Frayed Knights Pilot Critique and Delayed Consequences
Diego Doumecq has written up a third part of his critique of the Frayed Knights Pilot: The Temple of Pokmor Xang. I thought I'd link to it here, and talk about it (and Frayed Knights) a bit.

Frayed Knights Pilot Critique, Part III

Curiously enough, even in the pilot, there is something similar to the danger-o-meter he suggests. As you fight creatures in an area, the threat level (and chance of additional encounters) decreases. However, that aspect was never fully tested. I've since made some modifications and in the version that I am running, I've actually got something like that running in the UI. But not as pretty - it's just a number.

His speed-run through the dungeon made me grin. I wasn't sure anybody would actually try that, but I wanted to script it out appropriately. And yes, I wanted to make it a viable (if not the easiest) way to complete the dungeon. It needs to be cleaned up a bit, but that was the main idea. Or rather, a prototype for the idea. Was it worth the effort?

I'm going to give a cautious "yes." Yeah, I spent some extra time coding up an alternative that very few people will try, but the fact that it's there means something to me. Best-case would be to have some genuinely organic high-level AI deal with it as a more general solution. But then you wouldn't get the warning dialog.

Honestly, I never thought that I (or anybody else) would consider the lack of feedback to a player as being a virtue. But this brings up the topic for today: Delayed Consequences. Diego writes the following:

"Just imagine it, you made a bad choice but you don’t know that yet, so you go on and use another save just in case. Three hours later, the ramifications of your previous decisions surface and now you have a really strong urge to reload. But that would mean three hours down the toilet wouldn’t it? And you still don’t know the consequences for the other possibilities, so that could also mean even more hours down the toilet.

"Most likely, the player will just go on, preferring to live with a stain on their record than to waste various hours trying to do everything perfectly. He would be taking responsibility on his actions, and facing the consequences without all the metagaming that quickloading implies."

He's speaking of the encounter with Valeria inside the cell. There are basically four states that you can leave poor Valeria in (although one was broken in the pilot):

a) You never encountered her.
b) You encountered her, but refused to set her free
c) You encountered her, and set her free immediately (after an argument within the party).
d) You encountered her, don't set her free at first, but come back to let her go later.

From a design perspective, I really want all four options to be perfectly valid - there is no "correct" decision. But as to which might be considered the "preferred" set of consequences? I ain't sayin' yet. :)

If the consequences of the decision are not immediate, they MUST be non-fatal to a successful completion of the game. One of the cardinal sins of game design is allowing the player to save the game in an unwinnable state.

In theory, I could make sure that every decision is either wrong or right by changing Valeria's purpose based upon the player's decision. But that's not how I roll. I feel that robs the player of real consequences for their decisions. That, and I do like to provide some hints throughout the game with these kinds of decisions, so it's not a flip-the-coin type of issue.

The more fun kinds of decisions like this are when the player is choosing between all desirable or all undesirable options. Kinda like picking the cards in the character generation mini-game of the older Ultimas. Both options are "good," but they take you along different paths. It makes the answers non-trivial.

In the case of Valeria, that encounter was also something of an inside joke, and an attempt to twist a standard fantasy RPG trope. The "damsel in distress" thing is pretty much hackneyed. In some of the older Dungeons & Dragons modules, however, it was twisted so that said damsel, always needing rescue, was also almost always EVIL and a threat to the party. Other dungeon masters picked up on this, and routinely threw this kind of threat into their custom adventures. It kept working, too, because the adventuring parties were almost always played by teenaged boys with only one thing on their mind besides hacking & slashing.

It got to the point where finding a beautiful woman chained to a wall in a hostile dungeon automatically set off warnings. The more beautiful and scantily clad, the greater the likelihood that she was part of a trap. And yet, we kept falling for it, unless we were playing evil characters. Because you just CAN'T leave some woman chained to a wall in a hostile dungeon like that if there is the slimmest chance that she might be innocent.

Invariably, it would be a trap, and we'd get our butts handed to us one way or another. Sometimes it was immediate, sometimes not. And the DM would laugh at us for falling for it. And we'd fume, and vow never, ever to free some scantily clad beautiful girl from the torture chamber of the giants' fortress again.

But there are still yet more purposes for Valeria!

One of the things I have learned over the years is that in games, you really have to meet a character (NPC) a couple of times in different situations before you (meaning, the player) gain any amount of interest in them. Everyone else is a stage prop. I don't care if he's Lord Freaking British, if you only encounter him when he's got his butt planted on his throne, he becomes two-dimensional wallpaper.

Running into that NPC in other places seems (to me) to give them a life, a hint of a story that goes beyond them sitting in one place waiting for you, the PC, to chat with them. It provides the illusion of activity.

But I've got to do a better job with handling NPCs than I am now. This was a prototype, and I'm pleased it actually worked for Diego.

So what do you think? If you have faith that a decision with delayed consequences won't "wreck" your game (but may not make the game easier, either), are you okay with this in an RPG? Or do you really prefer to receive immediate feedback as to the consequences of your actions - the negatives and positives to faction, etc.?

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:59 PM (Permalink) 9 comments links to this post

 
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) 7 comments links to this post

 
Frayed Knights Pilot Critiqued
It's not often that I link to a site that shreds my hard work to pieces. Fortunately, that's because the latter doesn't happen too often. Maybe because Scorpia hasn't reviewed one of my games yet... :) But more likely because I'm nowhere near as prolific as I'd like to be, and I'm still pretty much off-the-rader as an invisible indie.

In this case, Diego Doumecq has taken apart Frayed Knight Pilot: The Temple of Pokmor Xang from a game design perspective, and has been pretty respectful of both the material and his role. And he seems to have really enjoyed the game, which makes me happy. But he has a lot of constructive, well-thought-out criticisms that he brings up that are worthy of discussion and consideration.

The issues he brings up are similar to the ones I have received in feedback forms from people who have played the game (still not quite up to 1,000 emails, but getting closer...), but he has done a very good job of putting his finger on the some of the root causes. For example, there's the problem I was well aware of when I released the game that combat was nowhere near where I wanted it to be, and I was having problems seeing the forest for the trees. Many players have pointed out the issue, but only a few have been as clear at pointing out some of the exact problems as Diego has here (and there are definitely more problems than the one Diego has addressed).

In part 1 of the critique, Diego primarily tackles interface issues - which are definitely easy targets for the game. There should be a part 2 coming up shortly, and he's also got some other game design articles and critiques available on his blog that are well worth reading. Part 2 should be appearing shortly, and I'll update this post when it appears.

I have said it before - but the purpose of the pilot episode of Frayed Knights was to solicit this kind of feedback from players. While I've got a ton of opinions on CRPGs, simply having an opinion and being able to deconstruct a game does not immediately translate to being able to create a killer design of your own. I'm a learn-by-doing kind of guy, and so this has given me the opportunity to learn what I have done right and done wrong a little bit faster.

So I want to thank Diego and all the people who have emailed me with feedback, suggestions, compliments, support, and criticisms. You folks help me become a better game developer. This sort of direct communication is what I feel can make indie gaming great!

Frayed Knights Pilot Critique at Indigo Static

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:40 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Frayed Knights: Dungeon Guidebook
Since we're back in the saddle again, I wanted to continue the more-or-less weekly discussion of the humorous indie RPG in development, Frayed Knights...

One of the more fun tasks I get to do when working on this game is the world design. When I'd take walks during lunch at the local park, jamming to really weird music and fantasy movie soundtracks on my iPod, I'd actually think of world design elements in the form of written travel guides. Yes, if you needed any more confirmation of my mental instability, this is it.

Anyway, I've written a couple of them up, and I expect them to find their way into Frayed Knights as actual in-game items (or as part of an instruction supplement). Here's the one on dungeons, which I have been promising for a while, and which has been guiding some of my thoughts the last two weeks.

These guidebooks were written by one of the most famous adventurers still living, Argus Stormhammer, the founder of the Adventurer's Guild. He wrote a whole series of pamphlet-sized guidebooks about a decade ago, and they are now considered essential reading for all adventurers.


“Dungeon” is a generic term for any underground adventuring location. As any veteran fortune-hunter knows, Kalderia – in fact, all of Zerion – is absolutely cluttered with these places. Where did they all come from? What beneficent god sprinkled these lovely caches of fortune and excitement ripe for our plucking all over the landscape of our fair kingdom?

Well, a good number – a majority, in fact – are simply naturally occurring caves or lairs of subterranean monsters. But to understand the rest – which are usually the most lucrative – one must understand history. History is the friend of the fortune-hunter, and it will serve us here.

About five hundred years ago as of this writing, the entire world was engulfed in the great Wizard War. Before that time, above-ground castles and towers were still in vogue – as they are returning to, now. But the wizards had air-power. Nepharides himself was rumored to lead an entire squadron of fire-breathing dragons. Traditional castles which seemed impregnable from the ground might as well roll out the red carpet when the hordes of winged monkeys, dragons, flying demons, and magic-carpet-riding wizards came to invade.

The solution was to burrow underground. The best dwarven engineers were enlisted to design and construct massive underground complexes to supplement or replace above-ground fortresses. Even after the war, a grand underground fortress was a status symbol amongst the wealthy and noble, and fantastic sums of money were paid for the design and construction of everything from small country cottages under forested hills, to entire underground cities.

While the dwarves were happy to oblige, they simply couldn’t keep up with the demand. Their fees were tremendous, and the waiting time began to stretch into generations. Eventually, more cost-conscious developers began hiring cut-rate help… including goblin engineers.

Now, while there are many skilled goblins at this sort of work, they weren’t always the most reputable. Many would turn around and double their money by selling the secrets of their designs to the enemies of their rich clients. Non-dwarves sometimes skimped on things like ventilation. That, or dungeon-owners would forget the population limits on their fortresses, and would host a few too many guests, or have a few too many babies. Then, before you could say, “Why is this canary dead?” entire dungeons became depopulated and forgotten.

Dungeon Delving
Now, most adventurers will brag in their tavern tales of fierce monsters and deadly traps faced in their underground forays. These threats are considerable, and I have lost many friends to these dangers over the years. I talk about them in other pamphlets. But there is another threat when deep underground, and that is bad air. There may be pockets of bad or toxic air in some of the poorer-quality mines, caves, or fortresses which may not be apparent to you until you start getting dizzy and passing out. There are magic items and spells (like one the wizards call “clean air”) to help you with that.

Water is a large threat as well. It’s usually very cold, which is bad enough, but it is also good at concealing dangerous drop-offs. And monsters. And traps. A potion of fish-breath is a handy item to keep around just in case the water surprises you with its depth.

Just because you have heard that such-and-such a dungeon has already been looted by other adventurers, don’t assume it is useless to you. It may still be a lucrative expedition for three reasons:

#1 – Many complexes that protect considerable wealth employ a false treasure room designed specifically to be more obvious of a target. The real treasure is often much harder to find. Many treasure-hunters find the false treasure, call the day a success, and leave a now-depopulated dungeon with far more wealth unprotected behind them.

#2 – Larger underground complexes were often home to a number of wealthy individuals who maintained (and hid) their own personal treasures in places other than the main treasure room. I once found a diamond necklace hidden in a cranny beneath a loose stone in complex that had been thoroughly explored by no less than three different adventuring parties.

#3 – Unless well hidden, shelters such as these seldom remain uninhabited for long. If more than a couple of years have passed since a dungeon was last explored, there’s always a chance it could have accumulated new residents – often of the lethal and hungry sort – and new treasures.

#4 – While some consider it unsavory, there is always the possibility of the types of finds euphemistically referred to as “secondhand” treasure. I know that if I were to meet my own demise in the bowels of a dungeon – a danger I have faced thousands of times – my spirit would rest easier should my array of expensive and magical gear find its way to serve another adventurer in need, even if only to provide extra coin to hoist a mug of ale to my memory in a nearby tavern.

Dungeon Classification
You may sometimes hear fellow adventurers talking about a “Bagger” or a “Lair” or a “Class C” when talking about dungeons. Fortune-hunters, over time, have evolved a classification system when speaking of their finds. Here is the most common usage of these terms:

Class A Dungeon: Also referred to as a “stronghold,” this an underground complex populated by intelligent, cooperative enemies capable of mounting an organized defense. These are among the most dangerous of dungeons, and are for experienced, combat-ready fortune-hunters only!

Class B Dungeon: Also referred to as a “lair,” this is an underground structure populated by threats incapable of mounting an organized defense together. For example, a dungeon inhabited only by unintelligent monsters, or by intelligent creatures that do not cooperate with each other to defend it might be a class B dungeon.

Class C Dungeon: A class C dungeon is one that lacks a living population, but is likely to contain automated defenses such as traps, automatons (including golems and certain sorts of undead), or incidental hazards (like hostile molds).

Class D Dungeon: Also referred to as a “bagger,” this is a dungeon with no known protection other than its obscurity or possible environmental hazards.

Now, bear in mind that this usage isn’t universal. Some adventuring groups combine the meaning of class C and D dungeons, for example, so you should always double-check your source to make sure you fully understand what they are referring to.

Until next time, keep your sword and mine sharp, and good hunting!

--- Argus Stormhammer, Veteran Explorer and Fortune-Hunter


Oh, hey! Forum Discussion!

Labels: Frayed Knights

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:53 AM (Permalink) 7 comments links to this post

 
RPG Design: Building a Better Dungeon
I spent a good deal of time last night going over visuals for dungeons - real-world dungeons, as well as artist renditions and video game dungeons. Of course modern, fantasy dungeons are very different in both form and function from their real-world counterparts. Real-world dungeons were not much more than white-washed stone pits with cells. Though as time goes by, the white-washing has gone away to be replaced by lime deposits and mold.

Which I guess is supposed to be the point of fantasy dungeons. They are generally old and no longer maintained. And they are huge complexes that serve as lairs more than a place to hold unwanteds.

Naturally, I was doing this because I was busy building content for Frayed Knights. Experimental content, but content. In some ways, this is a follow-up of last week's article, but getting down into the details. Yeah, I write about what is currently obsessing me.

The tricky thing about dungeons for fantasy adventures is that they have to ... uh... not be realistic. Realistic is boring. I mean, really - if there's only one entrance into the dungeon, all you need to do is lay siege to the entrance, ring an alarm bell, and sit in for a long siege. Or block off the ventilation. If there's an organized force of orcs or whatever in that dungeon, they should REALLY just attack as a unified swarm, overpowering the Player Characters by sheer mass of numbers.

Part of the fun of designing the world of Frayed Knights has been coming up with justification for some of the goofy logic we D&D players have to assume in order to suspend our disbelief. Like why the freak are there all these gigantic, underground complexes everywhere. Dungeons & Dragons has subtle explanations, in the form of dwarves & other creatures that were superhuman miners, and the availability of spells like "Dig" (which disappeared in 3rd edition), and "Stone Shape" and "Rock to Mud / Mud to Rock."

But what we lack in logic, we can at least make up for in consistency, and appealing to real-world conventions where they make sense (or even where they don't). Things like arched ceilings are a pain to model, but are architecturally more sound than squared-off flat ceilings we are used too. Lacking that, frequent support pillars and cross-beams to keep the tons of earth and dirt from collapsing the dungeon in on itself can help with visual appeal.

I was halfway through with this post when I discovered Shamus Young - by some bizarre act of serendipity - had addressed some of the same issues for making more "realistic" dungeons. Not realistic as in behaving realistically (in the aforementioned boring fashion), but to maintain enough verisimilitude that the details bring the world alive. Since I was just going to talk about how a certain Hackmaster module had a creature living in the kobold's latrine (and just enough kobolds would get drunk and forget to keep the monster fed), I'll simply refer to Shamus's article. He saved me about a thousand words.

GM Advice: Dungeons that Make Sense at Twenty Sided

Finally, another factor to consider is history and the effects of time. I'm not necessarily talking about ancient history (like the fact the Temple of Pokmor Xang was originally created for a much more terrible deity, a fact which might not ever even be useful in the game itself), but simply the problem that most fantasy adventure locations exist in some kind of stasis. Nothing beyond the basic routine ever seems to happen until the player gets there. The monsters just sit patiently in their little dungeon-apartments waiting for the day when the door will burst open and adventurers will appear, like the evil opposite of opportunity knocking, and kill everything in sight and take their stuff.

One aspect to consider is to consider the history of the location - from its original construction (it was originally built for a dragon, so everything is BIG) down to what happened yesterday. Barg the goblin and his mate got in a fight, and now Barg is sleeping out in the hall. That hanging bone decoration in the chieftain's sleeping chamber is actually the missing adventurer the people in town were talking about last week.

The problem with adding time details is that they risk becoming obsolete when the player comes back to the location a second time. In a pen-and-paper RPG, the GM can try and wing it (in fact, the old Against the Giants module series for AD&D made suggestions for how the giants would react to repeat forays by the players). But in a computer RPG, the static nature of those details makes it glaringly obvious its all a setup. Not that this surprises the player, but it still interferes with the suspension of disbelief. So these have to be added with care.

Dang. And I thought my job was done when I connected some 30' x 30' rooms together with short 10' wide hallways.

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:20 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Frayed Knights Wins Game-In-A-Year Competition
I'm very pleased to announce that the Frayed Knights Pilot: The Temple of Pokmor Xang has won the Dream Games' "Game In a Year" competition that began in April 2007, and culminated in April of this year.

The competition may have ended in April, but judging between some very strong entries took a little bit longer.

The announcement was made on Dream Game's forums last night. Rampant Games was cited as being "consistent throughout development, had the best quality product which adhered to their design, provided excellent testing and feedback cycles through their community."

Oh, yeah, community! That's you guys. Thank you. We literally could not have done it without you.

We had a TON of people sign up for the alpha and beta testing of the game, and while the pilot version of the game is probably not the pinnacle of polish and freedom from bugs (or even solid gameplay), suffice to say that the alpha test team endured far, far worse. Certain people in particular worked their butts off with suggestions and detailed test reproduction steps with every single build, probably growing almost as tired of the same level as I was. I'm going to note Random Gamer, francotau, DGM, Cowgod, Samrobb, Ezin, NME, JenaRey, Space Bumby (or, more particularly, her kids --- who gave it quite a workout), Califer, Smackey, and probably others who were quite active the first month but their posts got reaped by accident.

RandomGamer, DGM, and Cowgod in particular were amazing with their constant feedback and suggestions. They would dig DEEP to help me uncover some hard-to-find bugs. And I sometimes ignored their suggestions to my own regret.

Even those who were not heavily involved in testing provided me with some great advice and suggestions in my weekly development diaries. I made some major changes during development based on the advice of clear-thinking readers who were able to point out some areas where I was completely overthinking the problem, or going down the wrong path.

Likewise - I have been deluged with feedback from people who played the pilot. I have received over 700 responses with useful feedback and comments that are helping me shape the full version of Frayed Knights. Some people sent me gigantic forms of information full of brilliant insights, and some suggestions I'm dang well trying to incorporate. Granted, it's kinda humbling to realize that just about everybody BUT me could spot some of the glaring problems with the design. But this is about you, and about the game.

Several other communities have been very supportive of this project. The folks at RPGWatch, RPG Codex, Iron Tower Studio (More indie RPG goodness - also done with Torque!), Scorpia's Gaming Lair, RPGDX, and Game Banshee have been way, way cool and have offered plenty by way of both crits and encouragement.

You. Guys. Rock.

So - what's next?

Obviously, the Frayed Knights Pilot was just the first step. It served its purpose, as a scouting mission to see where I was on the right track and where I was completely in a different timezone from the right track. It was a complete game, albeit not a perfect one. We were able to get a lot done in a single year, and I'm very proud of it - particularly as my first released RPG (if you don't count Hackenslash).

Now comes the hard part - to make twelve times the game in less than twelve times the development time. Neither you nor I have the patience to wait twelve more years for its release. So what's it going to take? I don't entirely know the answer to this question. I have ideas, but not answers.

But this first chapter of the saga is completed, and I'm thrilled with what we've been able to pull off. Again - much of the credit goes to this and "neighboring" communities.

Thank you.


Wanna talk about it some more? There's a forum thread, even!

Labels: Frayed Knights

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:28 AM (Permalink) 17 comments links to this post

 
Frayed Knights: Dungeons Scrawls
Here's an update on the progress of Frayed Knights, the comedy-based indie RPG in development by Rampant Games.

You know, it's much, much easier to draw a map out on graph paper than it is to actually develop it as a full-fledged game level. Especially when you are not very good at the latter. The programmer in me wants to create a tool that will let me just draw the walls of a level (or adapt one of several programs out there that already do that), and convert it to a .map file. There's just one problem: The end result will look just as bad as what I'm already creating. It's all about the details.

As much as I'm trying to draw upon old-school pen-and-paper D&D for inspiration, there are a few things that just won't work. And frankly, the very 2D, rectilinear dungeons of yesteryear make very poor 3D CRPG dungeons. I remember Tracy Hicman, co-author of the Ravenloft module and the Dragonlance series, bringing this up at one conference (which I mentioned in one of my Wizardry 8 walkthrough articles) - old-school D&D dungeon design is boring and flat. I don't want levels to just be populated by practically random monsters, where you just kick the door down and find out what monster is behind it. While that is very old-school dungeon crawl, even back in the late 70's / early 80's, the dungeon crawls had a lot more rhyme & reason to them and theming than even many of the CRPGs of the 90's.

But before I ever even sketch out the map on graph paper, and long before fire up my level editing tool (currently I'm taking another stab at Torque Constructor), I need to have a very clear idea for each major level. I want these settings to stand out, not to be just random geometry with random combat. Players can get plenty of exercise doing that playing Diablo or NetHack (and even those games have some theming in their levels).

I have been going through this exercise for a couple of the upcoming dungeons I'm working on. For each one, and the outdoor areas, I want to answer these questions on paper. Yeah, it's design-doc-ish stuff, but a good exercise even as the only guy working on the project. And if I manage to contract Kevin or other unlucky level designers to handle some of the actual construction, they'll need this same kinda information

I'm going to use the Temple of Pokmor Xang as the example here, since ya'll have already played it and stuff. Assuming you could stomach it. It's gonna get better, I promise! :)


#1 - What do I want the player experience to be?
In the case of the Temple of Pokmor Xang, this was to provide an introduction and tutorial to the principle game mechanics of the game. The dungeon should provide a simplified view of the breadth of gameplay, and provide a representative sample of the quality of the game to come. It should also provide a good example of the humor and parody elements.

#2 - What is the physical setting of this level? What should be unique about it?
For Pokmor Xang, this was an underground temple used by evil cultist long, ago.

In more recent years, it was reclaimed by a different cult - the cultists of Pokmor Xang, a loser of a god - and a loser of a cult. The primary "set-piece" of the dungeon is the altar room, where the ominous statue of a dark god would ordinarily appear pretty impressive and scary. In PX's case, it's should appear lame, and comical in contrast to what the apparent "desired effect" would be. The entire level should reflect this - it's a much bigger, more impressive and potentially threatening setting than it really deserves to be.

#3 - What is the history of this area? How can this history be incorporated into game elements to make it more interesting?
There should also be some old signs as to the previous ownership of the temple. This actually didn't come through very well, and would need to be enhanced. There should also be some indication of why the PX cultists are here now, explaining the storyline to those who want to follow it.

#4 - What are the principle encounter types? Why are they here? What makes them different in combat?
For Pokmor Xang, the two principle encounter types are cultists (magic-using and melee), and their disgusting creations - pus golems. Brittlebone skeletons provided a minor break in the action. Kraltic Barg is the "boss" bad guy.

The big contrast should be in the player encountering what should be a major, scary evil cult, but it is more of a fifth-string cult of bumpkins playing at being evil and nasty. The boss himself, Kraltic Barg, should actually be a little bit scary and competent, but he's content with being a big fish in a tiny pond.

Unfortunately, those encounters have failed to provide enough of a distinctive feel in combat - something I need to remedy:

* Ordinary Cultists should be a pretty straightforward melee encounter versus humans - moderately hard-hitting, moderately good at soaking damage. Pretty much the baseline for an encounter.

* Priests should make things interesting with their usage of priestly magic. The players should learn a bit about the threat from casters.

* Pus Golems should be a somewhat more unusual melee encounter, easier to take down (especially with fire), but with an unusual special attack.

* Brittlebone Skeletons should be the cannon fodder of the level. They should appear in larger numbers, present little threat, and be chomped down like Doritos.

#5 - What are some other unique features of this level? What are the non-combat encounters / events that take place (besides the usual locks & traps)? We're talking tricks, puzzles, riddles, and non-combat NPC encounters here.
The meditation room turned out to be a very visually impressive room, and I wanted an "old school" fountain puzzle to be a simple interactive object encounter - a puzzle.

The torture room was simply different by nature of its function. In this chamber, I wanted a non-combat NPC encounter with a prisoner. I wanted it to be something of a parody of an old-school "trick" - the beautiful women held captive who almost always turned out to be a villain. Her true nature is only revealed later in town (though not in the demo). This encounter isn't quite working right.

The entry hall was just sort of a subtle joke by itself - a grandiose hall for a less-than-grandiose deity. While not an encounter, it stands out.

There's a secret door next to the statue. In retrospect, I think I need to draw more attention to it so that players can learn about "secret doors."

The collapsed stairway was a bonus provided by Kevin. I need to do more with it.

#6 - How is the player expected to progress through the level? What are the non-linear level progression options? Why should the player visit this location more than once? As a final bit of functionality which is not 100% working yet (I'm probably going to have to completely revamp the AI / encounter system for this) - I also wanted to make it so that skipping earlier encounters made the boss encounter more difficult. This was something of a "soft linearity" added to the level. You could make a beeline straight for the boss chamber, but you'll have a difficult lock to bypass, and you'll have a really tough final encounter. I'm not sure how well that played out.

There's also supposed to be a special encounter behind the southern door in the statue room that can only be reached later in the game on a subsequent visit. That's not in the demo, and I won't talk about it here.

#7 - What are some of the secrets / bonuses in the level?
There's a secret door by the statue, behind which most of the best treasure in the level is found.

The torture chamber is optional and holds some extra loot, as well as an NPC encounter that should pay off a little bit later in the game.

And then there's the southern door in the statue room.

#8 - What is the player's purpose for visiting this level? What is their ultimate goal?
The player is dumped here as the starting point in the game - starting with a bang. The player finds out, through character conversation and the journal, that they are here on a good ol' fashioned mercenary expedition to loot some item for a benefactor.

#9 - How does this level advance the main story arc? How does it advance any sub-story quests?
Sub-story: The players get introduced to their rivals by discovering that they are the SECOND adventuring party to hit this temple. The first group was far more efficient.

Main Story: Kraltic Barg has a benefactor who gave him the valuable jewels that are the object of this quest in the first place. And - this may be too subtle, I don't know - the player may note a room that WOULD have been a very explosive experience given Chloe's known preference for fire-based spells.


My actual answers are a little longer in the original design document, but not in this format. I didn't want to bore you too much by just printing them here. But nevermind the answers - how would you expand on these questions?

Wanna chat in more detail? Check out the forum!

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:09 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Frayed Knights: Back From the Dead
So here's the latest update on Frayed Knights, the comedic indie RPG in development from Rampant Games (an older work-in-progress "pilot" available here).

Frayed Knights has been dead for a couple of weeks.

Not dead as a project, but for me, Frayed Knights has been non-functional for a couple of weeks. Merging my heavily modified 1.5 codebase for TGE and the 1.52 codebase for TGE plus the AFX special effects code, plus TGB 1.3 (the last version that was pretty compatible with TGE) overlayed on top of that felt a little like making a time machine out of a DeLorean. But since even a used DeLorean costs over $25,000, this option was more economical. Plus, I didn't run the risk of splitting up my parents before I was conceived and thus unmaking myself in a time-travelling paradox.

With the stress and long hours of the previous day job behind me (and let me tell you - the loss of that stress literally felt like the relief of a physical burden - I can't tell you how much BETTER I've been feeling the last three weeks), I've felt the strength and desire to proceed to the next phase of Frayed Knights' development. This allowed me to tackle the merge which I had been putting off. But the resulting problems frustrated me and reduced me back to "tinker" mode - I'd work on a map a little bit, make some design notes, add to my "wish list," and then go back to surfing the web and playing Wizardry 8. Yes, I can procrastinate with the best of 'em.

The saddest part? Fixing things, once I committed to doing it, only took a couple of hours. I am once again reminded that I work best on a milestone schedule, with a list of tasks I am (loosely) committed to completing by a certain date.

So what does this merge give me? Well, besides a bunch of bug-fixes and optimizations for a planned Mac build, it gives me access to some new and improved interior changes used by Torque Constructor. Since I've had some waking nightmares with the "legacy exporter" in Constructor, this will hopefully improve my content development pipeline. There are some improvements to lighting, particularly with static meshes.

And then there's the AFX code. In a nutshell, it includes a whole slew of changes to the decal and particle system - primarily, though there's more to it than that - that allow some pretty awesome spell effects. There's a screenshot to the right of AFX in action in the Torque demo.

With that done, I'm back to working on some core technology. I am considering some massive changes to how AI works, how combat plays, and how inventory management is handled. I also need to finish the journal system and the transition map system now that we'll have more than two areas to go between.

Since I work best committed to a deadline (it stops me from "tinkering"), for next week I'm going to finish the design work and the rough-out of the Tower of Almost Certain Death and the first wilderness area, get trading completed with NPCs, and get started on the revised journal system. That ought to keep me busy.

And I'm gonna get back to trying to post an update weekly (or at least semi-weekly), as I was before I went into soul-sapping crunch-mode hell. Public reporting of progress keeps me from falling back into "tinker" mode.

For those who haven't tried out the demo yet, community member Demiath has uploaded a YouTube video of the first five minutes of the Frayed Knights Pilot. Which I think is extraordinarily cool. Feel free to go there and comment on how cool Demiath is, or your predictions on how Frayed Knights is going to outsell Diablo 3 when it is done (hey, if you are gonna dream, dream big...). It also helps to watch someone else play the game to remind me what things I need to fix / improve. Here it is in all its embedded glory (you will want to switch to high-quality mode on YouTube to be able to read the text):



Thanks, Demiath!

And that's it for now. TTFN!

Labels: Frayed Knights, programming, Torque

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:35 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Frayed Knights: The Tower of Almost Certain Death
I haven't been quite as regular with my postings about the development of the comedy-based indie RPG Frayed Knights of late, but the game does continue development, if not quite as quickly as it was the last few weeks before the pilot milestone. Obviously, we need a new milestone schedule. But I thought I'd provide a little bit of background on the world at large and chapters / adventures / locations in development.

Naturally, all of this information may change, and could conceivably not appear in the game at all. But here we go anyway. This week: The Tower of Almost Certain Death!

Originally, this tower was called the "Tower of Certain Death" by those few locals and adventurers who knew of its existence. Every once in a while some local youths from nearby towns who fancied themselves as adventurerers would discover legends of the tower, and mount an expedition to find and sack it.

Of the few expeditions that found the tower, most ended in the entry chamber, not with death, but with a lot of ale-drinking and graffitti-drawing to mark the accomplishment. Then the expedition would return home with tales of surviving the Tower of Certain Death.

At this point, jokes circulated renaming the old tower the "Tower of ALMOST Certain Death," as it was clear that merely entering the tower did not lead to instant demise. Those who remembered the old stories warned that it was actually ascending to the top of the tower that resulted in certain death, but as the young trespassers who had survived entry chamber parties maintained, the tower was in such poor condition that a lethal fall from the top when the floor gave out was a certainty.

However, the tower eventually attracted a group of down-on-their-luck adventurers. They discovered that the upper floors of the tower were not only in far better condition than the youthful entry-level explorers had guessed, but that they were inhabited - after a fashion. The former owner of the tower - a Wizard named Thermistale - had performed an experiment which failed spectacularly, transforming him and his apprentices into ageless, mindless monsters. Besides these entities, the tower had animated statues and traps designed to foil interlopers and government inspectors. And a great deal of the wizard's treasure had remained intact.

Once the "Tower of Almost Certain Death" had been successfully sacked, nobody bothered going there anymore. Those few who tried found that the tower was well and truly looted, with nothing remaining of remote interest to make it worth the trip. After twenty years, it faded from memory.

Rumors have recently surfaced that the tower has new inhabitants, though speculation rages as to whether or not the new inhabitants are monsters or a flock of birds.

Labels: Frayed Knights

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:55 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
I Didn't Know I Spoke Polish...
Wow, I'm multi-lingual!

Frayed Knights Interview on Onet.pl!

For those of us who don't speak Polish, and who are at all interested (don't worry, I wouldn't be either), I provided the original English translation of the interview in the Forum.

Labels: Frayed Knights, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:09 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Frayed Knights in PC Games Germany
Simon "Seminus" Bachmann sent me this scan from this months' PC Games magazine in Germany:


I really have little clue what it says, though I imagine it has something to do with games that really DESERVE to be banned...

I've gotten quite a bit of feedback coming from the magazine this weekend - about 50 more feedback forms. Most are fairly complimentary, but note the same kinds of issues that have already been cited (movement speed, interface, combat mechanics, etc.). A few chastened me to make a game that looks and plays like modern AAA RPGs, and a few complained about having to read so much (not an uncommon complaint, really).

Exciting stuff!

Labels: Frayed Knights

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:48 PM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
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) 6 comments links to this post

 
My Game Gets More Polish
Someone said in the feedback that Frayed Knights could use a little more polish.

Happy to oblige:

Frayed Knights Polish

(Yeah, I guess capitalization counts, doesn't it?)

I have no idea what it is saying. Possibly something unflattering about my ancestry. Which isn't necessarily untrue, mind you. But I just don't know.

Labels: Frayed Knights

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:04 PM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
Frayed Knights - Feedback Frenzy
And here's another weekly update in the development of Frayed Knights - the (arguably) humorous indie RPG coming from Rampant Games.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a couple of articles about a "red line" test for games. The idea was borrowed from a professional fantasy writer who spoke at a science fiction symposium I attended in college. In her writing group, when they'd peer-review each other's work, they'd draw a red line in the text where they - as a normal reader or editor - would have stopped reading for whatever reason. The idea, during revisions, was to keep pushing that line down, further into the story, until it disappeared altogether. Then it might be ready for reading by a real editor or audience.

I thought this could be applied to games, and that's a lot of what the pilot episode of Frayed Knights was all about. It was a rough draft of the first 'chapter,' if you will, and the feedback I've gotten back has been invaluable. I'm nearing 250 feedback responses so far, and I've read every one. Even had to have one translated from German for me (I only took two years of German in high school, and hardly remember a thing....)

As far as the red line goes, a vast majority went on to finish the episode, even though I felt - from their feedback - that there were a lot of issues that might have dissuaded them from playing all the way through. There's been some really clear responses - some with very long suggestions - as to what people would like to see changed. In some cases, I can't act on the suggestions, because it's just not that kind of game, or it would be cost-prohibitive. But the most common suggestions are

But where fixes can be made, I'm making 'em. Slowly. Not so much this week - between recovering from burnout from last week's mad rush to get the pilot out, to this week's crunch-time for the ol' Day Job, I've mostly been focusing my efforts on paper and planning. And I'm going back and playing some of the "old school" games I'm trying to emulate, seeing what sort of things they did so well (even if they'd not appeal to today's gamer).

The best news so far has been - as far as I can ascertain from the feedback - that the core idea behind Frayed Knights is solid and is appealing to a lot of people. There are lots of rough edges in design, interface, and mechanics that need to be fixed and polished, but overall, I feel pretty good about it.

Watch this space for new updates.

Oh, and while I'm at it - any other Torque developers out there - is DirectX support for TGE just as crappy as it seems to be in Frayed Knights, or did I somehow break something? OpenGL runs great, but DirectX is causing flashing polygons, bad lighting on some objects, and nasty terrain anomalies.

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:04 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Frayed Knights Pilot Release Aftermath
I wasn't really trying to make a huge deal of the pilot - this was an experimental release to help gauge how we're doing while there's still time to make major corrections. Releasing anything like this to the public, and soliciting criticism, is not something I'd recommend for anyone who fears damage to their ego. Even when the really negative comments are in the minority, one sting wipes out ten praises. At least it does for me. But the purpose of the pilot and the survey is not to make the development team feel warm and fuzzy, but rather to give us an accurate picture of where we are and where we need to go. Like checking for directions at a gas station before committing to another 200 miles. It was to help us know what major and minor changes need to be made while there's still time to make them.

And the response in the last 24 hours to the release of the Frayed Knights Pilot has been incredible. I'm sitting with 80 survey responses so far, and climbing. The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive - better than I really expected, to be honest, as much as I daydream about making a game that absolutely everybody loves.

Better yet, almost everyone - especially those who offered strong approval of the game and it's overall style and flavor - has offered criticism of aspects that they feel need to be changed. Often extremely constructive criticism, with several paragraphs of recommendations and clear explanations of what they had trouble with and what they'd recommend to fix it. We're talking details worth their weight in gold.

I am - in a word - floored. But in a good way.

Hmm, I guess that was six words. My bad.

Thank you to everyone who has participated and continues to participate in the pilot and the survey.

We're gonna push forward with the full release stuff, but I suspect a "revised pilot" will be making its way out. Hey, FK testing crew, if you feel like signing on for another tour, I'll have need of your services again sooner than expected! For those who haven't received enough punishment...

I plan to continue the regular blogging on development as it continues. I started this thing as kind of an open-development thing, and I'm going to continue in that vein. While I have my own criticisms of game design failures and so forth, the neat thing about being a critic is that you can tear down the things you see without having to build anything of your own for other people to tear down. Doing this has exposed quite a few holes and issues of my own.

Moving forward, the most commonly mentioned issues with the game are these:

* UI - in a nutshell, there are too many button presses required to do something, especially in combat. As I kind of expected, spellcasting is still too cumbersome (I can say that it is FAR better than it used to be, for all the good that does...) People have more modern expectations for the UI, and I have to respond to it. A lot of the suggestions seem to mirror World of Warcraft's design, for some reason... go figger. Unfortunately, I don't know if the built-in Torque UI tools are up to the task, so I've got a lot of work on my hands...

* Movement Speed - this is a sensitive issue. People expect first-person-shooter speeds in first-person games. The "walking speed" in Frayed Knights is far faster than realistic - it's more like a real-world run speed. But people like to zip. Especially in the village or another safe place. I'd deliberately tried to slow things down to closer to Ultima Underworld speeds for Frayed Knights - a more deliberate "dungeon crawl" / exploration pace (at a good run speed, but still...) But it frustrates people. So I'm gonna have to come up with a happy medium.

* Randomness - there's too much randomness in the game, between the random encounters and the wildly varying difficulty of combat. People might mow down four groups of two cultists four times in a row, but then get clobbered by the fifth while at full health and endurance. And the random encounters - while usually paced reasonably, approached ridiculous "Final Fantasy" levels in some cases.

* Combat - not exciting enough. And not clear enough. The melee characters don't have enough options, and the effect of some of the spells is too subtle (due to randomness and lack of clear feedback) to really tell what makes a difference. And some of the balance is off, like endurance / resting. Some things we need to focus on include better / clearer options for the characters, easier target selection, feedback on the upcoming combat order (who is going to go next), and easier spellcasting.

* Feedback - just overall, there needs to be clearer feedback on what's going on in the game that the player can either control or react to. I knew this was a problem before releasing the pilot, but we lacked the time and resources to take care of it. But there needs to be better visual display of what's going on with all the little details in the game. There are a TON of details happening in the back-end number crunching, so much that even *I* don't know what's going on sometimes. That needs to be exposed, if it is important. And if it's not important - I should consider dropping it.

* The Music (And Sound)- I actually deliberately limited the music, partly because I thought the looping stuff was annoying, and partly because Torque was having some major bugs with streaming audio. People wanted more of it - the game is too quiet with this release. And in general, more sound effects are required.

* Movement Control Awkwardness - I tried (HARD) to make a game that was completely controllable with only a mouse. Either I botched it (and yeah, I probably did - even I don't play that way), or its simply not what most of my prospective audience wants. Straight WASD and mouselook (basic first-person-shooter controls) is high on the list of requirements, though it's going to make things weird for clicking on all the things on the screen when the mouse moves your vantage point instead. I'm probably going to settle on holding down the right mouse button to turn / look (or the "A" and "D" keys...) . Maybe I'll keep the old system around (with some refinements) as an option or something.

* Key Remapping - yeah, I know. I know. Everybody's got their favorite way of playing a game, and they want all games to conform. I'm the same way. This isn't a hard task, just a tedious and annoying one... but that's about 75% of making a game. It just kept getting bumped in priority.

* Character Creation / Customization - Character creation just isn't for this kind of game. It's a game about these four characters (and some NPCs). The customization comes with leveling, and I didn't have leveling included with the game. I'm not too worried about this, but I wanted to mention it here because it's clearly pretty key.

There are also lots of suggestions / issues that aren't as common, but they jibe strongly with my own feelings towards the game - or they just make sense - and I'll be addressing those as well. The above were just the most common issues.

Again - thank you to everyone who is participating in the pilot. While pleasing everyone isn't going to be possible for any game, the suggestions will help me to make a more enjoyable game. Assuming I'm up to the task...

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:42 AM (Permalink) 18 comments links to this post

 
Frayed Knights Now Available!

FRAYED KNIGHTS PILOT: The Temple of Pokmor Xang

Now Available!

I'm not sure what else to say. You folks who have been following the development of this game - well, half of you have been helping me test, and the other half probably know more about the game than you would if you'd already played it once. But the pilot episode of the indie RPG Frayed Knights is now available for download. This is a short "demo" adventure - a single quest which should probably take anywhere from a half hour to two hours to explore.

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Announcements, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:47 AM (Permalink) 14 comments links to this post

 
Drama vs. Fun?
It's kinda funny - when my job makes me work all through the night until nearly sunrise, I get very annoyed. But when I do it to myself - meh, it's just what has to be done. But after this weekend, I