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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.
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| 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.
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| 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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| Wednesday, September 16, 2009 |
| Tuesday, September 15, 2009 |
| RPG Anvil: Super Adventures and Campaigns | |
Posted - 9/15/2009 3:19:27 PM | I've been thinking a bit about the overall structure, plot, and story fit together in CRPGs. That is, how does the game designer arrange the progress through the game. This includes things like what locations the game includes, and when the player will have access to them. What overall quest or quests the player is pursuing, and when these quests are revealed to him. How the story unfolds, and is revealed to the player.
The Adventure
Old school pencil-and-paper RPGs (Dungeons & Dragons and its ilk) have the unit of a game as an "adventure", maybe known as a "module". An adventure takes a few hours to play through, and generally advances your character a level or two. The theory being, you'll get some gaming buddies together for a couple of evenings of play, and play through the adventure. If, after that, you got together with a different group of buddies, you can still use your beloved character, and just play a different adventure.
Classic D&D module "Tomb of Horrors" (http://home.flash.net/~brenfrow/dd1/s1.htm):
Typically adventures are completely self-contained; they have a location or two (maybe a town and a dungeon), some sort of overall objective, and once the players obtain that objective, the adventure is over, and time to move on to the next one. Often multiple adventures share a setting (Greyhawk is the old-school D&D setting, but there are many others), but nothing more; no continued story or shared antagonists or anything (but see further down for exceptions).
This type of structure is rare in the CRPG world, for the simple reason that adventures are generally too short and unsatisfying for a full game. I played through "Witchs Wake", a Neverwinter Nights module that more or less fits the Adventure definition, and definitely felt unsatisfied and wanting more when it ended. (In that particular case, it wasn't helped that the story was clearly meant to continue but was never completed).
Witch's Wake (http://nwn.bioware.com/gallery/index.html?galleryID=7&screensize=2&screenimage=8):
Bag of Adventures
One thing a game designer could do is to simply release a "game" with a bunch of adventures, rated for different levels. The player could then pick and choose which adventures to play, based on his current character. There are actually some advantages to this, such as player-controlled difficulty scaling; if the player wants a less challenging adventure, he just picks a lower level, or maybe shorter adventure for his next task. However, you really lose the sense of continuity by just presenting the game as a series of unrelated adventures, and I've never seen a game take this approach.
One place that this might work well is as a multiplayer-only, online game. You get together with some buddies and play through an hour long adventure in an evening. The next night, you get together with some different buddies, and play a different adventure. I suppose this is something like playing an MMO that uses instanced dungeons, although MMOs have a whole extra set of interaction that goes far beyond this idea. Playing a Diablo game online is more what I'm thinking of, except of course Diablo has an overall structure to the game that is not broken down into nicely quantized pieces of evening-long gaming.
Diablo 2 (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/diablo2/images/0/2/):
Adventure Path
So, an adventure is too short to be satisfying; why don't we just link up a series of adventures to make the overall game? And in fact, this has been done, both in the pencil and paper world, and the CRPG world.
A few years ago, Dungeon magazine (the D&D adventures magazine) came up with the idea to link together a series of episodic adventures, published once a month, into an overall storyline; they called this an Adventure Path. The first one was called "The Shackled City", but it's been so popular that this practice has continued, both in the online Dungeon magazine and with Paizo's Pathfinder Adventure Paths. (Paizo was the old publisher of Dungeon magazine, which ended for reason too complicated to be interesting here, but readily available online).
Shackled City Hardcover (http://paizo.com/image/product/catalog/PZO/PZO1000_500.jpeg):
This format has clear advantages. The episodic nature means that the story is tightly controlled, so the game designer can tell a dramatic, well-formed story without worrying too much about the player wandering off track. The designer has a good idea of what level the player is at each step, so he can tailor the difficulty appropriately. And the players get the satisfaction of recurring characters, long-term objectives, and all those other things that are possible in a longer, more-developed campaign.
I find this format basically equivalent to some of the linear RPGs that have come out for computers; something like Icewind Dale. Now, Icewind Dale didn't explicitly sub-divide the game into a series of adventures, but it effectively did so; as a player you progress from one location or objective to the next, with no choice in the matter.
Icewind Dale (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/icewinddale/images/0/2/?tag=screenshot):
Super Adventures
There are drawbacks to the Adventure Path format. The player may feel railroaded, with little choice about what course he progresses on through the game. It is difficult to present a good exploration interface in an Adventure Path, because the game typically doesn't want the player to have choices about which location to go to; if there is an exploration phase, it's usually just an illusion where the player "explores" but there is only one location to find.
The game designer can take a somewhat more flexible approach; I saw this referred to as a "Super Adventure" in the latest D&D Dungeon Master's Guide. To quote "A super adventure is a type of short campaign- really one long adventure- that focuses on a single, limited setting." Some of the characteristics are:
- The adventure takes place in a single setting (likely an extensive one).
- The adventure allows some non-linear exploration.
- The adventure involves different quests, objectives, and possibly even expeditions.
A classic old Super Adventure is the old adventure "Temple of Elemental Evil":
Temple of Elemental Evil (http://home.flash.net/~brenfrow/dd1/t1-4.htm):
Interestingly, some of the old D&D "Super Adventures" like "Queen of the Spiders", I would probably now characterize as an Adventure Path in the parlance of this article; they are much more linear than I see a Super Adventure being.
So, with the Super Adventure, we're giving the player a much freer reign in which actions and choices he makes; at its best he has complete control over what options and directions he takes. BUT, he can only do so within a limited setting with limited characters. This allows the game designer the ability to create a detailed setting to work in; he won't end up creating whole cities or dungeons that the player will never see.
A computer based example of this is "Pool of Radiance"; the old one, not the remake. This is a big game, with exploration and non-linear choices, but is all set within one city. (Actually I haven't played the remake so maybe that is a Super Adventure too).
Pool of Radiance (http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/c64-games/24):
Open World Exploration
The very other end of the spectrum from the Adventure Path is for the game designer to give up all control of the player's actions, and just present a world for the player to do whatever he wants. Putting the greatest emphasis on the "role-playing" aspect of the game. Bethesda is the CRPG master of this, with games like Morrowind:
Morrowind (http://www.bethsoft.com/images/games/gamescrn_morrowind_02-B.jpg):
I think the PnP equivalent is not a published adventure at all, but a Dungeon Master who presents the setting, and then lets the players do whatever they want, making up the details as he goes.
Anyways, these games, done well, are incredibly immersive and addictive. They are also a game designer's nightmare; huge amounts of content to create, horrible balancing issues, difficulty in presenting any sort of coherent story to the player. As a player, you have to temper your expectations, sometimes; if you are trying to do something that the designers didn't plan for, you might end up disappointed that you can't achieve your goal, or that doing so ends up being boring or pointless.
Hybrid
To my mind, the very best of CRPGs have taken something of a hybrid approach. The combine a fairly large world or area to explore, along with a more structured plotline to follow. Tricky for the game designer to get right, but very rewarding to play. I would point to the Baldur's Gate Series or some of the Ultima games as examples of the hybrid approach done well.
Baldur's Gate (http://www.bioware.com/gallery/index.html?galleryID=28&screensize=3&screenimage=4):
Wrapup
So, there's a survey of the various structures a designer can take when designing the plotline of a CRPG. In writing this up, I found it really interesting how many great games I could think of in each category. As long as the game designer is careful in fitting his game progression and plotting to the overall structure, he can succeed with any of these approaches.
The RPG Anvil column deals with the design and development of CRPGs, and is published whenever I can convince my lazy ass to type one up.
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| Friday, September 11, 2009 |
| Untitled SENG Game: Level Editor | |
Posted - 9/11/2009 7:16:51 PM | This week I've been working on some updates with the level editor. Based on my experience with To The World Tree (http://www.prankster.com/ttwt), I knew that I had some issues; the level editor was slowing me down. Rather than muddle through as before, the best thing to do was to revamp the level editor now, saving valuable time in the future.
Here's a screenshot of "Layout mode", a new feature:
The features to do on my list:
- Streamlined UI - Duh. Every fewer click I have to make is time saved.
- Layout mode - In TTWT, I would do level layout in an image editor, and then look back and forth between the level image and the level editor as I filled in the details of the level. I may still do rough layout in an image editor, but the editor supports better layout operations.
- Cut-and-paste - Previously, if I wanted to, say, move a room, even by one tile, I'd have to redo the whole room. Now I can just use the "move" edit operation to move things. This also helps make layout editing more convenient.
- Skin mode - Given a level with just a raw layout, now I can select a region and apply a "skin", which fills in the proper tiles for that part of the level. Previously tile editing had to be done by hand.
- Proper save - I'm embarrassed to admit, but the old level editor didn't actually save levels. Instead, it saved partial levels that had to be cut-and-pasted (in a text editor) into the actual level file. Easy to do once; sucky to do a hundred times.
So, I've got "Streamlined UI" almost done (just missing some keyboarding), "Layout mode" is done (see the screenshot above), and "Proper save" is done. "Cut-and-paste" and "Skin mode" are non-trivial to implement, but should be done next week. I can show you some good workflow screenshots once I have those ready.
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