Frayed Knights TSoSD: FULL-ON BETA, BABY!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 14, 2011

It’s time for a long-overdue update on Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon:

We.

Are.

Beta.

Yes, that’s a new title screen. The previous one is somewhat more appropriate for game #2, so that’s where it’s going.

Now how about a really good question: What the heck does “Beta” mean?

First of all, it’s a game status thing. It means that at this point, there are no more big changes. There are no known game-crippling bugs. The game is fully playable from start to finish. All the features are working. There are still bugs, balance issues, a couple of places where we’re still using stand-in art, and room to fix things and change things.  We’re down to only about 100 issues, and only half of them are serious (the others are “suggestions” or “nice to have if we can slip it in” changes). We’re down to the small things – small but important. And not always easy. Things like combat feats not always being available for unknown reasons.  Or whether dual-wielding needs bigger penalties on attacks or damage to be balanced. Or renaming the “Balls!” spell to “Boot to the Head!” to match the visuals better (the boots come in a little high) and beefing it up a little more.  Fixing some weapon visuals that don’t have their mount point quite right (as you can see in the pic to the right). Placing a few more hidden caches of goodies, and placing some last remaining magical gear as loot. Improving some of the spell visuals. Adding some missing sound effects. Making sure the story – and game – as a whole holds together.

And playing the game, start-to-finish. A Lot.

I’ve not been able to do enough of that last, I’m afraid. I do a lot of skipping around. And cheating. The game is a little too big to just blitz through, and changes have happened so quickly that have invalidated my games halfway through (especially saved-game changes). In my current, cheat-free playthrough, it’s taken me over four hours just to get to what I consider the first-quarter mark. That’s hitting all the major features I can at my level, so I’m not leaving much loot (or experience points) behind. But I also know exactly where everything is, which speeds things a little bit from someone’s first playthrough. So I think the game is going to provide players with many, many hours of entertainment.

It’s been an awesome experience.  So often, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees when you are addressing bugs. I know my opinion is biased, and I have a natural inclination to like my game. But the thrill of gaining a new level, and deciding where to spend my character points, is as magical to me in this game as any other RPG. Pushing forward, gauging the risk of One More Fight with my current resources. Sometimes barely getting through a fight by the skin of my teeth. Pulling off a win by remembering to use a particular spell or magic item (or Drama Star ability) at the last moment.

This is what an RPG is supposed to feel like. It feels right. While I worry I’m looking at it through rose-tinted Goggles of My Baby Ain’t Ugly, I think I’m going to be really, really happy and proud of what I’m delivering to you.

I’ve had to do this (picture to the right) a couple of times, too: Limp back to town with the party one nasty encounter away from wipe-out.  Benjamin is incapacitated – able to mumble in dialog, but not much else.  Chloe is near death, and Dirk isn’t that far away himself. I’ve returned to the safety of town and a stay at the inn. One nasty encounter on our hurried flight from the tower, and it would have been a real challenge. I could have revived Benjamin with drama stars in combat, or pre-combat with a potion (and removed most of his exhaustion with drama stars or potions), but it was really time to return to town and sleep and trade equipment anyway. The whole party is pretty exhausted. And I’m only halfway through the dungeon.

The humor of the game – well, I’ve lived with these jokes so long that they don’t amuse me much anymore.  I still keep my eye out for some additional sources of humor – or at least a little bit of wryness. But part of the reason I’ve worked so hard to make this a real, hard-core RPG is that I want a game that I can enjoy playing. That means giving it the heart and soul of a good ol’ fashioned hard-core RPG that is still fun even when I know the jokes and storyline and maps like the back of my hand. I feel like I’ve achieved that.

And now we are fer sher in the home stretch. Finally. It’s been a long time coming. Another part of “going beta” is psychological, for me. It’s a threshold where we can stick a stake in the ground and say, “This is it – this is progress, and we’re almost done.” And seriously,  compared to about every other beta I’ve participated in, Frayed Knights seems to be in the best shape of all. Much of this is due to the incredible efforts of the testing team. I’m going to single out DGM again, ‘cuz he’s done an amazing job. (Now we just need to find out why he’s got a problem with his new computer / video card / driver combo…)  I don’t think that this means we have a lot less work to do – Frayed Knights is by far the biggest and most complex game I’ve ever worked on (including several hit and not-so-hit “mainstream” games).  There’s a lot of little moving parts to check, fix, and polish. But I hope this means things can progress quickly.

As a side not: one noteworthy change that you may notice from these screenshots (if you view them full size) is that they are in 1280 x 960 mode. Thanks to some efforts from Kevin (Xenovore), most of the UIs are all working in different resolutions. 1024 x 768 was barely acceptable for an indie title when I first started this project, but now with widescreen monitors becoming the norm, I really can’t get away with it anymore. Well, okay, sure, lots of indie games still are, but I can’t.

A third part of this final stretch – the flip side of “going Beta” –  is that it is a threshold that means it is time to do an awful lot of stuff that has nothing to do with finishing the game, but important stuff for releasing it. Marketing stuff.  Preparation for sales. Making it visible. Dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s on all the licensing requirements I need to fulfill, as I’ve licensed a bit of content (and the underlying engine) for this game. I’m not complaining – it’s all fun in its own way (well, maybe not the licensing requirement part), and all part of the biz of being an indie.  While some of this has been part of the ongoing process, for me “going beta” means the light has turned green and the meter is running on all this other stuff.

An example: the Big Deal with this release is that I’ve now submitted Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon to Indiecade.  Just under the wire for the late submission deadline. I guess if we find anything too horrible in this build in the next 24 hours, I can resubmit with changes. There are plenty of things I wish I could have fixed before I sent it, but what I thought would only take me six hours managed to consume closer to twenty over the last weekend, so I had to go with what I had.

It’s all exciting stuff. I can’t wait to let you play it!

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 37 Comments to Read

Action RPG? Big Whoop.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

Craig Stern of Sinister Design (Telepath RPG) has now weighed in on the interview that pissed off so many of us with Matt Findley of InXile Entertainment.

Craig Stern: “So You Created an Action RPG. Stop Congratulating Yourself.”

I’ve said my piece, but I’ll just add my agreement to what Craig’s saying here. Look – while there are some folks for whom action RPGs are an abomination, most of us are not stuck in 1989 waiting for the next releases from SSI, Origin, and New World.  We love action RPGs, too. Many of us love pure, non-stop, adrenaline-fueled multiplayer battles with guns and grenades. We get action games.

We just also understand the joy of turn-based systems.

Apparently modern designers don’t understand that at all. That, or they are lying their butts off  ’cause they think it will appeal to the kids.

Filed Under: Biz, Design - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Game Scope – Squeezing the Middle?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 13, 2011

Lately, we have two extremes that people tend to see as the norm. Probably because just by being “extreme” they tend to gather attention.

On the one end, you’ve got the mainstream games, which continue to grow unsustainably bigger with higher production values, and adapt by basically become more and more generic to appeal to “everybody.” Their ravenous budgets demand more and more customer dollars. While I’ve got nothing against selling as many games as they possibly can, it seems like a dead end – especially when you get into a situation where, according to EA Games President Frank Gibeau:

“When you’re in this business now you have to be able to get to the widest possible audience. Games are so expensive to build now that you can’t have a sustainable business if you’re in the million unit seller range. You’ve got to be multi-million units.”

This boggles my mind. If you can’t make a profit selling a MILLION copies of a game,  something is wrong. Your business model is broken. At least that’s my feeling – businessfolk can correct me all day long if they really want. But it feels to me like the business equivalent of “Casey at the Bat,” refusing the possibility of base hits and either going for home runs or nothing at all. I think a team made up entirely of Caseys won’t win very many games.

On the flip side, you’ve got the “race to the bottom” with indie games, chasing the extremely low price point which, perversely, requires a similar attitude: You have to sell an awful lot of games in order to be profitable if it’s only $1.99 or so. And you also have to make it very, very cheaply. I’ve met some guys making (and prospering on) iPhone games, and their rule of thumb was that the game has to go from concept to release within about a month.

What about the middle ground? What about the games that are neither big-budget titles with over $10 million budget, or the games that can be knocked out in about a month and sold for two bucks? Jeff Vogel has commented on this in the past, and it’s still an issue. There’s a middle ground in there – not just for indie games, but for smaller-budget traditional studios. Its potential may be limited – maybe it’s not possible to make the big bucks going for “mid-range” games that are neither quick-and-dirty moneymakers nor massive blockbuster productions.  Vogel has managed to pull it off. For that matter, so did Minecraft – fairly spectacularly. It didn’t need to sell 2.5 million copies (and climbing), but miracles do happen.  Gratuitous Space Battles is another great example, and based on anecdotal evidence has done extremely well for its creator.

We need to create more attention for the middle ground of games.  Yeah, they don’t have the sexiness of having extremely high production values, or extremely low-price (and managed to succeed where thousands of other similarly-priced games failed).  But this range – the area that addresses niche gamers rather than the generic “mass market” – is where the heart of gaming lies.

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 15 Comments to Read

An Indie Handheld Console?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 10, 2011

This may be just a pipe dream. Many folks are slowly becoming convinced it’s not just a joke, certain comments in the advertising and “Bob’s Game” ARG funkiness notwithstanding, but I guess that’s always a possibility. It may never be anything more than vaporware.  But they claim they have prototypes.

What it is, at least in theory, is a dirt-cheap indie handheld game console.

The console and the company are called “nD.”  You can’t say the name out loud without it sounding like “Indie.” It’s the brainchild of Robert Pelloni, author of the indie RPG “Bob’s Game.” He’s known for having staged some pretty bizarre publicity stunts as an indie, particularly as a result of his failure to obtain license to become a developer for the Nintendo.  Because, you know, Nintendo doesn’t deal with indies.

Apparently, the game really wants to be on a handheld. What’s an indie to do? Apparently, find some other indies with (apparently) the necessary expertise and make your own handheld.

This is a practically disposable handheld console, originally at a $10 price point but now updated to be around the $20 mark for the basic system.  Rather than cartridges or discs, it plugs into the PC – and thereby connects directly with an indie “app store” that offers developers a 90% royalty. It’s designed to run 2D games in the “16 bit style,” though I assume it will be significantly more powerful than an early-90’s era console.  But it’s still a no-frills kind of affair without things like touch screens, cameras, or tilt sensors. Just buttons and a 320 x 240 pixel screen (although there are plans to double the resolution in a succeeding generation, with firmware-level scaling for 1st generation games).

There’s not much info yet on the app store. It will be tied pretty strongly to the device, and there are suggestions that developers will need to regularly update their games to keep them “fresh” and near the front of the list (or having their game expire from the list entirely).  nD maintains that they will have other measures to combat quality and saturation issues. And they are not planning any kind of submission process – it’ll be an open season. More like Android, less like iPhone, a lot less like Nintendo. It’s literally a platform anyone can develop for, but focused on indie gaming.

Due to it’s low target price, there are suggestions that indies could even sell the game pre-loaded with their games from their website. I can’t tell you how cool this idea sounds to me.

The SDK isn’t complete yet, but nD claims that it’ll integrate SDL and CodeBlocks – so developing a game now with that target in mind will get you most of the way there while you wait. Even the final chipset is still under discussion, as they may change from the prototype depending upon availability and bulk pricing. The core operating system is a stripped down embedded Linux. They are planning WiFi connectivity, though the price point for that one is a significant impact.

Will this thing really fly? And if it does, will it succeed? I really don’t know. I’ve made games for several consoles, albeit not handhelds… so I really shouldn’t be someone who should geek out over this. But I am. I love the idea. I don’t have time with things like the Frayed Knights series in development, nor much faith in it, but I *still* want to make games for the thing.

Here’s the trailer video… the section about “marketing” makes me say, “WTF?!?!?” but they keep talking about having a sense of humor and doing “anti-marketing” marketing… being wild and crazy as opposed to boring and professional like the big boys are doing it… so I’m rolling with it.

Want more information? Wanna figure out if it’s for real and has a snowball’s chance in hell of making it? Want to even be a developer for it? Here’s the website…

www.the-nd.com

Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

Ultima VI Technical Documents Online

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

Here is some of the internal documentation used for the development of Ultima VI…

Ultima VI Technical Documents at Ultima Aiera

These pages include details on the conversation scripting and the data format for the world editor. If you are the kind of person who likes to get “under the hood” of favorite games, these thirty scanned pages are a lot of fun.

More details at the link!

 

 

Filed Under: Programming, Retro - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Dungeons of Dredmor: Releasing Soon, Releasing Ultra-Cheap

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 9, 2011

The word from Gaslamp Games’ Nicholas Vinning on the upcoming release of Dungeons of Dredmor is: “we’re so close to the end it’s amazing. There have been times when I thought this day would never come.”

They’ve also officially announced a release price… not a promotional price, but a permanent, official, non-sale price… of $4.99.

I hope this works out for them, because it seems very, very low (at least here in the U.S.). But it’s good news for players. It’ll be a steal at that price, based on what I’ve played of it. Maybe they plan to really expand on it with DLC or something, but I can say that as-is, it’d be a real bargain at twice the price.

There’s also a good deal of mod support built into the game, of which I was unaware. Very nice stuff.

So how soon is “soon?” I don’t know. I’m not sure if the team truly knows, though I suspect we may be talking days here, not weeks.  We’ll see.

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Roguelikes - Comments: 13 Comments to Read

The Story of Good Old Games…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 8, 2011

There’s an interesting write-up on the origins of Good Old Games, AKA GOG.COM, at The Escapist:

Everything Good Old is New Again

The most interesting bits for me were the difficulty of tracking down the rights in order to license them. Also, that some companies remain terrified by the lack of DRM on these games that have been cracked and pirated for years – more than a decade, in many cases.  That strikes me as a knee-jerk reaction not based on any kind of business sense.

I counted the number of titles I now have from GOG.COM. It’s scary. For those interested, the number was 58. 75+ if you separate the bundles into stand-alone games (not including expansions).  Now six of these were freebies, and I’d say more than half were purchased on sale. And I did end up buying some games that I already own in one form or another. I’m really paying for the convenience of not having to dig up the CD-ROM, and for having the game already configured to install and run on a modern machine. I’ve run into situations where the copy protection or installer refuses to believe my machine is in any way legitimate, so it’s worth it to me to have those problems solved.

But still – that is a LOT of friggin’ games.

I have no idea how I’m going to find the time to play all of these. But when a classic RPG or something is selling for $3, it’s pretty easy to ignore the inner voice that says, “Hey, you are NEVER gonna play this thing for more than a couple of hours,” and instead chalk it up to “research materials.” I bought Might & Magic VIII just ‘cuz I was at work and wanted a new fantasy soundtrack to listen to, and saw it was a freebie that came with the purchase.

While I do consider GOG.COM to be in many ways my competition, it’s something I welcome. These “good old games” are the games I fell in love with, the kinds of games I want to play more of, and the inspiration for the games I make now. I wouldn’t mind a bit of re-discovery and renaissance of these classics, spurring interest in the kinds of games that were fairly unique to PC gaming back in the day. As far as I’m concerned, that renewed interest just opens the door wider for players (potential customers) and game makers alike.

This is a good old thing.

Filed Under: Biz, Retro - Comments: 15 Comments to Read

Inaria Post-Mortem

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 7, 2011

We joked at SingleTrac that Post-Mortems should actually be called “Postpartums,” as you’ve just given birth to something pretty major.

Anthony Salter of Viridian Games has posted a post-mortem for his recently-released RPG, Inaria.

I disagree with his first point, but then it’s something he’d know more about that me.  I don’t know that the other “first game” would have ever made it out of the door. Maybe it would have, sure, but I suspect Inaria was a good stepping stone – and an entertaining game to boot.  But I’m not privy to his sales data, and lacking a demo (and being on the short side) probably hurt.

As to point number three (not enough content) – I would ask if it’s too late to expand on this? How about an update? Give some of the dungeons an extra level or three. Make more traps / secret doors. Add some additional, more dangerous monsters. How much could the game be improved in 2-3 weeks?

But I do appreciate his candor in writing up his experiences as an indie, both good and bad, and wish him the best of luck for his next game. And hope other indies can use some of the lessons he’s learned.

Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

“There Is Not Really a Business Case Anymore for Making Single-Player PC Games.”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 6, 2011

The above quote sounds like it might come from the head of a big, fat studio.

But no, it comes from one of the more successful indies – who made his business (until recently) out of making single-player PC games.

The pirates have won.

Of course, I say this as I’m wrapping up development on a multi-year single-player PC game project, so I’m even more terrified than I was before. 99.8% piracy? I used to think it was a gross overstatement to claim the pirates were the ones destroying PC gaming, but now I’m not so sure.  This sort of thing is incredibly disheartening as a guy who really, really WANTS to make games for the PC, and who loathes onerous DRM / copy protection.

There’s a glimmer of hope: CDProjekt announced last week that their PC-only, single-player RPG The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings sold through 400,000 copies the first week.

(Oh, and incidentally, for those who don’t know (I didn’t until I was in the biz): “Sell-through” numbers are very different from “sell-in” numbers.  The terms are tied to the brick-and-mortar business model. “Sell-in” refers to how many units were delivered to the stores. Sales numbers traditionally referred to sell-in counts, rather than sell-through numbers, as the latter referred to sales to actual customers which was harder to obtain. But with digital distribution, it’s all sell-through.)

And Jeff Vogel is reporting that his copy protection for his new game, Avadon: The Black Fortress, the most lightweight yet, but it sounds like it is breaking recent sales records.

I don’t know if the answer is, as Cliffski suggests, to make every single game with some kind of online component. I really don’t want to bolt that onto my game ideas. But these numbers are pretty disheartening. Pirates will make excuses (they’ll say, “I’d buy your game if you did X and Y,” but then still pirate it if you do X and Y anyway…), developers will give up on the platform in disgust and make quick-and-crappy little titles that can still be profitable at $1.99 on the iPhone, and PC gamers who will happily buy a game that caters to their needs get the shaft.

Hopefully there’s still enough of the latter two remaining.  The PC remains my gaming platform of choice. Playing a few retro titles from GOG.COM recently has helped remind me just why that is the case.

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 32 Comments to Read

Reminiscing about Ultima Underworld

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 3, 2011

GOG.COM announced that they will be carrying a bunch of older games from EA. They are leading out with three games – well, actually four – from Origin and Bullfrog. Ultima Underworld 1 & 2 are leading out in a single package as the first – but hopefully not the last – of the Ultima titles to hit their store. They are also selling Wing Commander Privateer and Dungeon Keeper, and will be releasing Origin’s Crusader: No Remorse, Bullfrog’s Magic Carpet, and Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri by the end of the month.

Ultima Underworld – the first one – was definitely one of those formative experiences for me as a CRPG fan and, later, developer.  The second one didn’t inspire me quite as much, though it was also a lot of fun.

I thought I’d start out by sharing some links about this game:

My “Game Moments” experience of fear in this game

Dan Schmidt’s memories of bugs found during the development of the game. Also, the amusing ghoul special case. (I want to replay the game with a character named “Eyesnack” just because of this.)

And my favorite: Games that Changed the World: Ultima Underworld at Computer and Video Games.

If you haven’t played the game before, would I recommend it today? I’d give it a qualified yes. The graphics were groundbreaking at the time, but they used a lot of tricks to make it work that don’t stand up well today. Remember that this game was released with more “full featured” 3D long before Doom… it was released around the same time as Wolfenstein 3D. So they can take some getting used to. And the interface…! At one point, I was experimenting with borrowing the control system for Frayed Knights. Then I went back and played and remembered how weird it was.  I got used to it back in the day – even found it fairly natural – but I think it’s tougher going back to it now that WASD-style controls are deeply ingrained in my muscle memory. And the stories – while serviceable – aren’t exactly going to knock anybody out with their depth.

I’ve only replayed this game in short segments (often months apart) since the 1990s, so I don’t remember a lot of the details in the game. I do remember having to back up to a much older save game because I encountered a bug that would cause some of your inventory to disappear. That bug was patched later, but it wouldn’t make your inventory come back. I also remember giving up on the game for a few weeks in frustration over the anti-magic level.

But besides the technological innovation (which doesn’t age well), Ultima Underworld (and the sequel) did a lot of things very, very right. The ability to trade with most non-hostile NPCs, for one thing, was really cool (duplicated somewhat in the first Fallout games, but not so much elsewhere). The more open-ended “simulation” approach to the adventure was really refreshing and enjoyable. There were a few puzzles that demanded (or at least suggested) specific solutions, but much of the game allowed you to organically problem-solve. Maybe that capability seems exaggerated through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia that I look through, but that is how I remember it. This was long before anybody coined the term “sandbox game,” and I don’t feel it was too literally that kind of game. But if you are a fan of the Thief games, that open-ended approach to missions originated in the Ultima Underworld series.

In many ways, I prefer Ultima Underworld‘s approach over the common sandbox approach which feels like you are just encountering the random dungeon inhabitant of the week. (Huh? What makes you think I’m talking about The Elder Scrolls?)  As I recall, the world, treasure, creatures, and everything are fixed (and therefore, to me, feel more meaningful) – every game begins with exactly the same. But every game also plays out differently according to your approach (and, sometimes, just random events in the game).

The designers also captured  the claustrophobic feeling in both games. Both games had you trapped in an underground prison – in the second game’s case, the castle had been surrounded by an impenetrable blackrock shell, and the only escape was to similarly confined worlds also controlled by the Guardian.  In the first game, you encountered cultures that had adapted to living in a massive prison. In the second, you saw glimpses of the psychological toll of the imprisonment on the inhabitants of the castle over time.

The map system was also really ahead of its time. First off, the game featured not only an automap, which was uncommon at the time, and especially impressive considering the dungeon walls weren’t limited to the four cardinal directions AND weren’t entirely flat. But the game allowed you to write notes directly on the map. There was also usually some space at the margins to write more extensive notes as well.  I loved this feature a lot, and was surprised when later, more technologically advanced big-budget titles didn’t allow the same kind of feature.

Another thing that impressed me about Ultima Underworld is how the game offered a lot of gameplay for a fairly small “world.” While the levels were fairly large and sprawling, there were only eight of them in the first title. That would be the kiss of death for modern, mainstream games (or at least it was until recently — they seem to have shrunk a bit in the last six years). But it made up for the lack of quantity with quality and depth. I’d never blow through a level in a single hour, as we seem to expect to these days. There was some annoying puzzles that required revisiting previous levels, but mainly the time was devoted to carefully exploring the level and problem-solving.  The second game, as I recall, included more (but often smaller) levels, but still packed a lot of exploration and gameplay into a relatively small area.

The rune-based magic system of the game, where you “build” your spells with runes – is likewise kinda cool and interesting, though I think  more so in theory than in practice. Fortunately, they were neither the first or last games to experiment with this approach.

But in the end, much of the “coolness” of the title that won me over was just the little moments. Knocking a skeleton over a cliff and watching him fall to pieces when he hit the ground below. Whether it was the impact or my blow that killed him, I don’t know nor really care. Or the time that imp, trying to smash it’s way through a locked door, freaked me out with its relentless pounding on the door. Or the nyctophobe who would trade anything for more light sources in a world encased in pitch darkness. Or haggling with goblin fishermen in the sewers below Britannia Manor.  Or just playing a game where just scrounging food to survive was a challenge.

Ultima Underworld remains in my personal list of favorite RPGs probably as much for nostalgic and historical reasons as for it’s actual delivered experience, but that’s not to say it isn’t a great game. It still is, albeit kinda clunky in the modern world (as are most games that are nearly twenty years old).  If you are an RPG fan capable of overlooking primitive 3D and the ungentle learning curve for the unique control scheme, both games are worth your time today.

And I think modern indie game developers could still glean a lot of great ideas from ’em. Hint, hint…

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 21 Comments to Read

Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure: The Saga Continues

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 2, 2011

Wherein young game developer Cassie brings her father to kindergarten to verify her tales of game-making to her incredulous classmates.

The Ponycorns Come to Kindergarten

Yes, game developers at game jams do often stay up waaaaaay past bedtime…

 

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Preview: Darklight Dungeon Eternity

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 1, 2011

Back in April Jesse Zoeller sent me an alpha link to his upcoming old-school style role-playing game, Darklight Dungeon Eternity. While it’s still an early build missing a lot of features (not to mention levels), I thought I’d share a little bit of my experiences about this upcoming title. Just bear in mind that this is based on an alpha still many months from completion, and so a lot can change between this version and the final release.

If you’ve played the first game, Darklight Dungeon, you will know what to expect. Darklight Dungeon: Eternity is a first-person perspective RPG that takes place inside a single, really big dungeon. Hearkening back to the old dungeon crawlers of the 80s and early 90s, the player is restricted to the four cardinal directions of movement. However, the dungeon is rendered with full-fledged 3D technology, including shader effects to make the water surfaces look nice, so it’s not quite like revisiting the past. As in the previous game, the detailing on the wall and floor geometry is a little on the plain and repetitive side. But there are a lot more objects in the dungeons to break up the monotony, so every room is generally unique in some way, making it easier to figure out where you are without necessarily checking out the in-game map.

The game is turn based, but with a time limit on turns. So if you just hang out in a patrolled corridor you will be attacked sooner or later. This doesn’t seem to apply in combat, fortunately, where you can take as long as you want.

Not all encounters are hostile. Some creatures begin the encounter willing to ignore you, allowing you to exit the encounter safely. At other times, escape comes with risk of failure (and repeat attacks by the enemy group). Early in the game, encounters are mostly with individual creatures, but later they more often appear in groups. Combat is still fairly straightforward, but the new game adds elements like blocking with your shield, and more strategic use of spells by both the player and the enemies.

Your character is classless – or as the Munchkin card game would say it, you have no class. Your character can both fight and use magic. Both are critical, as there are places in the dungeon where magic does not work, and places where only magic can harm your enemies. The game is both skill-based and level-based.  As you gain experience, you will gradually gain power by leveling, and gain points to increase your primary attributes.

Skills are increased by visiting the trainer in the village just outside the dungeon. This takes gold – and lots of it, as your skill levels increase.  So far as I can tell, your skills aren’t limited by your level (but that may be simply that I can’t earn money fast enough to hit the caps). Most skills simply give you incremental bonuses to your effectiveness. Some, like “cartography,” are more “dungeon aids” than anything else — if you don’t feel like making maps by hand.  (I’m out of the habit, so it’s one of the first skills I took). The skills all have several levels of improvement.  Some of the most critical and useful skills – like water breathing, or regeneration – are a bit more on the pricey side, but for good reason.

Of course, equipment is also key to survival in the dungeon. The merchant in the village offers some items for sale, but what he has is generally more baseline equipment compared to what can be found in the dungeon. I don’t know if any equipment is level-restricted (UPDATE: Yes, yes it is… in fact, I had some in my inventory I’d not noticed), but some of it is skill-restricted. One more reason to blow your gold on skill increases!  You can also purchase spells from the wizard in the village, which will likewise be pretty critical (especially healing). The wizard will also trade in rare magical artifacts that can do things like permanently increase attributes, but according to the developer these will require trade-in of rare magical essences found in the dungeon.

Enemies appear as shadows on-screen – you won’t know exactly what you are about to encounter until you collide with them (or vice versa). Combat is handled via a menu, and their visuals are static 2D images. It’s low budget and low tech, but it does the job. Monsters (and treasures) will respawn over time – at least most of them will.  A lot of the early dungeon delving is very reminiscent of old-school RPGs: You make repeated forays into the first level or so of the dungeon, fighting the same encounters, and retreating quickly back to the safety of the village after only a few encounters. Later, once you’ve obtained skills in magic and hit point regeneration, you will be better set for more extended journeys.

And by “extended” I’m not kidding around. This dungeon is fifty levels deep. Yes. Fifty. Five-Zero. The levels aren’t dinky modern CRPG levels either, but extensive Might & Magic era levels with dozens and dozens of rooms each, too. Considering the number of hours I’ve spent in just the first couple of levels, this is going to be a long game. (Jesse wasn’t kidding when he included “Eternity” in the title, I guess…)  From his reports, there will be plenty of quests, riddles, and puzzles going on through each level, and there is already quite a bit to hold my interest. It’s not just monsters and treasures. Spiked corridors, chasms, pools, special areas (filled with water, gas, magical effects, etc), traps, and so forth abound… even in the first level.

One interesting feature is that the village is constantly offering a bounty. You need to accept the quest first, but then once you’ve slain a monster of the given type, you can return and claim a little extra gold and experience for your kill. It’s very helpful in the early game, but later in the game it’s just more of a small bonus when you manage to get back to civilization.

As far as NPC interaction is concerned – so far I’ve really not encountered anything beyond the village menu and a choice of whether or not to fight docile monsters. While this could change in the final version, I’d not anticipate Darklight Dungeon Eternity being a game long on deep story, plot development, and interesting characters. It’s about hacking and slashing and puzzle-solving and questing.  It’s about managing risk and resources and knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. It’s a game where “character development” is about beefing up stats, not meaningful conversations.

There’s definitely a place for that. And the place exists on my hard drive.  Sometimes that’s exactly the kind of RPG I feel like playing. It’s got an addictive quality to keep progressing, gaining power to explore deeper and more dangerous territory – the sort of thing that attracts me to the genre in the first place. Hopefully the final version will take what’s working with the alpha and build on it. I’m looking forward to seeing how this ends up.

Darklight Dungeon: Eternity is planned for a November release (11/11/11, along with about 500 other games). For more information, you can go visit the Darklight Dungeon website.

Filed Under: Impressions - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

EA Launching Ultima Website…?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

GameBanshee has some more information, including a screenshot of a page that was up only briefly. They’ve also confirmed that EA is the owner of the site. Dang, fans are just too diligent, and won’t let a company sneak something like this past them for long…

Ultima Forever Website Leaked

The web page screenshot suggests Bioware (now a division of EA) is involved – not a surprise, offers the download of Ultima IV for free, and while ostensibly just a fan page to celebrate the series’ past, it seems to suggest there may be more happening in the future with it.

Interesting news, to be sure.

Filed Under: Mainstream Games, Retro - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Action RPGs: Still Not a New Thing

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 31, 2011

I guess my post today is an echo of my earlier post, but Hardcore Gamer has a useful little post about the long history of western “Action RPGs” that’s worth looking over. It’s shy on details, but provides plenty of examples:

Hardcore Gamer: A Brief History of Western Action RPGs

A number of his examples are debatable, but one point is most certainly not: Action RPGs did not begin with Diablo. Or Ultima Underworld. They’ve been around  in one form or another for almost as long as we’ve had any other kind of RPGs.

Here’s the thing: Back then, we didn’t make the distinction. We didn’t care. Well, okay, sometimes we got annoyed by an otherwise passable RPG system polluted by poorly-implemented action (or, as we called them, “arcade”) elements, or had to get creative to make sure our characters didn’t starve or get attacked while turns passed in “real time” while we took a bathroom break (yeah, Ultima got annoying that way…). But for the most part it was all just different flavors of the same genre. We never expected one style to marginalize the others, and so never felt the need to be protective of one over another.

I’m not sure when people started referring to games as “action-RPGs.” Maybe it was with the release of Diablo. I don’t remember thinking of Ultima VII as an action-RPG when I played it.  But it was, in retrospect. And, for those who haven’t played, the action-based combat pretty much sucked. I love the game in spite of that.

I’d just like to direct RPG designers with big mouths (oh, wait, that’d be me, huh?) to review this article before spouting off to the press about how new and innovative their idea of making RPGs more action-oriented is. News flash for you guys: It’s a very old idea. Just because you took two-and-a-half decades for it to become dominant to jump on that particular bandwagon doesn’t make it the new hotness.

A tip o’ the skull-cap to GameBanshee for the link to the Hardcore Gamer article.

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 15 Comments to Read

Game Art: Wow, it’s a… dead bird.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 30, 2011

This isn’t really a Frayed Knights update so much as a sharing of what I’ve been doing, because what I’m doing tends to be so all-consuming it’s hard to come up with other ideas for posts. BTW, do you have a guest post you wanna write? Please feel free!

Anyway, the stage of development right now is focusing on replacing some stand-in content with final versions. We’ve had some stock art or stone “question marks” acting as place-holders for a long time. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending upon perspective – I am very limited on resources to contract out for additional help in this respect. So I’m having to do it myself. I keep telling myself that this is how I will actually get good at it someday — through practice.

My latest adventure is with the Storm Crow enemy (careful, they zap! And bite…). I’ve been using a bat, licensed from a content pack, as a stand-in creature for this thing for a long, long time. And it has its own model.  In just a few months, I’m sure I’m going to look back on this with embarrassment, but for now I’m kinda proud of my death animation on this guy. I especially like how his legs keep twitching. It’s totally unrealistic and cartoony and kinda corny, but so is the game. It may be amusing to no one but myself, but ah, well.

The picture a little big, so it’ll take time loading. You’ll need to be able to view GIF animations to see this in action. He’s all shiny and hard to make out details because I didn’t tune the materials for Blender when I rendered him. I don’t need to – that information is mostly lost when I export it to the game, anyway. But it should give you an idea.

Now I have to get the attack and damage animations done.  And then I have four more models to do. Incidentally, I had my daughter help out with the texturing on this guy.  She also gave me some pointers as I was modeling this guy on how to make him look more like a bird of flight and less like a mutant chicken.

Filed Under: Art - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Age of Fear: The Undead King – Now Multiplayer, and On Sale!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 29, 2011

For those who crave some good turn-based strategy in a fantasy setting, you may want to check out Age of Fear: The Undead King. Developer Leszek Sliwko emailed me to let me know that not only has the multiplayer patch come out, but they are offering a 25% discount until June 6th. On top of that, if you buy it during the sale, they’ll send you two licenses instead of one – so you can play it with a friend.

I’m just going to quote him and let him extol the virtues of the game here:

Age of Fear: The Undead King is a fantasy turn-based strategy. The game features a novel battle system, two campaigns with solid fantasy stories and very flexible multi-player/skirmish mode.
The story takes place in an untamed fantasy land, where three forces: the Human Kingdom, the Greenskins’ Horde and the Undead Legion – are fighting for domination and survival.
Age of Fear: The Undead King is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux systems (serial key is fully interchangeable between versions).

Among other things, core engine has been heavily modified to accommodate multi-player mode and skirmishes:
– Age of Fear now supports battles with Local/HotSeat Players vs. Networked Players (up to 16 remote clients!) vs. AI Players (as well as any mix of those),
– players can design their army from scratch, while AI is capable to intelligently build its own team (or reusing existing player’s army),
– moreover, our AI should be able to adjust itself to virtually any tactical situation – please feel free to experiment with it!

Changes/Updates:
– Multi-player and Skirmish mode
– several UI adjustments (i.a.: unit swap in recruitments panel)
– balance adjustments to units (i.a.: Undead King now causes fear, Shaman/Warlock can cure poison)
– major enhancements to AI module (pattern detection, optimized flow)
– extended demo (4th mission)

You can grab the demo and check it out yourself here: http://www.age-of-fear.net/index.php/aof-downloads

And if you’ve played it, tell us what you thought of it in the comments!

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Strategy Games - Comments: 13 Comments to Read



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