Defending the Lack of Class…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 21, 2011

Brian “Psychochild” Green has a post today defending skill-based RPG systems versus class-based ones.

Stay Classy at Psychochild’s Blog

He’s responding to a post at Elder Game:

Classes vs. Open Skill Systems

This is an old argument that has been going around since at least the early 1980s.  And both authors here outline issues with both systems.

For those who don’t know what they are talking about here:

Class-based systems are those in which your character has a particular class, role, or profession that structures how you can increase your abilities. For example, if your character is a fighter, you may be given limited or no access to spellcasting abilities, whereas a wizard will be a poor fighter. In a “pure” class-based system (like the original D&D game), your class and “level” pretty much dictated everything there was to know about your character’s abilities. Otherwise, it was equipment and starting attributes that provided variation.

Purely skill-based games allow you to build your character’s abilities piecemeal, rather than as a “package” of benefits that comes with class-based increases. Want to hit better? Buy a better attack. Want to cast better spells? Upgrade your spellcasting and buy new spells. Something like that.

Skill-based systems grant much greater flexibility in customizing characters. That seems a clear advantage with veteran game-players. But it comes at a cost. And it’s much harder to balance, as a game designer.  Can you make sure that your game plays just as well for the player who put all his points into Basket Weaving and Joke-Telling as the player who put them all into Handgun Accuracy and Physical Fitness?

Then there are the hybrid systems, which most games tend to be these days – though that’s a pretty wide spectrum. These games may dictate some primary progression by class, but then leave the player with freedom to buy additional skills or abilities. That helps keep all players on a more even playing field, making sure characters always have their core bases covered, but still gives them the chance to be a fighting-mage or a rogue specializing in social skills.

Which is best? While it’s easy to note the clear advantage (and success) of systems that trend more towards the “class based” camp, I’m going to agree with Brian and say it really depends on what you are trying to achieve with your game.  My general rule-of-thumb is that if the game has you playing a solo character, more skill-based systems that allow the greatest flexibility work best. But where groups of characters need to work together in a team, it’s generally better for a system to lean more in the class-based camp with enforced complimentary abilities.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

My First Dungeon That I Wroted All By Myself

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 20, 2011

Dunno why my brain was going there, but for some reason I was thinking of the first(ish) RPG I ever wrote. No, it wasn’t Hackenslash. I don’t remember if it even had a name. It was a game for the Commodore 64 that I wrote (in BASIC!) when I was a kid. For sure, it was the first one I wrote which anybody other than me played.

The dungeon was represented with character graphics in the Wizardry-style 3D view. The C-64 had some simple graphics tiles you could use for making games, especially card games and simple maze games. I wussed out a little bit, though, and only displayed one room at a time. With doors. I’d done tech experiments where I rendered more complete halls, but the more important consideration for this game was the size of the dungeon.

You see, I made the dungeon 10 rooms x 10 rooms x 10 levels. That’s 1,000 rooms / squares. If I only used 1 byte per room, then it only used up 1K of my available 38k or so of working RAM (the core operating system and BASIC language and reserved memory ended up taking up the rest).  So the entire dungeon was generated at the beginning of the game inside of 8 bits. They were arranged something like this:

Bit 0: If set, there was a door to the north.

Bit 1: If set, there was a door to the east.

Bit 2: If set, there was a door to the south

Bit 3: If set, there was a doorway to the west.

Bit 4: If set, there was a staircase going up to the previous level here.

Bit 5: If set, there was a staircase going down to the next level here.

Bit 6: If set, the player had visited this room already.

Bit 7: Don’t remember. Probably unused.

In the random maze generation code, I would have to reciprocate the values. So if one room had bit zero set (north door), the room to the north had to have bit 2 set (south door). Of course, the idea was that you could also have one-way doors and stairs that way, too, but I never got that far.

All monsters and treasure were generated at random. When the player entered a room, it checked bit six to see if the player had been there before. If not, then it generated a potential encounter at random. It also generated a treasure at random.  And it set that bit for future reference. If the player had been in the room before, there was a much smaller chance of a random encounter, and no treasure.

Separate from this 10 x 10 x 10 array, I also kept track of the location of the big treasure of the dungeon – I think it was a mystic orb or something. It was always somewhere on the last level of the dungeon.  If you entered the room with the orb, you automatically picked it up. Probably before combat happened.

I’d intended to have equipment in the game, which were really just higher bonuses to attack and and defense. I think I had two spells – an attack spell and a healing spell, cast by a magic user and a cleric. And – oh, yes, it was party-based. You had to make your party in advance. I had fighters, magic-users, clerics, and thieves as the core classes. And like so many RPGs, the thef was a pretty useless class. I intended to have traps in the game at some point, as an encounter type that the thief could bypass, but I never got that far. And equipment never happened. You COULD level up, though, and every gold piece you picked up in the dungeon added to your experience point total.  There was no other use for gold.

I had some very rudimentary, cheesy sound and music for victories, and no graphics for the monsters.

The random dungeon generator made sure there were no doors that led past the edges of the map. But otherwise, it simply assigned doors randomly, making sure every room on the map had at least one door. usually two or three.  Stairs were scattered about more randomly, but all levels had at least one staircase going down.  Often 2 or 3. Of course, this algorithm didn’t guarantee that the every room was accessible, or that the game was winnable.

Maybe at higher level, your magic user was supposed to learn some kind of passwall or teleportation spell. I don’t know that I ever really thought that far ahead.

But I did have a couple of friends come over to play it, and we had a silly time making characters, fist-pumping the air when my off-key victory music played.

The code is long-gone now. My memories of it are less than perfect.

At least I can say that Frayed Knights is a better game than the one I wrote when I was fourteen.

Filed Under: Programming, Retro - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Welcome Back, GarageGames

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

I really didn’t like the name “TorquePowered” anyway.

Looks like they’re back, they’ve got funding, and they have returned to the original core values from a few years ago. And for a little while, they are offering all their engines for the sub-$100 price point.

Good news across the board, I think:

Welcome Back, GarageGames

More info at GamaSutra on GarageGames

The best news (besides $99 for the engines) is that they’ve managed to retain most of the Torque dev team.  Congrats and good luck, guys!

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

Attack of the Clones

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 19, 2011

I don’t have issues with certain things that are called “cloning” games. Everybody copies / borrows game mechanics, UI layouts, control schemes, and whatnot from successful games. If we had to reinvent the wheel every time we made a game,  we’d lose the advantage of standing on the shoulders of giants. Great ideas are meant to be inspire others, be adopted by others — and then improved upon, or remixed with better ideas. That’s how we progress. That’s how we got from Doom to Duke Nukem 3D, and from Wizardry to Bard’s Tale. Or from Dungeon Keeper to the upcoming release Dungeons (I hope!).

But wholesale copying / reskinning of a game? Blatant replication of innovative game mechanics without adding anything of substance to the mix? And especially stealing assets (or code) from a game to make a clone? Not cool.

In other media, it doesn’t matter if you’ve added your own sentence here and there, swapped some words around, and changed the font. It’s still called plagiarism.

It can be a fine line. In the casual game arena, I remember (but apparently not too well) when a game came out called Fairies that was an out-and-out rip-off of Bejeweled Chuzzle. Not cool. Reflexive’s Big Kahuna Reef, on the other hand, took the basic gameplay from Bejeweled and innovated, throwing a lot more twists on the core match-three concept. Cool. A more marginal case was the gazillion-selling Diner Dash, which was a clone of the much more modest Betty’s Beer Bar. I didn’t play much of either game, but from what I could see, the former at least added a great deal more polish to every aspect of the game, including the gameplay. From my uninformed perspective and distant memory, I’d call it “Iffy at best” if I’m feeling charitable, but most likely belongs in the “uncool” category.

But then we have these sad cases:

#1 – An indie makes a game, shows it to a MAJOR PUBLISHER, gets turned down. But shortly after their game becomes a moderate hit, said MAJOR PUBLISHER suddenly releases a clone.  This one might charitably be seen in the  “iffy” category, but the core idea was so original and different that the genesis is pretty obvious. Plus there’s the fact that it’s a big game company ripping off a tiny indie, especially for a game they’d looked at and then “rejected” — that smells bad. Really bad.  The offending company in this case is Capcom, ripping off the indie X-Box hit ‘Slosion Man with their mobile device game MaXplosion.

‘Splosion Man Maker Calls Capcom’s MaXplosion “Complete Theft”

At least Capcom has come relatively close to apologizing for their behavior. About as much as they can without leaving themselves open to a lawsuit the indies can’t afford to engage in.

Capcom ‘Saddened’ Over Its ‘Splosion Man’ iPhone Rip-Off

#2 – This is more of an indie-versus-indie thing, but the offending party is not worthy of the modest title of “indie.” Here they ripped off a Flash game completely, merely substituting the main character art with art stolen from another Flash game, and threw it up onto the App Store for iPhone.

Did EdisonGame steal The Blocks Cometh from developer Halfbot?

Sheesh. There are lines that should not be crossed.  I know that these are not the first nor will they be the last time crap like this happens. But innocent, hard-working indies are the ones getting screwed here.  Bad news all around, topped with bad sauce.

Filed Under: Biz, Casual Games - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Indie RPG News Round-Up – January 2011

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 18, 2011

Here are some exciting developments in indie-RPGdom that have been taking place over the last month or so. Since I asked, people have provided me with some links to some great roguelikes this month, many of which were not even on my radar. And maybe not on yours, either. I want to thank the community for your assistance in scouring out the news.  Sorry this was delayed a bit, but frankly — it’s a big one this month.

Here you go:

Swords & Sorcery – Underworld

Version 1.06 – the expected “final” version – has been released on this game which takes obvious inspiration from the original Might & Magic game (and others of the era).  The explanation of the changes can be found here, in a post that also briefly touches on some of the reasons this patch was so long in coming – very sad real-life issues that have nothing to do with game development.  Indie gaming reminds us these games are made by real, individual humans, I guess.

Whatever the case, this little low-tech-looking game has some old-school western RPG heart, and entertaining gameplay. It’s certainly worth a look if you haven’t tried it yet.  Just be sure to get a look at the instructions on the website first – while the gameplay is a little more intuitive than many of the games it was inspired by, it’s still not a game I’d advise without ROTFMing first.

Sword & Sorcery – Underworld at ClassicGamesRemade.com

Din’s Curse / Demon War

Din’s Curse is currently up to version 1.014, with patches that fix both it and the beta of the Demon War expansion (if you’ve pre-ordered and have access to the beta).  You can check out the changes here. Or just grab the patch here.  A description of the Demon-Hunter class (from the expansion) and the three skill trees associated with it (Reaver, Warden, and Demonologist) can be found on the Din’s Curse Classes Page.

Dungeons of Dredmor

This is a graphical roguelike that looks pretty sharp. Scheduled for an April release, it’s got attitude, good looks, and old-school gameplay. And 87 bazillion cheeses. Yeah, I think this has the potential to be very, very bad for me…

Dungeons of Dredmor at Gaslamp Games

Legerdemain

I’ve been hearing rumblings from a lot of people about this surreal but highly entertaining roguelike. It’s been out for a while, but never mentioned here, so I thought I’d remedy that problem right now. As the game is described:

Legerdemain takes place in a strange and cracked fantasy world called Phenomedom. You assume the role of an imprisoned magician seeking to learn the nature of your captivity. Along the way you’ll uncover vast conspiracies, morbid secrets, and the secrets of ancient puzzles. You’ll likely slay a few thousand monsters along the way too.

Legerdemain draws heavily upon interactive fiction and Roguelike games to provide an experience focusing on story and depth of play. From interactive fiction we inherit elements of scene description, exploration of new environments, and conversation with the game’s inhabitants. From Roguelike games we derive a top-down two-dimensional perspective and numerous strategic elements. Legerdemain’s glyph-based UI is also reminiscent of Roguelike games, but here we forego ASCII for the myriad and more modern conventions of Unicode.

You can check it out yourself at the website:

Legerdemain at Roguelikefiction.com

Inaria

Okay. This one is special to me. Many summers ago, I decided to take up a challenge to write an RPG – from scratch (kinda), with no engine and no non-freeware tools or resources – in a single work-week (40 hours).  Something I really ought to do again without quite so many restrictions one day… 😉  Anyway, Anthony Salter (Viridian) took up the challenge himself and did the same thing. Better than me, I think. He created the game Inaria.  He’s now gone back and is upgrading the game and giving it some real attention, with the intent to create a commercial product. It’s planned for release on March 6th, 2011… his birthday.

The screenshot to the left is from the latest (as of last week) version of the game. You can check out the original here:

Inaria Postmortem

Caves of Qud

This is a far-future, post-apocalyptic roguelike, which has just entered open beta.  It requires .NET, which is a little unusual, but you can check it out here.

Darkwind: War on Wheels

The massively genre-blending turn-based 3D auto-combat-racing strategy / RPG hybrid  Darkwind: War on Wheels was recently updated with two significant features.  First of all, there is now checkpoint-to-checkpoint racing in the wilderness. Secondly, they’ve provided an addition of player-created quests (!).

This is an online game, but the core game is free with no time limits – create your characters and compete Car Wars style in races, death-races and arena combat.

Darkwind: War on Wheels

Magical Diary

From Hanako Games, makers of the Cute Knight series, comes the next anime-style game that is likely to cause me to lose development hours and manliness points, but the truth is her games are simply way fun. This one sports 3D dungeons, too. Entitled Magical Diary, it is a story / sim / role-playing game about a school for young wizards. But not quite like the one you are probably familiar with from a certain book and movie series that will not be named here. 🙂

And it’s now available for pre-order at a reduced price.  Hey, everybody’s doing it! You can check out the latest screenshots there, too.

Magical Diary at Hanako Games

LambdaRogue: The Book of Stars

I dunno what this trend is about roguelikes with graphics and intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces. Don’t these guys know that impenetrable interfaces are half the charm of these games?  Seriously, guys… 🙂

But, okay. I gotta admit. Color me intrigued on this one. It offers multiple resolutions, and an ASCII text mode for the hardcore who can’t enjoy a roguelike without the ASCII. But more intriguing is that this seems to have a well-thought out world and history for the player to explore. I haven’t tried this one out yet, but I hope to be able to soon.

LambdaRogue: The Book of Stars

Rogue Survivor

“Rogue Survivor is a free zombie survival roguelike sandbox game with unique features and modding support. The game takes place in a town famous for being the headquarters of the powerful CHAR Corporation.You wake up amidst the chaos and you must find ways to survive.”

Dang! This thing is feature-laden. Again, I’ve not played it yet, and I know all too well that what sounds great on a bullet point may not be that exciting in implementation. But… well, I’ll leave it to you to judge.  Then you can tell me about it and convince me to alter the order of my giant RPG-playing backlog YET AGAIN. Meanies… 😉

Warning – from the screenshots, it looks like it does contain adult language. Not that this should surprise anybody at all about a zombie apocalypse game.

Check out Rogue Survivor

Driftmoon

I’ve mentioned this one before, but the game is now in Alpha 3 and still in pre-order stage.  You can check out the latest updates here.

Aveyond: The Darkthrop Prophecy

Hey, I couldn’t get away without having at least one traditional jRPG-style RPG on the list, could I? But this one is a real winner, from the award-winning Aveyond series.

The final installment of the Aveyond: The Orbs of Magic series has been released! If you’ve been following since the first game (Aveyond: Lord of Twilight), you already know about this one. Young rogue Mel has gone into hiding now that she has discovered she has the powers of magic at her command. But her best friend – and ousted heir to the throne of Thais – searches her out, in hopes that they, with their other companions, can prevent the Darkthrop Prophecy from ever being fulfilled.

Check out Aveyond: The Darkthrop Prophecy

Age of Decadence

The latest screenshots and this combat video leave me with little doubt that this game is going to kick all kinds of serious butt. It also looks like it’s pretty far along. With my luck, it’ll release the same week as Frayed Knights. *Sigh*.

More info on Age of Decadence here.

Recettear

Japanese indie RPG / item shop game Recettear has managed to sell over 100,000 copies. For an indie game, that is nothing short of phenomenal. And no, we won’t even try to compare it to Minecraft’s 1 million copies. That’s in a whole different plane of reality. Anyway, many of these sales were at deeply discounted prices, so it’s not exactly a slam dunk, but localizing company Carpe Fulgur has an interesting commentary on what hitting this figure means – and doesn’t mean.

Frayed Knights

I guess I have to sneak in an update here on Rampant Games’ own upcoming indie RPG, Frayed Knights. As has been reported, there is now somewhere north of 75 unique feats for characters to take, and spells – well, let’s just say that with the spell upgrade options, the total number of spells available to characters (and monsters) has gotten a little on the crazy side. There are over 100 base spells now, and each one sports an average of about four additional variations / upgrades.

Combat and AI have been modified significantly to make fights much more tactical and interesting.  There’s now a functional monster journal, and lots of general improvements to the overall game. Right now, work is winding down on general game bug-fixes and improvements, and focusing on very specific problems (this chest in this dungeon doesn’t work, there’s no quest journal update after this conversation, this monster is still using stand-in art, etc.) It’s a very, very exciting time for me.  You guys are missing out… 😉

Planet Stronghold

Winter Wolves Games has posted a video explaining how “aggro” works in the upcoming science-fiction story-based RPG, Planet Stronghold. MMO players (or anybody who has played the indie RPGs Deadly Sin or Deadly Sin 2: Shining Faith) will have no problem understanding the concept, but here’s the video anyway…

End of Line…

And that’s it for this month. In spite of the size of this month’s round-up, I’m sure I’ve missed a few newsworthy items. Please inform me of my gaps in coverage, horrible spelling and grammar, and even  my poor table manners, in the comments!

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism, News - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Matt Chat Interview with Brian Fargo, Part 1

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 17, 2011

Brian Fargo, founder of Interplay, gets interviewed by Matt Barton (author of “Dungeons and Desktops”) this week. Discussion primarily revolves around the early history of his involvement in the games biz, including discussions about who was the best Dungeon Master at Interplay, the development of Bard’s Tale, what made Wizardry such a strong title back in the early 1980s, and and so forth.

It’s long-ish, and there’s more to come.  But if you are at all interested in the early history of CRPGs, this is well worth the watch.

There’s also a donations page to support Matt Chat, if you feel like putting something into the ol’ tip jar for him to support these shows.

Filed Under: Biz, Interviews - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Arx Fatalis – Source Code Now Freely Available

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 14, 2011

If you wanted to take apart a reasonably major RPG and dissect it, seeing how it works, now’s your chance.

Arx Fatalis Source Code Now Available

There’s also the latest patch for the game (still patching it after all these years! Awesome!) at the same location.

The source code uses the GPL 3 license, which is (IMO) pretty restrictive if you wanted to actually do something like make a commercial game out of it.  But it’s definitely possible, especially if you aren’t planning on updating the code much – just making a new game out of the core engine (and make your source code available to all). Or you can mod the old game to your heart’s content. Or simply look through it and see how it works.

Fun stuff. For those of you who wear a programmer hat sometimes, enjoy!

(UPDATE / Note:  Sorry, I know I’m injecting my own opinion about GPL here, one that is NOT shared by all developers. As mentioned in the first comment below, GPL is not inherently prohibitive of commercial release of software, and has a number of success stories. But I feel the viral nature of the license, the problem of compatibility between different licenses for other libraries, and so forth make it very difficult for a company that actually releases software as a product rather than a service.)

Filed Under: Programming - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

RPG Design – More on Simplifying

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

I played through the first couple of levels of the first Eye of the Beholder game the other day (“research”).  I’d only really played the second game in the series to completion, so it was fun to revisit the original (well, original AD&D-branded imitation of Dungeon Master, at least).  Going through a couple of levels, I was struck by the simplicity of the game.  Even compared to other RPGs of the era.

Strip out any economy. Gathering gold – typically a staple of D&D-based RPGs – is outta there.

Strip out NPC interaction outside of combat. Or any idea of “quests” (which hadn’t quite gelled as a regular feature  of RPGs at the time anyway).

Story is paper-thin, without much more plotline or background than your run-of-the-mill roguelike.

The gameplay is really just three things:

#1 – Solving a maze. With lots of puzzle-like obstacles blocking your way, involving things like keys or other objects to be found, lever / pressure plate puzzles, teleporters, spin-tiles, figuring out solutions based on cryptic hints or riddles, illusionary walls, and so forth. Basically enhanced versions of the same fare we’d seen since Wizardry 1.

#2 – Real-time combat. With challenge being more in managing the real-time aspect than any kind of tactics.

#3 – Exploration – generally to get the clues / items you need to solve the maze (#1), or to make sure you got every piece of needed gear or food (or experience point) needed for #2.

It’s easy to see how those simple mechanics can get exhausted after a single game, let alone a series. And to a degree, they were. Yet going back and playing after a long hiatus from this style of game was fairly refreshing, and also compelling. Particularly when they mix the three activities above together, and let you build on those individual skills. Use those traps and doors to your advantage in mid-battle!

Though people who claim Diablo isn’t an RPG might be on thin ice defending the label for this game. Although EOB was based on the original dice-and-paper role-playing game rule system, it seems to me that  Diablo incorporated more traditional RPG elements.  (As an update – I don’t have a problem calling either one an RPG, though they both illustrate some of the breadth of the description).

Compared to this, many modern games (including my own) feel like a mess of subsystems. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s interesting to look at this game through the lens of a couple more decades of RPGs. Just like playing a game like Desktop Dungeons today, it’s interesting to see what can be done if you strip out some of the additional trappings of the genre and focus on really maxing out a few elements.

Simple and clean works. I should take my own advise. Someday.

I wonder what someone could do today with a similar focus, but two decades of more advanced technology? Could we get more three-dimensional puzzles? No doubt we could get more interesting combat. As I recall, Dungeon Master – the inspiration for Eye of the Beholder – had more interesting combat.  Or at least spellcasting. Maybe with a decade and a half of hiatus, what was old may be new again, and some fresh ideas injected into a classic design.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

RPG GOTY 2010 Voting

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 13, 2011

Just wanted to direct your attention to this poll at RPG Watch:

Game of the Year (RPG) Awards 2010

You actually get three choices for your first, second, and third-place choices. I wonder how they are going to weight it? If one game is on almost everybody’s second-place award, but no game is a consistent first-place winner, would everybody’s second choice be GOTY? I don’t know.

There’s also a very scary question about your choice for the WORST RPG of 2010. Ouch.

Scariest of all is a question about the most ANTICIPATED RPG of 2011. Not to try and influence anybody (especially with some pretty exciting mainstream and indie RPGs expected to drop in the next twelve months), but Frayed Knights *is* on that list. Just sayin’.

So if you have a desire to sound off with your opinion, go pay the poll a visit.

Filed Under: General - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Then and Now…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 12, 2011

Some things change. Other things… not so much.

Then:
Arguments would get heated over Colecovision vs. Intellivision vs. Atari

Now:
Arguments will get heated over XBox 360 vs. Playstation 3 vs. Wii.

Then:
We’d keep pumping quarters into a machine for extended play.

Now:
We keep pumping digital dollars for DLC for extended play.

Then:
Pirates would buy a pair of floppy discs for $2.95 each to store an illegal copy of a game, and then spend another couple of bucks photocopying the copy protection questions. They claimed it was because the games were too expensive.

Now:
Pirates won’t even spend that much to legitimately buy a deeply discounted sale-priced game.

Then:
Television pundits and self-appointed community protectors freaked out over a video game where you could drive around in a car and kill people (Death Race).

Now:
Television pundits and self-appointed community protectors freaked out over a video game series where you could drive around in a car and kill people (Grand Theft Auto).

Then:
We’d pay as much as $80 for major computer game. Which was equal to about $140 in today’s dollars.

Now:
$60 is the recently-raised top-tier pricepoint for a game. Which is equal to about $60 in today’s dollars. Of course, after you buy all the DLC, it might be closer to $140 soon…

Then:
Ports from the arcade machines either required a joystick to play on the computer, or were nearly impossible to play.

Now:
Ports from the console either require a joypad to play on the computer, or are nearly impossible to play.

Then:
You might have to drive across town to find a store that carried the game you wanted. And if it didn’t carry it, you’d have to mail-order it.

Now:
You can buy a new game for your iPhone while you are sitting on the can.

Then:
A game made by three guys in six months would sell for $50. And people would complain it was too expensive.

Now:
A game made by three guys in six months sells for $5. And people still complain it is too expensive.

Then:
98% of the games out there were crap.

Now:
98% of the games out there are still crap. But prettier.

(And we only remember the 2% of the “classics” from previous eras that are recognized as classics simply because they weren’t crap.)

Then:
Half the games were brain-dead clones of recent hits.

Now:
Half the games are brain-dead clones of recent hits.

Then:
RPG fans joked about when we’d see Ultima XV or Wizardry XV.

Now:
Final Fantasy XV announcement expected imminently by RPG fans. No joke.

Then:
Women didn’t play video games! Well, almost never. Except for those who did.

Now:
Women don’t play video games! Wait, what do you mean Farmville is a video game? No it’s not, it’s a… a… oh.

I could just keep going. But I know you really wish I’d stop, so I’ll stop now. And let you take over…

Filed Under: Geek Life, General - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Does GIMP Cut the Mustard for Indies?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 11, 2011

Here’s an explanation as to why professional artists prefer Photoshop to Gimp , I guess:

Why GIMP is Inadequate

I’m not a professional artist, so I doubt I’m qualified to comment on the author’s specific points.  But the arguments seem reasonable – and GIMP (I guess it’s just GIMP now, and no longer “The Gimp”) development being down to just two main people does sound a little distressing.

The 8-bits per channel per layer thing does surprise me a little bit, I confess, but that’s really all that most consumer-level video cards can display anyway. As I understand it (and folks can TOTALLY correct me if I’m wrong, here, thanks), green is the only color that the average human eye can distinguish greater than 8 bits of depth with, anyway. However, the author’s point is that it’s the potential degradation over multiple operations that’s more of the issue here, potentially causing posterization (or, as we in the games biz tend to call it, “banding”). I imagine that it might get noticeable.

Potentially, it could even get ugly… but nothing like what we saw when we were playing games with 16-bit colors (5 bits per channel). Oh, yeah, the late 90’s…

But I’m not even sure that’s a problem anymore. The latest version of GIMP supports the GEGL framework, using 32-bit floating point values for linear light RGB, though it still uses 8-bit channels by default. Does that resolve two of the author’s issues? It sounds like it might…

But bottom line: as an indie, should you hold off on licensing those new sound effects or whatever for a bit so you can save your pennies to buy a copy of Photoshop?

I can’t speak for all of the indies out there, and there are a lot of whistles and bells that Photoshop offers that Gimp simply doesn’t. At least not without third-party plug-ins. But seriously… for me, making textures which scale down to 256 x 256, or icons? Gimp pretty much offers everything I need.

I mean, how much do you need for something like Terry Cavenaugh’s best selling VVVVVV? Or Minecraft?

Not all indie games embrace the 8-bit aesthetic, of course, or voxel-based pixel art. And honestly, as far as I know, the art for both games was done in Photoshop.

I’d hate to relegate indies to some kind of visual gutter and say, “Bah, indies don’t need high-end graphics.” That’s BS. But I’d still say in general that the concerns listed above are pretty much of an overkill for most indies. I’d argue it’s at least “adequate.” I’d be more concerned with making sure Gimp works really, really well with all of the remotely popular tablets out there. And has more of the cool filters and so forth incorporated into Photoshop.

But that’s not entirely the end of the story. Blender has become one of the big success stories of Open Source development, and part of the reason for that is that it has catered to the needs of the high-end artists. I’d say at this point that I’m not using 95% of Blender’s capabilities, while I’m probably using 60% – 70% of Gimp’s.  The high-end and professional artists have made some marquee, showpiece examples of their work done with Blender, and Blender has not been shy about showing these off. The adoption of Blender has been due in no small part to these examples.  They prove the potential of the software for those who have been on the fence. They have become opinion leaders.

I don’t think the same could be said for Gimp. Yet. But I think it’s certainly got the potential to get there.

But in the meantime… I’m still using it, and I don’t pretend my meager artistic skills come anywhere close to pushing its limits.

Filed Under: Art - Comments: 16 Comments to Read

Send Me Your Indie RPG News…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 10, 2011

Have you heard about new (or upcoming) indie RPGs / Roguelikes in the last month or so? Updates? Something interesting going on with indie RPGs or otherwise newsworthy that hasn’t been mentioned here before?

Please send me the info for an upcoming indie rpg news round-up:

Filed Under: News - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Flash Love Letter, Set To Music

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

Based on DanC’s “Flash Love Letter” article from 2009 explaining why Flash was such a powerful platform for indie game developers, somebody has now gone and put  (a hyper-abbreviated version of) it to music.

I laughed my butt off watching this thing – so be warned if you are watching at work. But I think it’s one of those things that’s only funny if you are a developer, or closely follow the industry, particularly w/ respect to “social gaming.” Otherwise your reaction might be, “Huh? Do I want to buy flowers?”

As DanC suggests, this is effectively a Cliff’s Notes version of his essay. But the point is (for prospective indies still scratching their heads) – this is how the industry has adapted to the platform and figured out how to make money with what was effectively “free” games on a free (but almost ubiquitous) platform.

Filed Under: Casual Games - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

The Race to the Bottom

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 7, 2011

A fellow developer observed the following the other day:

Back in the 1980s, we used to dump quarters into arcade machines to play just a few minutes of a game.

Now, gamers grumble and agonize about whether or not to pay a few quarters to permanently own a ridiculously sale-priced indie game.

Painfully true. Even for me, and I’m a regular buyer of indie games.

Back in the day, we’d dump $0.25 in the slot (which was probably worth twice as much in modern currency) just to play a game once. I dunno about you, but the very first game would usually last about one minute.  It took a dollar or two just to gain a base level of competency. After you’d spent that much, however, it usually meant you liked it, and you might return to the same game over and over again. After dozens of dollars, you might get pretty good.

I don’t really want to think about how many quarters I dumped into the Shinobi machine so that I could finally beat it on a “single” quarter.

Nowadays, an iPhone game costing more than a couple of dollars, total, will be met with loud complaints. Steam sales had a bunch of indie games at $5 or less all last month, and even the newest ones were steeply discounted into the $10 or less range.

Oh, as a consumer, I’m loving it. I went on an indie-game buying binge in December, with all the sales and expiring pre-order deals.  Some of those games I bought I haven’t even installed yet. The key commodity for me nowadays is time rather than money, at these prices.

But I do worry about this. Is this kind of thing driving a consumer expectation that indie games should only sell for $5 or less? Are we racing to the bottom of indie game pricing where only those games that can sell a hundred thousand copies are more are profitable?

Arcade games back in the 1980s were built with a very specific purpose, and that was to maximize the number of quarters dropped in the slot. The kinds of games you’d find in the arcades were often very different from the ones sold in the stores. You wouldn’t play Ultima or Wizardry in the arcades. No, you’d get games like Tempest. Fast action, quick bursts of fun, and it would offer you bonus points if you started at a more difficult level to maximize your score (and minimize your play time). It was designed for that market.

That seems to be where a lot of indie games are going. Cheap, disposable, quick entertainment. As a game developer, building a sustainable business around making these low-budget games would mean cranking them out every couple of months or so. That’s doable – and in fact, even kind of attractive to me as a game maker. At least you wouldn’t get bored!

But are we getting to the point where a consumer will balk completely at paying more than $10 for an indie game, no matter how big, deep, and compelling?  I hope not. I mean, the marketplace is the marketplace, and it’s not usually very profitable to fight the trends.

There’s another option, already popular with online games, and it’s also borrowed from the arcades. I will never know how many quarters I put into the Shinobi game.  My total cost of ownership (well, pwnership) was hidden. I only played $0.25 at a time. That could be how bigger games might thrive in the current marketplace. A dollar or less at a time. I don’t prefer that option – I’d rather plunk my cash down once and forget about it. But that could be the wave of the future. Or the present, if you consider how many mainstream companies are pushing premium downloadable content.

Interesting times.

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 17 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights: The State of Alpha

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 6, 2011

I figured I’d provide a li’l ol’ update on the development of Frayed Knights, that piece of RPG vaporware that’s getting way too serious & deep for something that’s supposed to be all tongue-in-cheek & stuff. It was also supposed to be released by now, if I recall way back when as I was designing it to be a “quick & dirty” project. Heh.

Are you guys tired of hearing about it yet? I always feel a little weird discussing the game here every week or two, after such a long time. I feel  like some annoying kid who won’t quit saying, “Hey, I’m gonna write this game one day, and it’s gonna be so awesome! Better than Halo!” Release your freakin’ game, and then we’ll talk, kid.

Well, Frayed Knights is not ready for release. Yet. Though the light at the end of the tunnel is getting a little brighter. It occurred to me the other day that that Frayed Knights is literally the most complex, detailed game I’ve ever worked on in my entire career. There’s one indie MMO I worked on that came close, but I only worked on pieces of that. But Twisted Metal? Jet Moto? Warhawk? Those were simple arcade-ish games designed to run inside of 2 megs of RAM (not including texture memory and level changes).  Plus, they had a team of several developers, and a budget about 400x more than mine.

Making things worse, I’d developed some of the systems back in the early days of FK development to be WAY too complex and flexible. I’m not using half the capabilities I designed for it, and it has made things harder to develop (complexity = more work).  Silly me. As much as I rail against “kitchen sink design” (throwing in everything but the kitchen sink), I have fallen into that trap myself. And now I have to figure out how to balance all that crap. Brilliant work, Jay.

(Have I mentioned that besides having 75 76 77 unique “feats” characters can take in the game, that the spell list is GIGANTIC – probably something like around 500 spells if you include the “upgraded” versions? Yeah. I’m an idiot. Nobody’s gonna use all those.  They are gonna stick with a tiny subset…)

I suppose my rambling right now is probably indicative of my thoughts on the game. I’m jumping around from system to system, fixing things here, replacing things there, and tweaking things somewhere else. The game has been “playable,” start-to-finish, for a few weeks now. So now my efforts have been focused on making it complete, making it polished, and most importantly making it fun. Here’s kind of a breakdown of what I mean:

Making It Complete

• Many sound effects & music are missing.
• Most areas still don’t have in-game mini-maps.
• New spells topped out at only 5th level or so – I’ve been relying on upgraded lower-level spells for testing.
• The equipment list was also woefully inadequate for higher-level play.
• Monsters were missing their special abilities.
• Feats were barely present.
• Several dungeons were missing anything but their primary quest line – side paths were merely some lame combat encounters and low-level stand-in treasure.
• We’re still using stand-in graphics in many spots.
• The player’s party goes from being loquacious to taciturn in a lot of areas. Much more dialog is still needed, especially to help clue the player in to what’s going on. Right now players still need to read my mind too much to know what to do next.
• Many quests still don’t have journal entries yet.
• Many rooms / buildings are bereft of any but plot-critical details. Need more interior-decorating passes.
• There have been some small (or medium-sized) features people have requested (or I requested of myself) that sounded like they’d be REALLY COOL and a great addition to the game, and so I had to stick them in. Because I’m a sucker for feature creep.
• And so forth…

Many of these have been remedied over the last couple of months, maybe more than half, but there’s still a lot left to do. I don’t feel comfortable going to “beta” until that is all done. At least many of these are among the more “fun” things to work on.

Making it Polished

This is mostly bug-fixing. We’re still working on high-priority bugs (or a few small “must have” features).  The game is never going to be Blizzard-level of polish. But for me, polishing is basically going through and fixing the things that suck most. As those get refined, things that used to be acceptable now suck by contrast, so you fix them. The game still holds too much suck for me feel super-comfortable with releasing it to many external alpha testers yet, so it’s mainly been a team-based alpha testing thing so far (or “friends and family” testing, but they are loathe to criticize…)

Making it Fun

This basically comes down to three things:

• Providing more feedback for the player, so they can better tell what’s going on, and understand how their actions are impacting the world.
• Providing more interactivity – making sure there’s always plenty to do and explore. As always, provide “interesting decisions.”
• Making sure the activities (especially combat) are balanced, challenging, and interesting.

A lot of this is going to be addressed in Beta, but I need to make sure we’re at least in the ballpark now. We’re not, yet.

But somehow this crazy thing is actually getting close. I know I have done a lot of things “wrong” and could have done a lot of things better, but hey… that’s what sequels are for, right?

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 13 Comments to Read

The Top Freeware Indie RPGs of 2010

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 5, 2011

I’ll give you a hint:

The #1 freeware indie RPG of 2010  rhymes with “pesktop pungeons.”

Top Freeware Role-Playing Games of 2010

Kinda weird that The Spirit Engine 2 is on the list, but I suppose it did kinda-sorta go “donation-ware” this year. Was it this year? Man, it’s hard to keep track…

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: Read the First Comment



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