It's All A Coincidence!
A reviewer writes a less-than-stellar review of the big Christmas release of a major publisher... and major advertiser of the game review site.

He's subsequently fired, and later many of the ads and branding for the game are pulled from the site.

An editor subsequently resigns. Maybe.

I'm sure it's all just a coincidence.

Or not, if Penny Arcade nails it.

Either way - perception is reality in these things. The product of game review sites is one who's value is based on trust. An erosion of that trust is a bad thing.

Thanks to Primotech, Destructoid, Kotaku, and Joystiq for the heads-up. And Brian H., who personally gave me the heads-up when I was too sleep deprived to notice anything happening beyond the odd voices in my head.

UPDATE: This "insider info" on Valleywag - if legit (and it has the appearance of being so) - is pretty damning evidence of not only what has happened, but that it is simply a symptom of the state of GameSpot and C|Net's journalist websites - if not the entire game review industry. A key excerpt:

"Our last executive editor, Greg Kasavin, left to go to EA, and he was replaced by a suit, Josh Larson, who had no editorial experience and was only involved on the business side of things. Over the last year there has been an increasing amount of pressure to allow the advertising teams to have more of a say in the editorial process; we've started having to give our sales team heads-ups when a game is getting a low score, for instance, so that they can let the advertisers know that before a review goes up. Other publishers have started giving us notes involving when our reviews can go up; if a game's getting a 9 or above, it can go up early; if not, it'll have to wait until after the game is on the shelves."

Scary. Of course, it could be an editor from a rival gaming site who can easily make it sound authentic and is trying to cast even more doubt on GameSpot's already questionable journalistic integrity. We'll probably never know the truth. I doubt Jeff Gerstmann even knew what hit him. (Discovered via HDRLying. )

Labels: Mainstream Games

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

 
Frayed Knights: Twisty Paths and Flickering Torchlight
Frayed Knights is an indie computer role-playing game (CRPG) in development in something of the style of old-school first-person-perspective dungeon-crawlers like Wizardry, the original Bard's Tale series, and the D&D "Gold Box" games. But then it totally throws the whole thing on its ear with a comedy twist and a refusal to take the genre seriously. Here is another of the weekly updates in the ongoing development saga. If bleeding out of the eyes persists after reading, consult your physician.

Dungeon Dressing - Ranch Style!
Back when I was 12 or so, I loved reading through all the appendices of the Dungeon Master's Guide for D&D. Yes, I was as much a geek then as I am now. In order to help DMs (Dungeon Masters) with their creativity, one appendix was filled with "Dungeon Dressing" (Appendix I, if anybody's counting...) A random table of all kinds of junk you might find in a dungeon. Nevermind that if you just threw those into any old dungeon room, it would make no sense whatsoever. An acrid oder, a broken arrow on the foor, a torch stub, scattered teeth, and a buzzing noise...

All that junk might work in the Temple of Pokmor Xang, though. As I was describing the level to Kevin a few weeks ago, I told him to imagine that the temple was the domain of some "trailer trash orcs." In fact, I want to give the high priest's bed a broken leg, so it can be propped up on a block or something. Unfortunately, that means content. Lots and lots of content.

So I spend a bit of time this week working on the "dungeon dressing." Not all the random bits I just described, but certain key elements like light sources, doors, gates, and other objects that need to be interactive, give off light, or respond to scripts.

Torching Things
You know what? A simple freakin' torch in a sconce can take a LOT of time. Maybe it's only because I'm still not a very fast modeler or something, but for some reason I chalked the whole idea of making a torch - something less than 100 polygons - to something I could whip out in oh, say, an hour or something. How hard can it be? (Yes, it is that very question that probably causes all insanity in game development.)

Well, not hard. But time-consuming. For those unfamiliar with the process, the steps include:

#1- Finding some pictures on the web to base my model on. Not that I actually used any of them directly, but it helped to know what different designs of torch sconces have in common

#2 - Building the geometry, which is actually pretty fast.

#3 - Texturig the model. UGH. This is probably the slowest, painful, and least-satisfactory portion of the process for me... at least for models that don't need to be rigged and animated. Fortunately I have Genetica, which is good for creating a base-layer texture for almost anything.

#4 - Repeating steps 2 and 3 for all levels of detail (LOD) of the model. Although at this stage, I'm not doing much with LOD. And to be honest, this stage usually comes after stage 5 and I know the high-LOD version is just right.

#5 - Exporting the model into Torque's DTS format. I've done this enough that setting it up for export in Blender is cake. But it takes a couple of iterations.

#6 - Creating a particle system for the torch flame. I use an example particle system as a base, but it needs tweaking. That means a lot of iteration.

#7 - Creating appropriate lighting information for the torches.

#8 - Going back and repeating steps 2 - 7 until it looks just right.

When all was said and done - the quick, stupid little torch sconce ended up taking me about three hours. And it still doesn't look perfect or anything. So there was one full night of development.

Pictures of Pimple Gods...
I repeated similar steps for a candle, a table, and a portrait of "Happy Pokmor Xang". You can see the end results in that top picture - though the candle is barely visible in the distance.

Besides this, and adding some smoke to the firepit in the altar room (the altar IS being turned into an actual 3D model even as I type this!), I have been adding scripted doors and a portcullis (still not fully textured or animated) to the level. Which brings up another interesting story...

Well, interesting if you are me. But I'm a programmer, Which means I get laughs out of stories that end in punchlines like, "Oh, and then I realized that I hadn't dereferenced the pointer before post-incrementing it, so I was stuck in an infinite loop!" Hah, hah, good times.... But I digress...

Dealing With Dungeon Speed-Runs
I was doing a "walk-through" on the dungeon, and I realized that, if you played it just right, you could actually bypass about 70% of the content as it is currently designed. Now, I'm all about the optional content and secret areas and stuff like that. In fact, my biggest concern is that with the game being so heavy on the story and dialog, that it might be too linear. So while the chapters occur in pretty linear fashion, I want the player to be able to chart his course through it pretty much as he pleases.

But, I also would like to not have players complain that the first dungeon is way too short, or that the Frayed Knights is only fifteen minutes long.

So I did a little bit of redesign, drawing upon my experience as a Pen & Paper RPG game-master. There are all kinds of ways of solving this problem, and I'm going to try and adopt a similar policy for all content in the full game:

Hard Barriers
First of all, you've got hard barriers - the traditional way to handle things that you see in almost every game. This comes down to designing the areas in a fashion where it's simply impossible to get to point E from point A without passing through points B, C, and D. This can be done with dungeon layout, as well as providing obstacles between A and E that can only be removed by visiting these other areas. I resolved this by adding some defensive portcullises to the dungeon that must be raised in some other area. Yeah, boringly traditional, that's me.

Soft Barriers
But I also wanted to introduce the concept of soft barriers. Which means more coding on my part. These are things that encourage the player to hit the other points without forcing the issue.

Example #1 - the key to a locked door is in another area. However, you can still pick the lock. It may just take more time and risk.

Example #2 - As they approach the big "boss encounter", the Frayed Knights note out loud that since they haven't cleared out the areas behind them yet, they could find themselves surrounded in an upcoming fight. Which happens, if the player refuses to take the hint --- the player will have to face one or two waves of reinforcements during the boss battle (depending upon how much of preceeding areas they've tackled). So they can brute-force it if they want.

I'm going to try and be more mindful of creating some more of the "soft barriers" to challenges in the future. Basically, the soft barriers provide the player with additional choices. I figure that's a good thing. The trick is to make sure the player knows he's got a choice. In example two, it comes from the characters making a mention of a possible threat. In the first example, how does the player know that the key to the door is available?

So that's what's been going on this week. Mostly between the hours of 11:00 PM and 2:30 AM. How's your week been?


(Vaguely) related examples of cruelty to pixels:
* Frayed Knights: Are You Experienced?
* RPG Design: The "Brute Force" Problem
* RPG Design: Why Can't I Get Past the Stupid Door?
* Big World, Small Dungeon: Does Size Matter in RPGs?

Wanna Talk About It? Here's the Forum Thread.

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:00 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Penny Arcade Adventures Interview
You know, when I first heard about Penny Arcade Adventures (Subtitled, "On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness"), I thought "Graphic Adventure Game." Like Sam & Max, or the old LucasArts / Sierra adventures. Especially when Ron "Monkey Island" Gilbert came on board to help with the design. But from the sounds of it, it's going to have a lot of RPG-style action going along with it.

It looks like we'll have yet another comedy-oriented indie RPG out there soon. I think there's room for two :)

The combat system is a "blend of turn-based and real-time," according to this interview. It's definitely off the beaten path. The setting is... well, all kinds of awesome to my ears. According to Jerry Holkins (AKA Tycho Brahe),

"Story-wise, it's meant to be a kind of ridiculous horror game. It's modeled in kind of a winking way after the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft, and it's designed from the ground up to be a kind of pulp serial. It takes place in what seems to be a slightly mystical, prohibition-era urban and suburban setting."

Sign me up. This sounds pretty dang awesome.

Check out the Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Interview at RPG Vault.

Labels: Adventure Games, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:59 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
A Look Back At Ultima IV
Gametap has a retrospective on one of the most important CRPGs of all time, Ultima IV.

Ultima IV isn't my favorite --- although I can count on one hand the number of CRPGs which occupy more choice real-estate in my heart. It had its flaws, even when it was released. I was one of the wusses who didn't like gathering reagents for my spells. And I was never happy with the monsters having the advantage in combat because of interface issues (diagonal shooting was introduced in Ultima V, I think).

While I played through part of Ultima IV when it was first released, it was years later before I tried it again and finally beat it. I had just finished Ultima VII: The Black Gate, and found myself in need of more Britannian adventures. So only two hours after beating what in my mind is the best of the series, I went retro and started Ultima IV again.

Let me tell you... the difference of seven years of technological advancement was far more obvious in 1992 than it is today. The first two or three hours were painful.

But then something happened, and the primitive interface and graphics partially melted away, and suddenly I was enjoying the game on its own terms - and having a blast. I was in gamer mindset for most of the ethical dilemmas - I did what was needed to max out my virtues. But it was fascinating in its context. When I finished the game a couple of weeks later, I just kinda sat there and pondered what a unique and different kind of adventure I'd been through. It hadn't changed my world-view or anything like that, but it had made me think.

Too many games seem to be terrified of asking the player to think.

And there I was, thinking, among other things, that I really wanted to play another Ultima RPG immediately.

Anyway, you can check out the retrospective here:

Ultima IV Retrospective at GameTap

(Tip o' the helm to GameSetWatch for the link!)

(Vaguely) related Ultimusings...
* What If Ultima IV Were Written Today?
* Innovation in RPGs?
* The 16 Essential RPGs
* Game Moments: Ultima 7
.

Labels: retro, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:00 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Indie RPG News Roundup, November 28th
Indie games aren't traditionally as driven by the holiday season as mainstream titles. However, things have been busy this year with several RPG releases in October through December. Go indie!

Eschalon: Book 1
We had patch 1.02 fopr Eschalon: Book 1 come out this weekend, and now we're already on Patch 1.03 (a "release candidate" version). BasiliskWrangler has been busy. Most of patch 1.02 and 1.03 are bug-fixes for some unique situations. You can also visit the main page to go with the "safer" 1.02 patch for the next day or so.

Download Eschalon: Book 1 Patch 1.03


Age of Decadence
Iron Tower Studio, the studio responsible for the upcoming indie RPG "Age of Decadence" (another Torque-based RPG) inaugurated their new forums with some screenshots of towns and building interiors. Purty! And kinda brown. But purty.

Age of Decadence Town Districts


Birth of Shadows
This is a new indie RPG from Precision Games that should be releasing in December, after a minor graphics overhaul. It is an action-RPG, but it does offer some nifty elements like multiplayer and a map editor.

Birth of Shadows Website


RPGDX November 07 Contest Winners
There were two winners of RPGDX's November "48 hour RPG contest" - which was actually closer to 5 days, but who's counting. The winners were The Trials of Soscarides by Scrim, and The Amazing Adventures of Kassandra by Mattias Gustavsson. I haven't tried either one out, yet, unfortunately.


And that's the Indie RPG news roundup for this week. Have fun!

Got News or Updates? Let Us Know on the Forum!

Labels: Indie RPG News

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:30 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
How To Enjoy Character Creation in a CRPG
Scorpia just wrote up her "first look" at the new indie RPG Eschalon: Book 1. I am amused. She didn't get past the character creation system. For most reviewers, would probably be a bad thing. I, myself, have ranted in the past about the frustration of dealing with character creation systems for games for which I don't yet understand the rules. Like many gamers, I'm too excited to jump right into the action.

Not Scorpia. She delighted in the character creation system, and ended up making three different characters. Admittedly, Eschalon does a pretty good job of providing you with explanations of what all the different options do, and gives you a lot of stuff to play around with. She ended up making three different characters.

And she reminded me how enjoyable that experience can be.

I usually enjoyed the experience in "dice and paper" RPGs, although that usually comes with my experience with the system. Imagining the path your character might take in life - choosing some unusual options and figuring out how to best take advantage of it. In CRPGs, there's always the fear that you are choosing something poorly. Will "Stealth" actually be of any use? Or "Medium Armor" (probably the worst armor specialization option in Morrowind)? Should I generalize or specialize?

I lost count of the number of characters I made for Neverwinter Nights - just because the D&D 3rd edition rules system was so fun. But I understood the system before I made my first character for the game. I have never heard anyone complain about how much time designing a costume in City of Heroes can take. And maybe RPGs could do a better job of making the character system part of the fun instead of an obstacle to "getting to the fun part."

Some things that work:

* It can teach you about the game system.
The character-creation process can be a tutorial - literally or figuratively. When you enter the adventuring portion of the game, you can already have a good basic understanding of how the magic system works, or what sort of opportunities you need to look out for to take advantage of your character's strengths.

* It can build up your anticipation for the rest of the game
Some fun visuals and text can introduce you to the game's back-story, and hint as to what may be in store. Are there any hidden clues here?

* It can be a game by itself
Eschalon: Book 1 uses the oh-so-old-school randomness as part of the process. While many players get frustrated by this, Las Vegas has proven that human beings are thrilled by gambling. Do you stand on a decent set of rolls, or do you try for something better, or something more specialized? Eschalon helps offset the negatives by giving you bonus points you can use to offset the randomness. And do I even need to mention the awesome Gypsy sequence of the middle Ultima titles?

While much of this depends upon the game's design, it's nice to remember that creating a character doesn't have to be a chore. It really should be part of the fun.

UPDATE: Added a screenshot of Eschalon's character generation screen, complete with the help dialogs turned on.


(Vaguely) related randomness:
* How To Get Me To Buy Your Indie RPG
* Scorpia's New Tale
* What If Ultima IV Were Written Today?
.

Labels: Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:34 AM (Permalink) 15 comments links to this post

 
Game Design: Yahtzee On "The Keyring Syndrome"
Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw (author of the extremely funny Zero Punctuation series at The Escapist) is also an adventure game designer, and has a a series of blog articles about common adventure game flaws. Several are appropriate to adventure games and RPGs. This one in particular concerns what he calls the "Keyring Syndrome."

The problem comes from the simplified interfaces of graphic adventures as they "evolved" to the point where there were so few verb / object combinations available that you could brute force the solutions. In particular, the "Use on " combinations that allow you to unlock a part of the game simply by going through your inventory blindly.

But more than that just criticize the problem, he also suggests some solutions. It's a good read whether you are a designer or a fan of adventures or RPGs:

Ben Crowshaw: Use Key On Door

Labels: Adventure Games, Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:40 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Sherlock Holmes 4 Now Available
The fourth "Sherlock Holmes" 3D graphic adventure game, "Sherlock Holmes vs. Arsène Lupin," is now available. The last one, "The Awakened," was a blending of Sherlock Holmes with H. P. Lovecraft's horror stories. This one continues the mash-up idea, this time pitting Arthur Conan Doyle's legendary detective against the legendary thief, Arsène Lupin, created by French author Maurice Leblanc.

And no, I haven't read anything by Leblanc, so I have no idea.

Based on my experience with the last Sherlock Holmes game, I'd be interested in playing this one if I wasn't quite so swamped with good games. Not that I'm complaining! Now, if I could play as this Arsène Lupin guy, and could try and defeat Holmes in the heist of the 19th century... well, then they'd have a sale in a heartbeat. I wouldn't care that I'm still only level 4 in Eschalon: Book 1.

Sherlock Holmes 4: Sherlock Holmes Versus Arsène Lupin

(Vaguely) related ado about nothing:
* Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened First Impressions
* Watson Fails Spot Check, Spared 1d3 Sanity Loss
* Coming Soon: More Graphic Adventure Goodness?
.

Labels: Adventure Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:55 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Free Game: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
This has been around for a couple of years, but I became re-acquainted with it yesterday.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Steve Meretzky and Douglas Adams, was one of Infocom's most popular (and most difficult) text adventure games. Naturally, it was based on Douglas Adam's hit book series of the same name. The BBC has created an online version of the game - with illustrations. Your saved games go to a public registry, so you need to name your game carefully to avoid getting it stomped on by other players.

Play The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

For yet more entertainment value, the BBC has an interview with Steve Meretzky about his collaboration with Douglas Adams in the 1980's to produce The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Adams and his agent actually approached Infocom with the idea, as Adams was a fan of Infocom adventure games (particularly Suspended, by Mike Berlyn).

An excerpt from the interview: "At first I was a little shy to speak my mind, given Douglas' fame and brilliance and given that we were adapting his material. As a result, the early parts of the game (which are the parts we designed first) are structurally weakest, in terms of being too linear and relying too heavily on prior familiarity with the Hitchhiker's story. I'm referring to the Earth and Vogon Ship sections of the game. Later, as Douglas became more comfortable working in a non-linear medium, and as I became more comfortable making my opinions known, the game became much stronger. I think that once you arrive at the Heart of Gold, the structure of the game changes for the better, becoming less linear, more original, fairer to the player, and just plain more fun. Douglas always described the structure of the game as "pear shaped" - narrow toward the stem end, then suddenly ballooning wider, and finally coming together at the end. "

Another little tidbit from the interview that I didn't know: The "biscuit story" from So Long and Thanks For All the Fish really happened to Adams!

Interview with Steve Meretzky about his collaboration with Douglas Adams

Curiously enough, the babel fish puzzle is listed as one of the nastiest puzzles in adventure-game history, yet I was never stumped until I got on board the Heart of Gold. However, I do remember that puzzle with great fondness...


(Vaguely) related semi-random stringing together of verbs and nouns with the occasional article, adjective, and adverb:
* Adventure Gaming Alive and Well?
* Indie Interview: Mike Rubin
* Does Textfyre Have a Chance of Reviving the Commercial Text Adventure?
* A Twisty Little Maze of Passages, All Different
.

Labels: Adventure Games, Free Games, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:10 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Frayed Knights: Are You Experienced?
And this week's progress report on the comedy / fantasy CRPG, Frayed Knights!
Progression Considerations
Working on the experience system in Frayed Knights has had me trying to figure out those numbers to make a leveling up system that just "feels right," and it's been hurting my brain. Probably because it's hard to plug in "feels right" on the one side of an equation. I want to have a system that emphasizes quest-based experience, but also rewards other dramatic, interesting, and especially risky actions --- like combat, or picking locks. The little problems going through my head included:

* Since a group of monsters is far more dangerous and difficult than encountering all of those monsters separately, should a group include a bonus over a single monster?

* How much more should a level 3 monster be worth over a level 2 monster?

* Approximately how many monster kills of around equal to one's level should it take to raise an entire level?

* How many monster kills should quests of different lengths be worth?

* How should disarming a trap or picking a lock compare in terms of experience points to these other rewards?

* If you defeat only half a group of enemy monsters before fleeing, should you get experience points on the ones that you defeated?

* Should a party member that ends an encounter incapacitated (Frayed Knights' kinder, gentler equivalent to "dead"), should they get experience for the encounter? What about if they started the encounter incapacitated? What if they both start and end incapacitated, but at some point in the middle of the fight was revived just long enough to get beaten down again?

Yeah, yeah, the easy answer is that these questions SHOULD have all been answered in the design doc before I got to this point. You know what? The flavor of combat in Frayed Knights has evolved quite a bit in the last five months or so, and so anything I'd have done back then would have already been thrown out.

Engineering Backwards
What I DO know is that the adventure in the dungeon of Pokmor Xang - plus a little bit of knocking about in the forest on the way back to town, and the mission completion - should allow the party to level up. Once. Though in theory even that can change. But that's kind of the weird backwards engineering that I'm doing right now. And I expect the player to finish the full game somewhere in the mid-teens, though I'm allowing progress up beyond level 20.

So whatever numbers I put in (and after running through a LOT of numbers and formulas, I did manage to lock down some numbers to put in for now), they'll be completely replaced once the whole game is humming along and has been play-tested a few times.

But for now, I have a workable system in place that seems reasonable enough for right now. It is fun seeing the little numbers increase on the screen, at least...

UI, UI... Woah, Baby, We Gotta Go
Besides working on experience point systems and fixing the usual assortment of bugs, I also worked on "UI Manager" that should hopefully clean up some of the transitions between, say, combat and dialog.

And as a quick-and-dirty modification, combat now rewards you with one or more drama stars upon conclusion.

So there's progress being made.

Foreseeing how development is going to be the next two weeks... expect little. We've got a major milestone at work that is going to demand some serious overtime for the next couple of weeks. But I'll continue work on monster scaling (YES, I used the "S" word), random encounters (MORE Evil!), keys for doors, and interactive object capabilities.

As always, have fun!


(Vaguely) related stuff I found stuck underneath my desk:
* The Rules Lawyer
* Disappointment in the Demonweb Pits
* RPG Design: Same Ol' Grind
* Can CRPGs Age Gracefully

Got Something To Say? Have At It On the Forum!

Labels: Frayed Knights, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:22 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
RPG Design: The Same Ol' Grind
On the RPG.net forums the other day, I came across this discussion on how much time it would take to "honestly" get a character up to high level in 1st edition D&D. One player noted that based on the XP from killing monsters, players would have to kill 960 goblins (for a party of 4) to earn second level.

This brought up a fairly ancient argument about the rule from D&D where experience points were given out for treasure. In fact, the argument was old when Gary Gygax penned the defense of the practice in the 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide. I always followed that rule, and my players went up to third level or so fairly quickly. But apparently not only was it not universal, I might have even been in the minority.

Effectively, the experience points (abbreviated "XP") for treasure thing was an early attempt at codifying quest-based XP. One participant in games with Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz, Old Geezer, commented in the thread that not only was the XP for gold integral to the original "vision" of D&D, without it you were best off to just sit in the middle of the dungeon and ring cowbells for wandering monster encounters. Those unplanned, "grinding" types of encounters were intended to be obstacles and challenges, not "XP on the hoof," as he puts it.

Embracing The Grind
Yet computer RPGs, descended from Dungeons & Dragons, have traditionally emphasized the "grind" as not only the principle source of character progression, but in many cases the sole source of character-building experience. Killing monsters over and over again, "grinding" away on the body count until a new level was achieved. It is only recently that CRPGs have attempted to abandon grinding - in this case defined as experience through body count - behind. I'm thinking specifically of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and some Neverwinter Nights premium modules. There are certainly others, but those come to mind.

Curiously, even 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons departed significantly from the vision, suggesting quest-based XP as an option, and then generously announcing that experience points could be earned by merely defeating or bypassing an opponent. And D&D Online had to a grinding of a different sort - repeating the same adventure over and over again.

There was one nice thing about the "grind" mechanic in single-player RPGs. If you found yourself overpowered by a particular section of the game, you could back off, go fight some monsters, and get an extra level or two (not to mention gold and supplies) before trying again. As a player who often prefers often-underpowered rogue classes, I appreciate this. After all, I remember all too well my talking-and-sneaking character in Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines being dropped into multiple boss-fights where talking and sneaking were rendered useless.

Alternatives to Experience Points
Of course, we also have some totally different systems like the Elder Scrolls games (Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion) which eschew the experience-point system altogether, and simply let highly exploitable (not to mention WEIRD) "practicing" take place.

Call of Cthulhu used a similar system for leveling up back in... what was it... 1980? It led to players frantically trying to use every single skill on their character sheet at least once during an adventure. But half the characters were dead or permanently insane at the end of each adventure, anyway, so it didn't really matter so much.

Call of Cthulhu D20, by Monte Cook, just suggests the characters gain a level every two adventures. That makes bookkeeping simple, but again locks the players to a particular power level, and doesn't take into account the difficulty of any one adventure.

A Balanced Approach
I'm personally a fan of the experience point system. Seeing the points accumulate and measuring progress towards your next increase provides a good, positive feedback.

In my opinion, a good computer RPG should strike something of a balance. The principle source of experience points is best based on non-tedious, non-repeating criteria that helps measure progress through the game. Quest-based and story-based stuff. And points for taking unique risks (like disarming a trap, or dealing with a difficult radiation-filled environment).

But I'm fond of using repeatable risks as a source of experience points. Maybe this can be limited in some way (like not being able to earn more than N experience points this way per level or something... though that kind of rule can be confusing to players). But it needs to be there. This allows players some freedom and a feeling of non-linearity... they can abandon their quest and just go out monster-bashing ( *cough*grinding*cough* ) any time they want, for as long as they want (though it could have detrimental effects on their quest status... )

Though I kinda miss giving out XP for gold...

(Vaguely) related inane mutterings:
* RPG Design: The Brute Force Problem
* RPG Design: Scaling Encounters
* Why Do RPGs Suck Now?
.

Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:00 AM (Permalink) 8 comments links to this post

 
Indie RPG News Roundup, November 22
Here we go, the Thanksgiving edition of the Indie Role-Playing Game News Roundup! Happy Thanksgiving! Which only has any meaning for you guys who are in the United States. For the rest of you, Happy Thursday! Today is a day set aside to be thankful for our blessings, which we celebrate by mass consumption of food, usually with relatives we only marginally like, followed by something very passive like watching football (okay, "American football," sorry...). At some point, we have to wash all those dishes, which we're not NEARLY so thankful to get to do, but I digress.

We tend to spend much of the Thanksgiving weekend (which is usually four days) playing video games, board games, and role-playing games with friends. Which makes it one of my favorite holidays. In between visiting friends and family (or preparing for said visits), I'm personally planning on getting in some Frayed Knights development in, or playing some more Eschalon: Book 1. It's a happy thing.

So what's happened this week in the world of indie computer RPGs?

Eschalon: Book 1
As was previously announced, Eschalon: Book 1 was released. And initial reports seem to be pretty dang positive. I'm having a lot of fun playing it, that's for sure. It's very old-school, and doesn't exactly redefine the concept of the RPG (for which I'm actually thankful, for a change --- I've not been overjoyed with recent re-definitions), but it is competently done and a lot of fun.

Additionally, Basilisk Games has agreed to let Rampant Games offer Eschalon as an affiliate. Which pretty much means nothing to you unless you are me. It's just one more place to get the game. Since I'm all about getting the word out on the indie computer RPG scene, though, it sounds like a good thing.

Finally, patch 1.01 for Eschalon: Book 1 is now available. This is only for the full version of the game, NOT the demo. It addresses some annoying bugs, but also improves the gameplay based on player feedback. For example, the "x" key now opens up the inventory, equip item, and stats windows all at the same time, and vendors now sell more arrows for you ranger-types.

Download the Eschalon: Book 1 Patch 1.01

Read the Patch Notes


The Broken Hourglass
Planewalker Games notes, "On the PWG site, we have published a new article explaining the outlook and role of two of the Tolmiran gods--Arithaan, a cold and distant sort, and Uulix, the god of almost everything that isn't nailed down."

Read "Stagnation and Death: A Look At Tolmira's Pantheon"

And they get bonus points for using the word, "Pantheon."


Aveyond 2: Ean's Quest
On Amaranthia.com, the date for Aveyond 2 is now listed as "December 5th." So we may be only two weeks away from release. So if you haven't finished the first Aveyond game, get cracking! (Okay, technically, the free RPG "Ahriman's Prophecy" was the first Aveyond game...)


Avernum 5
RPGVault has an interview with Jeff Vogel about his new (for Mac users, "upcoming" for us Windows abusers) indie RPG, "Avernum 5." An interesting thing to note is that he's only planning on six games in the series. Anyway, since Vogel has been at the whole indie RPG thing before anybody really dubbed it "indie" or anything, it's always worth reading.

A good quote: "Avernum 5 has nicer graphics and sound than Avernum 4. We redid a lot of it to add a nice bit of flash. However, we're still a small indie company. If you need nice 3D graphics and full stereo sound, you probably won't be happy with our games. We focus on what we can do - provide a huge game with a cool story and lots of variety."

Read the Jeff Vogel Interview at RPGVault


Once again, Happy Thanksgiving, and Happy Gaming!

Labels: Indie RPG News

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:08 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Gimp 2.4 Released
While this may be of particular interest to indie game developers (since we're notorious cheapskates), anybody who uses The Gimp as the low-cost (that is, FREE) alternative to Photoshop may be interested in this news:

The Gimp 2.4 Has Been Released.

You can read the Release Notes for more details.

Or you can just download the new version of Gimp.

Labels: game art

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:39 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
GCG Tackles the "What Is An Indie Game?" Question
When talking about indie games, the question often comes up: "What is an indie game?" You ask n people, you'll probably get n+1 answers. I've tackled it twice, myself, and though I'm fairly satisfied with my own answer, I also admit it's hardly the final word on the subject.

Game Career Guide - a media partner of GamaSutra - has now tackled the "What is Indie?" question, in the article, "The Indie Ethos." And they emerge with no real answers, but lots of opinions. An excerpt:

"If it is the developers -- the people -- that make a game "indie," then one still must question what criteria those people should meet. Although it's straightforward to say a team of four developers working with a self-funded $1,500 budget is indeed making an independent game, what happens when the studio is 10 people strong and has a budget of tens of thousand of dollars, but the money comes from the individuals on the team refinancing their homes? What happens when the team is 15 people strong and is backed by several hundred thousand dollars in venture capital? How do both money and team size play into the picture? "

There's also an observation by Sam Roberts, director of the Indiecade festival (formally one of the guys responsible for the Slamdance Guerilla Game Developer competition) that I'd like to see verified:

"...there are more low-cost options for musicians and filmmakers nowadays than there are for game-makers. In the last 10 or 15 years, the barrier of entry for filmmakers and musicians has dropped dramatically, with more and more low-cost tools and digital equipment becoming available, and with more and more outlets for releasing finished products. For game developers, on the other hand, the barrier of entry is still quite high, seeing as even low-cost tools require the user to have some knowledge of programming."

The final word? There won't be one. The traditional way of making a modern computer or video game (find a publisher who funds development out of advances towards royalties) is still dominant, but more alternatives are being discovered every day for creating and distributing games. Which of those ways are part of the "indie" way may remain in an ever-changing gray area.

But for me, it still comes down to people making the games they want to make without oversight by a third party. If you need to get permission to do what you want to do, or are subject to binding oversight, you ain't indie. That encompasses everything from quick-and-dirty web games like Desktop Tower Defense (still one of my favorites) to pretty major, high-quality (and bigger-budget) offerings like PopCap's titles and Soldak's much more elaborate Depths of Peril. That works well enough for me.


(Vaguely) related rubbish masquerading as useful information:
* What Is an Indie Game?
* Dependent, Independent, and Indie
* Gimme That Old Time Indie Game Development
* Super Columbine Massacre RPG Too Hot For Slamdance?
* Is There Hope For Indie Computer RPGs?
.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:42 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
2007 Interactive Fiction Winners Announced
Okay - so I'm a week behind in some stuff, like mentioning the conclusion of the 13th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition. I just consider myself fortunate that I managed to post at all last week, as I was pulling out the 12+ hour days fixing... ahem... undocumented features in my code that the designers just kept discovering "on accident" with their incredibly creative scripts that did things to my code that are just unmentionable...

But I digress. We were talking Interactive Fiction, the new-and-improved name for "text adventures." Since much Interactive Fiction isn't really supposed to be an adventure at all, but they are all text, at least. Hmmm.... I wonder if the Infocom programmers had the same problem with so-called "implementers" totally breaking their Zork engine with weird text-based crap that just shouldn't work at all...

There I go, digressing again.

The winner of the 13th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition was Lost Pig by Admiral Jota (writing as "Grunk"), followed by An Act of Murder by Christopher Huang (writing as "Hugh Dunnett" - sound it out) in second, and by Lord Bellwater's Secret in third place by Sam Gordon. These - and all the other competitors - can be downloaded at the IF Competition game download page.

The full results of the voting can be found on the IF Competition Results Page. Congratulations to all the authors!

Labels: Adventure Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:16 AM (Permalink) 7 comments links to this post

 
Gamers Play For 30 Minutes At a Stretch?
According to the Half-Life 2: Episode 2 stats collected by Valve, the average player is playing their latest game for an average of 27 minutes at a stretch, and prefers "medium" difficulty (with the fewest number of players attempting the game on "Hard").

Comparing this to the Episode 1 Stats, Episode 1 players played for an average of 34 minutes ( a 20% drop in playing time!). The ratio of players playing on easy, medium, and hard difficulty levels was not too different.

So what does that say about how games ought to be designed?

Tip o' the pith helmet to Kotaku for the link.

Labels: Game Design

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:36 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Initial Scouting Report: Eschalon Book 1
I spent about an hour or so playing Eschalon: Book 1 last night. It is way too early for me to render any kind of judgment on the game, but I will say so far, it's looking pretty good.

With indie games, I tend to ignore the fact that the graphics may be somewhat less than state-of-the-art. And Eschalon: Book 1's graphics would definitely have been much more at home in a mainstream RPG about a decade ago. That being said, they seem to be nicely polished, filled with neat special effects, and nicely animated. A step up from the "Spiderweb" standard.

The turn-based gameplay is handled very nicely. Each move takes up a turn, but the smooth animation and movement controls disguises the turn-based nature rather nicely until you find yourself in combat. Once combat starts, its a straightforward I-go / You-go affair. Unfortunately, this early into the game, I haven't found much to do by way of tactics beyond trying to maneuver yourself to get the first hit in, or choosing when to use potions. But that's hardly a surprise - most RPGs start you out with few combat choices in the beginning, and ramp up as you go.

There is no autosave as you move between zones that I have noticed, so you need to be pretty careful about maintaining your own saved games. I don't know if I relish this particular aspect of old-school gaming, but it's simply one of those things you need to remember... the game won't automatically bail you out when things go wrong.

The storyline involves the overused "amnesia" device, though it does reveal a nice twist early on that makes it more interesting.

Character creation involves dice-rolling! Talk about old-school! The game rolls values between 7 and 14 for all of your stats, but then it also gives you 15 points to spend on increasing these beyond their starting value. I chose to play a rogue, which should come as little surprise to regular readers here. The rogue skill list is fairly extensive, though the only real "rogue-like" activities I engaged in were moving silently, hiding in shadows (both taking place automatically), and lock-picking. Lock-picking uses the painfully old-school limitation of sometimes destroying your lockpicks when you fail.

While some people who fear numbers may not be so impressed, one thing I really like is that the game shows you the chance of success for all your actions. So before you even risk your lock-picks, you will know you have only a 29% chance of success. Oh, and you do get experience points for non-combat actions, such as picking locks.

Downsides - well, a lot is being said about it's 800 x 600 resolution. That seems to be a real issue, though the game handles quite well in windowed mode. Though it's pretty tiny in a window on my 19" monitor at the resolution I run my desktop. There are some help screens for various menus in the game, but really nothing by way of a tutorial other than initial instructions and an in-game letter you receive from a mysterious benefactor to get you pointed in the right direction. And there are times where your character (or enemies) may be hidden behind a wall and hard to see.

Yeah, not exactly scathing criticism, but the game has put its best foot forward I guess. Again, it's far too early for me to tell, but so far nothing is making me regret my purchase.

But find out for yourself and download the game here (but be warned, it is pretty big...) Oh, and another warning - SLIMES CAN SPIT!!!!

Eschalon: Book 1 Demo


(Vaguely) related old-school pontificationingliness:
* Eschalon: Book 1 First Impressions
* RPG Preview - Eschalon: Book 1
* Indie RPG Roundtable

Played It Yet? What Did You Think? Let Us Know In The Forums!

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:57 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Eschalon: Book 1 Released
Let's see if this promised "old-school goodness" is as good as we hope...

Eschalon: Book 1 Free Demo Download

It is rumored to be over 100 megs in size (Note: I don't know about the demo --- I bought the game right off the bat in a show of indie solidarity and faith in the creators... or something. But I can confirm the full version clocks in at just a hair over 100 megs).

Congratulations to Basilisk Games! Here's hoping for another quality indie RPG! It's gonna face some steep competition this year from Depths of Peril for "indie RPG of the year" (and Aveyond 2 hasn't yet weighed in...), but early reports indicate it might be a contender.

Forum Post - Eschalon Book 1 Thoughts. What Do You Think?

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:40 PM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Eschalon: Book 1 First Impressions
RPG Watch has posted their first impressions on Eschalon: Book 1, the "old-school" indie RPG scheduled to be released on Monday. They go into a lot of detail on the game system in general, though the author hasn't gotten too far into the game yet.

Some nifty tidbits:

"Dungeons so far have been reasonably complex affairs with lots of switches, traps and locked doors. A particular feature of Eschalon dungeoneering is dealing with the dark – without a torch or other light source it’s literally pitch black... speaking of the dark, rogues and similar characters get a lot of love with skills such as pick locks, skulduggery (traps), find hidden, move silently, hide in shadows and dodge. Quests yield far more experience than combat, so using the shadows to slip past monsters is a valid approach or together with a Cat’s Eyes potion, the darkness can be used to great effect to attack enemies who suffer a big penalty with no light."

Ah, that warms my roguely heart!

And overall, the impression seems to be very favorable:

"Eschalon is a welcome return to classic stat-based CRPG gameplay, with crisp graphics reminiscent of Arcanum and a presentation quality that sets a new standard for indie roleplaying games. Despite some question marks over the combat, we can’t wait to delve further into the game for a full review but in the meantime, grab the demo when it is released on the 19th and prepare to be hooked."

Read Eschalon: Book 1 First Impressions at RPG Watch

Oh, and you can download the free demo here.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:36 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
RPGDX is running an informal 48-hour RPG creation competition, using whatever tools you want. It begins Saturday (which is tomorrow, here in Utah...)

From the post:

"This weekend we're going to have a 48 hour RPG making contest. It starts from whatever time you wake up on Saturday to whatever time you go to bed at on Sunday, and can be extended into next week if a majority of competitors wish. The theme of the contest is Completion - the idea being that the time limit is the real restriction of the contest and the challenge lies in actually finishing and releasing something."

There are no prizes (that I'm aware of), but it should be a lot of fun. Well, for those of you who aren't slaving away on Frayed Knights this weekend, like I will be... :)

If interested, check out the rules and further information:

RPGDX 48-Hour RPG Competition

UPDATE: The time has been extended until Wednesday. So now it's a... uh... (pulls out calculator) 120-Hour RPG Competition.

Labels: programming, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:27 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Frayed Knights: On Weaponry and Spraying Blood
Once again, I go into my long, drawn-out diatribe on the development of the indie RPG "Frayed Knights," a comedy-based fantasy role-playing game.

What did I learn this week?

Spraying blood is good.

Lots of Squishy Goodness
Well, okay, no, it usually isn't for the person who is spraying blood. I'm sure I wouldn't appreciate it if I was the one doing it on some street corner. Not that I really contemplate such things.

But while I was trying to make combat more interesting in Frayed Knights, I found that simply providing more feedback than the rather arcane text descriptions REALLY helped the game immeasurably. Little slash marks across the player icons, or the word "Miss!" appearing when you miss (soon to be joined by the word "Blocked!"), spraying particles, little numbers appearing showing how lucky you got, and sound effects making a "clank" miss sound or a "cling-THUP!" noise on a hit... These little elements of feedback helped make combat come alive.

Other Changes
Besides that, I added some special effects like the tremendously-easy-to-do-in-Torque effect of making dead enemies fade to invisibility when they die. Oh, and fixing some silly bugs like... ummm... monsters continuing to attack the party while dead. While the monsters themselves were dead, I mean. Talk about an attack by undead! I fixed the doors so they can now be shut as well as opened, and the drama stars not activating properly.

Kevin has been working on the dungeon some more, and put in a visibility-blocking section to help out with some of the framerate issues we've been dealing with the meditation chamber (the one with the toilet-shaped fountain). James has been working on the weed goblins, which don't actually appear in this dungeon, but will appear in the section of wilderness immediately outside the dungeon. Thanks to the code I completed about three weeks ago, that actually makes a difference.

Weapon Types
While not a big change to the actual code itself, I spent some time this week re-designing how weapon damage is handled.

I have a small collection of medieval weapons in real life, and I have been spoiled by such detailed weapon system rules found in games like Twilight: 2000. And I've participated in pseudo-medieval live-action 'medievalist' combat with various weapons. And I've fenced. And I basically like having interesting choices in weaponry.

So in the interest of making the choice between a spear, a warhammer, and a broadsword a little more interesting, here is how weapon damage type is used in combat.

Edged Weapons
Edged weapons include swords, daggers, axes, halberds, etc. They concentrate their impact in a line along the edge to split resistance (resistance meaning the soft, fleshy enemies in the damage path). The advantage of edged weapons is that they tend to have a higher base damage than other weapons. They have no clear disadvantage, other than being the most vulnerable to armor.

Blunt Weapons
Blunt weapons tend to be much slower than the other weapon types, and require a higher Might to use without major endurance lost. However, most armor isn't as good at redistributing the blunt-trauma impact of these weapons. Unless the armor has a base armor rating higher than that of the weapon's total damage potential, the blunt weapon will always inflict some portion of its damage to the victim regardless of armor.

In other words, blunt weapons are really good for nickel - and - diming a heavily armored opponent.

Blunt weapons may have spikes or flanges on them to concentrate the impact force, but the key difference between edged weapons and the other types is that these impact areas aren't designed for deep penetration.

Piercing Weapons
Piercing weapons concentrate all of the impact force into a single point. The advantage of piercing weapons is that they are more 'all-or-nothing' with respect to armor. If the weapon penetrates armor at all, much more of its damage potential goes through.

This tends to cheese off the guys who have heavily invested in expensive, heavy armor.

Other Weapon Factors
There's a lot more to a weapon than just its type of damage and the amount of damage it does. Weapons have speed factors, which influence how often a character can attack with it. Then there's how much endurance it burns to attack with it, which depends upon the character's Might. And there's its reach, which how effectively the player can attack monsters closer or further away. While I haven't put it in code yet, I also want to add flexible weapon types (specifically flails) to the mix, which would have the advantage of being able to partially negate shield bonuses.

Too complicated? Maybe. But Frayed Knights, in spite of its comedic storyline, is still being built upon what I hope to be a strong rule system. I was tempted to do something really crazy and subdivide armor into different ratings for each type of weapon... but I figure what I've got is already going to be a little complicated and challenging to balance as it is. While these factors may not represent a physically "accurate" simulation, they should at least be believable and make the choices in the game interesting.

And that's it for this week. Tune in next week when I'll try to entertain you with fascinating stories of such interesting subjects as... uh... GUI stack management and memory deallocation and stuff. High Drama!


(Vaguely) related beating a dead unicorn with a +1 stick (damage class: blunt)
* Frayed Knights: Death and Arianna's Interview
* Frayed Knights: Ben Speaks, and Combat Tweaks
* Designing a Computer RPG Rule System

Want to Talk About It? Argue Weapon Systems? Here's a Forum Thread!

Labels: Frayed Knights, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:05 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Indie RPG News Roundup, November 15th
Indie RPGs. If the mainstream publishers ain't givin' ya what ya want, don't despair! Check out what's coming down the pipe