2006 In Review
So what rocked and what sucked about 2006 in the world of a video games and indie games? At least from my narrow perspective as a game developer and RPG fan, here's what I saw:

Rocked: The Rise of the Casual RPG
Aveyond. Cute Knight. Will there be more? Man, I hope so. I hope that not EVERY indie RPG tries to become a "casual" RPG, but I am very pleased to see a branch of the genre push out in new directions. Neither Hanako Games nor Amaranth Games seemed to intend to start a sub-genre... they just wanted to create cool games. They succeeded. And not only did they prove that the right RPG could attract a wider audience than anyone expected, but they also showed that there was more to casual games than just match-three bubble poppers.

Sucked: Computer Gaming World Retired (in name, at least)
Yeah, so the magazine hadn't been as great as it's hayday in the early-mid 90's, but it was still sad to see it go. It still exists as the Official Games For Windows Magazine, but that still just underscored the fact that it hadn't been the same magazine for a long time.

Rocked: Downloadable Console Games
They have been almost TOO MUCH of a success, causing the big publishers who previously snubbed their nose at the idea to muscle in on the action. But it's a great thing for gamers!

Sucked: Abuse of Microtransactions
Hi! Here's the next-gen version of last year's title! It's largely unchanged, but we're charging you more because... you know, it's NEXT GEN. Oh, and to top it off we've disabled all the features you got used to in last year's version, but we'll sell them back to you piecemeal via microtransactions! And we'll pretend that we're doing it for YOU. Aren't we awesome?

Rocked: Torque Game Builder (formerly Torque 2D) Released
The sheer number of commercial games that have been released this year using TGB alone is testiment to its flexibility and ease-of-use. It obviously filled some kind of need. I just wish I had more opportunity to play with it (but I have had fun combining it with the core game engine).

Sucked: Apocalypse Cow Still Not Released
A bit of suckage that is entirely my own fault. Apocalypse Cow was supposed to be a quick-and-dirty project. Shame on me.

Rocked: Oblivion and Guitar Hero
Two awesome mainstream games. The triumphant return of the Elder Scrolls series helped reinvigorate the single-player RPG genre on PCs and consoles. While it was a little too "action / arcade" for my preferences, and I had great fun abusing its use-based skill system, the fact of the matter is that I had a blast playing it. And Guitar Hero --- a surprise hit (now a franchise) from a previously obscure little developer. While the first game was a 2005 release, it's popularity has continued to rocket this year, and GH2 is definitely one of the most fun games I have ever played. So while I lament the parade of regurgitated game concepts coming out of the publishers these days, I also respectfully acknowledge that there are still some awesome titles that make their way through the pipeline.

Sucked: Dungeon & Dragons Online's Launch
The game has cleaned up its act a bit since its rocky launch, though I worry how much damage has already been done. That, and the lack of soloing options for people who loathe PUGs (Pick-Up Groups). But I think this is just one more nail in the coffin of the "brick-and-mortar" physical media game distribution model as a primary means of distribution. Hopefully other MMO companies will take note, and offer completely digital downloads as a viable option in the future.

Sucked: Anti-Game Legislation
As this was an election year in the U.S., the sheer volume of anti-videogame legislation clearing state governments by elected officials seeking quick-and-easy "family values" points was staggering. Even more staggering was the obvious lack of concern about Bill Of Rights violations by the same officials we've entrusted with the protection of the Constitution. Of course, that's just the USA. Europe has been jumping into the act as well. Hopefully the madness will eventually come to an end.

Rocked: Courts Pimp-Slapping Anti-Game Legislation
As bad as the anti-videogame legislation has been, at least some federal judges still have a clue. So far, they've slammed every bit of game censorship as being a flagrant violation of the Constitution, with the exception of one: A bit of legislation that the ESA actually approved of, that simply included games as a medium in another, older law governing more traditional media. And it's been really funny seeing "Wacky Jacky" Thompson's apoplectic reactions every single time. Too bad THAT doesn't get much media coverage.

Sucked: The PS3's Launch
Ludicrously low numbers of units actually shipped, sticker shock, units selling for $10k on EBay, underwhelming launch titles, arrogant public relations, and a head-scratching ad campaign. It's definitely a candidate for the most screwed-up launch of a major game console in history (and that is saying a lot). As Sony was the one that dethroned Nintendo in 1995, they should be acutely aware that historical dominance isn't all it takes to be king of the consoles in the new generation. It's hardly a "VirtualBoy" level disaster, but it is going to be a challenge for Sony going forward. All I know is that I am VERY glad I wasn't overly anxious to get a PS3 on launch. I'll happily wait until the dust settles.

And to end on an optimistic note:

Rocked: The Continued Rise In Popularity of Indie Games
We're getting more media attention daily. Casual games have become big business. Well, bigger, at least. With XBLA and Steam providing connecting downloadable (some indie, some not-so-much) content with mainstream gamers, and the (fairly) high-profile launch of Manifesto Games, players are discovering of alternatives to traditional channels through which they've always found their games. And the sales numbers are proving that they are being delighted by finding smaller, lower-budget, but FUN little titles out there. This is a great thing for developers and players. Go indie!
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:02 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
It's A Nice Day For A White We.. er, Christmas?
Okay.

My entire worldview has been shaken to its foundations. Shattered. The Matrix has had me, but I'm ready to take the red pill now. I can see that it's all a manufactured reality that doesn't make any sense.

My reality cannot accept what I saw today.

On the store shelf. At Best Buy. The discount music section. This.... this ... thing:


That's right, ladies and gentlemen. The Billy Idol Christmas Album.

We've gone from punk, to pop, to... crooning traditional holiday favorites in the style of Bing Crosby. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you. I mean, Alice Cooper is running drives to support music education in public schools, and stuff. But MAN am I feeling old all of the sudden. How soon until Marilyn Manson is doing jingles for nutritional supplements?
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:56 PM (Permalink) 7 comments links to this post

 
Trapped In a Blizzard
We're kinda stuck in a blizzard right now. And not the World of Warcraft / Diablo kind of blizzard... that would actually be kinda cool. We've been visiting my in-laws for Christmas, and wouldn't you know it... the night before we were supposed to leave, a fairly localized storm dumped ten inches of snow on us. Considering we've got one hairy mountain pass to cross that was smack in the middle of this storm, it's a little questionable as to whether or not we'll make it home today.

Fortunately, I've had my laptop with me during the holiday, and while I was far from a workaholic, I have managed to get some game dev work done, and I'll spend today happily coding away if we can't make it home. Well, okay, "Happily" is a little questionable.

Apocalypse Cow has been coming along. All the levels and bosses are coded up, and I'm currently working on some new features that I think will really enhance the overall game. Unfortunately, the game is in dire need of polish and content. But with luck, whether or not we make it home today, I should be able to call the game "Alpha" sometime this weekend. For my sanity's sake, I'm hoping to have it done before midnight Sunday, so it will have gone Alpha "this year."

I've also been working on the not-so-secret RPG project. It's a little weird to take a break from game programming to do some game programming (especially considering this is my vacation time from the job, where I do game programming), I admit. So far it's still been just design work and "tinkering" in code. Well, tinkering with a plan. The core design is mostly there, and the dialog is... in progress. The game will have a lot of dialog. And a lot of combat. Yes, for all my discussion on non-combat oriented RPGs, this one is going to be fairly traditional, but with (I hope) some very interesting twists. Watch this space for more information in upcoming months!

And with that, I'm back to coding (and checking on the local travel warnings... apparently they are recommending no travel right now unless we're transporting emergency supplies).

Have fun!
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:17 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Enjoy an Oldie But Goodie

Labels: Free Games, Game Moments, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:02 AM (Permalink) 8 comments links to this post

 
The Rise and Fall of Troika
Continuing my trend this week(end) of being lazy and posting links to other people's articles (hey, it's Christmas):

The Escapist has an article by Joe Blancato about Troika, the RPG development studio created by the three principles behind Fallout. The major take-away from the story: Releasing buggy products will kill your company, no matter how cool the concept behind your games.

The Rise and Fall of Troika: How Interplay's Golden Boys Struck Out On Their Own

Labels: Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:07 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part I
Armchair Arcade has the first of a multi-part series of articles on the history of Computer Role-Playing Games (CRPGs). It's more nuts-and-bolts than my article on the Evolution of Computer RPGs, going into a lot of detail on what came when up until about 1983 or so.

I found it particularly enjoyable because I've played many of the games discussed. But even if you haven't, it's a fun and interesting read:

The History of Computer Role-Playing Games, Part I

Labels: Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:51 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Merry Christmas
Whether you celebrate it or not, I hope the holiday finds you and yours well. Have a great one, everyone!

(Here at the relatives, we are celebrating by much Guitar Hero 2 playing! Freebird FTW!!!)
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:52 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Horrible Holy Night
To get into the Christmas Spirit... I offer this opportunity to mock and jeer.

Apparently, this was not a joke. This was someone's audition tape. You may think it starts bad. And it does. But wait until the end. It gets... sooooo much worse.

Enjoy.

http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000570.php
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:10 PM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
You Were Searching For WHAT?
So what search terms are leading people to Rampant Games and this blog?

I'm cribbing from Lum the Mad here, and maybe directing some really weird traffic this way, but some of these were just too entertaining not to share.

So here are the fun search terms for the month of December:


Coyote Evolution - Well, I started as a single-cell amoeba.

Oblivion Adult Mod, Oblivion Adult, Adult Oblivion Mods, Etc. - I don't understand! Everyone in Oblivion is an adult already. There are no children! THAT is what is so creepy! Where the heck do all these adults come from? And nobody else seems to notice. Were their children abducted and all memory of them wiped from their parents' memories? It's a total horror story in the making. We need the "find the children!" mod!

Trogdor Song - YEAH, Baby! My money's on.... TROGDOR!

Oblivion Assassin - And, coincidentally, he also owns a flower shop.

Battlefield Sucks, bf2 sucks - That it does. Though I still enjoy playing it occasionally. When I have time to kill, because I rarely kill anything else.

hunting games for coyotes - Why do I suddenly feel nervous and exposed?

kill the coyote games - Uh, Yeah. Very nervous. Very Exposed.

Coyote Porn - Speaking of being exposed... Trust me, you REALLY don't want to see it.

falcon 4.0 bomb damage assessment - You can do it, but it's more fun causing the bomb damage.

indie game mistakes - And Rampant Games is the result...

fun alzheimer games - I knew of a few, but I forget what they are... But try this.

job interviews - what am i doing wrong - Your beard clashing with your white pantyhose, maybe?

ken boning barbie - I have it on good authority that this is not anatomically possible.

daggerfall azeroth land mass - Daggerfall FTW!

tamagotchi game sex - They hatch from a friggin' EGG, man! Don't get your hopes up.

"coyote" kidnapper - Okay, seriously, guys... should I be worried here?

best pirate story - Arr! It is, isn't it?

like bf2 but better - Hmmm..... Not Trespasser.

cow utter - Utter Destruction, you mean? Muhahahah!

porn passes - But only with a 2.0 GPA

Cute Knight Dream - Do I really want to know about this dream?

Vampire Bloodlines Nudity - Hot Bloodsucking Undead Monster Action!

free pirate stories - I've only got the one, but it's absolutely free.

you must face the gazebo alone - Alright! Another Munchkin player!!!

Coyote Skeletal System - Coyote Porn, Now With 100% Less Skin!

Elder Scrolls Oblivion Yellow Team Champion Sleeping Nude - Because sleeping in plate mail chafes.
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:08 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
How to Turn Façade Into An RPG
Scorpia took me to task on my little CRPG definition from last week, but the discussions we've had here and on her site and here, I'm feeling a bit more confident about my breakdown. Though Gegi also offered a really good suggestion (an addition) that you need some level of choice over your character's attributes or development of their attributes over time for it to count.

The point of my breakdown is that while things like combat systems, storyline, inventory systems, and so forth are all very important, they are NOT the defining attributes of RPGs. For story --- well, it's too fuzzy of a line to draw. Almost every game has a story, even if its just a simple one-line setup. There's definitely a qualitative difference between the story of, say, Empires and Dungeons, and Final Fantasy VII.

So as a fun design experiment, I thought about what it would take to turn a non-RPG into an RPG. Specifically, let's take one without combat of any kind and see how it might be done. As an amusing example, let's take the experimental indie game, or "interactive story", Façade. I consider it to be an adventure game, personally. A very unusual one. But that kind of gameplay. ("Action-adventure?" Since timing is important...)

So, in playing Façade, you start out by choosing a name, and then knocking on the door of some old college friends, Grace and Trip. You use typed text to hold a conversation with them, and you can also manipulate certain objects in the apartment. The game can branch many ways, but in general you discover that Grace and Trip are having marital problems. As an interested third-party, you influence them in several directions, or simply leave the status quo the way it is. And you can get thrown out of the apartment for being too rude (been there, done that!)

So lets see how to turn this into an RPG. I'm not saying this would make a good GAME, necessarily (I don't actually think Façade is that great of a game to begin with, but it's an interesting experiment).

Step 1: Identifying with the Avatar
We'll start with criterion #4 (and add Gegi's suggestion), and give you more customization of and identification with your avatar. You are already pretty much acting in the first-person perspective, which adds some identification, but the game really has you playing yourself. The person through who's eyes you see doesn't really have an identity. So let's fix that.

Lets say you have a choice of backgrounds and two attributes / characteristics. For backgrounds, maybe you can choose whether you were, at one point, closer friends with Grace, Trip, or neither. Perhaps you could also choose to be an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend of either one, depending on the gender you chose. Maybe we'll add a profession as well. So you could be John, the artist and old friend of Grace's, or Jane, a doctor and Trip's former girlfriend. Or lots of combinations in-between. You are now playing SOMEONE ELSE, not just yourself.

On top of that, let's give you a choice of traits. Let's stay away from numbers, necessarily. Let's say you get to pick one trait that descibes your character - or at least how you are perceived by others. Funny, Sincere, Serious, Impulsive, Smart, Rich, Persuasive, and Argumentative.

Step 2: Your Avatar's Attributes
Now, we've got some interesting customizations for your character in the last step. Now we need to address criteria 1 and 2: You avatar's attributes need to influence the game, and there needs to be some randomness.

I'm not familiar with the AI or the nuts and bolts of the rules of Façade. But let's make things easy and say that rather than your responses always influencing the AI of Grace and Trip by a specific amount, instead it's fuzzy. So if a particular comment would normally irritate Grace by 5 points, it instead becomes a range. +/- 50%, so it can be anywhere from 3 to 7 points.

Now we've laid the foundation for your character's attributes to have an affect on the game. First off, your choice of backgrounds may influence the reactions of Trip and Grace. If you were a closer friend of Trip's, then maybe your actions will have a stronger influence on Trip, and your actions may be met with some suspicion by Grace. And so forth.

Your professional skill might give your actions a bit more credability when the conversation moves around to those topics. For example, if you are a professional artist, then any time the conversation moves around to art, you might get a bonus to your credability and the "weight" of your comments. So instead of 3-7 points, maybe you get 4-8 points for how much your words influence the AI of either character in ANY direction.

Your chosen trait also plays a roll. If you chose "Persuasive," you get a bonus to the chance to steer a conversation in a particular direction. If you choose "Funny," you have a bonus to any attempt to "lighten" the mood. Serious has the opposite effect. Impulsive reduces how much Grace or Trip get offended by your actions, since they are used to you being that way. If you are rich, there are some very definite bonuses that can occur in certain parts of the conversation. And so forth.

Step 3: Avatar Growth
Okay. We're now left with the third criterion --- your Avatar's attributes / traits must have a strong correlation with the progress in the game.

So now, we take Façade 2 and Façade 3 --- the second and third acts of the story (maybe each act takes place in a future date) and combine them together into one giant game. Between each act, you get to "level up." You get to choose one additional trait. This isn't necessarily the acquisition of a new trait, so much as it is also the perception of this trait within you by the NPCs. If you choose the same trait a second or third time, then you get two or three times the bonuses. They shouldn't be contradictory. If you choose both serious and funny, for example, you might be able to influence the tone of the conversation in either direction.

I've Created A Monster!
So now, do we have Façade, the RPG?

Well, we've now probably multiplied the content requirements by about 6x. Not only did we triple it by adding a second and third act, but we also increased the complexity by requiring that Trip and Grace respond to your chosen background information. The fact that you were Grace's ex-boyfriend could come up more than once in a conversation. And to take advantage of those professional skills, we need to make sure that the player who chose to be a doctor will have a few chances to throw their medical credentials around. That's a lot of additional conversation to create and record! Not to mention test.

We've also greatly increased the complexity of the game engine, and the AI. Adding a bit of randomization shouldn't be too hard, but figuring out all the bonuses that could apply could be a little tricky. And then there's game balance issues! Does choosing "rich" or an artist background give you undue power in the game? (Since the game really doesn't have an "objective," then arguably it doesn't.)

But I'd argue that, should we take upon ourselves this foolish task, what we've ended up with at the end is an RPG - the genuine article. There's no fantasy, no combat, no inventory system, and the storyline is extremely open-ended and untraditional.

But yes, I'd argue that at this point, we have an RPG.


(Vaguely) related steaming piles of insight:
* Non-Combat RPG: A Fool's Errand?
* The Rules of Role-Playing Games
* RPG Conversation Redesign
.

Labels: Adventure Games, Free Games, Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:00 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Sherlock Holmes Investigates Cthulhu
Sherlock Holmes: I recently read "The Hound of the Baskervilles," and became a fan.

Cthulhu: I've been a fan for years.

Adventure Gaming: Decline, Shmeline. Looks like there are more than a few being produced, but they just aren't marketing with the big bucks anymore. I have loved 'em for many years.

Now, let's just COMBINE THEM ALL TOGETHER, now, shall we?!?!? By a company that apparently has a bit of clout, and has already done two other Sherlock Holmes games. Can't say I've played their other games, but now I may have to check 'em out.

Be sure and check out the trailer.

Apparently, it's already out in parts of Europe, and it is scheduled for UK and U.S. release around the end of February 2007. There's a German Demo (700 MB!) available already on Filefront. The gameplay is first-person perspective, but it switches to third person during cut-scenes. You alternate between playing Holmes and Watson.


Thanks to Raph for the tip!

Labels: Adventure Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:35 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
The Worst Game Ever
So what was the worst video or computer game ever released? Man, the lists can be impressive. There's a lot of crap to choose from. I personally try to avoid games that I hear are truly bad, so I undoubtably have avoided some really spectacular failues. I have been rescued from pain by timely reviews or word-of-mouth.

So for me, it's going to have to be something personal. A game which, for whatever reason, spoke to me. By "speaking to me," I mean personally insulted me and all of my immediate kin, screaming profanity in my name. A game which not only sucked, but one which whispered promises of delights in my ear, but left me waking up in a bathtub of ice with my kidneys removed. A game with a name that inspires fear and anger as much as the name of a classic, beloved games fills me with nostalgic memories.

A game... like Trespasser. Yep, that's gotta be the one. For me, at least. Perhaps, this little venting of the spleen will allow me to let the healing start. Maybe.

The Hype
Trespasser was the "interactive sequel" to the second Jurassic Park movie. Which was pretty lame itself. It makes one wonder if Trespasser was Dreamwork's attempt to make the movie look good by showing how much worse it could have been. Oh, wait, they DID come out with Jurassic Park III, didn't they?

Okay. So the concept, design, and the previews made it sound awesome. You play a female character (oooh, progressive!) named Anne, voiced by none other than Minnie Driver. You crash-land on Isla Sorna, which is where the company InGen did it's primary Dinosaur R&D. Dinos have taken over the island, and you have to somehow survive and escape the island. And to make it more realistic, there was no HUD (Heads-up-display, gaming parlance taken from the miltary to refer to the stats and game information appearing on the screen that you shouldn't actually see). To see your health, you look down at your own cleavage, upon which is tatooed a heart which fades gradually as your health drops. Okay, so maybe the concept wasn't entirely without it's flaws.

The lead developer, Seamus Blackley, was an alumnus of Looking Glass Studio, and had previously worked on such System Shock, Flight Unlimited, and Terra Nova. His concept, as I understood it, was to combine realistic physics and AI to create a truly organic, open-ended adventure game. The dinosaurs would be driven by needs and primitive instincts, and the objects in the game would demonstrate real-world properties. So you could come up with your own clever solutions to manipulate the environment. This is a tall order, but considering his pedegree, I expected him to pull it off. Not perfectly, of course, but it should at least shake up the idea behind adventure gaming.

Oh, and while there would be firearms, it wouldn't be a shooter. Okay, good. It sounded like the ultimate action / adventure game to me. I was all ready to fall in love with it.

Now, I can be pretty forgiving of flaws or deficiencies in games. I mean, I'm a big fan of indie games, which do lack the production values and sheer sets of features of mainstream games. Not that those are really flaws, but I know many hardcore gamers have a tough time looking past things like a game with "only" 2D graphics, or, say, the lack of mouse support in Aveyond. I'm pretty lenient reviewer. I try to avoid judging a game by my expectations and comparisons to similar games (though that's impossible to do entirely), but instead focus on what it is, and what it is trying to achieve. This allows me to compare, say, Oblivion with the far-more-primitive Ultima IV. Maybe it's a flaw as a game designer. But I like to approach every game with as much of an open mind as I can.

I actually got Trespasser the day AFTER it appeared on the shelves. I was too busy at work on the day it was released, but some friends at the office (who actually had the luxury of being able to go HOME that night) picked it up with high expectations. The next day, they came to work with tales of woe, and how horrible the game was.

I protested, knowing that my coworkers were hardcore FPS fans. "You don't understand, it's a different kind of game," I insisted. "It's an adventure game, not a shooter."

"We know that," they insisted. "That's why we got it. You just have to play it. You'll see."

So I did. I bought Trespasser that afternoon, and took it home with optimism tempered by my coworkers' dire warnings. I reduced my expectations, realizing that the game was certainly going to have its flaws. But that was okay. The only thing that mattered was if the game was FUN.

The Truth Is In There
So the game started. Richard Attenborough's familiar voice explained the situation as a reading of his memoirs, and the initial setup was awesome. Washed up on a beach, an abandoned lab building or something up the hill, and all was quiet. Just like a good horror movie.

And just like a horror movie, the true horror gradually showed itself.

First off, there was the wonderful waldo-simulator that was the principle game interface. Apparenly, Anne of the Tattooed Cleavage was some kind of mutant with one very very funky arm. Controlling this arm was an exercise in frustration. Doing it successfully required the level of control necessary to consistently succeed at a claw vending machine. I saw two teenaged girls who could do that once. They pulled a plush animal out of the machine with every coin. After that, they took requests from my daughters for any plush toy near the top of the stack. I imagine they would have done pretty well at the interface to Trespasser. But they would have quit in disgust from all the other bugs.

For one thing, this mutant arm would get stuck on things. I would walk through a door, unaware that somehow my hand had gotten stuck on the door frame. I wouldn't notice this until I had walked about fifty feet, and find out I couldn't use the complicated waldo-controls to bring my arm in front of me to pick up an interesting stick. Then I'd turn around and discover that my arm had stretched out behind me the entire fifty feet. Yes, Reed Richards or Elastigirl would be proud of Anne. But unfortunately, too often I couldn't just jiggle the waldo-controls to free her hand. Instead, I'd have to WALK back to the other side of the door to retrieve my own hand.

Then there was the physics simulations. Physics in the world of Trespasser was pretty different from physics of the real world. For one thing, there was no friction in this world. Energy didn't get converted / absorbed on collisions. No. No, what would happen would be that you'd put your pistol down gently on a slight incline so you could try to stack boxes (since you had only one "inventory" slot). The pistol on this ten-degree slope would then proceed to ROLL down the slope. Not just slide, no. ROLL. End-over-end. In slow-motion. So you'd do a little stacking, trying to prevent the boxes from sliding off of each other, stop, grab your slowly rolling pistol so it didn't drop down to where the Velociraptors were hanging out, move it back up next to you, and go back to stacking boxes that refused to actually stack while keeping track of your pistol rolling at a speed of about six feet per minute.

The end result was that you were constantly juggling objects in the world that utterly refused to stand still.

Still, I persevered. I mean, this was a whole New Concept for a game, right? Surely there'd be a glitch or two. But like an uncut diamond, there was sure to be a gem of great value hidden within the ugly stone. I'd keep digging.

Unfortunately, the organic and open-ended gameplay promised by the game never really materialized. The advanced AI of the dinosaurs appeared no different from scripted AI of any other game. I mean, the velociraptors (as far as I got) were always out to kill you. Sure, there was one scene where a Tyranosaurus was preoccupied with fighting another dinosaur and you had to stay out from underfoot, but that was pretty much the extend of things. If the velociraptors were using some kind of clever pack behavior, I missed it as I saw them pacing blindly beneath me as I stood on a beam trying to prevent my pistol from slowly rolling over the frictionless edge.

And the physics puzzles? Pretty much box-stacking (with greased boxes) or stack-knocking-over. Pre-scripted. The physics was limited to very specific items only. Sure, if you ran out of bullets, you could actually CLUB the dinos with your rifle, or a fragment of a door that you smashed open earlier, which was admittedly pretty cool. But I was deliberately searching for clever solutions "outside the box," and I found very, very few. The dinosaurs weren't possible to simply fend off or outsmart. It pretty much came down to trying to shoot them with an impossibly weird aiming system (imagine trying to shoot a rifle one-handed while holding it as far away from you as your arm can reach. That's pretty much the "challenge" of the game), and then trying to club them over the head with an empty gun when you run out of bullets.

The straw that broke the camel's back was when I arrived at the town. Admittedly, my machine wasn't entirely bleeding edge, but it was more than powerful enough to handle all of the games of the era (including Unreal, I later discovered, which was lamented as a "pretty slideshow" by too many gamers with less powerful systems). But when I arrived in town, my framerate dropped to unplayable levels. Something like 3 frames per second. I took a few painful steps, and then a velociraptor teleported next to me. Though it looked like he had teleported in via the transporter on the Starship Enterprise during an episode in which they were having "transporter malfunctions." The dino appeared inside a fence, half on one side, half on the other. It shrieked and hissed (I know I would, too, so the AI felt very realistic at that point), unable to escape its merger with a wooden fence. I would have felt pity for it, if a minute later (which was how long it took me to take maybe a dozen steps) another raptor hadn't appeared out of nowhere and killed me instantly. I didn't even have time to look down at my breasts to see if my heart-shaped tatoo was fading.

I tried several times, trying to turn the detail levels down to "nothing." Nothing worked. Well, I mean that nothing that I tried worked to salvage the game... there wasn't a "nothing" detail setting that worked. Though that would have been strangely appropriate. The game was simply unplayable from that point on.

Aftermath
The next day, I returned, shame-faced, to my coworkers and admitted to them that they were both correct and very wise. I returned the game to the Software, Etc. store where I'd purchased it. They only allowed a trade, so I desperately searched for another game that I was interested in that I knew DIDN'T SUCK. Unfortunately, the only one of equivalent price was a copy of Unreal --- a game which I could buy from the company store (we'd been bought by GT Interactive, Unreal's publisher, by that point) for a third of its retail cost. It didn't matter. By this point, I was so disgusted by Trespasser that I just wanted to put some physical distance between me and the game, and I'd like to feel my money wasn't COMPLETELY wasted.

But apparently, the scars remain.

Incidentally, that same year, Blackley's former company released Thief: The Dark Project, and later Thief 2, which I thought captured the type of gameplay promised by Trespasser. And the budget "sci-fi hunting game" title Carnivores captured the whole man-against-dinosaur thrills almost present in Trespasser. So the actual concept - the idea behind Trespasser - was demonstrably sound. It's just that the design and execution were fumbled horribly.

Since then, a wonderful postmortem has explained just how such a wonderful idea crashed and burned. This is perhaps the single, salvageable good thing to emerge from the wreckage. And, in the tradition of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, a group of honest-to-goodness fans have emerged to try to convert the sow's ear into a silk purse. And I do have to admit that the game did bring me some enjoyment for perhaps the first fifteen minutes or so. So perhaps it is not the objective worst game of all time, nor even the worst failure of all time. That last prize probably goes to E.T. the Extraterrestrial for the Atari 2600... he game that destroyed the system... but as I never owned a 2600 nor had to personally experience the horror of that game, except for a few minutes at a friend's house before swapping out the cartridge for Missile Command, it doesn't burn in my memory like Trespasser.

But for me, when we talk of how much a game sucks, Trespasser set the high bar for craptastic-ness that has yet to be exceeded. It is my Eye of Argon for computer games.


(Vaguely) related musings on the Nature of Suckage:
* Why Battlefield 2 Sucks
* Quality Ain't Easy
* Polish: Attention to Detail
* How To Get Me To Buy Your Indie RPG
.

Labels: Adventure Games, Game Design, Mainstream Games, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:26 AM (Permalink) 7 comments links to this post

 
How Many Game Developers Does It Take To Change a Light Bulb?
Very, very funny. Because it's so true! Courtesy of Greg Costikyan of Manifesto Games:

Game Developers Change Light Bulbs
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:13 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
The Warhawk Movie and Endings
Warhawk (the 1995 original, not the new remake) was one of the two first games Singletrac ever made. All told, we released something like 11 games. But for Warhawk and Twisted Metal, we had very little clue what we were doing, but we had a lot of fun doing it. The producers out at Sony helped us stay on target and make sure nothing fell between the cracks...

But nobody's perfect.

A great deal of money was spent on a really horrible movie that would tell the story of Warhawk (aka Warhawk: The Red Mercury Missions). It was definitely worthy of Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. In fact, one game, by Psygnosis I think, actually did that to their own movie once they realized how bad it was. After seeing the movie countless times, I'd just start making up my own lines to go with it. At the beginning of the video, Commander Jassic faces Hatch and Walker in front of them, and states their names. I'd always say something like, "We are gathered here today to witness the Holy Matrimony of Captain Hatch and Corporal Walker..." at that point in the video.

Man those videos were cheesey. But one thing that was missed was having actual ENDINGS. I think Sony expected us to do some cool CGI stuff and call it done. We weren't really paying much attention. I think there was a brief clip of Kreel doing a slow death-rattle, but it sucked even worse than the rest of the videos. So at last minute and at great expense came up with a solution:

Text. Plain ol' scrolling text.

Oh, we had CGI endings too, for the final level. But they were too brief to offer much explanation. So we included text. And as long as we were using text, we may as well use it for ALL endings. Including the failure endings. It was more fun than a generic "Game Over" anyway. We invited the entire company to submit endings. Some were funny. Some were bloody. Some were over-the-top dramatic.

For your entertainment, here are some sample endings from Warhawk. If I remember or suspect the original author, I'll mention it. No, I can't remember all of the ones that are mine. Some were just amalgams of ideas from two or three interesting concepts.

By way of explanation - the Icarus is the mothership that launches your fighter. Kreel is the bad guy who is using the powers of Red Mercury to warp reality. Commander Jassic is your really wenchy-acting commander. Captain Hatch is the pilot, and Corporal (?) Walker (first name rumored to be "Sky") is the co-pilot / weapons officer who is constantly getting yelled at by Jassic.

There was also a trick to "winning" the game against the final boss, Kreel. The obvious approach - just overpowering Kreel, would result in his being able to get off one final act of vengeance, launching the last cannister of Red Mercury up and into the mother ship, blowing up everyone on board. Since this included Commander Jassic, this could be considered the "best" ending.

Alternate win scenarios included suiciding by ramming your ship directly into the mouth of Kreel's skull-ship. Kreel would be destroyed, but so would your pilots. The "best" ending was the "intelligent sacrifice" - you eject just as you slammed your ship into the skull's mouth, thus gaining the advantage of the surprise attack AND living to tell about it.

So here are some of the ending variants:


Canyon Variant A (I think Mike Mason did this one)
Kreel's forces find your remains smoldering in the wreckage of the Warhawk. Your head is brought back to Kreel and mounted on a pole outside his command center as a reminder to others of the futility of opposing him. Within days his forces have conquered the planet, establishing Kreel's position as godhead and subjecting the world's population to a long and
malevolent rule.

Back in the Icarus, Jassic views your demise with doleful impotence. Her hope of stopping Kreel
has been smashed along with your body, and she ponders the wisdom of pinning her hopes on a
green pilot and a sarcastic weapons officer.


Airship Variant B
The Warhawk plunges into the cold, dark water and plummets like a rock.

One hundred meters: the sea around you grows darker as you tumble into the depths.

Two hundred meters: the cockpit groans and creaks under the building pressure.

Three hundred meters: the canopy shatters and you are crushed instantly under the abyssal pressure.

Your bones have long been scattered by the sharks when Kreel crowns himself emperor of the wasteland.


Airship Variant C
A rescue plane from the giant air transport retrieves Hatch just before he drowns. His copilot is not so lucky.

Hours later, Hatch is taken before Kreel. The madman uses the mysterious power of red mercury to twist Hatch's mind, turning him against those he once trusted and loved.

Hatch becomes Kreel's right-hand man. Flying an improved, red mercury-powered Warhawk fighter, he singlehandedly destroys the Icarus and the last remnants of the world's defensive forces.


Volcano Variant C (Mike Badger, lead programmer)
As Jassic watches the Warhawk sink into the water, she realizes that the situation has become hopeless. Although her reputation as a tenacious fighter is widespread, she knows that it is only a matter of time before she must surrender to Kreel's might. She ponders the treatment that she will receive at the hands of her captors, and is unable to face this prospect. She opens a secret compartment and removes a lone cyanide capsule. Taking a deep breath, she places it in
her mouth and performs her final duty. As death takes her, her final thoughts are of Hatch and Walker.

Three days later Hatch and Walker's bloated bodies slowly rise to the surface, their body armor no longer able to keep them in their watery grave. The sea birds feast upon their tenderized
flesh until the sharks move in to finish the job, crunching through their armor and ripping them to pieces. What little is left sinks to the bottom for a second time, never to rise again.

(Note: I think we all had some level of hostility towards these characters by the end of the game's development....)


Volcano variant B
In the end, kreel was defeated only after a costly nuclear war. Millions of innocents died, and much of the world lay in ruins from the devastating holocaust.

Rescue parties searched the water around the volcanic spires for days, looking for any remains of the Warhawk. What little was found left no doubt that the officers had died almost instantly.


Volcano variant D (I think this one was mine, too)
As the fiery magma in the
heart of the volcano is
the Red Mercury in my blood.
It maketh mine arm great,
that I might pluck thee from
the sky, and in my wrath
I do plunge thee into the
depths of the sea. Such
is my might and my glory.
Amen.

-- Book of Kreel 11:17


Gauntlet Variant D (Mine)
kreel watches the demise of the two would-be heroes in his "Gauntlet of Pain." He laughs as the warhawk erupts into flame on his closed-circuit monitor in his dining room.

Then he realizes that he is choking to death on a chicken bone from the meal he was eating.

Kreel has died. You were indirectly responsible, but no, you have not won Warhawk. The best is yet to come.

Try again.


Overpowered Kreel Epilogue, variant B
"No!" Hatch cries impotently as he sees Kreel destroy the icarus with a dying gesture. The combat took too long, gave Kreel too much time to prepare. Hatch plays the episode
over and over in his mind, trying to learn what he could have done differently
to spare the lives of his comrades aboard the mother ship.

Walker shrugs. "Well, Hatch, i guess you won't be getting that promotion after all."


Win By Intelligent Sacrifice Epilogue (I think this one is mine)
The escape pod is tossed like a feather in a hurricane as the red mercury detonates inside kreel's battle-fortress. With repulsors screaming from battle damage and overload, the cockpit slams into the moist earth three miles from the site of Kreel's defeat.

Hours later Hatch regains consciousness. Hearing voices outside the canopy, he cries out to the rescue party, led by Commander Jassic herself.

Soon the two heroes are celebrated all over the world. Hatch is promoted to general. Walker re-
kindles his romance with Jassic. All is well.

Until something fouler and more devious than Kreel's tormented mind surfaces...


Win By Intelligent Sacrifice Epilogue, StormLand variant C
The mad overlord Kreel was destroyed by captain Hatch's brilliant tactical move. After ramming the warhawk directly into the red mercury containment chamber, Hatch and Walker ejected in time to be transported back to the Icarus, avoiding being engulfed by the firestorm that destroyed Kreel.

Hatch went on to become commander-in-chief of the world's defensive forces, and had a long and distinguished career.

Walker finally married Commander Jassic, and the two went into business selling tie-died t-shirts and "I survived the Red Mercury War and all I got was this lousy baseball cap" baseball caps.



(Vaguely) related posty-thingies:
* Easter Eggs
* Warhawk Flies Again!
* Warhawk Re-Imagined

.

Labels: Mainstream Games, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:00 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Virtual Villagers Wins 2006 Sim Game of the Year
In 2004, it was Outpost Kaloki.

This year, it is Virtual Villagers!

Congratulations to developer Last Day Of Work for winning the 2006 Sim Game of the Year award at GameTunnel!

Kudos and Armadillo Run won second and third place, respectively --- I have no doubt the competition for the Sim category was extremely tight this year.

Since I'm a fan, I'm pleased to have some kind of validation that my tastes aren't TOO out-of-whack... well, that, or the judges are just as weird as I am. Anyway, congratulations to Virtual Villagers.

(PSST.... yes, you can download the free demo HERE!)



(Vaguely) Related Fantasies Not Involving Ginger or Mary Ann (this time):
* Tamagotchi Villagers
* Dead Villagers
* Virtual Villagers II Developer's Diary
* We Won!

Labels: Game Announcements

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:42 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Indie Postmortem: Shelled!
At GarageGames, there's an indie postmortem of the game, "Shelled!" Interesting to take a look at, especially if you have been working with the Torque engine (though the postmortem only has a few Torque-specific sections).

One interesting mistake he mentions is a problem I deal with constantly: Coding what you need, not what you think you might need. My time at a company practicing eXtreme Programming (XP) helped break the habit somewhat, but I still find myself falling into the trap of taking five times as long to create something ten times as flexible, when I actually don't need any of that flexibility.

Many thanks to Gary Preston, the lead programmer of Shelled!, for providing this very candid postmortem.

Check out the postmortem here.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, programming

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:51 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Fastcrawl - Quick Take on the 2006 Indie RPG Award Winner
Sometimes, you just feel like a good ol-fashioned dungeon crawl. So I gave FastCrawl (Download it HERE! ... or not), the winner of the 2006 Indie RPG of the Year award from GameTunnel, a try this evening. I didn't have much time to play around with it, but I was able to play through a couple of full games, and thought I'd share my discoveries.

Installation was a pain. The game requires .NET 1.1, which I thought I had on my machine, but it claimed it couldn't find it. I tried reinstalling .NET (without a reboot), and FastCrawl still complained about not being able to find it. I went ahead and installed and played it anyway, and it worked in spite of complaints.

When you start a game, you are immediately given a random party (with random names) and it is up to you to guide them through a dungeon. It creates a random story (more of mission objectives and setting), and drops you into the entrance of a randomly-generated dungeon. Some dungeon types include doors and locks. Others are more open caverns. A skilled rogue is handy in the former dungeon types. The dungeons are filled with various monsters, traps, randomized treasure of innumerable different types, and occasionally a character who will join you on your quest.

FastCrawl bills itself as an "action-RPG," but it's really turn-based. There's really no time-critical actions you ever need to perform. It's even less action-oriented than Empires and Dungeons. I actually prefer the turn-based gameplay, anyway, so other than a misleading category name, it doesn't bug me. Every step or action takes up a turn. Resting takes several turns (and uses supplies, a treasure type available in limited quantities).

You only "level up" when you find and take the stairs down to the next level of the dungeon. Each time your characters level up, you are offered one of several specializations that they can choose from. For example, a cleric may specialize in improving the strength of his healing spells, or in healing the entire party at once, or in becoming a "Wrath" priest that inflicts deadly spell damage on oppnents.

Combat is also handled in a turn-based fashion. You will need to select the starting formation of your party - which dictates who can attack and be attacked with what equipment and range. Once that is set, the game goes through the combatants one-by-one during the course of each combat turn. Though it's a somewhat abstract arrangement, long-time players of certain games with "ranks" of characters (like the old Wizardry / Bard's Tale games) will be right at home.

Eventually, assuming you survive long enough, you'll come up against the "final encounter" - the "boss monsters" of the dungeon mentioned in your initial quest story. Defeat them, and you win the game.

The graphics of FastCrawl are simple and static, but pretty. The music is likewise nice but doesn't overwhelm the game. No saved games slots are available, but your game is auto-saved when you exit so you can continue when you come back to it. You won't need to do that much, as the shortest games can take 30 minutes or less.

My take: According to my definition, FastCrawl is definitely an RPG, with some old-school sensibilities mixed with some newer indie production values and ease-of-play. It has enough replayability to remain entertaining (I think) after many play-throughs.

While the random party generation may frustrate some players, I think it's actually advantageous to maintaining the replayability of the game. It's much harder to settle on a single, optimized group. For example, in my first game, I had two clerics. It was easy to get used to having the two clerics on "heal duty," though I eventually specialized one in Wrath. My second run-through, I was given no clerics whatsoever initially (though I eventually found one who joined me on the second level of the dungeon). I had to come up with an entirely new strategy to take advantage of having a warrior, rogue, and mage.

Like Empires & Dungeons, FastCrawl has a little bit of a "board game" feel to it. It's a good quick-and-dirty dungeon crawl, and well worth checking out if that sort of thing floats your boat. If you are really looking for a more epic adventure and in-depth storylines, it will leave you unsatisfied (go check out Avernum 4 or Aveyond).

While I love big storylines and detailed characters, sometimes I'm just in the mood to grab a sword, hit the dungeon, and beat the crud out of some monsters for some ph4t l00ts. I got a kick out of this game, and I expect I'll keep playing it whenever the mood strikes me.

Want to check it out yourself and tell me how wrong I am?

Download the free FastCrawl demo!

.

Labels: Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:36 PM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Black (and White) Is Beautiful: Does Gaming History Matter?
Maybe the measure of the maturity of a subculture or medium is how much of its history has been forgotten. If so, I'd say computer games and video games are well on their way to becoming a mature and established. It seems many game journalists are too young to have clear memories beyond a full generation of console hardware. Mention the 3DO to your average gamer, and you are likely to be met with either a blank stare or the vaguest of recognition. I'm probably included in that description... I think I only played three 3DO games ever, on a company system, and only one - Road Rash - was actually worth playing.

Maybe that's why our industry has thrived so long and selling the same old recycled, gussied-up games to the public year after year. Although it's changing slowly as the "average" gamer threatens to age beyond the "twenty-something" crowd, we've traditionally been young enough to be very forgetful of our past. I find myself frustrated when I read glowing reports of a "revolutionary" game "inventing" a new kind of gameplay that I remember enjoying fifteen years ago. Like more than one article stating that "open-ended gameplay" somehow began with Grand Theft Auto.

Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion must have stolen the idea from Grand Theft Auto. Riiiiiiiiight. What was the release date of Elder Scrolls 1: Arena, again? Or Elite?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's not like it's unique to our medium. I mean, Elvis and the Beatles were always people that our parents liked. I never did understand the phenomina around those performers or the music.

And film! I don't know when I learned to despise black & white (or just "older films"). Maybe it was after years of watching Our Gang and The Li'l Rascals, when I suddenly realized to my horror that the cute girl Darla was actually pushing sixty in real life (and died in 1979). Or maybe it was my being influenced by marketing. Surely the fact that everybody was TALKING about the new shows meant that they were more interesting than the old, right? The technology was poor, the special effects were embarassing, the studios hired pretty boys and girls to be "stars" instead of people with actual acting talent, the humor was over-the-top for a more naive audience, and what they thought was edgy and tantalizing was actually laughably tame (except when they referred to things that are now politically incorrect).

But a friend forced me to watch "It Happened One Night," and I was delighted. It wasn't that there was anything in particular that was in any way spectacular. Nothing knocked my socks off or showed me anything I hadn't seen before. But the whole thing was just... just a great movie. Since then, I've been going back and catching up on some great shows from the past that I might have missed out on. (Some recent discoveries: "Captain Blood" and "The Adventures of Robin Hood" starring Errol Flynn, and "The Big Sleep" with Humphrey Bogart were a lot of fun!)

When you are talking about a commercial industry, from a short-term perspective it's not in a business's best interest to promote the past. I mean, if you are spending $75 million on a movie remake, you do not want it competing directly with the original that viewers can watch for free on television.

Games have suffered additional cultural amnesia in that they have traditionally marketed to a younger audience, and that the rapid evolution of technology that has rendered older games obsolete (and even impossible to play, due to the loss of the equipment necessary to play them).
But that part is changing. The gamer demographic is maturing, as is the technology. And with the advent of emulation - emulation that copyright-holders are discovering they can take advantage of on the new consoles with downloadable retro games - we are seeing a few old classics being introduced to new audiences.

But I'm not expecting a retro revolution here. It's like AMC or the Western Channel --- I think those channels are primarily catering to an existing niche and only incidentally growing their market.

So am I just railing against the inevitable here? Is it such a bad thing that players (and developers) have forgotten what made M.U.L.E., Ultima IV, Elite, Super Mario Brothers, Final Fantasy VII, Mario 64, Doom, The Secret of Monkey Island, or Galaga so special? Am I just being an old fart, complaining about how kids believe videogames began with Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater?


(Vaguely) related workings of a fevered imagination:
* Innovation in RPGs?
* R.I.P. Computer Gaming World
* What Makes a Game Great?
* Open-Ended Gameplay Began with GTA?

Labels: Biz, Mainstream Games, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:09 PM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
But is it an RPG?
I've decided to revise my musings about the nature of RPGs a little bit from my last stab at it. Coming of with taxonomic criteria is a tricky thing, as it often happens in reverse - you deliberately design them to exclude the games you don't want in a category, and to include the ones you do. And I'm going to admit that there's a little bit of subjectiveness in each of the criteria, and a lot in the new, fourth one.

Some of this was spurred on by some discussion going on concerning the 2006 Indie RPG awards. There are some folks (specifically the "controversial" but ever-so-fun-to-read Scorpia) who maintain that "hack-and-slash" style games no longer qualify as RPGs, especially if they are heavy on the action. Or at least they belong in their own category. And there are some who maintain that Diablo wasn't a "true" RPG, too.

Now, I'm not going to argue against RPGs being a broad enough category that it couldn't use some additional subdivision. If there were more indie RPGs coming out each year, I'm sure GameTunnel would be happy to break the category up a little more. After all, they had an entire category devoted to "Aquanoid Clones" a while back, because there were just so many of them. But I'm going to go for a more general, inclusive classification here. Here's my criteria for determining whether or not a game is worthy of the "RPG" label (even as a hybrid... a "slash-rpg?")

Note that when I say "Avatar" in the context of this discussion, this can actually mean a set of characters that fall under the player's control. So the Avatar may switch in mid-game (as in the Final Fantasy games), or it may be an entire party of characters (I'm thinking classic Eye of the Beholder / Wizardry / Bard's Tale stuff here, including the newer indie game Minions of Mirth).

Is This Game An RPG?

#1 - The success or failure of the player's actions are significantly influenced by (or modified by) the attributes of the player's avatar.

For example, even if the game makes you aim your bow manually (as in an action / RPG), whether or not you hit and / or the damage you do is based upon the avatar's attributes (a combination of inherent ability and the attributes of any active equipment or effects in use by the avatar).

Many games might pass this test, for very small values of the word "significantly." FPS games, for example, have attributes of your avatar - principally determined by power-ups and current health status. However, with such a small variety of changes to the attributes, and the fact that rocket launcher doesn't really vary from player to player (unless they have quad damage, but that's a small variant), I'd argue that it fails this rule.


#2 - Some non-determinism should influence the outcome of critical player actions.

This is something of an artifact of criterion #1. I have a tough time accepting a game as an RPG if attacking monster A with weapon B with a character with stats set C will ALWAYS hit for X points of damage. I'd start looking for Adventure or Strategy labels for the game.

I BELIEVE that the range of damage done by an attack in Oblivion was determined randomly (at least I couldn't perceive a deterministic pattern). There seemed to be some randomne