Frayed Knights - Pilot Prep
So, did you want to hear a weekly update on the development of Frayed Knights, the indie fantasy role-playing game of comedy and pointless in-jokes?

No?

Oh.

Well, I don't have anything else prepared, so I'm just gonna roll with it anyway.

The Pilot Demo Approaches
This week (this month, really) has all been about the Big Sprint to alpha for the "Pilot Demo." That's the latest name for what's getting released in April. I liked the term, "pilot," thinking of pilot programs and TV show pilots. That really kinda sums up what the April release is about.

Basically, its one big test screening. To see what flies, and what lands with a thud. The engine will be "done." Armed with the feedback from the pilot, we'll build out the rest of the game, fixing what seems broken in the engine or design and moving forward.

It's kind of a cheapski way of making two RPGs, so I can get all my mistakes with the first one out of the way.

The Game Development Life Is Very Glamorous
I spent way too much time this weekend looking at... fonts. Key game elements are still laying half-assembled on the virtual workbench, and I spent hours and hours looking at fonts. And emailing the guys that made the fonts, asking for terms. Because they don't want to give you the terms up-front, in case you are a WEALTHY company like Microsoft who they can charge thousands of dollars to. So I have to play my "poor indie" card.

Interesting point - on one site that had fonts that were "free for non-commercial use" and some other fonts that were "premium" but okay for commercial use - the charge for commercial use of the free fonts exceeded that of the premium fonts. Go figger. We're not talking about extreme price-gouging or anything, but it was definitely interesting.

And no, I still haven't settled on a font yet. The two more exotic ones I tried out were almost universally panned.

Ah, such is the glamorous life of a game developer. It's all action and adventure and excitement and whooping and hollering as the game comes together...

The Game Comes Together?
The frantic final stages are both thrilling and stressful. Remember that scene in "Ghostbusters" when they are talking in the elevator about how each of them is wearing an unlicensed proton accelerator on their back and that they've never actually had a successful test of the equipment? That's pretty much how I'm feeling each time I run the game. The changes are coming "fast and furious," building on a bunch of foundation code that is beginning to get old enough to gather dust, but I'm now calling functions and special behaviors that were never entirely tested.

And I am thrilled with how often they actually work more-or-less correctly. That almost makes up for the times I spend revamping or debugging months-old code that seems completely alient to me.

For example, I spent a half-hour tracking down the reason that a character can wear TWO suits of chain mail at the same time IF they equip the second suit directly from the party inventory, but not if they bring it to their own inventory first. The fault turned out to be a misspelled function name (ah, the joy of typeless scripting languages) that had been sitting around in the code FOREVER, unexercised.

I finally got Drama Star effects implemented. Well, partially. We're in the middle of a massive (and long overdue) re-design of the UI. I can now mix monster types in encounters - so we can have a boss encounter with his guards (a challenge that, for now, is a little on the "too hard" side). And there have been a lot of fiddley bits I've been working on - fixed dialogs, descriptions on spell effects, UI management bugs, and so forth.

Taking Inventory
Oh, and inventory is now working much better. You can actually use activated items now - like potions - both in and out of combat. I liberally sprinkled a few potions of negligable healing throughout the dungeon, which has made an ENORMOUS difference in combat balance during the game. I expected it would, but you never know about these things until the rubber meets the road.

I also disabled access to the party inventory during combat. This is a change that I think will stick with the final version. Previously, I'd designed it so that using things directly out of the party inventory simply incurred a much larger delay between a character's actions. But the delay factor is really abstract - while it doesn't need to be understood to play the game, really big delays would cause confusion and frustrations with players who haven't yet grokked it. Disabling access to party inventory simplified and streamlined things, and also - I felt - made for more interesting decisions. Who gets that potion of healing when supplies are running low?

(I usually give it to Benjamin, who can then heal other party members with spells.)

Combat
Almost all aspects of combat are now functional. The AI aren't casting spells yet, the "defensive" stance doesn't do anything yet (I gotta fix that - it's like a ten-minute job!). And no "active" feats have been implemented yet (nor are they usable by the AI). And I'm not entirely sure weapon ranges are functioning correctly - I gotta run some tests on that this weekend.

But with spells working (and easy to add!), inventory items (both equipped and activated) functional, drama star effects... I'm kinda giddy. Combat has become much more interesting. Not that every random encounter with pus golems is a thrilling X-Com battle level of awesome (if only!), but they are much more fun and interesting than the click-click-yawn-click gameplay of too many "action" games.

That makes me giddy on a level that I suppose only an old-school D&D geek can appreciate. I still have no clue if anybody ELSE will appreciate it - but hey, that's what the pilot is for, right?

Sign up!
If you haven't signed up to be an alpha victim --- er, I mean, TESTER, and you have an unusually high tolerance for pain, don't forget to sign up on the alpha testing thread in the forum.


(Vaguely) related dorkiness:
* Frayed Knights - Bad Text Gone Wild!
* Frayed Knights - The Stupid Stuff Takes Too Long
* Frayed Knights - Please Don't Swim In Our Toilet
* Frayed Knights - Exploding Locks and Other Stories

Got questions? comments? Arguments? Suggestions? Post About 'Em In The Forum!

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design, Roleplaying Games

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