Frayed Knights: Demo Planning
"If it weren't for trade shows, we'd never get anything done." I once heard that from a computer industry veteran in the early 90's. The need to prepare for demonstrations tends to drive a lot of effort. Some of it is wasted effort - a bunch of stand-in elements to keep the demo from collapsing. But having a hard deadline like that, with very specific goals for something that has to be visible to an outsider, helps you focus on what's important.

I had planned to show the next iteration of Frayed Knights for the April '09 Utah Indie Night. Which will hopefully be more towards the end of the month (as it usually is) than the beginning of the month (Greg, are you paying attention! I need more time, cap'n!). But I didn't have a clear goal. And I hadn't been communicating much with my team. Horrible, horrible management gaffes. I know this. Letting communication lapse within the team is probably reason #1 for failure. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest is that the team motivates each other. It's not just the team lead or manager trying to do cheerleading.

As for my own progress, I've been muddled in some Really Boring Stuff. It's not particularly motivating, which means I've not been putting in all the time I've needed to put into it. Yes, I'm not the kind of superhuman go-getter I aspire to be. At least not all of the time. You know, I beat this problem every once in a while with some easy productivity tricks, and then I forget to use said methods a few months later. So I'd been struggling with some slow progress and some not particularly exciting upgrades to the game for weeks, and had no clue what I was going to show.

It was Kevin, the "dungeon master" (he's working on the signature interiors, like the Temple of Pokmor Xang), who helped shake things up. I've been giving him the signature dungeons throughout the game to work on, even though I'm not ready to support them yet. He's been struggling with Castle Mournhold, and had some questions and suggestions for me. There are some optimizations that some engines do that Torque just... doesn't. And a semi-realistic castle has all kinds of problems when rendered in a 3D world no matter what engine you use, especially with all the vantage points from which you can see - practically everything. It's hard to cull unused polygons that way.

Even after I explained the whole thing about how real-world castle design didn't work so well in Frayed Knight's fantasy world - with all the aerial warfare possibilities - there are a few "real world" style castles there. I guess I'm a sucker for tradition. Castle Mournhold is one of them. We've based it - loosely - on Bran Castle in Romania. As you can see from the picture, it does not have simple architecture.

After some discussion, we decided to try and make the Mournhold chapter the demo for the April Utah Indie Night (UPDATE: Sorry, this won't be a public release). We both finished the conversation VERY excited about what we could show. We have no illusions about having it completed - but we should be able to show the basics.

First off, it's a vampire story.

One of my wife's all-time favorite D&D modules is Ravenloft, by Tracy Hickman (co-author of the Dragonlance series, etc.). Well, it's one of my favorites, too. But thanks to her, I've played through it (and run it) more than once.

For those not up on old-school D&D - Ravenloft is one of the classic 1st edition modules, and also one of the deadliest. Not quite in the same league as Tomb of Horrors on the player-mortality scale, but up there. But it was also perhaps the first module that was very thick with plot and atmosphere. Later, they started making modules that were TOO plot-heavy, to the point where players weren't allowed to leave the rails. Some blame this departure on the success of Ravenloft. I don't know. All I know is that Ravenloft - which later inspired an entire campaign setting - was a pretty cool Dracula-esque story done the D&D way, worthy of playing through multiple timess.

One of my big inspirations for Frayed Knights was to explore how this group of characters would approach and abuse an otherwise "traditional" fantasy RPG adventure. Imagining how the Frayed Knights would plunge through something like Ravenloft just makes me giddy.

I do have the Hackmaster parody of Ravenloft, Robinloft, just to see what they did with it. It really isn't the direction I wanted to go, however. While memories of Ravenloft provide some inspiration for this chapter of the game, it's really not quite the direction I want to go, either.

For one thing, our vampire is more of a 70's era glam-rock star. Complete with platform boots, a short cape, and bright-colored clothing. With sequins and rhinestones.

That's right, our vampire glitters.

His castle is still in a horrible state of disrepair, but that's not his fault. The monsters ate the maintenance and cleaning crews, drat it all. And he's not quite the evil mastermind - he's got someone else pulling his strings. And, according to Chloe's sources, he's got information. Which means the Frayed Knights may have to take him alive - well, undead - and force him to talk. Can you imagine Arianna trying to interrogate Dracula?

We're going to have a lot of fun with this one.

We'd better, because we only have around six weeks to get the demo ready. Frantic development mode activated!

Labels: Frayed Knights, productivity

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:26 AM (Permalink)