| Thursday, November 19, 2009 |
  10 Fantasy Fights: Building Tiles | 
Posted - 11/19/2009 6:36:10 PM | "10 Fantasy Fights" needs a small town for recruiting party members, buying items, etc. So I've started in on getting a tileset ready, and I've got the building tiles done. In the level editor, here is a basic layout:
And, here is the layout with the tileset applied:
The biggest annoyance is the giant doors (20 feet wide!), but unfortunately they have to be that big for the pathfinding algorithm to work reasonably with a multi-character party. Things are zoomed out a bit more in the actual game, so they shouldn't look quite so giant; the upper building is really pretty small for something in-game anyways.
Next to work on some furnishings to go in the buildings; tables, shelves, etc.
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| Monday, November 16, 2009 |
| 10 Fantasy Fights: Planning Complete | |
Posted - 11/16/2009 4:14:44 PM | 
Well, I finished the planning phase for 10 Fantasy Fights. I ended up with a startling 20-page design document; a lot of that is lists of spells and items and the like, but still, that was a lot of stuff to write down!
So, now the engine is done, and the planning is done. I guess that means I get to start making content! First up, the graphics to make up the 11 levels. Since SENG is a tile-based engine, the number of tiles should be relatively sane, but I do want it to look better than "To The World Tree", so it will be more work. In particular, I want to follow the rule of 4: at least 4 different tiles for each "thing", to allow for enough variety. So, if there is a tile for a grassy patch of ground, there should be a least 4 different textures, so that a big field of grass doesn't look overly repetitive.
Good news for you guys though; asset creation makes for more interesting screenshots and posts than planning does!
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| Tuesday, November 10, 2009 |
| Links: Items, Levels, and Quests | |
Posted - 11/10/2009 11:34:35 PM | I was out of town most of last week interviewing for a job, so no blogging. Looks like I got it, so SENG will suffer for awhile. I'm still hopeful I can make some good progress on 10FF before starting, so if all goes well that will see the light of the day fairly soon.
On to the links that have built up:
John Harris of GameSetWatch has a good article about items in RPGs. The article is specific to roguelikes, but has good information to keep in mind for any RPG designer:
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/10/column_play_item_design_part_1.php
Two good articles from Shamus up at The Escapist. First, one about levelling up in RPGs, full of do's and don'ts for an RPG designer:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/6690-Ding-Now-You-Suck-Less
And another about how RPG designers can lose their audience with stupid, logic-defying sidequests. Things like: a wooden door that can only be opened with a certain key, and not with the giant axe that the player character is wielding.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/6745-Quest-for-the-Sidequest
Last, Andrew Doull continues his series on Quest design; lots of good stuff here. I recommend the whole series:
http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2009/10/quest-for-quests-part-four-assumptions.html
That's all for now!
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| 10 Fantasy Fights: Kickoff | |
Posted - 11/2/2009 4:40:22 PM |
Starting to work on "10 Fantasy Fights". Here's my todo list:
11) Milestone 5.1 - 10 Fantasy Fights.
a. Look at old feedback:
i. Moved to C:\gdunbar\src\seng\docs\feedback
b. Planning
i. 1st person:
1. Spells
2. Powers
3. Factions
4. Summonees
ii. NPCs:
1. Characters
2. Spells
3. Powers
4. Factions
5. Summonees
iii. Items
iv. Monsters
v. Levels
vi. Level assets
vii. Background sounds
c. Character models
d. Item models
e. Level tiles
f. Level objects
g. Magic.seng
h. Factions.seng
i. Items.seng
j. Monsters.seng
k. World.seng
l. World map
m. Levels
i. Journal.seng
ii. Quests.seng
n. Coding
i. AI improvements
1. Cast AI should not stop casting spells because it tries but enemy is out of range.
o. Rules
i. First section text
ii. Run generator again
iii. Screenshots
p. Polish:
i. Credits - See credits.txt in seng\docs.
ii. Versions
iii. Help text
iv. Startup images
v. Startup text
I work by making a big list of stuff todo, and then drilling down on each item as I go. Time to start on the first item!
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| Untitled SENG Game: Now, With More Name! | |
Posted - 11/1/2009 4:45:33 PM | 
I've finished my internal Milestone 5 ("Engine Updates"). Yay! The SENG engine is now in good shape for a full-featured game. Oh, there are always more features I could add, but there's enough there for a full-featured, full-length, engrossing, deep RPG.
So, with that, I announce the end of "Untitled SENG Game".
Milestone 5.1 is "10 Fantasy Fights", a prototype to test out the depth and breadth of the SENG engine before I dive fully into a complete game. You can see some of my thoughts on 10FF in this previous post:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/mod/journal/journal.asp?jn=503512&reply_id=3537500
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| Wednesday, October 28, 2009 |
| Untitled SENG Game: Spell Effects | |
Posted - 10/28/2009 1:55:03 PM | Among other things, I've been mucking around with the spell effect system. I made the code much more flexible and generic, making it easier to make effects with varying appearances. As part of that work, I also spent a little time coming up with a core set of decent looking effects. Here's a "High Magic" spell in progress:
I also added the ability for traps and weapons to fire effects. Here's a poison dagger attack in progress:
I'm interviewing for a full time (non-game) programmer job next week. Those of you who are fans of SENG games should root for me to fail miserably; those who prefer my bank account should root for success.
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| Thursday, October 22, 2009 |
| Links: Economy, Quests, and News | |
Posted - 10/22/2009 4:29:51 PM | Some interesting links for this week:
Shamus has an interesting article about broken economies in RPGs:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/6660-The-Broken-Economy-Is-Your-Fault
I found this really interesting, because I've been trying to design and balance the economy in SENG. The point of the economy in a single player RPG is:
- Let the player get some reward from all of his loot.
- And let the player acquire some items (but not too many, and not too good) by spending those rewards.
It's tricky. I'm almost at the point where I want to bail and just make the items available for purchase depend on the player character's level, so I don't have to worry about the pesky economy balancing.
Andrew Doull has started a new series on Quests in RPGs:
http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2009/10/quest-for-quests-cast-part-one.html
http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2009/10/quest-for-quests-puzzle-part-two.html
Also very topical. In RPGs that try to allow the player to direct the plot, quests are probably the most important storytelling tool. Getting them done well is important, and difficult.
(When I say "allow the player to direct the plot", I am trying to exclude RPGs that keep the player on rails with extensive cutscenes, or RPGs that basically have no plot, like action RPGs).
And last, Coyote has a nice roundup of news on indie-RPG projects:
http://rampantgames.com/blog/2009/10/indie-rpg-news-round-up-22-oct-2009.html
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| Thursday, October 15, 2009 |
| Untitled SENG Game: Icons! | |
Posted - 10/15/2009 12:06:54 PM | I've been working on icons for SENG lately; almost done.
One of my philosophies for SENG is to have a minimum of art content, but display it in many ways. In terms of icons, this means using one icon for a variety of different representations. For instance, inventory. Instead of making two separate icons for "Long Sword" and "Mighty Sword of the Wild Hunt", I use the same icon, but color it (in the game engine) differently.
For instance, here are the new inventory icons:
You can see three different versions of the "heavy blade" icon in the middle, one gray, one white, and another green. So, for each item, instead of having to draw up a new icon, instead I can just pick a color.
I should note that the colors in that particular screenshot are not well done; the bright colored items at the bottom especially. Saturated colors with a slight hue seem to look best in-engine. When creating "real" content I'll keep that in mind.
Another issue is making icons that look decent on both a dark background and a light background. SENG typically has a dark background, but when the user hovers on an item, the item is highlighted, changing the icon background to a light color. My best solution for this was to make a black shadow behind the main iconography. On a dark background, the shadow is virtually invisible, whereas on a light background it enables the icon to be seen.
Here are the new spell icons (note the highlighted spell):
Note that these icons are pretty muted because they represent low-level spells; the icons get brighter as the spell-level increases.
So, just wrapping up the remaining miscellaneous icons, and then some work on graphic effects.
| |
| Links: Assorted | |
Posted - 10/11/2009 6:15:10 PM | Various links this week, all courtesy of Coyote (http://rampantgames.com/blog). Hey, maybe you should just read his blog instead of mine! (OK, you can read both).
First, a postmortem on Persona 4. Interesting for me to read about the trials and tribulations that another small RPG creator went through in developing their game:
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/10/indepth_behind_the_scenes_of_a.php
Second, a discourse on the random dungeons in Din's Curse, Soldak's forthcoming RPG:
http://www.soldak.com/Blogs/Steven/Din-s-Curse-random-dungeons.html
Man, this makes me want to add random dungeon creation to SENG. However, a big part of my vision for a SENG game is to have well developed quests as part of the game. How about adding random quest generation too? Hmm... Maybe later.
Last, Destructoid on "The little things that every RPG should have":
http://www.destructoid.com/the-little-things-that-every-rpg-should-have-151174.phtml
This is one of my big points with SENG; support the little things that really should be there, to remove player frustration from the game. Let's see how my vision of SENG stacks up:
Enemies that telegraph when their HP is low
Agree. SENG displays an HP indicator for enemies; it's just annoying to hide this stuff, even if there is some "realism" justification.
Equipped weapons and armor visible on characters
He's talking specifically about NPCs. Borderline agree. SENG does this for "human-like" enemies, but not for more exotic enemies. Too much potential art to make.
Bestiaries
Agree. SENG has accessible information on every monster you encounter. How informative the info is depends on your party's Observation skill. I could probably do better at putting this information into a comprehensive, accessible documentation system; right now it is only accessible if you can actually see the monster.
Useful merchant screens
Agree. SENG is pretty good here (you can view item info for stuff you are planning to buy or sell), but doesn't let you access a character's inventory from the merchant screen. This could be better.
That bit when the party disbands in a town
I'm not really sure what he's getting at here.
"Story so far" summaries
Agree. SENG supports this with a robust journal, both of quests and of all dialogue with NPCs.
HP & MP restoration with level increases
Disagree. I think this feature encourages players having to be "gamey", and trying to time their level gains to correspond to difficult places in the game. Save HP and MP restoration for resting (or potions), where it belongs.
Status spells that actually WORK
Agree. The boss monsters should be vulnerable to spells, same as any other monster (or player). SENG has a save system that guarantees that all monsters will be more vulnerable to certain types of spells, so a clever player can exploit this to his advantage.
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| Untitled SENG Game: Ten Interesting Fights | |
Posted - 10/6/2009 4:01:45 PM |
In the last couple of days, I wrapped up some last RPG tweaks. Made rogues a little more powerful, adjusted the numbers a little bit; nothing too big.
Next up on my list is to add some AI functionality to the monsters you run into in SENG. Right now they basically just charge at the closest party member and attack. My main goal here is to enable some more interesting tactical combat scenarios for the level designer. (Not totally true; I also want to enable some non-combat scenarios, like having monsters patrol an area, but that is a secondary goal).
However, as I've been thinking about these AI improvements, I got to thinking about the combat scenarios that I wanted to enable. I made a small list of these, and then thought about how I was going test these out, both the AI behavior and also the play balance. Thinking about making little test areas for the scenarios made me think about the next big milestone, where I make a series of prototypes for playtesting. And, "Eureka!", I should just merge these ideas, and make a series of test encounters as part of a prototype. Temporary code name: "Ten Interesting Fights".
Here are the 10 fights:
- "Warm-up" - The player controls one actor, a basic fighter. He fights a couple of really wimpy monsters, one at a time.
- "The Classic" - I add a couple of new party members, a rogue and a spellcaster. They fight a classic fantasy battle, against some brutes in the front with archers behind.
- "Summoners" - Same party as before. Now the enemies are a set of spellcasters that summon minions to fight the party.
- "Archers" - Same party. The enemies are a set of archers across a chasm, difficult to approach across a narrow, exposed bridge.
- "The Horde" - Now I introduce a full gamut of potential party members for the player to pick from. The first battle for this party is against a whole bunch of wimpy monsters. This is something of a test for how the engine scales. 20? 50? 100?
- "Heavy Ordnance" - Something like "The Classic", except now in the back are spellcasters that focus on damaging spells.
- "Sneaks" - The party faces a bunch of stealthy rogues who try to sneak behind the party and attack the soft spellcasters in the back, or use shoot-and-run tactics.
- "It's a Trap!" - Spellcasters and archers take cover behind a set of traps, some visible (lava pits), some not.
- "Helping Hand" - The party faces a set of tough soldiers, with healing/buffing spellcasters in the rear.
- "The Boss" - One big, mean sumbitch.
I figure I can advance the party 2 levels between each encounter, giving full exploration of levels 1 through 20.
In planning this, though, I've realized I need to make a bunch of content (levels, monsters, etc), before I can really get to work on the AI improvements. So I'm going to postpone the AI work just briefly to wrap up the remaining engine work. Which is:
- A few graphics tweaks - adding "aegis" effects (which previously I had to manually put into the graphics), and a couple of others.
- I never updated all of my icons to the new UI; they are all too dark, and I need some more, for instance for different weapon types.
So, probably about a week to work on those, at which point I'll declare the "Engine Updates" milestone done, and begin work on the "Ten Interesting Fights" Prototype. The goal with "TIF" is to actually produce a prototype that I can have some people test and give feedback.
Oh, and if someone has a thought on a better name than "Ten Interesting Fights", I'm all ears.
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| Untitled SENG Game: Audio and Party Chatter | |
Posted - 10/2/2009 4:27:32 PM | A couple of updates on the game engine. First, I added support for footstep sounds and ambient audio. One of the critiques that I got from the To The World Tree demo (http://www.prankster.com/ttwt) was that the game was virtually silent. I'm a little resistant to having a full background music track, but I can appreciate that some sound can help to add to the atmosphere.
The support I added is very basic indeed; when someone in your party is walking, I play a little loop of footstep sounds. And different areas in a level can have a little background loop that they play. So, for instance, if your party is walking through a mountain pass, the game can play a little loop of a wind sound.
I used audiere (http://audiere.sourceforge.net/) to provide the audio support, basically because the API is dirt simple to use, and that's what I wanted. It works well enough, though I am a little disappointed with the performance of MP3 playback; it introduced a little glitch in the game when I used an MP3 file. No big deal; I'll just use WAV files for the small audio that I have, but just a little warning.
Hard to provide a screenshot for audio, but here you can see my test character standing next to a fire, which does indeed play a little burning sound effect:
Second, I added support for what I call party chatter. Every 5 seconds or so, the game calls a "heartbeat" script on a randomly selected party member. This script is intended to allow party members to interact, unprompted, with the player or even other party members. So, if party members don't like the actions the player is taking, or don't like each other, or whatever, they can have a little conversation (or anything else that the scripting engine supports). In this screenshot, the honest Grumpy has gotten so fed up with the player that he is leaving the party altogether:
Next up, I'm working on some last little tweaks to the RPG system, followed by implementing a little more functionality in the AI system.
| |
| Wednesday, September 30, 2009 |
| Saturday, September 26, 2009 |
| Friday, September 25, 2009 |
| Untitled SENG Game: Level Editor | |
Posted - 9/25/2009 7:36:22 PM | So I finished up the updates to the level editor. Now, let me show off what it can do!
To do this, I'll show how easy it is to make a tower in a grassy field. Let me put a caveat that I don't have any real art or anything, and I don't have a full tileset to work with. (I did actually spend a bit of time getting the tiles together, but that's more because of my incompetence than anything else). Here are the tiles I'm going to work with (pictured in the level editor):
Another caveat; the level editor is an internal-only tool. As such, it should be quick and easy to use, but it's not pretty, or necessarily intuitive.
OK, here's a blank level, with the grid turned on (note that at 40x40 tiles, this level is only 100 feet across; the editor handles much larger levels but that's as big as I need for this demo):
First I'll draw in the tower area. To do this, I enter layout mode, highlight an area:
Then, one click fills in dummy tiles. I'll make an L-shaped tower (so a couple more clicks):
Now, we need walls. To do this (still in Layout mode), I highlight the whole area, select the "Wall" tool, and "Apply" then draws walls around all the tiles (notice the walls all face nicely inwards):
I'll also manually draw in a wall to split the tower into two rooms; not pictured, but only a couple of clicks.
Now, time to "skin" the tower, replacing the dummy tiles with the real tiles. Enter "Skin" mode, pick the "towerskin", highlight the whole area, and hit Apply. Voila:
Next, I use the Layout mode again to put dummy floor tiles all around the tower, and use the Skin mode again ("grassskin" this time) to put grass all around the tower:
And there you have it!
Now, to polish the level, I'd have to go through manually and do stuff like add doors, furniture, and other adornments. But I don't have graphics ready for all that stuff, and besides, I didn't make the polishing any easier; unfortunately that stuff always takes awhile.
I am very happy with these changes; making levels is way easier than it was in the To The World Tree days. Next, working on sound effects and ambient sounds.
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| Wednesday, September 23, 2009 |
| Links: Design Storytelling, and Procedural Worlds | |
Posted - 9/23/2009 12:01:44 PM | Couple of links today:
Andrew Vanden Bossche from GameSetWatch has article about storytelling through cutscenes or text exposition, and the often-superfluous nature of stories told in this manner. Good article:
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/09/column_design_diversions_press.php
Shamus has a nice article where he defines "procedural content". He points out that there can be a difference between procedural content and "totally random content", and writes that Fuel does a nice job of having procedural content that is driven by an artistic designer. Having never played Fuel, I can't comment on that, but I did like the article:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=5134
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