Tomislav Pongrac’s indie improvement story begins off like many others. A developer in search of a artistic outlet, to make games that individuals will take pleasure in, influenced by artwork and leisure, trying to hold the studio alive and effervescent with new tasks, however life like that it’s by no means going to make anybody wealthy.
But I’ve by no means met of another developer who’s so obsessive about their creation that they use their very own physique – put it by excessive bodily and dietary pressures – so as to recreate one thing as distinctive as their very own metabolism in-game. Pongrac starved himself, catalogued his bowel actions, woke at 3am to eat, pressured himself to get fats and excessive on sugar, and extra – so he may seize all these bodily modifications in his game.
Before his survival game, Scum, was even an idea, Pongrac’s analytic analysis would have given some indication of the meta to come back. Around three years in the past, whereas the Croatian studio Gamepires was “depressed” after the discharge of its racing game Gas Guzzlers, Pongrac started to analysis the highest 10 games on Steam. Not with the intention of copying a success, however seeing what, how and why that they had confirmed fashionable.
“I was trying to find a compromise between what my team is capable of doing with six people, the amount of quality we can bring, and the ways that we can improve the genre,” he tells me throughout Reboot Develop. “We didn’t want to make a survival game at the time, we just wanted to see what it would be capable to do.”
“First I starved for one day, then switched to a normal diet so I wouldn’t go too extreme. Then I took two days without food, and then three days”
After presenting his findings about sandbox and survival games to the crew, Pongrac mentioned they simply checked out their ft, uninspired by his analysis. “That was the first and biggest challenge. You start to doubt yourself and your colleagues,” he says.
It wasn’t simply the swelling curiosity in survival and sandbox games on the time that impressed Pongrac, however the statistics of World of Tanks, and his personal fond recollections of character creation in tabletop role-playing games Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Cyberpunk 2020. This is what would finally make Scum stand out from different survival games; drilling down into the character, your bodily capabilities in-game, manner past fundamental energy, talent and intelligence stats.
“Our character creation system is basically a classic RPG system which has our unique soft skill sets. [Tabletop RPGs] helped a lot with this character creation process. Now you have to understand that in Scum I have incorporated different parts of my life.”
Pongrac has at all times been a bodily particular person, taking over karate and different martial arts when he was youthful, however transferring on to weights and cardio as a result of he “got too old to be beaten up.” This bodily development impressed an obsessive focus in Pongrac, to the purpose the place metabolism – the conversion of meals to vitality and protein, and the excretion of waste – grew to become a significant curiosity. And that is the true differentiator for Scum. This is a game that tracks nutritional vitamins, energy and digestion. You go away marks the place you urinate or defecate, which can be utilized to trace you down. Scum counts the variety of enamel you have got, which impacts what you may eat.
All of this originates from his experiments.
“The best way to try things, especially if you’re working on a survival game, is to try to survive,” says Pongrac. “We have to have food and water and a place to dump. These are essential to us. I decided to try a number of different tests on my own body.”
The first experiment was to disclaim his personal physique 600 energy lower than he wanted every day. For three months.
“I’d read that people during the second world war in a concentration camp were provided with 800 – 1,200 calories per day which is way below your daily needs,” he says. “I definitely didn’t want to eat just 800 calories. But what happens if I eat 600 calories less than I need? This experiment lasted for three months during which I did only cardio – running and spinning. I noticed that the first thing that I lost was my muscle mass and then fat. After three months I was so weak that I couldn’t open a jar of pickles. That was enough.”
Pongrac continued with the experiments, practically all of which lasted between three and 6 months, and through which he meticulously logged his caloric consumption and different stats. His second experiment concerned consuming no matter he needed, every time he needed, and his muscle mass returned after a month. “That’s astonishing,” he says. “These things are normal for human beings. Your muscle has memory. Even though you lose it because it’s simpler to dissolve muscle to get energy than fat. And once I got back to my normal weight of 69kg, it stopped. It stopped no matter how much I ate or did, it stopped.”
The third experiment required consuming between 8-10 meals per day, every being 300 energy, like a traditional bodybuilding routine for bettering muscle mass. “I grew to almost 79kg which is the heaviest I’ve been in my entire life. I never felt better. I had to wake at 3am to eat a meal. It was tedious but it was reassuring to know each plate was 300 calories. I got to the point where I couldn’t put on my clothes. I got to the point where I either stop or change my whole wardrobe. I’m not a young guy. I will be 45 soon and my testosterone levels are lower than when I was younger so it’s much harder to grow muscle mass,” he says.
It’s throughout experiment three that Pongrac’s analysis will get a little bit messy, and particularly bizarre when he’s telling me this and looking out straight into my eyes.
“I went for a dump at least five times a day,” he says. “The best part, and why I felt so good, was my body was functioning fantastically.”
“When you take a dump you have to take a look at what comes out of your ass. If you don’t have to wipe your ass you’re doing the right job. If you have to wipe your ass or it’s too hard you’re doing something wrong. You have to balance stuff. During that period I didn’t have to wipe my ass at all. That’s a huge amount of time and paper you save.”
“When you take a dump you have to take a look at what comes out of your ass. If you don’t have to wipe your ass you’re doing the right job. During that period I didn’t have to wipe my ass at all. That’s a huge amount of time and paper you save”
Depending on the way you take a look at it, all of that is both invaluable analysis or a tragic waste of time. All of that is elective in Scum. Pongrac is placing himself by ache for an extra characteristic that you just don’t have to actually interact with in any manner in any respect. It’s like writing a 100 hour RPG understanding lower than 10 % of gamers will see all of it, however extra gruelling.
“This is a huge thing that a lot of people don’t realise the game has, but it’s actually not that important,” he admits.
And but the obsession continued to the purpose the place Pongrac starved himself, though fortunately to not such excessive lengths.
“Starvation was for three days,” he reveals. “First I starved for in the future, then switched to a traditional food plan so I wouldn’t go too excessive. Then I took two days with out meals, after which three days.
“When you don’t eat for 3 days really you’re feeling very well. My sense of odor obtained higher, however just for meals. I work in a small workplace and if any person began to eat it was so annoying. I used to be attempting to pay attention however couldn’t do it. It’s like your physique is solely wanting this sort of meals though you don’t really feel hungry in any respect. The first day was horrible, however after that I consider I may maintain myself at the very least 5 days with no need to eat.”
Even when the bodily pressure of those diets was an excessive amount of, Pongrac turned a severe harm into a possibility to proceed with the experiments.
“Unfortunately during one of the exercises I had a spinal injury and I had to stop,” he says. “I obtained actually depressed as a result of I used to be being actually thorough with these experiments. I assumed, what can I do proper now?
“So I attempted one thing actually harmful. In in the future I switched from a keto food plan to actually excessive carb consumption. I continued to try this for months, which suggests I had sugar, drank Coke, ate all the pieces thought-about unhealthy. You know what occurred? I had diarrhea for 3 months straight. I had a rash on my pores and skin, I nonetheless have it on my face. That was a results of my intestinal wildlife which was fully destroyed by carbs. I’m nonetheless combating this. But I felt good due to the sugar, every time I had sugar I’d really feel unbelievable.”
This is all ongoing, too. If Scum continues to be in Early Access, then Pongrac’s personal physique experiments should proceed. If you’re trying to discover out what’s coming in a future replace for the game, it’ll most probably have one thing to do with intermittent fasting and physique fats beneath 10 %, which is what Pongrac is presently specializing in.
“I wish to see if these items work. What is the connection between this and the game?
“For us, there’s nothing higher,” he says “than whenever you get a random e-mail from somebody who’s enthusiastic about enjoying your game who not solely loved the game however realized from it and obtained all these little particulars that we’ve put inside it, it’s one of the best feeling on the planet. We’re actually proud.
“Our characters are absolutely distinctive,” he provides. “We made a game with characters that are completely unique. They might look the same because we can’t produce that many character faces, but inside their metabolism is fully unique and will change with time. And that’s the whole point of what I did.”
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