Frayed Knights: Of Priests and Pus
Continuing the weekly report of the development of Frayed Knights, the comedy-based fantasy RPG...

A Ray of Sunshine
Every once in a while, the universe decides to quit kicking you when you are down, and give you a ray of hope. Maybe that's just so it'll hurt more when it kicks you again and dashes those hopes. But regardless of its purposes, it's great when it happens.

Earlier this week I bemoaned the state of content. Frayed Knights has been running behind, and I have been desperately trying to find ways to get it back on schedule. And I've been frantically trying to figure out how to get things done quickly -- and the "build or buy" decisions get complicated by the difficulties of adapting off-the-shelf content to match (insofar as possible on an indie budget).

Not 24 hours after I posted it, art resources from the other team members (who hadn't seen the blog post) began rolling in. Kevin delivered the Pokmor Xang dungeon "release candidate." And James had the pus golem rigged with some animations done, and was working on the Pokmor Xang priests.

Worshipping Pokmor Xang
We went the rounds on the priest, and while it's still a work-in-progress, I am very pleased with how it's shaping up. "Tickled" might be the operative word here. It took us a few iterations. The idea here was to make them at once comical but menacing. I mean, these guys worship a pus-god. The god of boils, blisters, and pimples. They are obviously very disturbed individuals. How do you explain that particular conversion to your friends and family. "Well, one morning I popped a zit, and the spray on the mirror was in the image of Happy Pokmor Xang. I knew at that moment it was a sign..."

In spite of the Happy P-X image, however, he's not a nice god. His clerics are not nice people. Maybe not quite as nasty as the goddess of disease, Neutoxis - these guys are kinda second-string nasty. Bush league evil. But they have aspirations and a need to overcompensate.

One idea I hit on was to give them wooden masks. Something between a big wooden tribal mask and a Michael Myers freaky psychotic killer look. For one thing, that allows us to keep using the same model over and over without there being a problem that the villains all look alike. And then, when I was actually having my daughter do some sketches for me, she asked, "Should they have pot-bellies?"

Perfect.

After a couple of failed attempts at modeling them on my own (I should stick with crates and doors), I handed them off to James, and he came up with something really pretty awesome. A few changes later, and we've got the awesome work-in-progress picture you can see here. At least, I think he's awesome. I especially like the holy symbol on the apron (which looks suspiciously like a bib - something else I love!) that James came up with. It's sort of a combination of a biohazard symbol (purely a coincidence, OF COURSE... just like the fountain that resembles a toilet), and a symbolic image of a bursting blister in a cup.

Yummy.

You can click on that picture to get more of an extreme close-up, if you can stomach the sight. He's not 100% complete, again, but except for his hands, most of his texturing is pretty close to complete. He mainly needs rigging and animation.

The Pus Golem
Speaking of yummy, we also have... the pus golem.

The pus golem isn't 100% complete either, but he's getting there. He's a shot of him outside his natural habitat, but since I was working on stuff in the town when I got him, it was just easier to put him there for his close-up. There's still some UV work that needs to be done before he's final, but we've got the rigging in and some of the animations.

Here's part of his idle animation, when he's silently roaring. Well, probably silently. He doesn't really breathe, but I guess he could possibly make some kind of slobbering, gurgling noise. Maybe we could record someone sucking the last of a milkshake out of a 32-ounce plastic cup or something. Or - since I have a cold right now - I could just record myself breathing. That might work...

I've already talked a bit about his creative process. Poor James had to spend too much time looking at pictures of pus while working on this guy.

The Dungeon Nears Completion
Kevin has done a pretty outstanding job on the Pokmor Xang dungeon. He's done a lot to break up the monotony of a couple dozen rooms. I have to say that - as much as I wanted Frayed Knights to shine - I wasn't really expecting it to look this good. So thank you, Kevin, for raising the bar and making us all have to do so much more work to make the rest of the game match...

In fact, it's so nice that I've had to make some storyline changes. See, the place wasn't originally created by the priests of Pokmor Xang. They are squatters. And there are some secrets to the dungeon that even THEY do not know about. And... if I have time to put it in... at least one secret that they do know about. And fear.

I have been working on fixing up the doors in the dungeon, including some nice double-doors (with animations) for several areas. At least *I* think they are nice. Considering my artistic ability has mainly progressed from "sucks" to "sucks less" (which I'm very proud of, BTW), it might not be that spectacular, but it works. And I love simple animations. They look sharp, and they are pretty trivial to do.

And More In The Village
And as far as the village people - I've been writing dialog. I love writing dialog at this time of year. Why? Well, it's fun, it's different, and I can do it in a notebook. The notebook thing is important, because it can be done sitting by the fire on a snowy night in my family room, instead of in my cold basement office huddled next to the space heater.

Due to my dependence upon text in this game, the dialog is a special challenge, one I'm not sure I'm entirely up to. The trick is making it (usually) funny, but also informative and moving the plot / story along. And there are moments (not many, but they are there) where the game actually approaches seriousness. In fact, Chapter 1 ends on a pretty tense note.

So I keep editing and iterating, and hope that what I end up with falls in the same zip code as funny. We'll see.

Managing
During the development of Void War - about three quarters of the way through - I noticed that my role kinda shifted from "some guy programming a game" to more of a management position. I found I spent half of my time on the phone or in emails with people. It was frustrating at the time, but the game made a ton of progress while I was doing that. I've begun to feel that way now. I hope that's a good sign.

'Cuz as of right about now we have approximately 70 days to get the Chapter 1 done. Or at least demo-able.

What I HOPE I manage to do this week is to put some more quality time in on the dungeon of Pokmor Xang. In a perfect world, I'd finish both it and Ardin Village in two weeks. I don't think I'm gonna make it, but I'm seeing that ray of hope.


(Vaguely) related revealing of too much information:
* On Making 3D
* The "Red Line" in Game Demos
* Frayed Knights: The Exploding Lock and Other Stories
* The Secret of Success? It's All In Your Mind(set)!

A Forum Thread! All About Priests and Pus! You Know You Wanna Look!

Labels: Frayed Knights, Roleplaying Games

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