Friday, September 04, 2009
Frayed Knights - Dungeons &... Ferrets?
One of my favorite aspects of roleplaying games is the feeling of exploration. Discovering what's around the next corner, behind that door, below the stairs --- with the hope that it is something cool --- that's the kind of thing that thrills me. It's that promise of discovering the green dragon on the Persian rug or something, I guess.
Making an RPG - being the guy in the sausage factory - doesn't usually carry that thrill. Though I do get to indulge my own imagination a bit. But it is nice working with a couple other level designers. While they may start with a 2D graphed-out map and some descriptions from me, they invariably inject their own ideas (something I encourage!) and creativity into these levels.And then they send me roughed-out maps. Which I then get to explore. I try to start with a walk-through of the dungeon via the game engine, experiencing as closely as I can as a player first. Besides inspecting it for issues (of which there are invariably several), I also try to explore and let my imagination run wild. While I may have my original notes for what sort of encounters go where, I don't consult these notes when I'm doing the walk-through. I'm just poking around, trying to get a feel for the environment, and seeing what direction my imagination takes me. One day I'll get better at actually recording those notes.
Brian decided to go a little nuts on the sense of scale with the goblin dungeon he decided to call "Vertigo."I'm not really complaining. Though I don't have a clue how I'm gonna make the 2D, top-down map work on this one...
But this is really one of those times when making a game is more fun than playing it. Later, when I'm knee-deep in scripting and bug-fixing and have played through the same corridor a hundred times, I'll be good and sick of it.
But for now, it's exciting and fun, and I'm trying to capture the "cool" and sense of discovery and expectation in my mind for reference when one day... a few days from now... I'm feeling all weary and jaded.
One issue Kevin ran into with the castle was that - being modeled somewhat after a couple of real-world castles - it was actually pretty dang cramped and hard to navigate. This was a design feature in the real world - castles were defensive structures, and you wanted an invading force to be stuck in bottlenecks. And while a human being can duck, contort, and whatever to navigate these confines, this doesn't work so well in a computer game. Simple is king where navigating and collision detection is concerned.
We've opened things up a bit, but Kevin found that "realistic" staircases just couldn't fit very well.
We needed ladders.So now we have ladders. I had fun getting the code to work. I tested it out on Shiela's ferret. Training a ferret to climb a ladder turned out to be exactly like training player characters to do the same. This also means, technically, that I could have non-player characters climbing up and down ladders. I don't know if I really want to try and take advantage of that.
Speaking of non-player characters (and monsters) - I've now added some "stand-in" versions of monsters that are visible prior to combat. They don't necessarily represent the exact types or quantities of enemies that you'll encounter. It's more of an abstract representation. Abstract works well in 2D, but people have a tough time with it in 3D. I'm worried that players will have problems with seeing a single goblin prior to combat, and then fight a half-dozen of them a few second later. I think it is preferable to having encounters appear out of nowhere (which will still happen, in the case of surprise encounters or ambushes).
Personally - the transition wasn't as bad as I feared it would be, and I think that while it may be a little jarring initially, it's easy to get used to.
But we shall see.
Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design, Roleplaying Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:09 AM (Permalink)
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Using a single enemy to represent a looming encounter is very reminiscent of the Tales games. Course those aren't first-person games, but I think it'll work. :)
(Oh, and if you haven't played any Tales games, I highly recommend Tales of the Abyss -- my wife and I are on our third playthrough now!)
(Oh, and if you haven't played any Tales games, I highly recommend Tales of the Abyss -- my wife and I are on our third playthrough now!)
Ya I agree apocriva
As for stand-in 3D art I wouldn't worry too much. If worse comes to worse just use the ferret for stand-in enemies :P
As for stand-in 3D art I wouldn't worry too much. If worse comes to worse just use the ferret for stand-in enemies :P
I *could* do the Persona thing and make the "stand-ins" be amorphous blobs, but I don't think it would work as well for this game.
And I haven't played any of the Tales games, Apocriva. Thanks for the suggestion!
And I haven't played any of the Tales games, Apocriva. Thanks for the suggestion!
So how did you go about implementing the ladder? I have one in Vespers, and it was a bit of a pain to implement.
I ended up making it just a steep ramp. Since Vespers is in first-person (like FK), and there are no NPCs that climb the ladder, I didn't think it was necessary to go the distance and make it more realistic, including a climbing animation.
But it sounds like you have NPCs climbing ladders. Do you have them animated with a ladder-climbing animation? How do you get them to line up just right with the ladder before starting to climb?
My biggest problem with the ladder was actually going down. When you're at the top, it's too easy to just leap right off instead of nicely descending. I had to insert a zone to force the player's speed to slow down to prevent leaps. It works okay, but it was painful to set it up just right.
I ended up making it just a steep ramp. Since Vespers is in first-person (like FK), and there are no NPCs that climb the ladder, I didn't think it was necessary to go the distance and make it more realistic, including a climbing animation.
But it sounds like you have NPCs climbing ladders. Do you have them animated with a ladder-climbing animation? How do you get them to line up just right with the ladder before starting to climb?
My biggest problem with the ladder was actually going down. When you're at the top, it's too easy to just leap right off instead of nicely descending. I had to insert a zone to force the player's speed to slow down to prevent leaps. It works okay, but it was painful to set it up just right.
@ Rubes: I'll interject my $0.02 worth on the ladder issue...
There are basically only two ways to implement a ladder; either way, you've got to "grab" the player (or AI) and put them on the ladder (and adjust the animation, of course).
1) Make the ladder a useable object, i.e. the player must select the ladder to use it. Once selected, the player is locked to the ladder and then you can either have the player automatically move the full distance, or limit the movement to vertical only. When the player reaches the other end, unlock him. (I believe this is the method used in FK.)
2) Place a trigger or collision zone around the ladder. When the player enters this zone, he's "attached" to the ladder, but can still move freely, so while up/down movement would keep the player on the ladder, left/right or jumping could detach the player from the ladder. Also, the player is expected to be generally facing the ladder; turning too far away from it also detaches the player. This is the ladder style most often used in first person shooters like Quake or Half-Life, since locking a player to the ladder may very well get them killed.
There are basically only two ways to implement a ladder; either way, you've got to "grab" the player (or AI) and put them on the ladder (and adjust the animation, of course).
1) Make the ladder a useable object, i.e. the player must select the ladder to use it. Once selected, the player is locked to the ladder and then you can either have the player automatically move the full distance, or limit the movement to vertical only. When the player reaches the other end, unlock him. (I believe this is the method used in FK.)
2) Place a trigger or collision zone around the ladder. When the player enters this zone, he's "attached" to the ladder, but can still move freely, so while up/down movement would keep the player on the ladder, left/right or jumping could detach the player from the ladder. Also, the player is expected to be generally facing the ladder; turning too far away from it also detaches the player. This is the ladder style most often used in first person shooters like Quake or Half-Life, since locking a player to the ladder may very well get them killed.
Kevin's right - basically the ladder has a mount-point animation. When the player clicks on the ladder, I decide whether he's closer to the top of the ladder, wanting to go down - or closer to the bottom. Then I mount him to the appropriate mount point and run the animation. (If the player has a climb animation, you can also fire that one - but this animation is strictly to move the mountpoint up or down the ladder path).
The other trick was figuring out where to "teleport" the ladder-climbing object when you unmount it.
The other trick was figuring out where to "teleport" the ladder-climbing object when you unmount it.
One of my favorite aspects of roleplaying games is the feeling of exploration.
Absolutely! It's probably THE most important part of RPGs for me. Combat gets old after awhile, no matter how good it is. Exploration never does.
And loot is part of exploration for me - always wondering what neat item I'll find next. That's why I don't like crafting magic items, as in Knights of the Chalice, because you lose that anticipation of good loot. I also don't like games with random loot in treasure chests, where you can save and reload until you get just what you want. That can be too tempting to avoid doing, but it can pretty well destroy a game.
I suppose, though, that exploration is expensive to create, especially when you're not forced every two steps to fight a battle. For me, constant battles get old fast, but they do make the game last longer. It would likely be a pretty short game without them, huh?
Absolutely! It's probably THE most important part of RPGs for me. Combat gets old after awhile, no matter how good it is. Exploration never does.
And loot is part of exploration for me - always wondering what neat item I'll find next. That's why I don't like crafting magic items, as in Knights of the Chalice, because you lose that anticipation of good loot. I also don't like games with random loot in treasure chests, where you can save and reload until you get just what you want. That can be too tempting to avoid doing, but it can pretty well destroy a game.
I suppose, though, that exploration is expensive to create, especially when you're not forced every two steps to fight a battle. For me, constant battles get old fast, but they do make the game last longer. It would likely be a pretty short game without them, huh?
The crafting rules were among my chief problems with 3.x D&D rules system (which I'm otherwise pretty fond of). Between that, and the rules for buying magic items based on the town (something which it seems Pathfinder has rectified, I am pleased to say), awesome loot ceased to matter much beyond the GP value. Suddenly that major DM-controlled reward factor became next to useless.
If you want to hint to the player that there may be more than one enemy, you could try putting an effect around them.. a dark fog, perhaps.. to hint to the player that they don't have all the details
True - and I'm going to look into it - but I worry a fog might look too strange. Like a spooky weird GHOST rat or something. :) But I'll play around with it and see what happens.
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