Twelve Games of Christmas #8 – DarkLight Dungeon

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 20, 2010

The full version of DarkLight Dungeon was released today. And for ambitious dungeon explorers, it comes with a potential real-life bonus: A $100 prize to the first player to solve an in-game challenge.

So what is DarkLight Dungeon? It’s an indie first-person dungeon crawler of a definitely old-school western RPG persuasion. It features turn-based, menu-oriented combat; anti-magic zones; square step-based dungeon grids (but with smooth 3D transitions and particle systems); puzzles; trapped chests; exploration; and even *gulp* character aging.

The story (thus far as I’ve played) is hazy in the way that many old-school RPGs always were: You find yourself in a “village” (a small part of the dungeon) with no recollection of why you are there or how you got there. The villagers aren’t exactly sure what’s going on either. Armed with little more than a few gold coins, you explore the village, pick up quests, and start your heroic career bashing on giant rats. Among other things.

The game is classless; advancement is based on leveling up and putting skill points into your various abilities. Your character’s race, along with dungeon respawn rates, determines the difficulty level of the game. Abilities become progressively more expensive to increase as they get more powerful, which pushes me to spread my skill points around and make myself a more well-rounded character.

The game advertised over 200 items, 100 monsters, 30ish hours of gameplay, lots of player statistics, 44 spells, and 15 skills (with 20 skill levels each). The free demo gives you access to a little less than 1/5th of the dungeon, which grants you a significant amount of play time.

I guess I can pretty much stop now. At this point, you know whether or not you want to download it and give it a try.  If you do, click the following link and check it out:

Try DarkLight Dungeon

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Twelve Games of Christmas #7 – Lilly and Sasha: Nexus of Souls

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 19, 2010

So for indie game #7, I thought I’d note indie RPG Lilly and Sasha: Nexus of Souls.  The second game of the series by John Wizard Games, this one literally picks up immediately where the last one ended in something of a cliffhanger. I would not be surprised if this second one ends much the same.

The game series follows the tale of two sisters – Lilly and Sasha. Courtesy of a nasty little nihilistic wizard, Sasha becomes possessed by the spirit of an ancient evil named Zahhak. Time is running out as they quest for a cure before Zahhak takes over Sasha’s mind completely. At the opening of this second game of the trilogy, things have gone from bad to worse.  The cover art to the right pretty much describes it.

I’ve felt that John Wizard Games really makes an effort to make their games stand apart from many of the commercial RPG Maker titles by emphasizing simple puzzle-solving and tasks. That’s commonly a feature that I associate with adventure games, but these games are still solidly in RPG territory. There’s just a lot more to do that straight combat.

Most indie RPG series like this try to make it really easy to jump into the story without having played the earlier games, and Nexus of Souls is no exception. But the way this story is going, picking up where it does, I’m going to suggest in this case that you’d really be best off starting with the first game, Lilly and Sasha: Curse of the Immortals. The story is pretty serialized, and the second game reveals some pretty serious spoilers during the intro. If you are going to try these games, try Curse of the Immortals first.

Try Lilly and Sasha: Curse of the Immortals (Part 1)

Try Lilly and Sasha: Nexus of Souls (Part 2)

Alas, as these are games made with RPG Maker, they are for Windows only. Sorry.

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Tron Legacy – Heir to the Throne?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 18, 2010

I saw Tron Legacy last night in IMAX 3D. I am definitely glad I did. It was one of those movies that really should be experienced in 3D on the big screen. I’ll save you the guesswork now and say I really enjoyed the movie overall, but I also definitely had mixed feelings about it. Part of it was all that I hoped it would be. Other parts were a little annoying. Sometimes more than a little.

As dorky as it was, I loved the 1982 original. It was really lame and cheesy in so many ways – and I knew even then as a kid how cheesy it was – but I still loved it. I wanted to be Kevin Flynn. Not the Kevin Flynn that performed awkward heroics in his tight circuit-suit in the Grid, but the Kevin Flynn who programmed CLU to hack the system. The Kevin Flynn who wrote Space Paranoids and Light Cycles;  who ran his own arcade and who made electronic key-cards to hack very big security doors and cracked jokes while being perfectly at home in front of (or, apparently, inside) any computer.

And I wanted to make video games with visuals that were as good as the ones in the movie. Of course now, we can generate scenes in real-time that look 100x better than the ones they spent hours on every frame in a render farm back in 1981 or so when they were making the movie. But at the time, they were amazing and otherworldly.

As goofy as the movie was, as technologically ignorant, and as poor the acting was on the part of some secondary characters – it was still an influence on me. Possibly a big one, I guess, as I grew up to become a video game programmer. I would probably have done that even if I had never heard of Kevin Flynn. But redundant or not, it was a push in that direction, one I remembered well over all those years. And of course, it was a technological marvel of the time. So warts and all, I stick it on something of a pedestal, and still get a kick out of watching it every few years.

So now, 28 years later, we finally get an official  sequel. The premise had me instantly. Kevin Flynn did return to the Grid. Lots. Lived another life there, really. And then, one day, he disappeared and never returned. Now, years later, his grown-up son finally uncovers his trail, and accidentally goes in after him. The action scenes, the visuals, the computer de-aging of characters, the father-son thing, Bruce Boxleitner’s Alan Bradley, and a lot more were simply awesome. It was exactly what I’d come hoping to see, and I was very satisfied.

But a lot of other things bugged me, on a level that really detracted from the overall movie. Sam’s little rebellion against ENCOM bugged me, showing a complete misunderstanding of how the software industry works. Though I was delighted by the use of actual UNIX commands. Apparently nobody told the scriptwriters why software companies give free or cheap copies of their software to schools and students. Anyway, apparently ENCOM is a big evil corporation because Sam refuses to take charge and give all their software away for free or something. I dunno. Anyway, it presents Sam as a rebel and a daredevil, which explains his success in the games a little better than just being a software guy who plays video games.  The whole rebel thing could have been played up a lot more, but that’s pretty much the end of it.

And that’s a big problem with the whole movie. The set up so many possible metaphors and themes, but never follow up on them longer than a scene or two. It’s as if every half-act was written by a different screenwriter who had a different take on the story and characters.

One thing that this movie lost that I missed from the original was the sense of alien mystery of the computer world. In the first movie, you had a world which had evolved by itself based on human interaction with computers. In this one, almost everything was – in theory at least – by design. There was no guessing as to what real-world analog some feature or function in the computer world was supposed to represent. Instead, we get a very human-style nightclub, patterned after… a real-world nightclub.

And the big mystery of this movie – the ISOs or “Isometric Algorithms” – are treated as little more than a throwaway Macguffin. It’s explained that they changed everything – but why and how and what it all means is left completely as an exercise to the viewer. Surely something so central to the backstory could be explored to a little more depth, huh?

And the whole Rinzler thing – faceless to the very end – honked me off. It’s clear they could have done something much cooler and more heroic and meaningful there. But they didn’t.

As other critics have mentioned, there are definitely pacing issues.  It’s not (usually) a problem of exposition versus action – they seem to be in pretty good balance, and the exposition tends to be pretty character-revealing and satisfying. But there are a few places where there is just a lot happening but nothing going on. There’s not a clear sense of direction or purpose, just a fill-in-the-blank action sequence getting inserted because seven minutes had gone by without a chase or fight.

So these are pretty big issues marring an otherwise pretty awesome film. I’d still heartily recommend it, particularly to anyone who was a fan of the original – but you were going to see the film anyway. For others, well, I’ll recommend it anyway. Especially in 3D. It’s a wild experience, and unlike, say, Avatar, it actually has something interesting (if underdeveloped) beneath the cool visuals and special effects. And yeah, it does feel like an appropriate heir to the Tron “legacy” – warts and all.

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Twelve Games of Christmas #6 – Hegemony: Philip of Macedon

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

Hegemony: Philip of Macedon is a game I only discovered a few weeks ago myself. It’s an unusual real-time strategy game with, like, real strategy.  It is the kind of game we dreamed of seeing as a AAA game years ago, but the technology wasn’t there yet. By the time technology caught up, the mainstream games biz wasn’t making these kinds of games anymore. They’re back to making games about space marines (or modern marines) instead.

You take on the military campaign of Philip of Macedon, father of  Alexander the Great. There’s a lot of historical authenticity built in, but don’t let yourself be fooled for a moment into thinking that means boring or dry.  It’s deeper than about any other RTS I have ever played, yet still remains playable. That’s a tall order, and they managed to pull it off pretty dang well. It’s an impressive accomplishment. There’s a real campaign-based strategy game going on, with the ability to do things like set up supply lines and so forth.  And tactically – well, the tactics are as advanced and interesting as any mainstream RTS out there.

To top it all off, the game is beautiful. I particularly love the smooth transition between the board-game / war-game view of the campaign and the real-time tactical views. They did an amazing job with the visuals.

In fact, I’m going to quit talking about it here, and just let you watch the video instead:

So there ya go.

I hope they sell a million copies of this game. I would like to see more indies doing amazing stuff like this. I’d love to see some mainstream game studios taking a few more risks and making stuff like this (again) too. My general feeling is that this game is a boot to the butt of the mainstream games biz, which quit taking these kinds of risks over a decade ago. The last “historical” RTS was Age of Empires III, and that one pretty much dumbed down everything  I loved about the first two games in the series. I’d love to see Longbow Games get rewarded for their audacity.

If you are interested, head on over to these guys’ website. You can grab the free demo and give it a try and see if it’s your cup of kykeon.

Check out Hegemony: Philip of Macedon from Longbow Games.

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Strategy Games - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Making Big AAA Games: Not the Dream Job (Anymore)

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 17, 2010

Cliff Harris talks about working in the AAA games biz at Computer And Video Games.

He’s done it, I’ve done it. I’ve even interviewed a bunch of mainstream games industry refugees gone indie and wrote an article about it a couple of years ago.

I was reflecting on this a bit earlier when talking about my last employer in the traditional games biz earlier this week. The studio was managed like… well, like too many video game studios. A lot like what Cliffski is talking about above.

It is my belief that a big part of the issues he suggests is a cultural legacy thing. The culture persists even though the situation that spawned it is long gone. It’s probably easier to explain it by first illustrating it:  I don’t know what kind of hours Cliffski puts into making his indie games now. But I’ll bet he’s far happier putting in extra hours and effort when need be now than he ever was working for his former employers in the mainstream biz.

That’s the problem that has been illuminated since EA_Spouse dropped the bombshell open letter several years ago.  It wasn’t that long ago that most or all of the developers had a stake in the success of a game. We had profit-sharing back at SingleTrac. When I was at Acclaim, they’d just recently changed the bonus system to cap the maximum a developer could receive from royalties. As one long-term senior employee explained to me, “I made a LOT of money on WWF Wrestling. I built my house on that money.”

It’s interesting how Acclaim went into a death spiral after this change of policy, huh? I won’t assign causality here, though… merely correlation.

For much of the early history of the industry, the developers were stakeholders. They either got a portion of the profits if the game did well, or they had a stake in the company. If the company did really well, they made bank. So naturally, these early developers were highly motivated to work their butts off.  They had ownership. And so a culture was created around developing games. These guys were cowboys.

Things have changed. Not only do very few individual developers in the mainstream game biz have a stake in the profits anymore, but the royalty structure and competitiveness of the industry has evolved to the point where  the vast majority of games make their studio NOTHING beyond their initial advance.  The publisher takes all (and may, depending upon how tricky the accounting is, actually lose money on the bulk of their releases; one hit pays for a half-dozen losers).

But the culture of the industry has tenaciously remained.  It’s been encouraged by management – because it is completely to their advantage.  They use peer pressure and the supposed glory of working on a big game and maybe vague suggestions (not even promises) of bonuses in the future as motivation. And so the culture persists, even though its foundation has long been abandoned.

Put in all that overtime for free, people, and one day you’ll be able to tell your kids about it! Well, not that you’ll ever be able to settle down and raise a family the way we’re working you, but… well, nevermind.

Curiously, the foundation is alive and well for indies, but I don’t hear the professional, full-time indies bragging much about how much time they put into making their games each week. It could be happening – I just don’t hear it.

Once upon a time, my advice to indies was actually the route I took: Put in your time working for a major developer. You’ll learn a lot. I sure did. But I don’t think that holds water anymore. The team sizes in major studios are so big now that you’ll just be a very specialized cog in the system, without much visibility into the rest of the development process. Nowadays, I’d say that if you are going to work for a traditional studio as a chance to learn your craft, go for a smaller one, working on things like handheld games or downloadable titles.

But even so — traditional studios as training ground for indies is sounding more and more like taking a job a food packaging plant as training to be a chef.  There’s just not as much carry-over of skills. And while once upon a time, I found myself wishing I had been on the team to make some of  the most awesome AAA games of the era, I don’t find myself wishing I had anything to do on the biggest titles today. It’s more likely to be a small-but-brilliant little indie game that makes me say, “I wish I’d written that one!”

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Twelve Games of Christmas #5 – Ella’s Hope

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

Today’s game is Ella’s Hope. This is a full-fledged RPG of the jRPG style which joins the ranks of the Aveyond series and Cute Knight series as a highly-recommended RPG to introduce someone – particularly but definitely not exclusively female – to the genre. It’s cute, straightforward, and girl-friendly.

But it also has several difficulty levels to choose from, to scale the challenge from newbie adventurers up to the more hardcore RPG set. I have been playing on “Normal,” and thus far have found things to be pretty easy so long as you remember to down the occasional healing item at the right time, and take basic advantage of your party’s special abilities.

The story centers on a young girl named Ella (I’ll bet you didn’t see that coming!). Ella is a maid in an inn in Angel’s Gate, a small village in the shadow of a mysterious stone of historic / religious importance. According to legend, it is a marker for a gateway between the mortal world and the world of angels. A group of elite Guardians protect the gate and claim to serve the interests of the angels.

Once a year, trials are held for prospective new Guardians. Individuals of martial and magical skill and high moral character are selected – the best of the best – from all lands, for a chance to become a Guardian candidate. Gifted youth from the village are often invited as well, as an exception to the rule, as being born and growing up in such proximity to a mystic portal is thought to give them some special energy and potential.

Most fail the trials. And even those who pass are not guaranteed to become Guardians – only granted candidate status to train for a chance to join their ranks.

Our heroine isn’t one of the chosen few. A lowly maid and a runaway as a child, she’s not considered particularly gifted. Her story takes a slightly different route. But suffice to say she’s not going to spend the whole game mopping floors or picking up eggs from old lady Maude down the road. She’ll prove quite capable of doing the kind of violence you’ve come to expect in your fantasy role-playing fare.

Anyway, I invite you to check out Eridani’s Games freshman RPG, Ella’s Hope:

Download Ella’s Hope.

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The Twelve Games of Christmas #4 – Laxius Force III: The Last Stand

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 16, 2010

I wish I could say I’d completed all of the Laxius Force games.  But frankly, they are huge… but at least they are reasonably self-contained. They share common characters and story threads, but they are easy enough to jump into without feeling too lost. Or you can feel very lost, if you don’t enjoy the in medias res openings the games sometimes employ. Personally, I do — I prefer that over the overused “Wake up in your bed on the morning of the fair” intro that is all-too-common in jRPG-style indie games. (Hey, I loved Chrono Trigger, too, but c’mon guys…)

The final chapter of the saga – Laxius Force III: The Last Stand – was released this fall. It looks to be the biggest and best one yet. French indie studio Aldorlea Games and founder Indinera Falls have been producing RPGs for quite some time now – at a rate that frankly embarrasses me for my own apparent lack of activity. Each game in the series has improved in quality, though the core game technology hasn’t changed. I think it’s simply a case of the creators being prolific as hell and possessing skill borne of sheer experience and determination over the years. The gameplay is solid, the story and characters are fun, and the sheer quantity of stuff in the game is staggering.

But there’s also playful silliness in all of the games, and a raw informality that can be either off-putting or enjoyable depending upon your expectations as a player. For me, it’s the latter. The polish may not be quite as high as some other indie offerings, but they are solidly entertaining games that – especially by this final chapter – really know their stuff.  To the point where – early in this game and in previous titles – the characters make fun of the very tropes they nevertheless adhere to. In spite of the fact they make no sense, they are still there because they are fun. It’s just how it works.

The latest game promises to fill your weekends for a while, too. Let’s get this first part out of the way, because it’s kind of staggering to my own imagination: Forty-two playable characters.  Somebody’s been reading too much Wheel of Time, methinks.  I thought half as many playable characters from the previous games was impressive. I don’t know how active they all really are (I mean, Sephiroth was technically a playable character in Final Fantasy VII, right?), but I can understand. This is the final chapter of the series, so it is important to have all the old favorites make an appearance. But… wow.

And there is an advertised 100+ hours of gameplay, and more than 150 quests. I can not verify these numbers. I can only say, “Hey, this is a Laxius Force game, I can believe it,” and leave it at that.

Not that I mind, particularly, but in the title screen… how come Random is wearing full plate-mail, while Wendala and Luciana are wearing bikinis? Just askin’. (My wife claims she doesn’t mind the cheesecake in fantasy book & game covers so long as it is balanced by equal amounts beefcake. I’m really not sure I want to see Random stripped down to the loincloth, though…)

Anyway – cool game, give the demo a try. You do NOT need to have finished Laxius Force II: The Queen of Adretana to play (thank goodness, or I’d be hosed!), though you can import your characters into this game if you have. It’s huge. It’s good. Enjoy!

Check out Laxius Force III: The Last Stand

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My Former Boss to Wear an Orange Jumpsuit?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 15, 2010

My former boss, from back when I was working on the Tale of Despereaux game:

This Game Developer’s Next Project is 18 Months in Prison

I could come up with all kinds of snark on this.  But I’m not sure I feel like it. While long-time readers may have grasped that I wasn’t too happy while I was working there,  I don’t feel personally wronged by the guy. Not like most of my coworkers, who ended up being defacto creditors to the company after being promised repeatedly of alight at the end of the tunnel. I left the company when things were clear (to me) that the company was going to crash and burn and take its employees with it.  Apparently, I cut it a lot closer than I thought.

The thing is – while this is a more egregious example of What Can Go Wrong in a game studio, several studios here in the local area have crashed just as badly, if not quite as spectacularly. It can be a brutal, unforgiving business.

I guess another point to bear in mind is that owing money to over a hundred employees is met with stern warnings and easily postponed hearings that never seem to go anywhere. But owing money to the government will land you in prison.

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The Twelve Games of Christmas #3 – Telepath RPG: Servants of God

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

So while my intention for the whole Twelve Games of Christmas thing was to draw your attention to some recent-but-not-totally-new games that you (and I) may have overlooked over the last few weeks / months, there are some new releases I don’t want to neglect. And this one is, I believe, a good’n. And so new it’s actually a pre-release release.

Craig Stern of Sinister Design has finally announced that he’s opening up discount pre-orders for his upcoming Telepath RPG: Servants of God. Grab it now, and you not only get $5 off the release price, but you also get unrestricted access to the game while it is in late development.

This is why I’m excited about this game:

#1 – It’s a turn-based tactical RPG. I’m a sucker for these.

#2 – It’s also very narrative-heavy. With professional voice-acting and stuff. The second sentence isn’t a big deal for me, but it illustrates the veracity of the first sentence, which is.

#3 – It’s a unique setting with a different flavor.

#4 – It’s not in the jRPG-style indie RPG. I love a good jRPG-style game, but they have become so prevalent among indie RPGs that the ones that are not really stand out. *

Check out the Telepath RPG: Servants of God Pre-Order!

Here’s the trailer video to whet your appetite:

(* Yes, we could get into semantic arguments all day about what features make a game of the jRPG style, particularly as jRPGs and western RPGs have cross-pollinated so much, but suffice to say it just stands out. )

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

The Twelve Games of Christmas #2 – The Humble Indie Bundle #2

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 14, 2010

So the second indie “game of Chistmas” isn’t so much a game as five games. And charity. And gift-able.

The Humble Indie Bundle is at it again. With a second bundle. This one contains the indie games Braid, Osmos, Revenge of the Titans, Machinarium, and Cortex Command.  You pay whatever you want. And you decide how much of that will be given to the developers, and how much will be a charitable contributions to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child’s Play.

All games work for PC, Mac, and Linux. And you can apparently gift these games to someone else for a  Christmas / Holiday of Choice / Birthday / Whatever Occasion / No Reason Whatsoever present.

And in the bizarre promotional video category, here’s their… bizarre promotional video:

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The Twelve Games of Christmas #1 – A Kingdom for Keflings

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

I’m only human. (Maybe if I was actually part-coyote, I wouldn’t have this problem).

Between blogging ~5 times a week, frantically trying to finish a relatively major indie game, and running an indie games website all in what was once, long ago, called my “spare time,” things fall through the cracks. Sure, sure, I could maybe quit playing games altogether… but all work and no play make Jay a dull boy. All work and no play make Jay a dull boy. All work and no play make Jay a dull boy.

Uh, sorry, brain went somewhere else for a second. Where was I? On crack! I mean, on falling through cracks! Right. Okay, what I’ve let slip over the last few months is adding new games to the Rampant Games line-up. I’ve got indies annoyed at me for neglecting them. To them, I’m sorry.

So I’m gonna make up for lost time between now and Christmas, as I did in the spring, and introduce several indie games that have been released over the last few months that you may have overlooked.

First of all – and most delayed of them all – is A Kingdom for Keflings PC. This is a hit XBox 360 game now come to the PC. I was involved with its development in the earliest stages, briefly, back when I was working at NinjaBee (a long, long time ago…)

What is A Kingdom for Keflings? Amusingly enough, it kinda-sorta began life as a game-in-a-day project (called “Rome“). At least, Rome was a proof-of-concept. At that point, it was simply an experiment in building a city and helping it survive. Later, at NinjaBee, it was codenamed “Giant,” and then “Kingdom,” until long after I was gone.  But the core city-building and managementpart survived.

The twist is that you play a giant. A helpful giant. That, or you are a normal person, helping build up a city of diminutive folk named Keflings. But you are a giant to them. Anyway, besides simply directing and managing the city, you also get to perform the biggest feats of manual labor.  Booyah! But the little Keflings can be trained to perform various jobs, too. And booted (literally) from what they are doing to do something else.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

It’s a very fun, cute city-building game. While you don’t get to use your cute XBox 360 avatars for this game, you are provided with a number of characters to use as your giant. And you get the downloadable content for free at the NinjaBee website.

You can give it a try here:

A Kingdom for Keflings PC

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Strategy Games - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Blendering

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 13, 2010

I’ve been using an old-and-creaky version of Blender (around 2.43) for a long time, now. I had an exporter I knew worked for my engine (which is no longer being maintained), and I was pretty used to how things worked. I finally upgraded to version 2.49 – which is getting a little bit old-and-creaky on its own, but AFAICT that is the last version my exporter supported.

It took maybe a half-hour for me to get it set up with the last known update of the exporter, and to test things out to verify they worked. Maybe another hour to learn new ways Blender 2.49 does things over the older version, and to explore the differences in how the exporter now expects data to be formatted. There may be more to know, but it for now I’m productive.

And then I spent about another half-hour or so re-learning stuff I thought I already knew. As it turns out, there are far superior ways of doing things, like UV mapping and rigging, than I’d been using. Techniques that apparently existed even in my creaky-old version. Techniques that probably would have cut twenty or more hours out of my schedule had I taken the time to learn them two years ago.  That may not sound like much, but that’s a very good week of part-time game development for me.

So I guess the lesson is that while there’s no training as good as just hands-on doing it when it comes to game development, you do need to take some time for additional learning. Especially with tools as complex as a programming language or a 3D modeling package.

What keeps occurring to me is that I need to be better on the art side of things. While I may be able to get by to a degree with stock off-the-shelf content and a few horrendously underpaid contractors building up their portfolio, I still need to be able to do it myself when push comes to shove. Why?  Well, let’s see… I’ve had one artist disappear on me, and another one that’s had massive Internet and real-life issues. Content purchased off-the-shelf is rarely exactly what you need, and will often need customization to fit your game. And even if it’s a team member who is actively producing quality stuff, oftentimes there are quick, minor changes that may need to be made at midnight – like moving an origin or mount node around, or fixing a minor texture bug – and it is easier to just make those edits on the spot. It helps to be able to speak to an artist in their own language, as much as possible, so being fluent in the issues they face getting a model to look and work right is handy. There are times where you just need something small done quickly and can do it yourself, or when the rest of the team is overtasked and you can take up a little bit of the slack.  And finally, as I’ve said before, an indie should be able to carry the project on his or her back if necessary for whatever reason.

I still need a lot of practice.

I struggle somewhat giving myself time to practice, as I realize that for the immediate future, it’s not the most efficient use of my time, and my results are sub-par. But at least I can see that I’ve improved a lot. So something is working. I clearly suck less. I’m always about sucking less…

I’m not applying the same logic to music, though. At least not yet. One thing at a time.

So that’s my excuse for spending all my dev time this weekend working on something that looks like a cross between a manta ray, an alien face-hugger, and the Starship Enterprise. It was all about learning, see. And practice. And maybe, with about four more animations and a few more changes to the model, replacement of stand-in content with final art.

Filed Under: Art - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Happy Seventeenth Birthday Doom!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 10, 2010

On this day, in 1993,  Doom was released to the public as a shareware release. It was uploaded to the Software Creations BBS, and on an FTP site popular for its repository of shareware games.

Why, oh, why, did it have to be during the study week before final exams at my school? 🙂 My computer could barely handle it.  My grades may have suffered because of it. But it was awesome. And hey, it’s probably had a bigger influence on my career than any classes I was taking that semester.

But it was something of an indie milestone as well. Shareware in the 80’s and 90’s were what indie is today.  And while there were many successful shareware games before Doom (including id’s previous titles, Wolfenstein 3D and Commander Keen), Doom was something of a phenomenon. Bypassing the publishers and what accounted for the “mainstream” distribution system of the day completely for its initial release, it still achieved sales numbers that would have made it a solid success as a boxed game of the time. But there were no middlemen taking their cut this time, which meant big success for shareware studio id Software. The popularity propelled them further with the traditional commercial release of Ultimate Doom, and the traditional release (only) of the sequel, Doom 2. Not to mention the console versions…

For a time, the upstart shareware developers – the indies of their day – got to enjoy center stage in the PC games hobby. And PC gamers,  for a little while, got to be envied by their console-gamer counterparts. Besides being an amazing game in that era, it was also a bit of a coming-of-age for indie game development. Though I’m sure that aspect was not on the team’s mind when they fought to get the file uploaded to the server at full user capacity seventeen years ago.

I wish I knew what happened to my copy of Masters of Doom. I loved that book, which told the story of id Software through the release of Quake – pretty much the story of John Carmack and John Romero. I will probably have to buy a new one, as it’s valuable reading for any indie. Inspirational, motivational, cautionary, though probably not all that educational.

Anyway – happy birthday Doom!

And as a bonus – here’s a little interview with John Romero about indie game development. Interesting stuff, though his attitude here seems to be that indies are more of a fertile creative ground from which mainstream developers can cherry-pick the best ideas…

Filed Under: Geek Life, Indie Evangelism, Interviews - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

A More Compelling RPG: More Thoughts on Might & Magic 1. And X-Com.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 9, 2010

My post Monday was about how the old-and-creaky Might & Magic 1 somehow being more compelling (and, let’s face it, more fun) to me to play after three hours in than Bioware’s recent heir apparent to the Baldur’s Gate legacy, Dragon Age. The discussion around the post was, in my opinion, far more interesting than the post itself. It kept me thinking about why the older game worked for me on a level that Bioware’s title did not. While I grew up on games of that era, I refuse to simply chalk it up as just an artifact of its familiarity.

So here are a few more of my thoughts. This is going to be some weird and fuzzy thinking-out-loud stuff; probably not as fun as Monday’s post. But I wanted to talk about exception-driven gameplay. And X-Com.

The Exceptions Make the Rules- And Make the Fun!

In the early stages of Might & Magic 1, you are barely getting the hang of the basics of the game (assuming you RTFM – a necessity!) when the game starts lobbing surprises at you. It plays with the rules of the game. The rules are still consistent enough to be considered “rules,” but it’s the exceptions that surprise and delight. And they are everywhere.

Walls are walls. Except when they are secret doors. As you are figuring out the best ways to use magic against similar groups of enemies, you hit one of the mercifully-infrequent-and-small anti-magic areas where you must rely on other techniques. The guys in the front of the group face the brunt of the fighting. Until you get into a situation where the bad guys mix it up in the middle of your party.

Then there are trap-door squares that drop you to another level where you have to hunt your way out. There is an “arena” room where you may choose to fight in a gladiatorial death-match to the cheers of an audience. At certain dead ends you are told “Don’t Turn Around,” a warning that, if unheeded, result in a monster attack. Stuff like that. It keeps you hopping, and challenged.

Maybe this all goes away later in the game, and they just packed the early areas with the most interesting stuff. But I don’t think so. But for now, for me, it feels that every time I push a little further forward, ranging a little further from my ‘safe spot’ at the Inn in Scorpigal, I am finding something new and different. That’s what the thrill of exploration is all about.

By contrast, many modern games have much more complex and interesting rulesets, but then so much of the game fits neatly and consistently within that system. They make the experience of opening the door, killing the monsters, and grabbing loot a lot more interesting (well, even that is arguable), and especially the talking-to-people-in-villages part. But it’s too streamlined – not jaggy enough. Notable exceptions and surprises are much more rare.  The almost random, nonsensical stuff of the older games (and this includes the approach to dice-and-paper gaming back in the day) were goofy, but exciting.

Naturally, the problem as a game developer is that it’s a lot easier to work with the system than to keep creating exceptions to it. But exception-driven gameplay is just as important as a good story in making an RPG compelling.

The Metagame – The X-Com Connection

Like many PC gamers of the early-to-mid 90s, I fell in love with X-Com: UFO Defense (AKA UFO: Enemy Unknown across the pond).  However, there are many games since then that have tried – and failed – to capture my attention the way X-Com did.

You know what would have ruined X-Com for me (or at least weakened its appeal considerably)? If it had a branching storyline with fixed battles (even if I could have chosen to skip some or take them in a a different order).  Or if it had a fixed “window” of funding and resource gain throughout the game to make sure things never got too easy or too hard – so that I was always facing an “appropriate” challenge for whatever stage of the game I was in. And if it had fixed team members that couldn’t perma-die.

Gee, sounds a lot like a few modern RPGs, doesn’t it?

The thing that made X-Com so awesome for me was the meta-game. The individual battles across the globe weren’t just obstacles in my path to the shiny door at the end of the level. They were all interconnected via a higher-level strategy game where every ammunition magazine counted (at least to a small degree). Resource management was important. Your discoveries – and progression through the game – hinged upon achieving goals in the mission, but the goals were player-directed, not pre-determined on a mission-by-mission basis. Did you capture a live alien this time? Cool, have your researchers learn more about the enemy, and future battles will go better. You may even open up a whole new level of warfare (psychic)! Do a poor job defending that terror site in Buenos Aires? Or skip it altogether? Fine. But watch your funding from South America dry up. Are you getting too successful in your battles? Expect the aliens prepare a counter-attack. Hopefully you didn’t send all of your squaddies out on missions so there’s nobody left to defend your installation and scientists.

This greater context and interrelation – which the player helped define – for every battle was what made the game for me. It was all about the meta-game. RPG fans talk about “choices and consequences” as a holy grail of RPGs, but it’s not just about the big things, or about whether you choose to act like a douchebag or a saint when a villager asks for your help. All the little things add up.  Including the opportunities or problems you didn’t know you missed.

I get some of that from many older RPGs. Obviously, the accumulation of loot and experience points do this in most RPGs. Many older RPGs had much more of a resource-management aspect to them than they do now, as resting outside of an inn was risky business, and you were often burning through other resources (torches, lockpicks, food, potions, magic gems,  etc.) that would need to be replenished. Might & Magic games included a money-sink of leveling up that made acquisition of wealth even more critical, and the (annoying) concept of age. Then there were conditions like disease or blindness that could only be healed by higher-level spells or a trip to the nearest temple (and a donation of gold). Discovering new spells and, of course, new magic items. And always, always the matter of how far your hit points and spells would last you between resting periods.

Even just exploring and revealing more of the map on an otherwise uneventful foray could feel like progress. Especially when, as above, there were so many interesting things to explore and discover. It wasn’t just a series of obstacles between point A and point B.

Maybe for many players this all feels like busy, boring make-work, and all they’d rather do is go straight to the “best parts” – fighting, looting, and seducing NPCs. They’d rather just play the soldier, executing orders dictated from above with perfection and style, than be part officer participating in the planning and logistics.  But for me, that extra layer of context and control makes the rest of it all the sweeter. And it is the absence that makes “grinding” feel nearly pointless.

It seems that in a lot of RPGs today, that whole meta-game layer has been replaced with, rather than supplemented by story. A strong, compelling story is a virtue, and I’ll be the first to admit (as I have many times before) that traditional storytelling runs counter to the goals of interactive game-playing. But I don’t feel an either / or situation is strictly necessary.

I have praised on the Persona games plenty already, but I think this was why they worked out so well for me. In addition to having an intriguing (and freaky) story, the “meta-game” aspects of relationships, fusing new personas, pushing deeper into levels, fatigue, jobs, and the opportunity costs of all those activities added a layer of play that transformed otherwise pedestrian jRPG game mechanics into classic games.

Please Ration the Exposition

In Might & Magic 1, the entire plot of the game is hidden, to be pieced together via clues and quests. The only reason I know more about it at this point has been because of spoilers. And one cryptic clue (thus far). There’s lots of stuff in the game, but the exposition is doled out slowly (too slowly?) over the course of the game.

A modern trend in RPGs (not just by Bioware) is to drop exposition in HUGE CHUNKS. You feel compelled to talk to an NPC until you exhaust their meticulously scripted options, or until you die of boredom, out of fear that the opportunity to pump them for clues or optional quests will go away forever (when the bad guys destroy everything behind you, or whatever). And since you are in a town or castle full of these talkative folks with deep backstories (that’s a good thing, right?), you spend a whole lot of time trying to digest exposition in massive info-dumps.

I don’t know the solution to this one, sadly. I love multifaceted storylines and deep characters as much as the next RPG fan. Once I have a reason to take an interest in an NPC I have a tendency to probe them mercilessly for personal questions that have nothing to do with the story. Now you can argue that the exposition overload is self-inflicted, I’d counter by saying it is a learned response.

Brain-Dump Overload

It’s probably hypocritical of me to complain about that last point in a post that’s going on as long as this one. So I guess I’m about done.

I’m not a guy who believes that newer and flashier is better, or that older is somehow better, either. I’ve said many times that I feel that what is sometimes termed the “evolution” of the CRPG genre was really just a push along a presumptive path to bigger and bigger audiences, and as a result has lost some really great ideas of the past that would still be valuable today.  This was a problem even back in the heyday of the genre, when every new RPG released tried to mimic its most successful competitor.

My hope is that RPG developers – indie and mainstream – will take the time to look back and feel free to borrow from the things that worked in the past, as well as try new ideas today. Because as I understand evolution, it only comes about through a diversity of competing traits. Lets see more of that!

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 20 Comments to Read

I Got Them Indie Game Developer Blues

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 8, 2010

The fist-pumping internal manifesto:

I’m an indie game developer!

I’m here to change the world. To fight back against The Man. To show the industry how it’s supposed to be done. To do it my way. To go back to how it was done, when teams were small enough that an individual could make a difference, and imprint their games with the stamp of their own style, personality, and uniqueness.

I’m here to do something awesome.

And then the reality sets in:

There’s not enough time (or money) to do everything I want to do. I don’t have enough talent or skill to do things as well as I wanted to do them. Some of my most brilliant ideas are really duds. On some things, The Man was right all along, having learned from hard experience.  A tiny team means individual weaknesses and faults show through, too.

I have made the same mistakes I’ve been ranting against. Sometimes knowingly. And continue to do so.

And ultimately, the reality of the release falls short of the awesome vision of my imagination.

It’s the indie developer blues. Or maybe it’s just that I suck. But my ego demands that I assume this is common for all – well, at least most – indie developers. I keep saying that game design was easy back when I didn’t have to do it. It’s easy to be a game player and see the weaknesses in your favorite games and tell yourself, “I could do better if I had the chance.”

But indies seize the chance. And discover (Sophie Houlden’s encouragement notwithstanding) that making games is hard. And a lot of not-so-fun work. But I salute the ones who make it happen, who face the frustrations and disappointments of reality and produce something cool anyway.

UPDATE: The point (does there have to be a point?) of this post was not to whine, and I am glad that this isn’t the case in the comments.  I was just noting that going indie is a tough road, and to state the respect I hold for the indies as a community for persevering and doing what they do. While this isn’t my first rodeo, it’s always a challenge. When I come up for air and think “How the hell am I gonna pull this off?” it’s these indies I look to for inspiration.

Filed Under: General, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

The Chart of Bioware Clichés

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 7, 2010

So it’s old. It’s new to me. Neener.

Courtesy of Hellforge (and hat tip to Morinar…)

Click for the large, more readable version of the chart… 🙂

Now, okay. Let’s be honest here.  It wouldn’t be hard to pick any handful of random RPGs (or other genres) and make a similar chart based on common story elements. At some point Scorpia coined the term “Foozle” to describe the ubiquitous evil wizard / demon / sorceress bent on dominating / destroying the world at the end of most 80’s RPGs (and, well, a good chunk of RPGs today, too, so long as we’re being honest…)

The jRPG-style games are even worse.

And frankly, the reason formulas appear at all is because they work. It’s all about the details and execution.

But it’s worth noting, nevertheless. When things become too predictable, they become uninteresting.  RPGs have a wonderful potential to tell some awesome stories, but designers need to take care that they aren’t just telling the same story over and over.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 16 Comments to Read



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