Frayed Knights - To Raise a Village...
Another installment of the best-selling*, critically-acclaimed** weekly development series on the creation of the 3D comedy-based fantasy RPG, Frayed Knights. This week... it takes a dev team to raise a village. And a single dragon to raze a village, I guess, but we're getting ahead of ourselves, aren't we?

The Temple of Pokmor Xang isn't yet completed, as I mentioned last week. But the principle path through the dungeon is working. Events fire as they should, and you can complete the quest. But there's not a lot of loot, the combat is still way too hard and not very fun yet, and certain things aren't working yet (like using a potion in combat). Work is still progressing, but I've decided to make it a secondary priority.

January is the month to get the Village of Ardin completed. In an effort to kinda-sorta stick to the original schedule and not fall too far behind (or at least gauge how far behind we really are), I've been putting effort into that. Worst-case scenario, the wilderness area can be cut or abbreviated next month (which is a short month, anyway). If I can somehow manage to get both Pokmor Xang and Ardin done this month, I'm golden, right?

Yeah. And while I'm at it, maybe I can model some 3D monsters in my sleep, too. It could happen. I've managed to model some monstrosities while sleepy, which is close, right?

What I'm On The Hook For
For the purpose of the April public milestone ("Chapter 1"), I've got to get the following pieces done:
* The village itself - buildings, terrain, passage between zones, various props and vegetation
* Story-based events that occur when you arrive in the village
* Characters and certain plotlines that are supposed to be introduced in chapter 1, even though they don't really become part of the story until later.
* Trading / sales. For right now, there'll be a general store that may have some limits to what can be bought and sold (limiting my hypocrisy). I'm still up in the air about other trading options (like with the other adventurers in town).
* A certain change in party membership occurs.
* Miscellaneous interactives, like working doors and stuff like that.

You arrive in the town in the evening (yes, linear, on-rails crap... I'm a terrible, terrible game designer), so most of the shops are closed. Chapter 1 ends after a dramatic event happens (yes, more terrible on-rails stuff) and you return to your inn room to sleep off the horrors of your last adventure.


What I've Been Working On
This week, I've mostly felt like I've been spending money. I've been using a lot of off-the-shelf content packs - some free, some cheap-but-still-costing-me-hundreds-all-together - to at least get the gameplay in place. I'm hoping there'll be time to go through and replace or clean up the worst stand-in stuff later once we've got stuff nailed down.

I'm using content packs from GarageGames, DexSoft, Cubix Studio, 3DRT, FruitBatInShades, Adam DeGrandis, MMOWorkshop, and BlattSalat. Kudos to all of these vendors for their stuff. I'm also not entirely pleased with one vendor who is apparently still active (and reputable - I know of others who have used their stuff), but has a broken shopping cart that isn't properly integrated with PayPal and aren't responding on their support emails. I guess the next step is to escalate things through PayPal. Vendors - please be responsive, and check your email at least once every couple of days.

I had a nice chance to play with the terrain, construct a waterfall (which I'm still not happy with), get the sunset's reflection on the water (partly obscured by the mist rolling in), place buildings and walls, and otherwise do nifty level-designer things, which makes my programmer-brain happy, as it gets to take the night off when I do that.

One problem I did run into was misjudging the scale. Working with the camera and a bird's-eye view, I accidentally made the village too large. By about double. As you can partly see in the screenshot. So I'm working on tightening things up and putting more buildings on the east side of the river. While in real life I enjoy walking just for the exercise, my general rule of thumb is not to force the player to walk too far without having something interesting to do. A minute-long trip between buildings isn't my idea of fun, even if it would be more realistic.

About the Village of Ardin
The village of Ardin was - until recently - a sleepy little farming community on the river nestled in a comfortable dale. A few former adventurers and veterans of the military helped keep the village prepared for monster attacks, and kept the pesky weed-goblins from getting too aggressive. It was a quiet, comfortable land of mild seasons, good harvests, tasty fishing, and humble pleasures.

Then some adventurers found gold in one of the nearby dungeons, and everything went to pot.

Now the village has been transformed into the equivalent of an American 1800's "Gold Rush" community, with adventurers filling the hastily-expanded local inn. The villagers resented the intrusion and the drain on their resources at first, but adventurers bring good coin, so after inflating their prices they've reached some kind of equilibrium. They have also learned the disturbing truth not to get too attached to these visitors - too many never return from their expeditions.

And so it is for the Frayed Knights.


(Vaguely) related stories of dread and woe
* The Exploding Lock and Other Stories
* Cartographic Incompetence and Dirk's Interview
* Save Me, You Jerks!

Hey! A Forum Thread On This!

* Hard to determine exactly, since division by zero (free) is technically not a legal mathematical operation.
** It's true. Somebody critical said something nice about us, I think.

Labels: Frayed Knights, Roleplaying Games

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