“I really just started with an idea. I know it sounds clichéd, but I’ve been
working on my programming for a while, so when I had the basic idea of what I wanted
to accomplish, I started working on it and never looked back!”. With this mindset, Andrew “Redigit” Spinks
and the rest of the team at Re-Logic, created Terraria, one of the most successful independent
games of all time. With over 30 million copies sold and spanning
almost 10 years worth of updates and free new content, the 2D sandbox game has more
than earned its place in gaming history. Despite its overwhelming success, there were
multiple moments during its development that could have caused a premature end to Terraria’s
decade long journey, or at least put a stop to the final version of Terraria as we know
it today. Growing up, Andrew developed an obsession
with learning as much about computers as he could, with the intention of making video
games as a career. At the age of 19, he joined the US Air Force
and during that time he started hosting flash gaming sites. When his service at the Air Force was up,
he had garnered enough success with his flash websites to make a living out of it. After a while however, he realized he wasn’t
happy enough just making websites about games and wanted to actually make them. Right before he started development on Terraria,
Andrew was working on a Mario fan game called Super Mario Bros. X, along with game developers Jeremy “Blue”
Guerrette and Gabriel “Red Yoshi” Henrique. Around January 2011, Andrew started forming
more concrete ideas for Terraria and the driving force was to make a game that combined different
elements that he personally enjoyed in the hopes to create something that was simply
fun to play. As soon as he planned out a basic concept,
Andrew, together with Jeremey and Gabriel, started development right away and founded
their company Re-Logic. Andrew taught himself how to code and was
ready to tackle his biggest challenge yet. During development, he drew inspiration from
many of his most favorite games, but one of the biggest inspirations is a game called
Liero, an old freeware DOS game that can be summed up as Worms in real-time. Furthermore, it’s difficult not to mention
Minecraft as a source of inspiration given the similarities. Andrew is fully aware of this and admits the
game played a big part during the development of Terraria. “Minecraft was the final piece of the puzzle
in putting this game together, and also one of the biggest inspirations.” It was decided to program the game in C#,
using the Microsoft XNA framework and while Andrew was hard at work coding the game and
creating the original artwork, Jeremy was in charge of the beta testers and all the
internal documentation, as well as making a lot of the major design decisions. Gabriel assisted Andrew with drawing the sprite
art. Re-Logic also hired composer Scott Shelly
to produce the soundtrack. The developers didn’t add any story or lore
to the original 1.0 version of Terraria and this was a very intentional decision. “We felt that players would like to create
their own home, town, city, or even alter an entire world. And on top of that, they would also create
their own story to match it. So, if we had included a base story of our
own, it could have interfered with their own imaginative creations.” One of the key elements the indie studio wanted
to implement from the start was player choice. Whether people wanted to focus on building
structures, combat, exploration or adventuring, it all had to be an option and equally rewarding,
without either one of them being forced on the player. After all, no two gamers are alike and this
was something the developers realized very well, being gamers themselves. Exploration is actually Andrew’s most favorite
part of the game, saying he wanted to put so much content in the world that the only
way to fit in more is to generate a different/harder world and bring your characters there. The studio decided to first launch the indie
game on Steam, which was and still is very common practise for indie developers. Andrew said that Steam takes care of all the
player accounts and payments for the game, leaving him and the other developers with
more time to focus on the game itself. Leading up to the release, Finn Brice joined
the team to help out with the pixel sprite art and speed up the development process. He previously worked on an open source game
called Hedgewars. Everything was going smoothly for the people
at Re-Logic, but disaster struck when a beta version of Terraria was leaked online, forcing
the studio’s hand to prematurely release the 1.0 version of Terraria on May 16th, 2011. Looking back on that moment, Andrew wishes
he and the rest of the team had more time to prepare for the launch. “I would have continued to work on the game
until I felt it was ready for release. Because Terraria was leaked, I felt forced
to release the game sooner than I would have liked and worked towards getting it to my
ideal release state.” Which is exactly what the studio did with
five updates that were quickly released in the following weeks after launch and brought
the game up to a state where it should have been on day one. Despite the leak however, Terraria was an
incredible success on day one, selling over 50,000 copies. That number grew to 200,000 copies in only
its second week. When asked about this sudden overnight success,
Andrew and his team have no idea how they pulled it off. They had to scramble to keep up with everything
that was going on right after launch and while they made some mistakes, Andrew said it’s
part of growing up in the industry. The whole experience taught them a lot and
gave them the confidence to keep pressing forward. After releasing the first five updates, the
developers were able to focus on the future of Terraria and introduced a ton of new monsters,
bosses, NPCs and items with version 1.1 in December 2011. However, for a while it seemed like Terraria’s
bright future and potential was going to be very short lived. In February 2012, less than a year after Terraria’s
release, Re-Logic announced it was going to stop any and all further development on their
first indie title. “After a lot of internal debate, we have
decided that it is time to move on. My wife and I are due to have another boy
soon, and I want to spend some time getting to know him. I also want to spend the time recharging and
bettering myself as both a programmer and game designer. I have learned a lot from working on Terraria
and plan on using what I've learned, building upon it, and moving forward with another,
even better project. However, we are still planning at least one
more bug fix for Terraria. I want to thank all of you for supporting
us and making this games' success possible.” By this time, some developers had also left
the studio, including Finn, who moved on to form Chucklefish. The community that had formed around Terraria
was both sad and frustrated to hear development had come to an end, as lots of players felt
version 1.1 was just the beginning of the game’s potential. Months went by and without the inclusion of
proper mod support at the time, the community had all but given up hope for ever seeing
new content being added. Surprisingly, in September 2012, it was announced
the game would be coming to consoles. Publisher 505 Games and developer Engine Software
were in charge of the ports and they approached Andrew with the idea of adding exclusive content,
an offer he reportedly couldn’t refuse. So not only were console players getting Terraria
on their machines, they were getting a more expanded version. Furthermore, the console announcement didn’t
mention anything about the PC version. This made the community quite upset and they
didn’t understand why Terraria on PC wouldn’t receive the same additional features, or at
least receive additional PC support to further optimize the game. Andrew mentioned in interviews it wasn’t
an easy decision to stop support on PC, but it was always his intention to bring the game
to consoles at some point and when he felt like he had done all he could on PC, it was
time for console players to experience the indie title for the first time. Luckily for the PC community however, Andrew
and his wife Whitney Spinks were playing Terraria in December 2012 one day and by the time January
2013 came around, she convinced her husband to add more content to the game on PC and
reconnect with the community. The first thing he did was reach out on the
official forums, asking what kind of features fans would like to see added to the sandbox
game. Later that year, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox
360 versions were released in March, with mobile ports following suit in August and
September and finally a PlayStation Vita port that was released in December. Bringing Terraria to consoles was quite the
challenge for Engine Software as they had to painstakingly translate the C# code to
C++ and write custom wrappers for PlayStation. The network code was particularly challenging
according to David Welch, one of the former producers of Terraria. These versions were then used as a starting
point for Codeglue, who were responsible for the mobile ports. Additionally, both Engine Software and Codeglue
not only had to translate code, they also had to translate the traditional PC mouse
and keyboard controls to console controllers and touch controls. Not an easy task, but Andrew was very happy
with how the ports turned out. “I am definitely happy with how things are
coming together. Engine Software even came up with a few great
ideas in terms of speeding up some of the basic processes to really balance the gameplay
with the new controls. I’m really happy that they were able to
add new content and streamline the experience for a console audience and put the extra time
in to really stay true to the vision of the game. That was extremely important to me.” Terraria was reaching more gamers than ever
before and the title was about to become even more enticing for PC players. In October 2013, Re-Logic released update
1.2 for PC, adding a whole slew of new game mechanics, items, NPCs and so on. As well as introducing graphical changes. Around the same time, it was announced that
Terraria 2 was in the works. In fact, the sequel was in the planning stages
for quite some time by now, ever since Andrew first quit development on the original. However, after update 1.2, he was finally
ready to move on to execute his ambitious vision for the second chapter in Terraria’s
journey. At the time the developer described Terraria
2 as something that would have a lot in common with the original, but that it would expand
on the whole Terraria universe as well. He further said that he’s locked into a
lot of stuff with Terraria, like the way the loot works, the way character progression
works and so on. With the sequel, he wants to have infinite
worlds so that the player is not just stuck to one world, but able to travel anywhere. Andrew also talked about introducing more
biome diversity. 2013 was certainly a big year for Terraria,
with the game finally moving over to consoles and mobile devices, while giving players on
PC a big reason to continue playing. 2014 and 2015 continued the trend of putting
Terraria in more hands, with ports being done for PS4, Xbox One, macOS, Linux and the Nintendo
3DS, while the Wii U version came out in 2016. Additionally, console players finally received
the 1.2 update in 2014 as well. Re-Logic also revealed a new project in February
2015 called Terraria: Otherworld. A teaser trailer was released with the promise
of a novel take on the familiar Terraria experience that’s set in an alternate dimension within
the same universe. Unfortunately, the project faced many problems
throughout its development, but more on that later. Fans speculated that this new project might
be the sequel that Andrew talked about back in 2013, but it was quickly confirmed that
that was not the case. Otherworld was simply a spin-off, not a full
sequel. Re-Logic also made it clear that the project
was still in its early development stages, but fans wouldn’t have to wait much longer
that year for more Terraria content. June 2015 marked another important milestone
in Terraria’s history with the 1.3 update, which added more items, events, enemies, bosses,
and gameplay features. One addition that Andrew himself was especially
excited about, was the inclusion of a final boss, since he was never happy with the idea
of Terraria not having one. Back during its release, the developer also
mentioned in interviews that update 1.3 marked the last update he would personally work on
and that it was up to the rest of the team what would happen with Terraria in the future. Andrew was seemingly done with the indie game
once again and even discussed his personal future plans. “Now that Terraria is done I would like
to start working on a new project that is not Terraria 2. I already have a lot of plans and ideas for
Terraria 2, but that will be much later. I want to make a game that is very modular,
that includes mod support and makes it very easy for players to add their own content.” The following years went quietly by without
any new major content updates, but a lot of shifts were happening behind the scenes. In July 2016, it was announced that Engine
Software and Codeglue would no longer be involved with the console and mobile ports of the game
moving forward. The reigns were handed over to Pipeworks Studios
who are a part of the Digital Bros. group that 505 games are also a part of. In other words, it was an opportunity for
Re-Logic to turn the developers responsible for the ports into an in-house studio, making
future business communication and development pipelines much easier. About a year later, Re-Logic had some less
exciting news for fans of the franchise and revealed that Terraria: Otherworld was shifting
developers, which most likely meant a delay. Engine Software would no longer work on the
project and Re-Logic decided to hand their spin-off game to their new partners at Pipeworks
Studios. Their statement also said there would be a
“quiet period” surrounding the game while the developers had to reexamine the vision
of Otherworld from top to bottom. Many fans were concerned after this announcement
and in 2018 those concerns were proven valid when Re-Logic made a post on the official
forums explaining Terraria: Otherworld had been officially cancelled. They were very honest with the community,
admitting they never should have announced the game as early as they did. Additionally, they realized too late they
shouldn’t have outsourced such an important project and instead should have worked on
it themselves. By the time they switched from Engine Software
to Pipeworks Studios, the damage had already been done. It wasn’t all bad news, however, Re-Logic
also announced that Terraria was still very much in active development, with update 1.3.6
well on its way. Furthermore, all the ideas they had for Otherworld
would not just be thrown out and instead reworked for future titles. As previously mentioned, Andrew was seemingly
done with Terraria after update 1.3, but he was still closely involved with the Otherworld
project. Once that fell apart, he decided to come back
to Terraria for the 1.3.5 update and any future updates. In May 2019, fans got their first glimpse
of the final major content update for Terraria, subtitled Journey’s End. The team had so many ideas for update 1.3.6
that they eventually decided to bundle them all in one last big update and release it
all at once. A year later, fans were finally able to experience
Journey’s End on the ninth anniversary of the game’s initial release and the update
overhauled and added many elements to the game. 800 new items, new enemies, a full revamp
of world generation that includes new biomes, quality of life improvements, the game of
golf, a new difficulty mode, new enhanced weather effects and more where all part of
a final love letter to a game that the developers had poured so much hard work into for almost
a decade. On top of that, the developers also released
proper mod support for the first time ever on the day of the update’s release. Of course, mods were already available for
Terraria for years, but the tModLoader app made mods much more visible and accessible
for the PC community. The studio explained that fully-integrated
official mod support is not something that is feasible within the Terraria codebase,
but the tModLoader is the next best thing according to Re-Logic. With Journey’s End being the last major
update, the studio felt there was no better way to show appreciation to the fans than
to hand the keys to the community itself and see how they might continue to explore the
game further. The Terraria devs have always valued their
fans more than anything and it’s one of the main reasons why Re-Logic never put a
price on any of the major content updates. They’re aware they could have very easily
charged a small amount of money for Journey’s End for example, without too much community
blowback. Still, they chose not to and strongly feel
that forgoing those quick gains was and is the right path to take. "Primarily, this speaks to our core philosophy
of games and gamers first. Secondarily, it harks back to the way games
were sold when we were coming up as gamers. Namely, you bought a game and enjoyed it. In this situation, we are just meshing that
with the modern ability to update and add to that game over time. Deep down, it just feels to us like the right
thing to do.” Andrew Spinks and Terraria were involved in
a bit of a controversy recently. In February 2021, Andrew announced the Stadia
version of Terraria was cancelled due to the company’s Google account being suspended
for no apparent reason. He even went as far as saying that doing business
with Google is a liability and any future Re-Logic projects would not be coming to Google
platforms. For a while, it seemed like all bridges were
immediately burned, but later on in February Google restored all affected Re-Logic accounts
and provided much needed transparency about the situation to the studio. All is well now between Google and Andrew
and Terraria is even set to release on Stadia once again. Terraria was also released on Switch in 2019,
making the game available on all major platforms. In March 2021, it was confirmed that no less
than 35 million copies were sold across all available platforms, reaching another huge
milestone in the game’s history. Now that active development for Terraria is
over, it’s anyone’s guess what lies ahead for the developers at Re-Logic. It’s possible that the much talked about
sequel might still be in development or perhaps the studio is working on a completely new
IP. Only time will tell. Re-Logic did mention in the past it would
like to be known for other things besides just Terraria and that they have a couple
of projects in the works that are not Terraria-related and not in the sandbox genre. Whether that’s still the case today, remains
to be seen but whatever the developers choose to do, they have a clear mission ahead of
them. “We hope to eventually have a few projects
under our belt and to have positively impacted the lives of many gamers and stirred in their
imaginations something that wasn’t there before.” Thank you for watching this video, if you
enjoyed it, please consider subscribing so you can stay updated on future videos in the
How It Was Made series. Leaving a like and sharing the video with
friends also really helps out the channel so that’s always appreciated as well. Have a great rest of the day and till next
time.
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3:30 "without either one of them being forced on the player"
1.4 disagrees with its npc happiness