Frayed Knights: Abandon All Hope...
More on the development of Frayed Knights, the comedic indie RPG in development from Rampant Games.

First of all, Diego has part 2 of what looks to be a 3-part installment critiquing the Frayed Knights pilot. Man, I can't wait to hear what he'll say with a full-sized game! Check out his constructive criticism at his site:

Frayed Knights Pilot Critique, Part 2

To be honest, much of my time the last two weeks in development of Frayed Knights has been devoted to building the roughed-out version of the Tower of Almost Certain Death. Up until the last couple of nights, it's been a nice excuse for not working. I mean, yeah, it's been work - on the game, even - but it's been a lot of fun too. Torque Constructor has been working like a charm (for a change), and this is something I'm still learning. It's like playing with Play-Doh.

Unfortunately, even fun parts get tedious after a while, and actually become work. And there's still a lot of work left.

One interesting aspect that I'm probably going to get ripped on as I'm developing these levels is the orientation of my spiral staircases. It seems most modern spiral staircases are made to ascend counterclockwise. In actual medieval fortresses, the staircases were usually constructed so that they ascended clockwise. Under the assumption that everybody fights right-handed (poor lefties - or those who favored the "sinister" hand - were pretty much beaten into learning to favor the right hand), this gave the advantage to the defenders above. The attackers had to expose more of their body when fighting this way, and had a rougher time bringing their weapons to bear.

However, in the world of Frayed Knights, a lot of fortresses are underground, where the defenders would be below the attackers. In these cases, you'd want to build staircases that ascended counter-clockwise. So I'm just gonna have to have a bunch of inconsistent staircases - they will be built clockwise for above-ground fortresses, and counter-clockwise for underground fortresses. Or both, if said fortress goes both ways.

Not that this makes one bit of difference in the game itself. It can't handle fights on spiral stairways as it is, so it only of academic interest, anyway.

Besides building a tower so that it can at least be playable (once I have the outdoor wilderness level completed), I've done some experimental coding. I spent a lot of time (and sacrificed some shortcuts) to merge the Torque 2D codebase (now called "TGB" or Torque Game Builder) into the base Torque Game Engine (plus yet more enhancements). Yet I haven't really taken advantage of the power of the 2D engine features. For one thing, I'm experimenting with making a modern inventory system - and modernizing much of the UI - by using T2D rather than Torque's default UI system.

This was always my intention, but it means a lot more custom code. It was much easier to slap something together using Torque's UI builder and call it good for the purpose of the pilot. The inventory system is getting the big overhaul right now, with a "merchant class" sitting half-finished waiting to be incorporated in the new, improved interface.

Speaking of interfaces - man. If there's a single loudest complaint for the game, it has been the control system. Customizable keyboard commands is one of those other aspects which I always intended to be in the full version, but I didn't think it was critical for people to just test things out and see how it played. Apparently, I was wrong. Live and learn. People want to make the controls familiar so they can ignore that part of it and get on with the playing. If they can't do the former, they may never get to the latter.

Another issue which I have finally conceded defeat on is the actual movement interface. I was trying to do some funky mouse-only control scheme for the benefit of less hardcore gamers who tend to navigate around their flash games by clicking on the edges of the screen and stuff. And to try and build off of some ancient foundations laid by old-timey Ultima Underworld games.

I have come to realize that (a) Those people won't be playing my game anyway, and (b) Ultima Underworld's control system really did suck. I mean, sure, you got used to it, and it was pretty nifty once you did because it was like being five years old again and showing off to your mom how you were able to ride your bike by holding onto the handlebars with only one hand. But that still didn't make it good.

So it's going back to more of an FPS-style control. Hopefully people won't play it like an FPS. Basically, if you've played a first-person MMO or RPG, then you will have no problem adapting to the control system.

Forward, backward, turn left, and turn right default to W and Up Arrow, S and Down Arrow, A and Left Arrow, and D and Right arrow, respectively. The Q and E keys are the default keyboard commands for walking left and right (no turning). By holding down on the right mouse button, you can also look around and turn using the mouse. Otherwise, moving the mouse around only moves the mouse cursor.

See? I can be taught.

Happy or unhappy with what was posted? Let others know on the forum thread!

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:44 AM (Permalink)