other to improve their games.

Kayhynn:  How often do you add content to the game?

Frank: We’re constantly updating content, once every two weeks.  We do full updates of the client once a month right now.

Kayhynn:  Is this free to play or will there be a premium option or something like that?

Frank: It’s completely free-to-play right now.  We haven’t really decided anything with a premium option yet. It’s still up in the air.  The business model is to sell items in available in the stores for .50 or .60 cents a pop, such as the skyboxes, which are so beautiful.

Kayhynn:  What is the biggest selling point of this game?

Frank:  There’s a lot of things out there that let you build a 3D world, but there’s a couple of things they are missing.  One is you need a rich 3D pallette.  You need someone who is good in Maya or other programs, to create these graphics and backgrounds.  That’s what’s great about it.  We give you all the tools to put things together.  You don’t need a programmer.  You don’t need an artist.  You can build it yourself and we make it really easy.  It’s all there for you to use.  Someone can sit down and in a short period of time they can put together a small interactive experience and shout it to their friends and say “Look I made this.”

There are so many things you can do.  You’ve made a ton of individual decisions, no game will be the same as another.  The sky is the limit.

Kayhynn: Can people advertise the games they’ve made in Jumala?

Frank:  Yes.  Because it is a very online, interactive application, people can embed links on their websites   The links will launch the application if the client is installed.  If they don’t have the client installed, it will take them to the install page and then it will launch the game automatically.

Kayhynn:  Is Jumala in open beta, closed beta or what?

Frank:  As of PAX, you no longer need a key to download and play the game.  Starting today,Aug. 26, you don’t need a key and can start playing with it and see what you can do.

Kayhynn:  Is there an age limit?  Can children sign up?

Frank:  There is no age limit but that is not the target audience, though we have noticed that children do enjoy playing the games and trying to create them as well.

Kayhynn:  What made you come up with this idea of Jumala?

Frank: For me, I’ve been in the industry for 20 years now and one of the things I’ve heard from fans on the games I’ve worked on over and over again was “Man, I wish I could make games.  I wish I could spend the time to become a programmer and figure all this stuff out.” That was part of the inspiration and part of the motivation I had when I was working at Microsoft.  I wanted to be able to push the game development ability to people who couldn’t do it before.  We created a tool at Microsoft that our Web developers could use to create things, but we still couldn’t solve the issue of content.  They still needed someone that could be a 3D artist to help them. I wanted to build these tools at Microsoft, but I didn’t have the opportunity to do it.

I saw this local, Seattle-based company that had taken this technology, added to it and built this set of tools and were just a step away from taking it to the consumer level so that everyone could do this. I thought it was a great opportunity.  So about two years ago, I left Microsoft to come to this company and work with them.

Kayhynn:  What games have you worked on previously with Microsoft?

Frank:  Mech Commander, Mech Commander Gold, Mech Commander 2, I then worked XBox and Xbox 360,  then XBox Games Studio and the games that they were producing.  Before that I was with Origin Systems and worked on Wing Commander and Wing Commander 2.

Kayhynn:  What are some things you are looking forward to adding to Jumala?

Frank:  Oh so many things.  There are so many things I want to add it’s almost ridiculous, so this list isn’t in any particular order.  Lots and lots more game objects and capabilities, whether it’s camera angles to allow to do 3rd person or 1st person, adding in card games and puzzle games if we wanted, sprite based games if we want to.  We hope to get it embedded into a browser game so we can bring the 3D technology to Facebook and such for those that play Farmville, etc.  Eventually we’d like to get it on mobile devices, like the Android phones, iPads and more.  Most of those devices these days have 3D cards that can easily handle this.

Below is a promo video for Jumala. Over the next couple of weeks we'll be linking some tutorial videos as well. Enjoy!