A 5-Year Old Can Rock a Game Jam, Why Can’t You?
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 27, 2011
… Though she does get a bit of help from dear old dad. Here’s the resut of their weekend game jam:
Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure
The “Ponycorn” part of it was, in fact, an invention of her father – sort of a joke (with My Little Pony as the visual aid).
My favorite part? The quote, “That’s what you get for being evil. AND a lemon!”
There is a complete story of how this game came to be over the course of a weekend – and the efforts of Cassie Creighton and her father to put together this game in a building full of indie game developers – that you can read about at this blog post.
So, okay. So the question, “If a five year old can do it, why can’t you?” is kind of dumb, I’ll admit. A five-year-old can get away with a game like that, but a twenty-five-year-old cannot.
But the finished product is not really the point. Nobody is going to make an awesome, fully commercial-ready game in a weekend, anyway. The point is that she took the plunge, at a stage in her life where nobody but her father expected it of her, and even he had doubts about her staying power.
With the barriers to creating and distributing games falling as they have, there are really only three major obstacles facing a would-be indie game developer:
#1 – It’s still an incredible amount of work to make a game. Most people have no clue how challenging even a “simple” 2D platformer is to create. For most people, it’s not worth the effort.
#2 – An indie has to know a little bit about a lot of different things to go it alone. Or get help from someone who can cover their deficiencies. This is somewhat related to #1 – because getting started can be very intimidating, and first-timers without related experience can be staggered when they realize how much they didn’t know.
#3 – Most would-be game developers have their sites set really, really high, wanting to imitate the recently-released AAA games they love. It’s hard to throttle back so that the first two obstacles are *possible* to be overcome by a newbie. Many can’t cope with the let-down of dreaming about creating the Sistine Chapel and instead having to start making a dog house with a single color of paint.
But, as in all things, these are things that get better / easier with practice. I’m still nowhere near a general-purpose expert, I still vastly underestimate the time and difficulty involved, and I’m constantly crushed by the reality of what I’m doing not quite matching my vision. But I keep going, and sucking a little bit less each time.
And we all have to start some where. I think Cassie Creighton is off to a great start.
Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 3 Comments to Read
Indie Game Developers: “Soulless, Basement-Dwelling Sociopaths?”
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 26, 2011
I laughed (well, snorted) when I read the CRPG Addict’s account of playing retro indie role-playing games (late 80’s “shareware”):
“Shortly after I began this blog, it took a turn that I didn’t expect, and didn’t even really notice at the time: I began playing a lot of independent CRPGs. About one-third of the games in my blog (if you count the “backtracking” postings from last July) were developed as what we would now call “shareware.”
“Independent games tend to lack the bells and whistles of commercially-developed CRPGs, but they often have more intriguing gameplay, as we find with NetHack, and certainly a much greater challenge. But here’s the essential “problem” with them, coming from the perspective of someone who has in front of him a task to play thousands of games and is only at Game 56: commercial game publishers have to worry about the market, and so they tend to avoid releasing games that are @#!@%&ing impossible. With independent games, on the other hand, you are often at the mercy of a single soulless, basement-dwelling sociopath. I’m not saying that Laurence Brothers is such a person, but I’m frankly beginning to suspect that he at least was.“
He’s of course merely venting in a humorous way. But now that he’s got contact information for his tormentor, I’m really interested in hearing what said sociopath indie game developer will say about his approach to creating the arguably roguelike game Omega.
The perma-death thing is argued a lot, and my favorite approach is to simply have it as a “hardcore” option in games like Diablo 2 and Din’s Curse (and, now, The Witcher 2). But for early developers, the most intriguing aspect of permadeath was that it replicated the dice & paper feel and gave decisions meaning. In the dice & paper game, unless you were really, really good at fast-talking the DM into a retcon, death was final. Well, with the exception of raise dead spells and the like, but those generally came with side effects and were not usually available for lower-level characters. But the lack of any kind of time-reversal in the form of saved games meant players had to make decisions carefully. This is actually a fun thing, assuming you have a gentle game master and a decent level of predictability for your decisions.
Alas, many roguelikes have neither.
I haven’t played Omega at all, but after reading the CRPG Addict’s accounts (and playing other roguelikes), I’m reminded of just how much presentation gets in the way of features. You lower the bar on presentation detail (and the requisite work needed to create it), and you can go for a larger scope. Like having ghosts of former characters appear to haunt your new character. Adding a new monster that only needs text and an existing ascii symbol is relatively simple. Once you start requiring new models, animations, sounds, AI, etc. – it becomes an issue. All companies – big or little, mainstream or indie – have a limited amount of resources to throw into a game. Devoting it to one area means less left over to put in another. And if you raise the bar of quality in one spot, it’ll make everything look more shabby by comparison unless you bring everything else to a consistent quality.
Translation: There’s a reason indies today are using 2D graphics in the style of old 8-bit games.
But the real point of this post (HAH! I HAVE A POINT! That’s new…) is to look at that difference between mainstream publishers versus indies through the lens that the CRPG Addict jokingly provided. Many (most?) indies have a vested interest in supporting their game-making habit just as much as the big publishers do. So why do they make the games they do (and risk getting branded as soulless, basement-dwelling sociopaths for breaking with tradition)?
#1 – They just have no clue what they are doing, and just making the game they wanted to play (this is the primary answer for most first-time indies).
#2 – They didn’t have other people test the game before releasing, so the only tester was the game creator(s) himself / herself / themselves. Which makes judging difficulty very hard, and exposes the developer’s blind spots, among other things.
#3 – They are deliberately avoiding direct competition with big publishers who could basically spend them into oblivion. So they go out of their way to create something different that will appeal to an underserved niche. That is a major reason I’m making the kind of game I am – no mainstream dev is doing it anymore, and I feel I have something new and exciting to add to the sub-category.
#4 – They do know what they are doing, but are confident enough in their own ideas and unique take that they don’t care (much) about competition or category. (I think games like Din’s Curse may fall under this one). Or they are making the game as a part-time gig and not depending upon sales for survival, and are thus willing to make design decisions that have a higher risk of limiting sales.
#5 – Their design was dictated by limited resources. Well, okay, that’s again true of all games, mainstream or indie. But when you do a budget and realize that you only have six months of runway before your team of three have to find day jobs, reality has a way of dictating design. Shoestring-budget developers must make do with what they have, which may drive a radically different approach from audience expectations from the mainstream industry.
#6 – They are fans of some other person’s twisted vision, and seek to both imitate and improve upon it. This was, after all, how Minecraft came to be…
#7 – They are targeting a very specific niche, and aren’t concerned about appealing far beyond it. This is both a good and bad thing. I love it when game makers target niches that appeal to me, with games like Knights of the Chalice which totally scratched a long-standing itch I’d almost forgotten I’d had. But on the flip side, I shelled out the money for the highly praised, hard-core Super Meat Boy, but the game left me (out in the) cold after only a few levels. Same deal with the masochistic I Want to Be the Guy!, which garnered a small but devoted following. But this is something awesome about indies – instead of going after a broad but lukewarm appeal, they can afford to make a game that a niche can really love and be excited about.
And it may (usually) be a combination of the above factors.
So it doesn’t have to be sociopathy or lack of a soul that drives some of these compelling-yet-frustrating or oddball game designs. It’s just what comes with the indie turf. Indies are truly the ones who are “evolving” the medium, and it’s not by merely throwing permutations on last year’s biggest hits. They are making gaming more diverse than it has ever been, including the “golden era” of the arcades and early home computers.
That’s my kind of crazy.
Filed Under: Indie Evangelism, Roguelikes - Comments: 13 Comments to Read
Guest Post – Roguelikes: Dungeons of Dredmor Preview
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 25, 2011
You are getting a double-dose of Dungeons of Dredmor previews this week. I would say “sorry about that,” but I’m really not. Brian “Skavenhorde” Critser has played a lot more of the game than I have during its beta test period, and has a lot of details to add on this upcoming game. And since he’s already been tackling roguelikes for a month, it meshed nicely with his weekly updates.
Here we go with another delve into the world of the roguelike. This week I was going to focus on three commercial roguelikes, but as usual I wrote too much and cut it down to just the beta to Dungeons of Dredmor.
This game has had me hooked since the first time I started playing it. Everything Jay said about the game is exactly how my experience has been like as well.
Jay just gave you a preview of the game so I’ll concentrate on the finer details.
Beta for Dungeons of Dredmor
Dredmor is a single dungeon graphical roguelike. Your quest is to delve into the depths of the dungeon and destroy the evil lich lord Dredmor. Along the way you’ll be accosted by a host of different enemies. The star of the show are the diggles. The game describes diggles as strange little bird-things that tunnel through walls with a rubbery nasal appliance. That about sums up diggles except it forgot to mention that their cute nasty little bird-devils who will rip you to pieces rather than look at you. If they weren’t so downright mean they’d make a nice virtual pet.
Some of the other monsters you’ll find are blobbie. The game describes them as: “Blobs of animated slime, possible from an adventurer’s armpit”, deth: “Terrifying phantasmal reaper with a menacing scythe” and footies which are giant feet with an eyeball. That is just a small sampling of some of the wacky monsters you’ll encounter. There are also many different variants to the monsters like the elctroblobbies and commando diggles which are invisible and a pain in the side to any mage.
In addition to the usual monsters you’ll also have named ones that are more powerful than their brethren. With my last character I came across ‘Plchooiemag the Queen of Grindings‘ who was an elctroblobby named monster.
Character creation is as simple as choosing a new game, difficulty level: “Elves just want to have fun,” “Dwarvish Moderation,” or “Going Rogue Because Losing is Fun” and then choosing your seven skills out of a choice of 34. The skills are as colorful as Rampant described. You have everything from your usual weapon skills like swords, axes, archery and smithing to the not so usual as viking wizardry, archaeology, fleshsmithing, golemancy (my personal favorite), vampirism, mathemagic and astrology. Those like the monsters are just a small sampling of all that are available.
Each skill comes with 3 – 8 subskill levels. With each level normally offering something different other than just increasing the power of that skill or stat increases. For example: golemancy’s first level is “animate blade being” which summons blades that will hurt anyone who enters that square. It’s second level is “animate sanguineblobby” which is a blobby made from your own blood. I love those cute little disgusting creatures.
*Edit – In the most recent version of Dredmor the “animate sanguineblobby” has been replaced with “animate mustache”. That little blobby thingy will be missed.
That kind of variety isn’t limited to the magic skills. The burglary skill starts off with “lucky pick” which allows you to create extra lockpicks after a certain amount of turns. The next level offers “ninja vanish” which allows you to disappear to get out of sticky situations. None of these skills are mana dependent. They can be reactivated after a certain amount of turns.
There are three crafting skills which influence your ability to craft with certain objects. The three skills are alchemy, tinkering and smithing. In your adventure you will find six different tool types: The Modular Alchemy Kit, Elven Ingot Grinder, Tinkerer Parts, “My Little Anvil” Junior Smithing Kit, Dwarven Ignot Press and Porta-Still. Each of those tools have recipes which come with them or can be discovered through bookshelves. How skilled you are determines how many items you’ll create or the ability to create an item. For example: If you have two skill levels in alchemy then if you create some booze with your Porta-Still instead of creating one booze type you will create two. That has meant the life or death of my mage on a few occasions. Using some of the other crafting items you find you are also able to craft your usual crude iron swords, crude steel swords, copper plate boots and iron plate boots as well as many more items. Some of the more unusual types of items you can make include makeshift bombs, iron bombs, deep omelets, tesla mines, leather armor, and much more. You can find or create crafting components such as as voltaic cells, brass mechanisms, rust, powdered aluminum, all kinds of ingots ranging from copper to plastic.
After choosing your skills you name your character and off you go.
Now comes the part I loved: the stats. Those lovely complex stats. First your six main ones: burliness, sagacity, nimbleness, caddishness, savvy and stubbornness. These stats affect your secondary skills as well as affecting how many hit points and mana you have. Next come the eighteen secondary stats like melee power, block chance, armor absorption, enemy dodge reduction, visual sight radius, haywire chance (critical hit with magic), smithing level and so on.
In addition to the stats there are sixteen different damage types and sixteen different resistances for those damage types. David Baumgart, the Principal Artist from Gaslamp Games says, “There are the three mundane types of damage like crushing, slashing and blast damage which can be blocked by your armor. Everything else can be blocked by resistance to the specific damage type (mundane damage types can be resisted as well). Each damage type has an effect associated with the damage. Crushing often has a stun or knockback, slashing and piercing may have bleeding damage or other wound effect, conflagratory (fire) will have a burn effect, voltaic (electricity) will often stun and so on.”
I have used the conflagratory burn effect to survive many rooms that were swarming with monsters. I set them on fire and then ran for the hills. They start dropping like flies soon after they started to burn and if they didn’t it would only take a few whacks from my staff to defeat them.
Dredmor has three different types of gods. You have the Lukefisk god which demands you sacrifice lukefisk at its lukefisk shrines. If you sacrifice enough it will reward you with an item. Next comes Krong. Krong is a fickle god and you have to take your chances when you see his anvil shrine. You place an item upon the shrine and depending on Krong’s mood it will either be blessed, cursed or nothing will happen. Last is Inconsequentia. If you pray at her shrines she will give you a quest to fulfill. If you fulfill this quest you will be rewarded with a magic item.
There are your usual stores you’ll find in any roguelike. There will be display cases you can find a variety of items as well as being able to sell any excess items you are carrying. In addition to the usual shops you can also find vending machines that offer different items depending on which vending machine you find. There are four types of vending machines; food, drink, thrown weapons and bolts. Food and drink vending machines are a godsend for any type of character.
Speaking of food and drink these are the easiest way for your character to heal and regain mana faster. You eat food to regain a hit point each round and you drink alcohol to regain a mana point each round (mages are notorious drunks in this world). Each food or alcohol item has a number associated with it. That number determines how long that item will last. There are a few potions/spells that will heal a large chunk of health or mana. Some of these potions are one shot deals while others while others will have a timed effect similar to the food/alcohol, but not associated with it.
Each dungeon is randomly generated and each room has individually names such as, “The Annex of Sneezes!”. Every dungeon level offers a new setting from your normal dungeon: a crypt, a lava setting, and more. With each new level you will find new types of monsters to harass you on your way down.
There are a lot of different types of traps that are out to harm you or your enemies. A trap doesn’t care who steps on it (flying creatures don’t set off the traps). The tinker skill helps you create more complex types of traps like “tesla mines” and “shoddy dwarven IEDs” or if your “trap affinity” skill is high enough you can disarm and pick up any traps you find.
The regular equipment you can find or buy is as varied and unique as the crafting items. Some of the equipment you’ll find relatively quickly are robes, hefty sticks, golemancy cap (if you choose the skill golemancy), rusty sword, woodsman’s axe, refurbished staff as well as rings of varying quality. I don’t want to spoil the surprises in store so I mainly listed equipment you can find early on in the game. All of the items (magic items included) have a star rating ranging from one to ten. One being the worst and ten being an artifact from the gods.
You’ll find magic items along the way with such names as “Wkomarp, the Crushing Guacomole” or “Chrpoarp, the Charlatan Feasts.” A few of the powers a magic item can offer are resistances to certain damage types, a certain damage type, skill boosts, etc. The magic items are as unique and varied as the rest of the game. I’m still coming across items that offer something unusual. Like my last golemancy cap that I blessed at a shrine of Krong gave my melee attacks the added bonus of shooting fire a few squares from where you hit the creature. Those diggles never knew what hit them after that.
The music is very good. I don’t normally pay too much attention to the music, but with this game it was quite lovely. Lovely isn’t a word I use too often, but it fits so well with the game. With one of the tracks I got a Leisure Suit Larry vibe from it. It had a sort of happy and yet silly beat to it. This may be my imagination, but it was quite nice.
Above all the details Dredmor is a fun game that is both challenging and funny. A sort of Quest for Glory for roguelikes.
I think that just about covers it. I’m sure I have forgotten a few hundred things, but that should give you a pretty good idea of what the game offers.
Here are some of the features written by David Baumgart (the one on the website didn’t include enough detail for me):
– Select 7 skills from 34 to make your own character class
– Each skill has from 3 to 8 sub-levels you can upgrade
– Randomly generated dungeon levels
– Tactical gameplay
– Around 500 unique item graphics
– Ridiculous random (and some less random) magical artifacts
– Find or create and then set traps
– Can throw and shoot sharp things, poison gas, or firey bombs at your enemies
– Six strange spell schools from Mathemagic to Necronomiconomics to Viking Magic
– Sacrifice Lutefisk to the Lutefisk God for Fishy Rewards!
– Potions that do things besides heal!
– Fairly easily moddable with items, spells, monsters, dungeon rooms
and so forth stored in xml files, with stronger mod support planned…
– Ten variates of cheese.
– Crafting, including a pointlessly realistic production chain for the
creation of Aqua Regia, which you can then drink if you’re so
inclined.
– A needlessly educational metallurgy system
– Completely non-educational tinkering system allows you to make
crossbows, traps, and odd devices.
– Sprites! Lots of sprites! Many hand-wrought pixels.
– Music that people like!
A big thanks to David Baumgart, Principal Artist for Gaslamp Games, for answering my one thousand and one questions.
Filed Under: Guest Posts, Roguelikes - Comments: 5 Comments to Read
“RPGs Were a 30-Year Detour?”
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 24, 2011
Okay, Matt Findley doesn’t actually say this (it’s just in the title of the article) , but he does offer some choice quotes, like:
On the fantasy genre tending to be represented by RPGs: “Well, you know, we analyzed the long history of video games. I think these games always wanted to be action games at their heart. I think all those old turn-based games, it’s just that’s all the technology would allow.”
On turn-based gaming: “The reason those games were turn-based sword battles is that was the only option you had. I think, now you get that twitch element of “me at the controller.” When you take the monster down because you successfully hit, blocked, switched to exploding arrows, and shot him in the head, you’re getting that same depth that you would have had through 30 years ago D&D experience, but it’s happening fast-paced, quick, and in real-time for a modern audience that wants to see action.”
On the differences between games that work well for PC and those that work well for consoles: “You can play a game on the Xbox, and you can have a PC version of that game, and, you know, the same art assets work, the same environments work, the same control schemes work. You can use the same controller if you plug your Xbox controller into your PC. It’s allowed the lines to be blurred. Going forward, I think the lines between genres are getting blurred and the lines between all the different consoles are being blurred, which is, I think, very positive for what we can do with our games.”
Uh-huh. I’m not usually prone to nerd-rage, but sheesh! I’m granting that the interviewer, Christian Nutt, kinda pushed the conversation in that direction, but it still feels a little bit like he’s giving the finger to old-school RPG fans.
I remember a local DJ who had been a big fan of The Doors, especially the song, “People Are Strange.” That song helped him get through adolescence, and spoke to him when he felt awkward and alone (as most of us do at that stage of our lives, on one level or another). It had a profound impact on him. One day, he finally got the chance to meet a member of the band in person, and wanted to talk to him about that song. As soon as he brought up the subject, the band member laughed it off and said something to the effect of, “Oh, man, that song – we were such sellouts when we made that song. It was such a manufactured, commercial piece of crap.”
He eventually got over it, but it sounded to me like he was crushed. I can understand how he felt a little, now. Not that I consider Matt Findley to be any kind of RPG mastermind out at Interplay / Black Isle. Nor do I disagree that some fantasy-themed action games are a good thing. But the whole, “We only did RPGs because we didn’t have the technology to make obviously superior action games” thing really sticks in my craw.
‘Cuz, you know, I’m still playing good old-fashioned dice-and-paper RPGs. WHY, when I have these obviously superior console games sitting not ten feet away in our living room when we’re playing on a Saturday night? Why do we roll dice and describe scenes in slow spoken form instead of spending the night playing World of Warcraft and talking to each other over our headsets?
The reasons are multitude. Some of our group would probably say the experience is superior (at least in some ways) to anything they’d play on the XBox. And many of us are avid video game fans.
This is the kind of thing that pisses me off. You know this, if you have been following this blog very long. This whole idea that RPGs have been ‘evolving’ towards this platonic ideal that is indiscernible from a straight-up action game is a load of crap used by biz and marketing folks to justify going after the lowest common denominator. And according to all accounts – including my own first-hand experience – action games are a hell of a lot easier to make than traditional RPGs.
If you want to work less and make more money by making an action game, that’s FINE – just don’t imply that fans of more traditional RPGs are just too stupid to recognize the genius that is the action genre. Dude, I lived in arcades during my formative years. I was addicted to Asteroids and Pac-Man long before I discovered Ultima. I’ve spent half of my career making action games for consoles. I was FTPing Doom the day it was released. Oh, and I was playing action-RPGs before anybody decided to draw a border between the two – back when it was stuff like Gateway to Apshai.
I’m not ignorant of the virtues of action games, nor am I too old and slow to have a great time playing them today. And yet I still crave a good, stats-heavy, turn-based RPG. Regularly. I am so grateful to indie game makers and places like GOG.COM that provide me with more games like this – old and new – than I have time to play.
Because obviously the mainstream games business is too screwed up to make something like this ever again.
UPDATE: Looks like Matt Barton, author of the excellent book Dungeons & Desktops, gets a little hot under the collar over this interview as well. I actually hope Hunted: The Demon’s Forge doesn’t suck, because I was looking forward to it with no expectations that it would be an RPG. I hope it’s great. I hope Mr. Findley can keep making the action games he loves. And that nobody lets him take charge of development of an RPG ever in the rest of his career.
UPDATE 2: Rock Paper Shotgun weighs in as well.
Filed Under: Biz, Mainstream Games - Comments: 32 Comments to Read
Inaria: Now Available
Posted by Rampant Coyote on
I guess you can all check out the game for yourselves, now. Inaria has been released.
I’ve found myself still playing it even after my preview. Kinda surprises me, ‘cuz I’ve got The Witcher 2 unfinished on my hard drive as well (which I really enjoy, besides the twitchiness demanded by it as an action-RPG). I think Inaria just has the ability to (theoretically) be played in short, five or ten minute sessions. I say theoretically because they end up going longer than that for me. Progress is rapid. Dungeons don’t take too long to complete. And it loads really, really fast, being such a tiny game. So it fools me, as I find myself looking for a short break, into thinking “just a quick session until I level or finish this dungeon.” It’s still a short session, but usually twice as long as I expect.
Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: 3 Comments to Read
Preview: Dungeons of Dredmor
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 23, 2011
I have died dozens of times now. Many times in the first or second room of the dungeon. I’m not so much rolling up new characters as creating the latest incarnation of my last dead character. But those bird-like Diggles who taunt with the creativity of the French knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail have been having a field day at my expense. I feel like the world’s worst dungeon delver.
Yet I keep coming back for more punishment. And laughs.
I’m playing the beta of the upcoming indie graphical roguelike Dungeons of Dredmor. It’s a game with its tongue in its cheek that takes advantage of its randomness with amusing word combinations and general silliness. The 2D art and animations, the descriptions, the objects, many of the feats (“Fleshsmithing,” “Necronomiconomics,” and “Fungal Arts”), and so forth are filled with humor and silliness that all seems to say, “Don’t take this game too seriously!”
But it wraps a set of mechanics that belong in a pretty serious roguelike. The player must explore a randomly generated series of dungeon levels filled with traps, treasures, and monsters. Everything is turn-based, though an extended lack of input will cause your character to whip out a mobile gaming device and amuse himself. At least at medium difficulty – it doesn’t hold your hand to keep your initial forays in any way easy… or even balanced. In one dungeon, I opened the one and only door leading out of the first room to get swarmed by Diggles with no real hope of victory. Fortunately, that bit of bad luck has proven to be an exception, but the pile of corpses I’ve left in the dungeons are a testament that “survivable” doesn’t mean “easy.” But after leveling a couple of times and picking up some halfway decent gear (and potions), things tend to go more smoothly.
Dungeons of Dredmor lacks the complicated key-chords and ASCII graphics of its kin. In addition, it (currently) does not nuke your save game when your character dies, making it far more “soft-core” than your run-of-the-mill roguelike. In fact, while not exactly user-friendly, its interface is downright tame and should seem fairly familiar to experienced RPG fans. There are certainly places that have been streamlined from some roguelikes I’ve played in the past, but I don’t feel it’s been significantly “dumbed down.” The learning curve is still pretty steep, but the more straightforward mouse-driven interface means that just learning how to move my character and pick up items isn’t a significant part of the challenge.
Part of the appeal of roguelikes for me is the ability to find opportunity in complexity. Those games don’t tend to reward the brute-force approach of many mainstream RPGs, but rather a cautious approach, sometimes employing the kind of cheap tactics that might have gotten your account banned on some MMORPGs. Dredmor has this, and goes a step further with a deep crafting system. The game is littered with crafting materials and crafting stations for adventurers to build their own gear.
To give the money earned (“zorkmids” – that sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?) some use, shops can be found throughout the dungeon offering a very limited trading options. Those with the archeologist skill line also gain the ability to send artifacts back to a museum (or shadowy government warehouse, according to the skill description) to directly gain experience from the value of the item.
Characters are created not by rolling up stats (though the stats are there) and choosing a class, but rather by picking a combination of skills (or actually, skill lines). You can build your own perfect class this way. As you gain levels, you gain points where you can advance any of your skill lines to give your character new and improved abilities.
There’s just a lot to the game, and I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface. I don’t know if Dungeons of Dredmor is exactly a gateway drug to roguelikes, but it’s married the genre with the conventions of more mainstream RPGs in what for me feels like a great combination. I don’t play the game and think, “roguelike.” I think, “role-playing game.” But it’s an RPG with most of the advantages of roguelikes and few of the disadvantages, filled with plenty of humor.
For roguelike fans and RPG fans alike, this is a game to keep an eye on as it nears release.
Filed Under: Game Announcements, Impressions - Comments: 7 Comments to Read
Frayed Knights Update: Taking Turns
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 20, 2011
I’m overdue for an update on Frayed Knights progress. You know, that “quick and dirty” little indie RPG project that I figured I could crank out in just a few months. Because I’m stupid.
Combat has gone through a few iterations in Frayed Knights since the early pilot released such a long time ago. Even the “turn-based” nature has changed a bit.
Originally, every action had a cost in the number of “phases” it took to perform. This was kinda weird, because the action took place immediately, and then there was a delay in the number of phases the character would be delayed before taking their next action. The game proceeded by advancing phases. On most phases, nobody acted, and it would skip to the next phase. For example, let’s say Dirk has an action on phase 10. He swings his word, which took ten phases. The attack fires immediately, but his next action would occur on phase 20, allowing everyone else with an action between phases 10 and 20 to act.
Weapons had speed factors, which could be modified by certain feats and spells. So while a sword might have a speed of 10 – causing a 10-phase delay – a dagger might have a speed of 7 and have only a 7 phase delay.
While that’s a fairly workable system, it had a lot of problems and inconsistencies within my approach. How about spell durations? Should they also be phases? Those can be kind of big and confusing numbers. What about non-combat actions? How much time do they take? Weapon and action speeds – especially combined with abilities and spells that sped your actions – were very hard to balance. The stiletto, a very fast weapon, was either the best weapon in the game, or was absolutely useless against an armored opponent, as the damage rating had to be cranked way back to make up for its speed. And then there was the whole weirdness of a slow action taking place immediately but causing a big delay before the next action.
In the end, I discovered that the game I really wanted to make used actual turns, with everyone taking (usually) one action per turn. This was a substantial overhaul, but overall a Good Thing.
Most actions in the game, if they take any time at all, take a turn. Picking a lock, walking a certain distance (about thirty feet), casting a spell, searching, etc. It’s not an exact science or count of time, nor do I want it to be.
In combat, the order in which actions take place is determined by an initiative check at the beginning of each turn. This check is a random factor modified by equipment (knives are quicker than 2-handed swords), feats, spell effects, and the character’s Reflexes score. In the beginning of the game, Dirk (who has the highest reflexes score of the party) will be the first player character to act most of the time.
Characters with the “dual wield” skill and armed with a weapon in each hand get to attack twice – once with each weapon – on their action. This is offset somewhat by reduced accuracy. It still counts as a single action, however.
Then there’s the chance of getting multiple actions per turn. This can happen if you have a combination of Reflexes, equipment, and so forth. Or through spell effects. Very high initiative rolls, or the “haste” line of spell effects, increment an extra action counter. When that hits ten, you get a second action later in the turn. Or a third, or fourth, etc. Certain spells and feats automatically increment the extra action counter every turn.
Another wrinkle in the extra action counter saga is armor – heavy armor slows you down, and automatically reduces points coming in towards extra actions. It doesn’t effect the cumulative pool, or reduce extra action points below zero. But if Arianna is wearing full plate mail, she will not accumulate extra actions from a haste spell as quickly as, say, Chloe hanging out in a bathrobe.
And yes, enemies follow the same rules, and can be hasted by spellcasters just as well.
Changing topic here just a little: What’s the current status of Frayed Knights?
Things have slowed a little between vacation and a massive looming deadline at the end of June at the Day Job. I’ve been having fun making final content to replace stand-in and generic content. Which is only a slight improvement, given the amateurish quality of what I make, but one does what one can. Some of the dungeons have felt a little “flat” compared to later levels, and so I’ve been working to make them more interesting. I expect the current pace to continue through the end of June where we will continue to test, tweek, tune, fix, and polish.
And then all hell breaks loose in July. That’ll be the big, final push to ship. It won’t be fun, but hopefully it won’t last long.
Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 11 Comments to Read
Quick Preview: Inaria
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 19, 2011
I’ve had some serious distractions lately – pretty much since returning from my vacation. Besides catching up at the ol’ Day Job, I’ve had a number of games demanding my attention. Some you are probably familiar with (Portal 2, and The Witcher 2). Others are indie games that you have probably heard a lot less about. I’ve not had much time to spend on them, as I am supposed to be – you know, working on my game ‘n stuff – but I’ve had a good time playing around with them.
Three of them are unreleased titles still in (late) development. I will talk about each one separately. Today, I want to talk about Inaria.
Inaria is an indie role-playing game for Windows that harkens back to the old 8-bit days. The graphics are part of it, but the chiptunes-on-steroids style music is really what kicks it in high gear. I told the author, Anthony Salter (who wrote this great guest post the other day) that it really invokes the old Ultima III vibe for me.
For me, this is a good thing. On the nostalgic side, Ultima III was the CRPG that “blew my mind” and made me fall in love with the genre. While fairly simple by today’s standards, it felt deliciously deep and complex at the time, full of mystery and thing to explore.
I’m quite certain that this comparison is not coincidental. While Inaria is its own game, it’s clear that the author wasn’t trying to hide its sources of inspiration.
The game begins in a beleaguered city which has barely survived an attempted invasion by the Slorn army. The king sees only one path to survival – to assassinate the king. The generals, he theorizes, will war among themselves to seize power, giving the remaining forces of freedom time to regroup. Which basically means you, the nameless hero, must save the kingdom by whacking the Slorn king.
But you are pretty much a nameless nobody to start, so en route to playing Seal Team Six on the Big Bad, you need to buff up and improve on your equipment. This is an RPG, after all. So there’s lots of dungeon-delving, monster-slaying, treasure-hunting goodness to be had.
Your character starts as either a male or female character with base attributes of 2 in everything, level 1, with no equipment but a pocket full of gold to buy a dagger, cloth armor, and potions. Potions get more expensive as you level (!), so it’s not a bad idea to stock up a bit at level 1. From there, you get to talk to people. In the current version, people may have several things to say, so it’s a good idea to click on them a few times to get the full story.
Dungeon-delving makes up the bulk of the adventuring (so far), and is the only place where I’ve had combat. Maybe there are monsters to fight outdoors later in the game, but I’ve not seen them. Dungeons fully respawn when you re-enter them, so it’s possible to loot a dungeon many times. Early forays tend to be short, as you retreat from danger to return to town to get healed (for free) rather than blow through all your expensive potions. The cost makes potion use more of an emergency thing rather than a regular resource. And emergency use is necessary – especially in the first three levels of life, my characters died often. After that, a combination of greater survivability of my character and a better handle on how to play made death a bit less likely. Plus, I learned to save more frequently.
The dungeons are custom-made, and (so far) all have a different flavor or “theme” to them. This keeps things interesting.
While your starting character has no customization, at each level you have several points to put into your character’s attributes as you see fit. Attributes not only give you immediate advantages such as more hit points or greater damage in combat, but at certain thresholds also unlock certain abilities and spells.
Equipment includes mana and health potions, armor, weapons, and “trinkets” (jewelry). You can equip one of each. Some equipment can be purchased in stores, based on your current character level, but the more interesting stuff is found in dungeons. Some of these items will affect your attributes in addition to their primary function. I’m not sure if they have any other abilities.
Anyway, the game is a good ol’, small, traditional RPG. Fortunately for me, it’s a good one for playing in small doses – a 15-minute stretch may be enough to explore a dungeon, gain a level, and get closer to the ultimate goal. It’s pretty close to release now, though there are still some rough edges and at least one crash bug that I hope will be fixed before release.
I’m unaware of his further plans with the game, but it seems an ideal candidate for porting to mobile devices as well.
Check it out when it releases at Viridian Games.
Filed Under: Game Announcements, Impressions - Comments: 6 Comments to Read
Guest Post: The Roguelikes, Part 3( and a half! )
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 18, 2011
I don’t think this is the last one – Brian “Skavenhorde” Critser keeps providing more information on common and not-so-common roguelikes. And I’ll keep posting ’em.
Hello all it’s your friendly neighborhood rat with just a few roguelikes this week. Been a little sick lately so I had to cut this one short. Plus I’ve been playing the beta to Dungeons of Dredmor like a madman. That game is too addicting and probably part of the reason I’m sick now. Four or five hours of sleep a day is not a good way to stay bright eyed and bushy tailed….or in my case beady eyed and pink tailed.
Dungeons of Dredmor has that “one more turn” vibe to it that Civilization has. Except instead of “one more turn” it starts out with “one more room” then “one more level” and finally when I die I’ll think “just one character before I go to bed”. I’ll do a proper overview of that game a little later after I’ve ironed out some of the details in the game.
So without any more further ado here are the few offerings I have this week:
Rogue Survivor – Rogue Survivor is a zombie survival roguelike sandbox game current being developed. It’s still in its Alpha stage, but is playable.
In this roguelike you are one of many survivors just trying to live another day in a world gone mad. You goal is simple you must survive the zombie hordes that get stronger each day.
You will need to gather food and find shelter while dealing with other AI controlled NPCs who are trying to accomplish the same thing. Some NPCs are peaceful and some not so peaceful such as gangs. There are many ways to survive such as getting help from the National Guard or leading your own band of survivors or just making a go of it on your own.
The ASCII graphics have been set aside for tiles, mouse support and some music. The graphics are good, but not cutting edge of course. The mouse support makes learning the game all the more easier for people who are new to a roguelike.
The game world is dynamic and different each time you start a new game. The game offers a day and night cycle, weather, different districts, buildings, sewers (I recommend you don’t go down there when you first start out) and subways.
If you get tired of trying to survive as a human then play as the undead and learn what it’s like on the other side.
This is no shooter zombie game that you have seen a million times before where you shoot a few zombies in the head and reach the end where you will be safe. There is no safe here. The world is destroyed and you need to learn how to survive in it.
This game is a fine choice if you are waiting for Dead State to be finished.
Review:
URW – UnRealWorld – URW is a graphical roguelike-ish RPG which takes place in the far north during the Iron Age.
The game is styled after Finland, but not exactly. The developer didn’t want to make an imperfect copy of historical Finland so they have altered the map and the cultures. You’ll need to spend some time getting familiar with the different cultures in their help files if you want to customize your character or just jump right into the game and let the computer choose for you.
They used real-world historical facts and mythology to make this game. There are no knights or dragons in this. Instead you have peasants, rune-singers and sages. There are also some low-fantasy elements taken directly from Finnish folklore.
In this game you can build your own shelter, hunt, skin and cook your own food, get eaten by wild animals while you sleep and just about anything you can imagine you would have to do back in the Iron Age to survive.
You have nine different cultures to choose from, different rituals you can learn, many different skills including lore/craft skills which are essential if you want to survive in the wild, different tasks to accomplish (optional) and many many more features.
The game is brutal on beginners, but it comes with an extensive Info Browser that will how the game works and how to survive.
I haven’t played this game long enough to know all there is to this game, but I can say that if you are a fan of Dwarf Fortress I believe you will be a fan of URW.
You can download the shareware version of the game at the homepage and register it for only $3. Let me repeat $3. When I look at AAAs offering DLC for the color black to dye your clothes or for new clothes that are meaningless and then take a look at all this game has to offer I can’t help but wonder why anyone would spend even one cent on those worthless items when there are games like URW.
Please read these great reviews to get a better picture of what URW has to offer. My short summary does not even begin to describe everything there is to do in URW.
Reviews:
5 Resons I bought Unreal World RPG – by Zues
Information:
DoomRL – Doom The Roguelike – DoomRL is based on the world created by Id Software’s game Doom. You were sent to investigate the moonbase Phobos, but all hell broke loose and now you are the only one left.
Your mission is simple you are to descend into the depths of the moonbase and destroy the source of the evil outbreak.
This is a true coffee-break style of game. I hate to use that terminology since RPGCodex schooled me in its use when I said that I played Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup like a coffee-break type of game. Stone Soup had all the complexity of Linley’s Dungeon Crawl with the added bonus of having an interface that is easy to understand, but DoomRL is meant to be simple and easy to jump right into. There is a limited inventory, maps are the size of the screen, one item per tile and a smaller amount of keyboard keys you need to remember to play the game.
This by no way diminishes the “fun factor” to the game. Granted it is a simple game and some may say dumbed-down for a roguelike, but in this case since Doom was already a very simple FPS I would say that DoomRL has been smartened-up by simply adding a few features such as traits (perks), mods that amplify various equipment that you’ll find and changing the gameplay from first-person to the traditional roguelike ASCII graphics. The only drawback is that it doesn’t have the depth that other roguelikes have.
DoomRL features include 25 mostly random levels, ASCII graphics, special levels, classic Doom weaponry, unique and exotic weapons, traits, almost all of the Doom monsters, medals and badges, original Doom sound effects and music and finally a sandbox modding option.
DoomRL is currently up to version 0.9.9.1 and is quite stable. If you donate you’ll be able to get version 0.9.9.3 beta.
So if you’re a fan of the original Doom or tired of memorizing dozens of different keyboard key combinations of other roguelikes, then give this one a try. However do not expect a complex and deep game. There are many other roguelikes that offer that. This game is free and can be downloaded from the homepage.
Essential Reading:
DoomRL Wiki
Review:
Here are a few other Roguelikes made by developer of DoomRL, Kornel Kisielewicz:
AliensRL – Aliens The Roguelike – Aliens is a tactical roguelike inspired by the “Aliens” movie and the “Alien Breed: Tower Assault” computer game. The first version was made in 7 days.
Aliens RL is has been at version 0.8 since June of 2010. This release was supposed to be a “resurrection” release with the project back in action, but it seems that DoomRL took the spotlight since there has been no new version in almost a year. AliensRL might get some attention after DoomRL.
There is very little information on this game, but here is an intro for anyone curious as to what the game offers:
AliensRL Introrun from Mighty Mouse of RPGCodex
DiabloRL – Diablo Roguelike – Another roguelike from Kornel with some added help from Chris Johnson and Mel’nikova Anastasia. It also was first made in 7 days. It’s up to version 0.4.5 and hasn’t been updated in awhile. However Kornel has released it as open source under the GPL license. You can get it here.
Berserk – A fantasy survival game made back in 2006 for a 7DRL – seven day roguelike – challenge. It’s loosely based on Kentaro Miura’s Berserk manga. I wouldn’t count on this one being resurrected any time soon. I believe after Kornel switches from DoomRL he’ll be upgrading AliensRL.
The only information I could find on it were at the forums:
That’s it for this week.
UPDATE: Didn’t have chance to look at this after it posted, and I missed that this SHOULD have been part 4. But the name stuck all day long, and so I’m gonna leave gaffe almost as it was and call it three-and-a-half. ‘Cuz it’s more fun that way.
Filed Under: Free Games, Guest Posts, Roguelikes - Comments: 12 Comments to Read
Tips For Part-Time Indies
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 17, 2011
So here’s an article for those who want to make games as indies, but are somewhat addicted to things like eating and can’t yet quit the day job:
“Indie and a Day Job: Making It Work” at Gamasutra
He’s got some great suggestions here, to which I’d like to add a few of my own:
#1 – Make a regular schedule, if the day job allows. It’s a lot easier to work on the game at night (or in the early morning) if it’s part of a regular pattern or habit.
#2 – Set deadlines, and be accountable to someone for them. Accountable to your team, your spouse, a friend over email – report on the status, why you missed your deadline (oh, wait, you mean sometimes you actually meet them? Cool!), etc. Deadlines work.
#3 – Although your work may be primarily at night, don’t work when exhausted and nodding off. You are just wasting time. I know this from bitter experience, though I don’t know if I have entirely learned the lesson, as I still do this.
#4 – Keep a task list, and refer to it often. I just use a text file, or a spreadsheet (Google Docs is good for this).
#5 – Spend your first 5-10 minutes of your working time *planning*. Refer to the notes he mentions in the article, or the task list in #4, and decide your approach. I waste a LOT of time spinning my wheels after finishing a task figuring out what I’m going to do next, and this helps me curb that.
Be sure and check out the link he has to Steve Streeting’s blog post as well. There are more tips to maintaining work flow in an environment that doesn’t allow you to often get in / stay in “the zone.”
Filed Under: Game Development, Programming - Comments: 12 Comments to Read
Matt Chat: Baldur’s Gate
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 16, 2011
Baldur’s Gate and it’s sequel rank very highly in my list of favorite role-playing games. Matt Barton shares a retrospective and a play-through. I especially enjoyed the envy he expresses for those who haven’t played the games (yet): Boy are you in for a treat!
Man, has it been that long since I played this game? My CD cases are covered in dust. Got too many other games to play and no time for me to go back to it right now, but… man, it sure rocked, didn’t it.
Although strangely it also reminds me of when my system started getting heat problems – it would lock up in the middle of the game until I bought a secondary cooler to place beneath my video card slot. I’d have probably forgotten completely about that little issue with my machine, but when I think of BG I remember that frustrating problem. Also, I remember … I think it was with this game and the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion, setting up a gazillion traps for Demogorgon and totally killing him before Round 1 was over. (Update: Oops! RPGWatch says it was BG2 – my bad. Wrong tower. But I do remember ankhegs from this game. And lots and lots of kobolds. )
Great game.
In fairness to Matt, I want to repost his request for donations here to help continue his video series:
Donate: http://www.armchairarcade.com/neo/node/3793
Also, he is an affiliate for GOG.com (gee, I should do that too, considering how often I post links to it) – if you use his link to buy either Baldur’s Gate game, it costs the same for you but gives him a small referral bonus: http://tinyurl.com/3fojw94
Filed Under: Mainstream Games, Retro - Comments: 16 Comments to Read
Hobbes & Bacon
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 14, 2011
I loved Calvin & Hobbes for its entire run – it was second to none (with only Gary Larson’s The Far Side even in the same league back in the day). Like all fans, I was terribly disappointed when the comic ended abruptly. But now, as far as I am concerned, these two fan-made comics are now Calvin & Hobbes canon. And I finally have closure.
http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/05_10_2011/hobbes-and-bacon
http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/05_12_2011/hobbes-and-bacon-002
Outstanding work from Pants Are Overrated!
Filed Under: General - Comments: 7 Comments to Read
A New Wizardry – Kinda
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 13, 2011
I’ve posted about this one briefly before. But I’m just sayin’ – I *would* be buying this if they port it to the PC. Not expecting that, but I would. Or for XBox, for that matter.
Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls coming to the U.S.
There are several PS3 exclusives that collectively almost convince me to get one. Almost. But I look at all my games for the XBox 360, barely played, and realize I can’t really justify it. My XBox might as well be called my “Rock Band and Netflix Player.” I can’t justify buying another system.
Hat tip to RPG Codex for the link.
Filed Under: Game Announcements, Mainstream Games - Comments: 9 Comments to Read
Attrition and Resource Management in RPGs
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 12, 2011
Okay, this is a topic that will probably make a lot of action gamers and casual gamers immediately start snoring. Actually, it may make a lot of people start snoring. But here I go throwing caution to the wind and talk about it anyway. It’s something I’ve touched on before, but I thought I’d elaborate just a little.
There are a couple of different approaches to how combat and character state are handled in RPGs – specifically with how “attrition” is handled. One definition of attrition is “The act of weakening or exhausting by constant harassment, abuse, or attack.” It also refers to losses in an army due to death or injury, or less painfully through resignation or retirement.
Traditional
The traditional model is based on Dungeons & Dragons, which is in turn based on wargaming of the era. In these types of games, attrition is a significant factor, even though the actual loss of characters might be (relatively) uncommon. Health and special abilities (typically spells) don’t automatically regenerate between encounters. If you hit a trap which damages the party in room 1, then they will be wounded going into the battle against the guards in room 2, and they’ll carry the injuries and fatigue with them in the battle against the baron and his thugs in room 3. Expend your best spells sweeping room 2 clean means you won’t have them at your disposal in room 3. You are likely weaker when encountering the final encounter than you were when you started.
Low Attrition
A popular modern approach is to eliminate this aspect of attrition – characters can quickly be restored to full health and power automatically, or through a quick and relatively risk-free action that can be performed as soon as the coast is clear. (I should note that I was a devoted fan of a dice-and-paper RPG that followed this approach for almost as long as I was playing D&D – Champions / Hero System – so the idea isn’t really all that new). Special abilities may need nothing but a few seconds to regenerate or “cool down.” Debilitating effects are often removed at the end of combat in many of these games. Ironically, as older RPGs borrowed their approach from early editions of Dungeons & Dragons, this approach – derived more from action-based video games – seems to have in turn inspired the design of the latest edition of D&D.
Both of these approaches – traditional and low attrition – have aspects of resource management, often in the form of limited-use items or ammunition. So in both, the party may encounter the final boss with somewhat fewer resources to draw upon than they started. In practice, the way I play at least, I find myself looting stuff from enemies as fast as I use ’em in all but the most challenging encounters, so I may actually find myself better prepared to meet the Ultimate Bad Guy of the Last Two Hours.
There are some other side effects of either approach:
Multiple Forays
The staple of “old-school” gaming, the traditional approach generally led to multiple forays against the same enemies – or at least against the same geography. Yes, you can call it grinding – I won’t mind. In the dice & paper games, the modules often included suggestions for how enemies might reinforce their losses or make preparations for follow-up attacks. In computer RPGs, you typically just face respawns.
It may make sense if your approach to an adventure is more like a military campaign (here comes the wargame inspiration again – though only for strategic-level wargames, which I don’t believe were a major influence). But for dramatic purposes, having the boss hang out in his lair ignoring you while you repeatedly make deeper and deeper penetrations into his headquarters just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Traditional CRPGs did a lot of hand-waving and deliberate ignoring of the issues caused by heroes knocking it off and going home to rest up and trade for a week before returning to face The Ultimate Evil.
Varying Encounter Levels
With the traditional approach, encounters can vary wildly in difficulty. The adventurer’s may face a powerful adversary one minute, and them some pathetic underlings the next. They have to approach each encounter carefully, weighing it’s potential threat and expend resources carefully to respond. If you don’t recognize the danger until too late, your party is going to find itself in deep trouble in a desperate fight. But overkill can be just as bad – blowing your most powerful spells and items to wipe out a minor threat can weaken you just as badly as severe damage. Though it’s definitely fun once in a while to face combat challenges with former foes that are now easy to defeat (without being utterly useless).
With the low-attrition model, there’s really no point in relatively weak encounters. The player will never be weakened enough for the encounter to provide any real challenge or threat, and the player won’t suffer any sort of attrition from them to make future encounters more challenging.As a result, encounters under the low-attrition model tend to be pretty even in difficulty and – if the designers aren’t careful (as seems to be the case in Dragon Age 2, according to reports – I’ve not played it yet) – boringly similar and repetitive.
Pacing
Whereas the traditional approach typically suggests a more methodical approach to play and the low-attrition model tends to emphasize no-holds-barred action, that’s not necessarily the case. Players can find themselves motivated to slow things down while waiting for longer-duration effects to “wear off” and for longer-length timers to pop before advancing forward. This can turn into waiting for waiting’s sake, which is not good game design in a single-player RPG (and probably not the best in an MMORPG, either). Sitting and hiding and “waiting it out” is not an activity to encourage.
Traps and Speed Bumps
Either approach can have things like stand-alone traps or damaging environmental effects, though with the low-attrition model designers (or game masters) have to be a little more clever about their effects if they aren’t depending upon instant death as a probable outcome. Under the low-attrition model, there’s not much sense in simply dealing damage to the character. But longer-term afflictions could also just slow down the pace if they can be waited out, which leads to non-fun. But they can still be creatively implemented. And fun.
Which is Better?
While the above examples may seem small, they really make a big difference in the pacing and “feel” of a game. Champions (the dice-and-paper game, not the MMORPG) would have been poorly served by adding much more attrition or resource management. It wasn’t about an endurance match to the final bad guy – it was about over-the-top comic book battles and melodrama with everything you’ve got, every time. The system served to promote a specific kind of pacing and gameplay that was a lot of fun.
As a personal preference, I like the traditional approach better. I like having encounters that build on each other rather than being completely stand-alone. I like having to manage my resources a bit. I like how the traditional, attrition-heavy approach rewards more methodical play and planning rather than just reaction. But it’s not best for every game. Both approaches – and their infinite variants between them – can be a lot of fun.
The concern I have – as always – is the attitude that one approach is “best,” meaning the other(s) are inferior and can be safely discarded. No way, no how. There are a lot of variations on these styles, and tons of room to blend them together at different levels and in different aspects.
Enjoy!
Filed Under: Design - Comments: 15 Comments to Read
Guest Post: The Roguelikes, Part 3
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 11, 2011
Yes, part 3. And this won’t finish it. I wonder if I should rename this blog, “Tales of the Rampant Coyote and Rat” or something. But Skavenhorde continues to delve the depths of the roguelike dungeons, coming up with not only a short review / quick-take of the worlds therein, but a bit of development history as well. This week, we’re looking at two more very popular roguelikes: Linley’s Dungeon Crawl and its derivatives, and Legerdemain. Here’s Skavenhorde:
Let’s start the ball rolling with Linley’s Dungeon Crawl or Crawl for short:
Linley’s Dungeon Crawl was started back in 1995 by Linley Henzell. Henzell left four years later when Linley needed to shift focus to his law degree and stopped developing Crawl. However this was not the end. He released the code under the GPL so anyone could work on it and work on it they did. When Linley left the game was up to version 3.30 and now it’s up to 4.0.0 (beta 26) with a few variants floating around the web. Most notably Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, but we’ll talk about that one in a minute. Unfortunately progress on Crawl has seemed to have halted with 4.0.0. The homepage hasn’t posted any news on it since 2004.
Enough history now for the good part. Crawl is a single dungeon roguelike with the main quest being to delve into the depths of the dungeon to retrieve the Orb of Zot and return to the surface. You’ll of course face an assortment of creatures whose only goal is to stop you on this quest.
From most accounts Crawl is a semi-lite roguelike. Easier to understand and jump right into than others like ADOM.
There 26 races to choose from. You have your usual character races such as humans, elves, gnomes, orcs and halflings. There are subraces such as high elves, deep elves, grey elves, deep elves, sludge elves (I can only think ewww when I first saw that one), hill dwarves, mountain dwarves and hill orcs. Unusual ones such as kobolds, mummies, ghouls, ogres and their subrace ogre mages, trolls, draconians, centaurs, demigods, spriggans, minotaurs, demonspawn, Kenku (violent bird-people) and merfolk.
Each race comes with advantages and disadvantages such as a troll will regenerate very quickly, but learn very slowly and need a large amount of food to survive.
On top of that you have 29 different classes which include everything from fighters, thieves and wizards all the way to summoners, venom mages, warpers, necromancers, reavers and crusaders. The combination of characters you can make with the races and classes are almost endless. At the very least it offers a unique game experience every time you choose a different race and class.
Not all races can become any class they want such. For example: If you choose a human you can start as any class, but choose a draconian and your choices are cut in half. You’ll need to select the race to see just how many classes are available to them. There goes my idea of playing a mummy crusader. I say let the undead stereotypes fall by the wayside. I want my mummy crusader of light and goodness.
All kidding aside this game offers up much more than just a huge assortment of races and classes. You also have skills to learn. Unlike in other skill based roguelikes such as ADOM you don’t choose which skills to increase as you gain levels. In Crawl you become more proficient with a given skill the more you use that skill.
With classes such as venom mage, conjurer, necromancer, warper and elementalists you would expect some unique spells. Well Crawl delivers in that area as well. The magic system is robust and unique enough to offer something new even to long term veterans of roleplaying games.
The religious part of the game is as deep as the character creation process. You have a choice of twelve gods to choose from to worship. I loved this aspect to the game. It offers an even more customized experience depending on what god you decide to worship.
Some characters have a choice of a god to worship when you create a new character. Such as when I started my first game as a demonspawn chaos warrior I was offered a choice between Xom of Chaos and Makhleb the Destroyer. After I chose Xom of Choas the very first message after the welcome was from my god saying, “A new plaything!” It’s little touches like that that make for a wonderful experience playing Crawl. As you gain favor with your god you can get access to special powers.
I didn’t mention mutations in my ADOM mini-review so I should mention them here. ADOM and Crawl offer interesting ways your character can become corrupted. Some mutations are beneficial and some are not. As my screen name implies I am quite a fan of the Skaven race in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle and felt right at home when I first learned about mutations in roguelikes.
There are no sidequests or NPCs to this game which is unfortunate.
From the reviews I’ve read people tend to agree that crawl is a great game to get your feet wet in the roguelike genre. Personally I would still recommend ADOM first since it offers up a more RPG experience, but if that one feels too complicated then try out Crawl and then ease your way into ADOM.
Information:
Review:
Resources:
Advancement of Dungeon Crawling – This hasn’t been updated in years, but there is still a lot of resources on it such as a Beginner’s Tutorial and many guides on every aspect of the game.
Playing Crawl on a server – I don’t know too much about playing Crawl on any server, but for those of you who want to then you can do so here. They have tournaments and a leader board. It’s still active.
Spoilers:
This is a continuation of Linley’s Dungeon Crawl. Stone Soup is available with graphics or the usual ASCII interface. You can play the game either online or offline.
Stone Soup is still in development and as of April of this year they have released version 0.8 that adds a new god, new race, split up the enchantment school and some other odds and ends.
The graphic version of Stone Soup is so easy to play and get right into that I find myself playing it as a coffee-break style game. I’ll jump right into a game with my Draconian Necromancer, play a level or two, die and start all over again. The ease in character creation and mouse driven interface makes this game almost idiot proof. It took me all of 5 minutes to learn basically all the controls I needed to play.
Legerdemain – Now here is a roguelike-ish game that I love. It’s more a true RPG than a roguelike due to its static dungeons, gameplay changes, ability to save and others. Don’t let that fool you this game is hard and complex with a wonderfully surreal storyline to go along with that.
Legerdemain was made by Nathan Jerpe. He coined the phrase roguelike fiction to set his game apart from the other RLs out there. Some RL fans will be disappointed due to the static nature of the game, but I believe it enhances the games flavor and offers something unique among the roguelikes. Specifically it has an actual story. There had to be some concessions made when writing such a game and the randomness of the world was one of them. The other is permanent death. Due to how large this game (not to mention how difficult the beginning is) a permanent death system in this game would have been detrimental to your enjoyment. The heart to Legerdemain is its story and by forcing the player to restart every time he/she dies (you will die a lot) would have made this game unbearable. It’s not like a real roguelike where you can switch characters and try something new with new dungeon levels. The dungeon maps remain the same no matter how many times you restart. However, certain monsters and items do not remain the same. There are static items and monsters as well as random ones.
There is a free ASCII version of the game available on his webpage or you can buy the hintbook and tilesets. The “hintbook” (more a novel than a hintbook) is over 300 pages long and the tilesets offered are well made. Take my opinion with a grain of salt when it comes to graphics. I also think that Ultima 5 graphics are well done. This is due to the fact that I remember CGA graphics and anything better than that is ok, IMO.
The character creation is done by answering question and given a choice of five different multiple choice answers. Anyone familiar with Ultima should feel right at home with this except the answers are not quite as obvious as Ultima. Your answers will affect which philosophy your character follows (what spells he will have available in the beginning) as well as his starting stats, starting skills and interface color.
Each philosophy comes with its own spells. Some philosophies are easier to start with than others. If your characters start with the philosophies of Logos and Chronos then you may have a tougher time in the begging due to their non-combative spells. You’ll need to upgrade your skills in melee and missle as soon as possible to compensate.
There are a total of 12 skills in all ranging from the five different philosophies to combat skills such as melee to noncombat skills as in skulduggery and lore. Each time you level up you are given a choice as to what skills you want to improve. Obviously the higher the skill the better you are at it, but there are also some unlocks. For example when one of your philosophy skills gets high enough you will unlock three additional spells. You will keep unlocking more spells as your skills improve.
You cast spells with a brush instead of a wand and are given your first brush as soon as you enter the game. You will have a limited number of slots available to you to memorize spells. As your skill improves in that philosophy so will amount of slots available to you.
Some of the monsters are recognizable, but are also unique. Like the boogah who have imprisoned you in the beginning seem like ogres with a few differences. As you travel you will come across a variety of enemies that while familiar have their own unique flavor in this world.
One of the differences between a true roguelike and a roguelike fiction that you’ll see as soon as you start playing are question marks that will appear on the game screen. When you cross over one of these question marks a message will appear detailing the environment or giving background to the storyline. You’ll fine your first question mark as soon as you start a new character. As you are walking out of your cell you will come across a question mark which tells you a little bit about how you got into that cell and about your captors. There are also paragraphs that will appear from time to time when you come across something important. You can refer back to those paragraphs at anytime. They are all stored in your ‘philosophers journal’. Which can be accessed by hitting the ‘?’ key. A list of commands, memorable paragraphs, recent messages, local lore (read this every time you enter a new area) citizen interviews, known chants, a list of major characters you have killed and even a search engine if you are looking for a particular word or phrase within this journal.
NPCs can be talked to and can give you quests. The way you interact with them is similar to the old school Ultima series or Wizardry. As you are talking to them certain words or phrases will be highlighted. Type in those words and the NPC will tell you what they know about it. Just like in Ultima learning about certain topics from one NPC and talking about that topic with another NPC might yield more information or even quests.
If you are a fan of roguelikes, Ultima or desire something with more meat on its bones than what is offered by the AAA publishers then you should give Legerdemain a try. It may not offer a unique experience each time you play, but it makes up for that by offering a unique setting, complex gameplay, quests and most importantly a good story to sink your teeth into.
Review:
Play This Thing
Interview:
Tutorial:
Part 2: Escape from the Depths
Part 3: A World of Fractured Sunshine
YouTube: Escape from the Doobah Jail
Once again I have over done it. I had wanted to get into Rogue Survivor, UnReal World, DoomRL and a few of the other newer roguelikes, but that will have to wait till next time.
Filed Under: Free Games, Guest Posts, Roguelikes - Comments: 6 Comments to Read
Because Sometimes Convention Just Works
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 10, 2011
A friend sent me a link to this article by a writer on the indie turn-based strategy game Battle for Wesnoth about – well, about why originality in story is often overrated:
The author states: “One of the most important lessons I’ve learned, and now teach others, is this: genre cliches are your friend. Too much originality can badly disrupt the gameplay experience. This is so at variance with our expectations about ‘good’ art that I think it deserves some explanation and exploration.”
I guess this goes along with my own article, “Why Orcs?” Reading someone else kinda-sorta embracing the same position makes me feel a little embarrassed, because – well, because I personally value innovation and originality, and one of my biggest complaints about the video games industry today is its lack thereof. The whole paint-by-numbers approach to making a top-shelf game.
But it works because it works. Originality and innovation are often unrewarded, while the latest Call of Duty clone / sequel / derivative makes a bundle of cash.
But more to the point of the article above: You can’t reinvent the wheel every step of the way. At some point, you have to fall back on convention, audience expectation, tropes, archetypes, and / or even cliches. And that’s okay. These act as a shorthand for the player, as comfortable and familiar aspects that make it easier to jump into the game and the “interesting” parts of the story.
As the author states, “Creativity is certainly possible under these constraints, but it has to be additive and incremental.” Different games have different thresholds of course, and I think there’s more room in RPGs for unique and creative story elements than in a strategy game.
But I think this article explains to me why, on many levels, I preferred the first Wing Commander (yes, I’m delving into now-ancient history) to the sequels. The characters were much more two-dimensional and cliche in the first game. The story was far simpler – if you could even call it a story. But the simplicity allowed the story elements to do their job and then get out of the way of the game. Not to say I didn’t enjoy the richer storyline of the later games quite a bit. But in the first game, story was clearly secondary to gameplay, priorities which were reversed (or at least brought into parity) in the later titles. And so they fell back on conventions and simple, archetypical characters as a shorthand to the player to avoid lengthy exposition and character development for a pretty wide cast. So you had the “by-the-book” warrior lady, the older retiring “mother hen” guy who looks out for you, the ballsy seat-of-the-pants veteran, the reckless hotshot with something to prove, etc.
It works. A game has to function as a game. If it fails as a game (or just as “interactive entertainment” – maybe even calling it a “game” is too narrow), it may not matter how unique and creative the story is – I’d have been better off watching a movie.
I think the important thing to remember is that there are times to build upon the foundation of convention, and there are times that you need to push the boundaries and try something new. The conventions can provide a good starting point. And those very constraints can in many ways become the mother of invention and the source of creativity, giving designers a framework for their ideas.
But most importantly, it gives games solid, familiar ground to stand or fall back to even while we are exploring something new and wonderful.
Filed Under: Design, Strategy Games - Comments: 7 Comments to Read
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