Frayed Knights: Making Buttons Click Is Not Much Fun
And now - the continuing saga of Frayed Knights, an indie RPG in development here at Rampant Games.

Motivation is a tricky thing.

It's easy to get motivated when working on a game if there's a steady paycheck involved, or if you are working on some really cool parts, or if it's the beginning of a project and things are coming together quickly.

On the other hand, when it comes to working on user interface code in my so-called "spare time" to make a friendlier version of inventory management (something inherently boring in its own right), it can be a problem. Sometimes all you can do is just keep an eye on the goal, and power through it. I was working on this before, but I put it on the shelf for a bit for the sake of my own sanity. But I had to get back to it sooner or later.

But I now have a somewhat more functional and user-friendly inventory management screen. Inventory management is already a pretty boring subject in its own right, and layering a bunch of boring UI development over top of it is a recipe for curing insomnia. But now we've got the ability to drag 'n drop, nicely animated scrolling between pages of ... you know, stuff... and... gah. Man. I can't even talk about it anymore. Moving on...

The Vampire Village: Under New Management

Oh, Mournhold. Califer (Curtis) politely informed me that Mournhold was a major city in an expansion in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. An expansion I even own, though I don't think I ever went there. Since the cool name is taken, I have to come up with a different cool name. I have a notebook with some brainstorming I did to come up with the first name, but I'm not thrilled with any of the other ones. Anybody got cool suggestions? You guys kicked butt on coming up with spell names last time...

This town remains in development, though we're broadening things a bit to try and get as much of the game "finished" as possible. I've also been working on the silver mines. The silver mines will not be nearly as cool as the castle or the the Temple of Pokmor Xang. I'm experimenting with creating pre-fab "tiles" for the mines to generate a lot of geometry in a hurry and then "fill it in" with details to hide the repetativeness. I promised Verious that I'd post some technical details about the tools I'm using and my workflow (such as it is), so 'll post more about that next time.

Polly's been working on character concept art. This is Tema. She's Victor the Vampire's main squeeze in the township-formerly-known-as-Mournhold. She has a relatively small but critical role in the unfolding events of this chapter. We were looking for something like an undead Tina Turner look, with a harder edge, and I think it worked. She's not as sweet and friendly as Victor, I'm afraid. She's still a party animal, and enjoys the local night life, but there's an entire forest filled with the undead victims of her late-night escapades.

Victor is normally a calming influence on her, but she is no longer in residence at the above castle. Her current whereabouts are a mystery.

Aw, Rats!
Kevin and I are back to work on ... uh, a rat-farm. A farmhouse filled with rats. It's sorta what happens when there aren't any adventurers around to deal with the local farmers' rat problem. There's a reason why there are all these quests to kill ten rats and bring back their tails or whatnot. These things - if left unchecked - will eventually take over the world.

It's a setup for a Chapter 2 quest involving the temple of the rat god. Yeah, in this game, you get to raid a lot of temples. A pimple god, a rat god... I may have to throw in a god of hangnails or bedbugs or something while I'm at it.

Goals for the Week
My focus this week, now that the the improved interface screen is (mostly) working, is to avoid working on any user interface issues. How's that for a goal?

I'm going to be cranking along back on Chapter 1, starting with the events of "the next morning" after the big argument between Benjamin and the rest of the party. This is the point where the game opens up a bit more, and we get some good ol' non-linear gameplay action going. There's a ton of interior work and modeling - even to get to a lame white-box stage - that ought to keep me more than busy enough!

Labels: Frayed Knights

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