Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Frayed Knights: Doors at 2 AM
This isn't much of an update so much as a development diary sorta thing talking to myself about developing Frayed Knights. Any value in this post whatsoever to anybody is purely conicidental.I know how bad my posts get when I write them very late at night (like 2 AM or later). So I should probably be terrified of what my code 'n stuff is looking like when I am working on the game that late. Especially when I catch myself nodding off in the middle of development.
That's a pretty clear sign that I'm wasting time and effort. But I had some goals set for myself that I really wanted to achieve - even if, in the end, I only hit the abbreviated version of the list.
It can be astonishing to me just how much time gets consumed - even when I'm wide awake - doing something simple like placing doors in doorways. The allure of a tile-based engine becomes pretty clear as I'm tweaking the size, the angle, and the position of the collision volume (which, in this engine and the way I'm handling things, has to be a completely separate entity from the door). I find myself spending something like 8 minutes per door.
On a freakin' DOOR. Yeah, something that in a tile-based system would amount to, "which of the eight door styles do I choose." A 30-second job. And this is just for doors that aren't locked or trapped or blocked off...
How many of these doors am I gonna need in my game? Ye gods.... There are some things I can do to improve things, like making sure doorways are a more standard size. Uh, and always making doorways axis-aligned (nope, that ain't gonna happen). If I was reusing a lot of geometry, I could make some kind of a "hinge" entity on the interior objects that could be pulled out and used for door positioning information (or even automatically spawn the doors). But without significant reuse of interior sections, I don't see that saving much time.
But barring any breakthrough, putting in 20 generic, unadorned, pre-created doors into a location is gonna take me something like 3 hours. Much more as I add traps 'n locks 'n stuff.
Horrible? No. But the part of me that used to create modules for Neverwinter Nights and Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures back in the day is gritting his teeth.
Unfortunately, this sorta thing is about 90% of game development.
It ain't sexy; it ain't all that fun; it's a lot of butt-in-chair work that just needs to get done.
Labels: Frayed Knights
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:09 AM (Permalink)
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Goes to show how good tools can pay dividends in development time. Not a bad post at all for 2am!
# posted by 
: July 21, 2009 10:43 PM
: July 21, 2009 10:43 PM
Thanks. I did do some editing after getting some sleep, at least... :)
Though you are absolutely right, it's not just the quality of the tools - it's also the flexibility versus speed of development. There's always a tricky balance.
Before Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures came out - allowing players to create their own adventures using the "Gold Box" AD&D engine - Interplay came out with their own game-making tool called The Bard's Tale Construction Kit. It was basically the same idea, but using the Bard's Tale games as the core engine.
The Bard's Tale Construction Kit was much, MUCH more flexible than FRUA. But it was consequently much harder to make a game. Because not only could you do a lot more - you HAD to do a lot more.
It's tricky to find that balance.
Though you are absolutely right, it's not just the quality of the tools - it's also the flexibility versus speed of development. There's always a tricky balance.
Before Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures came out - allowing players to create their own adventures using the "Gold Box" AD&D engine - Interplay came out with their own game-making tool called The Bard's Tale Construction Kit. It was basically the same idea, but using the Bard's Tale games as the core engine.
The Bard's Tale Construction Kit was much, MUCH more flexible than FRUA. But it was consequently much harder to make a game. Because not only could you do a lot more - you HAD to do a lot more.
It's tricky to find that balance.
Being both a BTCK and FRUA guy (I even had one or two things in the UANL)... The quality on FRAU was 1000 times above BTCK, it was more like Interplay added a couple of things to the BT3 dev tools and released it.
BTCK was so buggy and awful, even with the patch, awful interface, etc. hardly any modules were produced. FRUA obviously dominated it but had a lot of poor thought out design (that godawful scripting system/event system).
oh I could moan on and on :)
BTCK was so buggy and awful, even with the patch, awful interface, etc. hardly any modules were produced. FRUA obviously dominated it but had a lot of poor thought out design (that godawful scripting system/event system).
oh I could moan on and on :)
Stu - Interesting. I tried both, but never did much with the Bard's Tale Construction Kit. Made a couple of full-sized FRUA modules though. I never thought of the BT kit as being awful, but I do remember it being cumbersome. You could do a lot of things with it that you couldn't do with FRUA (like make your own magic items), but the problem was you HAD to make it all. You had plenty of power (as I recall), but it would take 10x as long to accomplish the same thing in BTCK as in FRUA.
@Verious: You tell me. I took it from a photograph source. :)
(Great site for royalty-free textures & ideas, BTW): Sturdy Door
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@Verious: You tell me. I took it from a photograph source. :)
(Great site for royalty-free textures & ideas, BTW): Sturdy Door
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