Friday, May 30, 2008
Frayed Knights - Going Deep
And here's the latest update on Frayed Knights, the indie comedy-based RPG from Rampant Games. The last couple of weeks this update has been erratic, happening on days other than Fridays, but I'm getting back on schedule.
It's amazing how fast a month can go by, isn't it? Well, this month didn't fly by quite so fast. I went from crunch-mode to get the Frayed Knights Pilot out the door, to crunch-mode at the day job. When all that was over, I was pretty exhausted and took a few days off with minimal work on Frayed Knights except to "putter" and read more of the flood of feedback results on the game. I'm now pushing 400 responses. That is a LOT to read. And I have read every single one. Some were quite extensive in their recommendations... others might have just been the default entries.
Overall - the reception has been pretty good. Not overwhelmingly positive, but I have been surprised by how few negative reactions I've received. Less than 5%. I assume people are just trying to be nice.
So, this last week I've been diving back into the thick of things. My brain is being pulled in two different directions, as I'm partly back in designer-mode, and partly in the thick of bug-fixing and coding up changes. Right now, the game needs more design work than coding, but I'm too much of a programming addict.
Okay, So It Was Broken and I Had To Fix It
For everyone who wanted the "Z" key to be a toggle for freelook, you've got it. It locks the cursor to the center of the screen when you do it, which means you'll be forced to hotkey everything rather than click on buttons... and you'll have to look directly at objects in the environment to click on them - but it works. Movement speed has also been significantly increased. It feels too fast for me, personally, so it may need to be adjusted further, but I also think there's a lot of speed-demon players out there for which this is not a problem.
Dynamic combat encounters have been somewhat overhauled. I'm still toying with having them appear in the environment (along with "static" encounters), but with that will be introduced bugs that will haunt me forever, so I'm holding off on that particular headache for a bit as a consideration but not a mandate. I have gotten rid of the old D&D style "wandering monster" system and replaced it by something that is more measured and predictable. In fact, right now the player can look and see approximately when to expect the next encounter. I would also like the "probable" nature of the upcoming encounter to be discovered early if your party succeeds in figuring out what is stalking them.
What's truly amusing here is that, the first time through an area, the "static" encounters will be more surprising than the "random" encounters.
Before release, I had implemented a system where the game tried to "remember" the last spellcaster, their last spell, and the last spell target. It didn't work as well as it should. I've not updated everything so that it remembers the last combat spell and the last non-combat spell for each caster, and defaults appropriately. This should speed up spell selection a bit, particularly if you are always casting Chloe's Hotfoot and Ben's Negligible Healing.
And then there's some miscellaneous clean-up I had to do, especially in combat. Which brings us to another subject.
Going Deep
From a mechanics perspective, people (including me) were not satisfied with combat. Part of this is because it was never implemented as fully as I'd intended, particularly with special feats and abilities for characters... and AI. The AI, in particular, was pretty stupid right in the pilot, firing off spells sorta randomly.
I've changed things around a bit. First of all, the AI is actually a little more predictable now - but with that predictability I'm also trying to make it smarter. AI may have a particular sequence they like to repeat over and over again in combat, depending upon situation, but they also won't heal companions that don't need healing, and other silliness. They will also be more aware of easier / harder / more dangerous enemies, and will attack accordingly based on their intelligence and creature type. This is a long-term change as the game progresses in development, and so I'll be taking a wrench to it on a frequent basis.One thing that I had thought I had implemented - but apparently had not - was range issues. Attacking deep into the enemy lines is a lot harder (and more dangerous) than attacking something right in front of you. Weapons do have a reach / range factor, which was being ignored --- except to set a bunch of flags for whether feats that were not fully implemented would trigger or not. Except that wasn't happening either, as apparently I'd defaulted the distance to zero and completely forgotten about the little "TODO" there of calculating the correct distance. D'oh.
So now, if you are bare-fisted, you can only attack enemies that are right in front of you. Short weapons can attack creatures one rank beyond that, but at a penalty. Long weapons can attack either group equally well (though I'm tempted to put a smaller penalty for attacking the closer rank), and - at a penalty - attack THREE ranks removed. And finally, ranged weapons can attack any rank equally EXCEPT the ones immediately in front of you - where you get a high penalty AND may trigger enemy defensive feats.
For determining distance, it includes your own party. So Chloe and Benjamin are always at a distance of two from the front rank of enemies.
Plans In Motion
I will soon be evaluating the difficulty of merging the current code base with the latest version of the Torque Game Engine. I'm not particularly looking forward to that.
We've got a TON of content work we need to get done. And I'm not talking about that... at all... right now. :)
I am working on some missing functionality, like trading.
The spell casting interface... well, that's a big complaint, still. I still don't have a clean way of handling it. Many people are suggesting a simpler interface with the assumption that there will only be a handful of spells available. I originally planned dozens. So... the question is... do I shrink the number of spells down to make the interface easier for people, or do I keep the spell count up, realizing that - while streamlining may still be improved - it will leave spellcasting a cumbersome process? Or can I do some other tricks, like limit the number of spells a player has "memorized" for the sake of simplifying the interface?
Well, that's where I am. Whaddaya think?
UPDATE: Forum post on the subject available here (thanks Corwin!)
Labels: Frayed Knights
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:57 AM (Permalink)
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For the spell interface, there's an idea you can pull from the later Might and Magic games. They required you to pull up the spellbook interface for most uses, but you could also assign a single attack spell for each character to be cast with the "s" hotkey. This worked great when you just needed to spam attack spells in combat.
Suggestion: give each character a couple of slots to assign spells or other abilities to that can be activated with a single keypress or button-click. That - and auto-healing outside of combat - should eliminate the worst of the problem.
Suggestion: give each character a couple of slots to assign spells or other abilities to that can be activated with a single keypress or button-click. That - and auto-healing outside of combat - should eliminate the worst of the problem.
That would work well. You could also categorize spells separate them out into their groups.
As far as combat goes, I was pretty happy with what I saw. I knew this was a short demo and that all the options were not going to be available to me at this time. Just give more abilities and option at the first level up. Increasing stats is fun, getting more options is even better. :-)
As far as combat goes, I was pretty happy with what I saw. I knew this was a short demo and that all the options were not going to be available to me at this time. Just give more abilities and option at the first level up. Increasing stats is fun, getting more options is even better. :-)
What's the point of having docens of spells? Really, I can think at most of 20 spells that I would want to use in battle. You also have to consider that every spell has to be balanced or the player is going to directly use only the stronger/coolest ones.
So, I say get rid of most of the useless spells that you know people are never going to use more than once. Give a list sorted by categories and an icon for each spell. Then give the option of 3 customizable slots for each character in which the player can assign any spell he wants. This three slots will be bottom center of the screen and can be clicked or used with the 1, 2 and 3 keys.
I'm not taking into account how hard making this changes will be, so pardon if this is a tad bit too drastic.
So, I say get rid of most of the useless spells that you know people are never going to use more than once. Give a list sorted by categories and an icon for each spell. Then give the option of 3 customizable slots for each character in which the player can assign any spell he wants. This three slots will be bottom center of the screen and can be clicked or used with the 1, 2 and 3 keys.
I'm not taking into account how hard making this changes will be, so pardon if this is a tad bit too drastic.
I wasn't being nice, I was being honest. ;)
As has been said before, the magic interface from Might and Magic 6 was convenient. I also never had a problem with the interface from Wizardry 8.
I'd rather see an abundance of spells, as long as uses can be found for them. I don't mean a thousand and one different colors of fireball. Spells with noncombat and non-obvious uses would help liven things up.
As has been said before, the magic interface from Might and Magic 6 was convenient. I also never had a problem with the interface from Wizardry 8.
I'd rather see an abundance of spells, as long as uses can be found for them. I don't mean a thousand and one different colors of fireball. Spells with noncombat and non-obvious uses would help liven things up.
Well, there are two ways I can think of to have both a wide range of spells in-game and a sleek interface.
The first is a design similar to what Guild Wars has - that is, you can only bring a limited set of abilities with you on an adventure, but the full range is available for the player to sort and select while in a town or outpost. It works, but only just so.
The second option is to implement is blossoming pie menus. First, you get a pie menu for spell families (ie, destruction, summoning, buff, debuff, healing, etc.), followed by a menu for area (single, party, AoE, ranged, touch, etc.), then spell effect (destruction would offer different elemental types, healing would offer different heal effects and durations, etc.), and then finally, particular spells. It would be initially cumbersome, but once players get used to it, selecting spells would flow pretty naturally.
Let's say, for example, that I'd want Chloe to cast, oh I dunno, a water effect that would remove debuffs on the party for three turns. To balance off the spell's power and to make it more fitting for Chloe's character, the spell would have a chance to knock everyone on both sides of the battle down for a turn. I'd select Resoration, then Party Effects, then Cleansing, and then - let's call the spell - "Soothing (or Bruising) Rain."
If each pie menu only holds 5 options, that's 5^4 or 625 spells per spellcaster, for a total of 1250 spells, in a neat, compact interface. Granted, that's likely overkill, but it's just an example, and each pie menu could hold different numbers of options. The key point is that once players get the hang of gesturing through a pie menu, they'd have a very natural and powerful means of accessing a wide array of spells.
The first is a design similar to what Guild Wars has - that is, you can only bring a limited set of abilities with you on an adventure, but the full range is available for the player to sort and select while in a town or outpost. It works, but only just so.
The second option is to implement is blossoming pie menus. First, you get a pie menu for spell families (ie, destruction, summoning, buff, debuff, healing, etc.), followed by a menu for area (single, party, AoE, ranged, touch, etc.), then spell effect (destruction would offer different elemental types, healing would offer different heal effects and durations, etc.), and then finally, particular spells. It would be initially cumbersome, but once players get used to it, selecting spells would flow pretty naturally.
Let's say, for example, that I'd want Chloe to cast, oh I dunno, a water effect that would remove debuffs on the party for three turns. To balance off the spell's power and to make it more fitting for Chloe's character, the spell would have a chance to knock everyone on both sides of the battle down for a turn. I'd select Resoration, then Party Effects, then Cleansing, and then - let's call the spell - "Soothing (or Bruising) Rain."
If each pie menu only holds 5 options, that's 5^4 or 625 spells per spellcaster, for a total of 1250 spells, in a neat, compact interface. Granted, that's likely overkill, but it's just an example, and each pie menu could hold different numbers of options. The key point is that once players get the hang of gesturing through a pie menu, they'd have a very natural and powerful means of accessing a wide array of spells.
# posted by 
: May 31, 2008 2:14 AM
: May 31, 2008 2:14 AM
Will we see a new pilot with these features in? I think they could greatly improve our feeling of the game.
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# posted by : June 02, 2008 9:25 AM
: June 02, 2008 9:25 AMLinks to this post:
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