The Full Story of Terraria’s Development

The Full Story of Terraria’s Development

Let me paint a little picture for you here okay the year was 2011 Adele had just released an album there was a royal wedding the eighth and final Harry Potter movie came out but none of that actually matters because it was also the year that a man by the name of Andrew

began developing a little game called Terraria little is actually a horrible word for it nowadays Terraria has sold over 44 million copies and is one of the most played games in Steam history but it wasn’t always this much of a huge success heck it was considered

An abandoned project only a year after its first release so why did it become so successful how did it all start what did development look like who did the developer work with today we’re going to answer all of those questions and more from one Terraria fan to another even if

I’ve technically never beaten planta I have like 700 hours across all the platforms so I think I’m certified it’s not my fault I spend all my time building and I actually care about my NPCs and I give them nice little houses anyway the story is Hefty and I’m really

Excited to dive into all the lore of this game’s development Andrew spank is probably not a name that you recognize but you probably know him better as redigit red digit re red digit we’re going to call him red Hello I’m Andrew Spinx I am the uh president of

Rel logic and the creator of terrar he got the name from The Simpsons I frankly have no idea how or where but he did it and he founded the game Studio Rel logic shortly after red was really inspired by games like worms learo and soal I’m I’m

A little too young for those but is basically every game that I wanted to come out in my childhood he wanted to make a game that essentially combined all the mechanics of those games with RPG and sandbox elements and at this point very few games were that cool

Especially when it came to anything with Base building elements the genre was kind of lacking that is until Minecraft came along and completely paved the way for what Red’s dream could look like he loved Minecraft but wanted more purpose out of the game more structure which a

Lot of players can relate to too we all know that if Minecraft added a little more bosses some more goals for progression then it would be a much better game so bosses naturally were one of the first things that red wanted to implement into this game but how would

He begin making this game red was coming from the Air Force and he learned all about networking and computers there but he didn’t really touch programming but lucky for him there was the 2007 equivalent of unity of the day known as Microsoft XNA this allnew cuttingedge software Microsoft was advertising as

The next generation of game development Tech it was destined to provide Terraria with an incredible immersive exper the software was abandoned in 2013 okay but alas poor red did not know that so he taught himself how to code and he began to work in an engine that was unfortunately destined to die it’s

Actually really interesting when you look at all the engines that popular Indie Games have used it’s either some obscure software that you’ve never heard of or it’s like raw coded in Java stardy Valley was also made in Microsoft XNA but the developer migrated elsewhere not saying that’s what area should have done

I have no idea but even red admits now that if he could make a game nowadays he would absolutely use Unity with an idea as cool as Terraria red wasn’t alone two guys named tiri and blue were working hard alongside him to make the game into something great and so it began three

Bros chilling doing game da 5 ft apart cuz they’re not hang on Terraria started its development in January of 2011 and then 6 months later sold 50,000 copies the first day it came out then 200 ,000 copies by the first week for 6 months of development that is insane but then

Updates stopped not even a year later in 2012 despite the game’s instantaneous success red decided that Terraria just wasn’t worth putting more time into he wanted to move on to new things and so tii dropped off the team and well went off to make his own game that game was

Starbound by the way which it’s kind of sus that he went off to make what is now considered terraria’s closest competitor anyway abandoned and alone what was in store for Terraria next was it really just dead was that it 6 months and it’s just done well spoiler alert the game was not

Done Terraria didn’t end there because Red made one of the best decisions that a developer could make when working on a project he let the community help people were passionate about Terraria even in its early stages and devastated by its abandonment so much so that red would go

On to not only hire programmers but artists and designers to help him revive the project these were people that were dedicated and eager to see the game Thrive many of which are still with the studio today these are also the people who have developer sets in game which is

So cool if you didn’t know this in expert mode if you kill certain bosses they’ll drop a little goodie bag and then in the goodie bag you can get a set named after a developer I explained that horribly but you get the idea it’s just really cool to picture being so

Passionate about a game watching it fall and then being one of the people that rip it out of the ashes and then get your own in-game items based off you that’s pretty cool so it was back the project was back the community was hyped the little 7-year-old me would have been

Shaking in her boots Teraria had just begun urer urer is a notable name who joined the team I believe coming from the community and is responsible for so much of the code being cleaner than it would have been no offense red I’m just going off a community post here he’s now the

Game’s lead programmer and since we’re on the topic of programming coding is one of those things that Terraria realized you can really only get better at by just doing you won’t realize how unstable a system in your game is until you try to make it more advanced later

On and that’s one of the hurdles that Teraria ran into all right I’ll break this down real simply for y’all Teraria is written in C C has these things called objects an object is like a cat which has traits it is furry and it is mean this is true for all cats naturally

Terraria does not have cats but it does have items like a torch a table or a Terra toilet these items all have their own traits and in order to track them and use them throughout the rest of the code they need an ID keeping track of

The IDS for five items great that’s easy 1,000 items oh boy okay 4,000 items which Teraria has even more now what happens when a programmer needs to modify the state of a torch okay they’ve got to go figure out where it is in the code cross reference it with the ID

Manipulate it in a bunch of different places it was bad so how about instead of this we do this wow see even if it takes more time to set up this it is so much better in the Long Haul that is the hurdle in game development called optimization that

Should also give you an idea of how continuously evolving the code behind a game is and how invisible stuff like that can be to players optimized futureproof code is hard to make and for a lot of fresh developers like red it’s hard to do it takes a lot of time and

Experimentation to learn and it’s not something that really becomes an issue until later on when it bites you in the butt completely like it did for red another early unoptimized system in Terraria was the Project’s organization there is a lot of software out there made to help you as a game developer

Because of how much stuff there is to manage when you do it tracking progress with art code fixing bugs anything and everything the bigger the project the harder it gets but I learned that up until 2019 all of terraria’s planning and design was managed on Google spreadsheets not even Excel just plain

Old Google spreadsheets now they use something called jira Gyra take a shot every time I can’t pronounce a name in this video but hey if you’re making a game and losing hairs about how to manage everything remember that it probably can’t be worse than Google Sheets so the game was developing more

The organization behind it all was still a work in progress and the art oh the art well the art actually wasn’t that bad there’s not a lot of footage of old Terraria out there but even in its early stages it’s still very much Terraria most games endure some massive graph

Overhaul halfway through and you can see the Sprites getting better over time the art for Terraria definitely did improve but to me it’s not really that noticeable I do wear glasses though and it’s getting to the point where if I’m not 6 in away from my screen then I

Can’t see what I’m looking at so it’s totally possible that I just didn’t notice any changes because I’m literally blind and when I would have seen the old art I would have been like 10 years old on an iPhone 4 so you can judge for yourself whether the art has evolved

Needless to say it’s got a very distinct style now and you can tell the artists are having a lot of fun with it at this point all the structures were in place the game was revived and back in development red had able programmers at his side he was organizing everything

Via spreadsheets an art style began to Define itself what was he missing well it turns out that he was missing what a lot of programmers are still missing to this day women but he was a blessed man and soon he met a woman named SS who went on

To become a key designer in the project and such an Enthusiast for the game and she would also go on to become his wife a beautiful allow me to narrate the story of how they met quoted directly from SS herself the first time I met red I was

Working at GameStop and he had flown out to meet with his best friend who just happened to be my best friend that he had met well in the Air Force he came in bragging about Terraria being in beta and I was bragging about having beta

Access to diabolo 3 a year later we met again and hit it off immediately he showed me Terraria and I didn’t really get it and didn’t fully understand that he was the man behind everything that made it work so man’s got roasted and found the love of his life in a single

Moment good for him so Red’s got SS and eraser and a bunch of other dedicated people passionate about making Terraria something great and progress came from my understanding pretty fast SS had been kind enough to reveal to us a lot of the game design side of things I was talking

About this on stream the other day how the design design side of making a game is brushed over a lot you know like okay I’ve got to make the art I’ve got to coat it got to make music whatever but designing actual fun mechanics making boss fights designing levels all of that

Can be forgotten so easily Terraria once had the unreleased ability to Grapple the trees for example which red said was super fun but it turned out to be more annoying than anything there were even weapon dieses which were too visually yucky a level system a rain collection

System that never debuted there was a boss named oakam that even made it into the the game but was ultimately removed because the fight just wasn’t a good enough fit for the game all of those things were implemented enough to where the art was made it was coded in only

For the developers to realize that they just weren’t what they expected them to be and that’s not bad it’s a sad but inevitable part of game development that Terraria quickly became familiar with the lovely and devastating process of trial and error it is a nice reminder though that just because something isn’t

Final in your game it doesn’t mean that you didn’t learn anything from it without those foundational steps you could never begin to add the final touches that was a buttery transition so I’m currently doing a challenge where I only listen to video game music for a

Month it’s going to be a future video maybe you should subscribe so you can like see that but doing that has informed me that Scott Lloyd Shelly is The Man Behind the Terraria soundtrack the most pirate sounding name I’ve ever heard Mr Scott Shelly just kidding he’s Australian but that’s basically the same

Thing I try to go quick and not try to overanalyze you know like like lot of Americans do tend to you know like to form committees and over analyze stuff and let’s analyze it into the toilet when he was asked for where his inspiration comes from he said this this

Probably sound I’m going to try to do Australian Probably sounds try but my inspiration comes from the source of all creativity I just try to be receptive and let it happen I’ve tried forcing it but the best stuff just just comes after viewing early artwork that was British

After viewing early artwork playing the early build of trara and listening to some examples I felt it needed to be sparse open adventurous somewhat retro but unique and modern as well oh look at this look at this okay first off I deserve a standing ovation for that one second off it’s

Awesome to see and hear from this guy that designing sounds is really just about the vibe I build music so the game wouldn’t be the same without its iconic soundtrack and it wouldn’t be the same either if it didn’t have continuous updates that would keep flooding in for

Eternity I’m going to read this straight from an article because it’s so funny in February 2012 Rel logic’s developers announced that Terraria would be receiving one final bug patch but development resumed in 2013 then in 2019 Rel logic announced the final update to the game but Journey’s End came in May

Of 2020 and after that red was like guys this is it this is our final goodbye we’re so proud of this project but hang hang on we have more stuff it’s funny because it’s normally the opposite with Indie Studios they normally promis that a game’s going to come out on a certain

Day and then they push that day farther and farther back but Terraria keeps promising to stop updating and then keeps updating more and more even if they don’t release more updates the modding Community has failed to disappoint another smart decision on the dev side full Script Mod sport Calamity

Was released in 2016 and has been continuously updated and so has thorium two of the biggest mods out there that add a lot of new stuff it’s seriously worth playing the entire game over again just to experience these lots of smaller updates and Integrations have come along

In recent years as well it was ported a switch we got controller support and there was a mini golf update we all really wanted that at one point red was asked if there was anything too goofy or immature to add that they wanted to but

Red was like dude just look at the items that we have in game there’s morning wood masterbate golden showers and you can literally strap dynamites to bunnies I guess that’s part of the beauty of having your own game you can kind of just put all sorts of stuff in it that

You want to with the more major stuff though like platform integration and controller support the unoptimized code that we talked earlier proved itself to be challenge they did it though and now the game was more accessible and more gameplay Rich than ever before in May of 2022 Terraria had sold

Over 44 million copies across all platforms if you’re curious that’s about $440 million which doesn’t even account for all the merchandise they sell or the fact that Nintendo does what Nintendo does and cranks the prices up to double but anyway red himself admitted that we

Could have charged 50 cents for the 1. 3 update and made millions and people would have been fine with it but we don’t need to isn’t that wild see me personally see if I was in that position me personally because you know it’s true too you would have paid like 20 cents 50

Cents if they asked for it Ted Murphy the head of business even once described how it was kind of spontaneous the fans supported us along the way which allowed us to do things in a way where we weren’t charging for DLC doing microtransactions or any of that mess we

Can keep giving content in they keep giving us the love support and sales that we need to keep going as a company and developing the game in other words red said for real double it and give it to the next person man the studios also made it crystal clear that they’ll never

Partake in any epic games or XBox exclusive stuff because they would and I quote never sell their souls for any amount of money that’s awesome and honestly probably the goal for a lot of game developers out there who see microtransactions see DLC and are like I’m going to do that differently Red’s

Also given a lot of advice to anybody trying to follow in his footsteps and make their own game he said you just need to accept that it’s going to be hard at first and push through the frustration of learning something new and difficult one of the biggest things

That I’ve realized in game development is that committing to development is committing to learning for a very long time you’re going to suck at most things the first time that you do them the same way that in school you went from Algebra 1 to Algebra 2 to preal calculus your

Art is going to start by sucking and then slowly suck less until you have something good it’s very linear it’s the same as any other skill that you could pick up and nothing that’s out there that’s truly valuable will ever be easy just like red said so is it finally done

After 10 years of updates millions of dollars in sales and winning the labor of love award on Steam what’s next red certainly got plans of working on new games but he recognizes that after 12 years the game still sells like hot cakes there’s so much demand it makes it

Hard to move on well they did try to release a sequel in 2015 Rel logic released Terraria Otherworld which which was meant to be a spin-off sequalish type of thing but they ended up canceling it in 2018 and putting a lot of the game’s content into the Journey’s

End update red did announce though at one point that if someone made a petition and got $100,000 signatures and $15 ooh then he would publish the source code for Otherworld absolute power move the largest petition is only at 1,500 signatures though and I’m kind of thinking that most people are waiting

For bigger things to come from the Indie world that we’ve been awaiting for a really long time and being really nice about asking waiting really patiently for that we hope would just come sooner um so that’s Teraria that’s the full story that’s everything that that’s all I got that’s the full development story

The upbringing the success everything and everything I dug into the center of the earth to get this information but if you don’t believe me you don’t trust me or whatever then uh allow me to present you with my facts but big thanks to my friend Charmed for giving me all the

Footage for this video he was a complete dork with his friends and I got to edit the footage and witness this all so I’m going to make you listen to it too for a second help can you land I was in with you I I just see a white

Person hey to infinity and beyond anyway I had a whole lot of fun doing all the research for this video and I’d love to do a similar thing with maybe stardew Valley or Hollow night so let me know in the comments if you have any game ideas you’d want me to

Investigate if you learned anything or you enjoyed the video maybe hit the Subscribe button or consider joining the Discord it’s pretty much a hub for indie game Enthusiast game developers is anybody interested all down there I also stream on the weekends on Twitch every now and then so you can totally say hi

That’s it that’s all thanks for watching bye

Why did Relogic make Terraria? How’d they do it in less than 6 months? What did early development look like? Every question answered! I owe so many friendships to this game, and the fandom is still growing.

I stream every weekend over at https://www.twitch.tv/juniperdev
Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/49fZxfxe4V

Sources for this video (the forums are especially interesting to read for yourself!):
Red and Cenx: https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/terrarias-8th-anniversary-ask-redigit-and-cenx.79731/
Early Terraria: https://steamaddicts.com/2011/05/terraria-mania/
The Team: https://terraria.fandom.com/wiki/Re-Logic#:~:text=Redigit%20is%20Cenx%27s%20husband.,misunderstood%20this%20as%20″redigit”
Red’s interview: https://www.indiewire.com/features/commentary/terraria-10-year-anniversary-re-logic-1234637240/
E3 2013 Terraria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rv4xkg1NR0
Scott’s Q&A: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/pmrdu/iam_the_composer_of_the_terraria_soundtrack_scott/
Scott’s interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvg412e6FqI

0:00 – Intro
0:59 – The Beginning
4:05 – Early Development
8:31 – Defining Gameplay
11:02 – Final Touches
14:05 – Basking in Success

#terraria indiegames #gamedev #gaming #pcgaming #videogames #relogic #gamedevelopment #gamedesign #nintendo #indiegame #unity #programming #godot #stardewvalley