Utah Indie Night – Fall 2010
Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 29, 2010
I can’t report too much on last night’s event, though if Greg gets around to making a write-up I’ll link to his.
The evening started out with a short presentation about the dangers of Easter Eggs in games to the industry. He noted the Hot Coffee scandal (which I didn’t see as an Easter Egg so much as disabled code that wasn’t properly excised from the game after they realized what a bad idea it was), and how any kind of “undocumented code” can be a vector for exploit by malware. A better example might have been the notorious “himbo” Easter Egg in SimCopter. But the key point was, I think, to place Easter Eggs responsibly. Good advice!
After that, I was one of the many people showing my game to attendees. In this case, the perennial indie night fixture, Frayed Knights. There was a large crowd initially, and I showed some of the new features of the game that I hadn’t shown before. So I guess I did have something to show, after all. After the crowd dissipated to look at other games, I let people play the game.
Watching other people play your game in development is always a fascinating experience. Fascinating and terrifying. But very educational. There are many things to be learned:
#1 – Anything that players don’t seem to “get” without you explaining it either needs to be explained better by the game, or simplified.
#2 – Anything that you feel the need to apologize for while they are playing is a high priority issue that must be fixed.
#3 – Players will play the game COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY from how you, the developer, play. This can help you discover new bugs, open your eyes to new possibilities, and expose your design to the kind of feedback you’d never get on paper.
Thanks to the brave efforts of the guys playing the game last night, they unwittingly provided me with a number of NEW bugs and issues to put on my “to do” list.
UPDATE:
Some more write-ups on the event:
http://monkey-time.blogspot.com/2010/10/utah-indie-games-night-october-2010.html
http://vazor222.livejournal.com/25849.html
Filed Under: Utah Indie Game Night - Comments: 4 Comments to Read
Alpha Is Boring. Except For Those Poor Souls Working On It.
Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 28, 2010
I have been prepping Frayed Knights for the Utah Indie Night tonight. I was kind of excited, because, you know, now it is finally ALPHA. You know, testable. Being tested. Being fixed. As a complete game.
But, uh, that doesn’t leave much to really SHOW. At an indie night.
See, I’ve already shown off most of the individual parts of the game every few months. So people have already seen most of the *pieces* of the game. Now that the pieces are coming together, the real thing to show is… how the game works as a whole.
By cheating like crazy and insta-killing all enemies, it takes me at least fifteen minutes to get from the Pokmor Xang intro to the second “major” dungeon that becomes available – the Tower of Almost Certain Death. Twenty to twenty-five minutes if I hit the two “optional” dungeons available along the way. More if I try and resolve another optional quest. The tower needs some work, and one of the quests is currently bypassed (I need to fix that) which cuts some time out of it, but the tower takes about ten minutes on it’s own if I blitz through insta-killing everything. That’s before you even GET to the Caverns of Anarchy, which is truly the “meat” of the game.
(Note: If you don’t cheat like crazy with my awesome developer commands, aren’t skipping all the dialogs like I am, don’t know the optimal path through the dungeons like I do, actually try to buy and sell equipment once in a while, have to rest periodically and so forth, you shouldn’t expect to run through the game quite that fast. Just in case you were worried about it.)
Nobody really wants to sit and watch me play through that, just to see some dungeons ‘n stuff that they (probably) have already seen before. So much of what we’re doing with the alpha is just getting all the quests and progression working properly, the game balanced out with the appropriate spells, abilities, and equipment matching what’s going on, adding descriptions, dialog, and feedback to things that the player currently needs telepathy to understand what’s going on. And tons and tons of testing and bug fixes.
And really, that’s not much fun to watch. I’m as excited as anything about Frayed Knights right now, but we’re really at the stage of the development process that it’s not about new stuff anymore. It’s about the old stuff getting refined. Subtle stuff individually, but that collectively makes the game look more like a real game than the amateurish hack-job that it really is (oops, did I say that out loud?).
From the outside, alpha’s kinda boring.
From the inside, alpha looks more like this:
On the inside, alpha is a frantic flurry of activity, and it’s an incredibly bumpy ride to turn something that’s not-much-fun but functional into something a real game. There’s just not a lot to show off about it.
Filed Under: Frayed Knights, Utah Indie Game Night - Comments: 9 Comments to Read
Exult: A New Release to Play an Old Game…
Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 27, 2010
There’s finally a new official release candidate for Exult:
Get Exult 1.4.9 Release Candidate
Unfortunately, it wiped out my previous saved games, so I’ve started Serpent Isle once more. This is like the fifth time…
For those who do not know, Exult is an engine that allows you to play Ultima VII Parts 1 and 2, and the expansions, on modern operating systems. Originally, Ultima VII shipped with its own custom memory manager to get around the limitations of DOS, which was supposed to make it easier for people who didn’t know how to configure their expanded / extended memory drivers to get the game to run. What it really meant was a pain in the butt to configure and generally had to have the computer rebooted with a custom boot disk just to play the game. Not such a big deal in the era of the DOSBox emulator, but the whole thing was notoriously finicky. The crap we put up with to enjoy our games back in the day…
Exult uses the original game data from Ultima VII. This means you need a copies of the original games to play them, which is not a trivial matter these days (at least until GOG.COM gets a contract with EA or something). Nicely, however, it does provide options for an improved experience, including a larger playing field (though this has been buggy in the past), smooth scrolling, and the use of higher-quality digital music instead of the MIDI originals.
Oh, and it also has a bunch of developer tools to make your own game using this engine. Ideas? Anybody? Anybody?
If you have access to the old Ultima VII games, I highly recommend Exult.
I installed it and played it a little, and – as I mentioned earlier – found it had wiped my old saved games. If I’d been further along, I’d have taken steps to preserve my save game, but I was really only a couple of hours in. No big deal. So I played a bit, stepping through the dialogs a little more quickly. And I chatted with the knight named Spektor.
His portrait is a digitally modified photo of Warren Spector, who was a producer at Origin at the time. A much younger Warren Spector. Yeah, we won’t talk about how much younger *I* was at the time. But then it hit me – this game is old enough to vote. By comparison, when I started gaming, Pong was an antique at only about nine years old. When I finished Ultima VII : The Black Gate, I was so psyched and in need of more Ultima that I went back on my first major retro-gaming experience to re-play Ultima IV, which was a venerable eight years old at the time.
Eight years? That’s Morrowind‘s age, now.
Freaky.
I really ought to finish this game, though. Eighteen years is too long. But what’s also quite cool is that with Exult, the game really does hold up amazingly well. Yes, the graphics are at a painful resolution and the animation is designed for running at 4 frames per second or something. And – well, the combat is somewhat more hands-off than I remember.
Okay, yeah, it’s dated. But still fun.
Filed Under: General - Comments: 4 Comments to Read
Indie Gaming Poll
Posted by Rampant Coyote on
Feel like fessing up about your indie gaming habits?
Indie Superstar has a poll for you.
I kinda worry the poll will be skewed by the kinds of people who actually hear about it… but hey, ya gotta start somewhere.
Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 4 Comments to Read
The Coming App Stores
Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 26, 2010
Due to the success of iTunes and the iPhone / iPad App Stores, I assume. we’re soon going to be seeing them everywhere. Apple has announced an app store for the Mac that will mimic their mobile app store, and rumor has already linked that Microsoft is planning an app store with Windows 8.
This has some indies more than a little concerned. They remember all too well how the big portals in the casual space were effectively an extinction-level event for smaller, boutique casual games shops. If you were a casual game developer, you either joined the Borg collective, or were destroyed. And even now, indies face potential customers who say things like, “I won’t buy a game unless it’s on Steam.” Or worse, said would-be customer ask in all sincerity, “So why isn’t your game on Steam?” as if it was 1) As simple as filling out the paperwork, and not an enormous crap-shoot even for a quality game, and 2) any guarantee of financial success.
And now, we hear that the O.S. providers are going to be providing / sponsoring the portal…
That’s about like being a small mom-and-pop store and finding out that not only is a Wal*Mart superstore going up across the street, but that everyone on your city council has a significant portion of their investment in Wal*Mart stock. The cards are stacked against you, big time.
What are indies to do?
The option to roll with it and join the ol’ Borg collective again may be an option. Too early to say, but it’s likely. We indies should have seen that coming, once the press and industry in general caught whiff of the potential and the success of certain games. Now, what kind of games these portals will allow, what requirements exist, how difficult it will be to be sold through the portal, what price points will be… that’s all TBD. There could be a huge flight to the kinds of extreme low-budget titles that thrive at the sub-$3 pricepoint like we see on XBox Indie and iPhone. Or we may see something more akin to what’s available on Steam currently. We don’t know.
Another option that may be valid will be to fight back, keep doing our thing, and keep being indie. Use ’em if they make sense, eschew ’em otherwise. Do not forget that if the Windows 8 portal thing turns out to be true, it’ll be Microsoft’s second attempt to replicate their XBOX 360 success with the PC. The first, Games 4 Windows Live, was been pretty much universally regarded as a failure. When you can’t control access to the platform like Apple and Microsoft do for their proprietary platforms, it becomes a lot less trivial to gain the advantages of a monopoly. And attempts to put new Operating Systems under lock-and-key would probably earn far more ill will from consumers than it would be worth.
So this means indies may still be in the game, operating successfully independent of these upcoming 800 lb. (363 kilogram) gorillas.
To help out, Cliff Harris explains how indies are to survive without becoming dependent upon the app stores. It’s pretty much a reiteration of everything they should be doing RIGHT NOW, anyway.
Filed Under: Biz, Game Development - Comments: 7 Comments to Read
Frayed Knights: Skulking in Real-Time
Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 25, 2010
Okay, this isn’t really an update on the upcoming indie RPG Frayed Knights so much as a commentary from the trenches. Since my life these days seems to revolve around this frickin’ game…
As part of alpha, I’ve been going back and cleaning up levels and “modernizing” them with systems that hadn’t been implemented when I first built them. This means clearing out some ugly compromises with … well, less ugly compromises. And other stuff.
So I find myself in the hallway in the underground Pokmor Xang temple from the pilot, hiding from a Pus Golem patrol. This means keeping out of range or out of line-of-sight until they pass by. It’s fun, although most of the time I’m happy enough to just charge the patrol and let the combat resolve itself. But as I’m attempting to balance things out, avoiding an encounter is often the best bet.
There weren’t patrols or visible encounters in the pilot. These are new. So going back and revising the pilot area after all this time is… weird. And fun.
A note from the screenshots – patrols and guards are often represented as a single entity. But you never know exactly how many there are until you fight ’em.
Frayed Knights adopts the D&D combat convention of attrition and resource management of combat. In other words, you may have several fights that aren’t particularly challenging on their own, but in aggregate they wear you down. Sometimes it’s advantageous to try and avoid optional encounters on your way to the tougher fights in a dungeon. But leaving unexplored territory behind you can also be a detriment, as you may find the ones you ignored becoming reinforcements deeper in the dungeon, or that those optional areas contain equipment or secrets that can give you a leg up on later encounters.
Anyway, other than getting a little bonus experience points or silver, there’s not much to be gained by fighting through wandering encounters like this. So it may be advantageous to dodge patrols like I’m doing now.
But there are a couple of things about it that bug me. Frayed Knights is a turn-based game. Quite simply, if the player isn’t actively doing something (like moving), the clock ain’t ticking. If you stand in one place and do nothing, hours of real-world time can pass by without any in-game “turns” passing, spell effects won’t advance their durations, etc. The patrols break this consistency. Patrols are a real-time event. While no new patrols will spawn while you are standing around doing nothing, if you happen to be near the route of an existing patrol, they will encounter you and initiate combat. Which is, naturally, turn-based.
The other, less important issue is that it really isn’t any part of the “old-school vibe” I’m trying to achieve with Frayed Knights. No big deal, but I do tend to give a bit more scrutiny to those elements. And hey, I can think of at least a couple of RPGs as early as 1991 that would allow you do do stuff like that, which is old-school enough to me.
Ultimately, I try and use the nebulous “fun-factor” be my guiding star. I’m having trouble envisioning solutions to this little problem that aren’t more clumsy than the problem itself. So, for now, I’m inclined to simply put up with it and leave it as it is. It’s not a dominant gameplay element by any stretch, but skulking around and dodging patrols (or avoiding them until you are ready) in real-time is a go for Frayed Knights 1, until further notice. I hope people like it.
Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 8 Comments to Read
Telepath RPG: Servants of God Update
Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 22, 2010
Craig Stern tried to bribe me with “exclusive” screenshots from his upcoming indie game Telepath RPG: Servants of God. As he describes it, these are “showing off part of a multi-part, multi-room block puzzle from one of the deadly, trap-filled desert crypts you may find yourself exploring during the course of the game.”
There are spike traps you have to avoid as well, some of which are visible in the screenshot (he implies that some might not be visible, which could be interesting or annoying depending upon how they are implemented. So the game will have turn-based tactical combat. It’ll have tons of dialog and a huge story. It will have non-combat challenges like this one.
Alas, what Craig fails to realize is that I am utterly immune to bribery attempts like this, and furthermore that I am never, ever, EVER hurting to come up with things to write about on a nearly daily basis on this blog. So his clumsy attempts to get me to talk about this ever-more-cool-sounding indie RPG from a guy that actually does have a proven track record of releasing very fine games, including two free browser-based prequels is just not going to work.
I won’t mention the very old-school western RPG approach to dialog that he is flirting with in his recent essay entitled, “Say What You Want: When Dialog Trees Aren’t Enough.” Nor call attention to the second of his voice-actor interviews.
‘Cuz I don’t know who here would be interested in a turn-based, role-playing & dialog-heavy indie RPG like this. Especially one that eschews the traditional Tolkienesque fantasy world, instead going for something that seems to have more of a steampunk-ish middle-eastern flavor.
I hope he’s learned his lesson. I’m just gonna trash this post. Let’s see, the button’s right next to the “publish” button, so I’ll click that and be done…
Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 3 Comments to Read
RPG Combat: Good Reasons Why You Got Your Butt Kicked
Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 21, 2010
I felt like rambling on today a little bit about CRPG combat, and my philosophy on how combat should work in CRPGs. Of course, all CRPG combat systems are different, so it’s very hard find a enough commonality to compare them all. But we can start with the basics. Like getting your butt kicked. So I’ll focus on that.
My belief is that, as a player, you should TOTALLY get your butt kicked in combat from time to time.
Even if the combat doesn’t kill you (especially if you are playing with permadeath, such as via hardcore mode), it should put you on the ropes and / or force you to flee. But my feeling is that if it is not challenging you, why are you bothering? Not every combat needs to hand you your butt like this, but it shouldn’t be a rare event restricted to boss battles, either.
Now, when this happens, it is probably due to one (or sometimes more) of five reasons. Four of the five are due to good, healthy, challenging gameplay that empathize personal player skill and problem-solving. My philosophy on game design is that failure is good, but the player should be able to recognize what they did wrong, rather than the game being arbitrary, nasty, or unclear.
So, if you are sitting at the load screen, respawn point, or simply at a safe place to rest after running for your life and aren’t sure how you got smacked around so badly, consider the following possibilities:
#1 – You were unprepared
You entered the combat ill-equipped to deal with the challenge. Maybe you forgot to wear your protection-from-poison gear into a battle against the Spider God, or you forgot to change your spell load-out from fire-based to frost-based before staging your raid against the Fire Giant Stronghold, or you simply forgot to stock up on reagents or healing potions. Or maybe you are just past due to cut and run and rest up at the local inn. Whatever. This is a situation that is easily remedied the next time, although certain preparations may require additional questing.
Ideally, you should have received hints as to what preparations might be needed in advance. Note to game designers: getting clobbered shouldn’t be the players’ first and only warning as to what preparations they might need to take.
#2 – You need to use different tactics
This is my favorite reason. As the curtains close on your little disaster, you are already thinking of how it can go differently when you find yourself in a similar encounter. A different approach, the application of more player skill, is all it takes to reverse the butt-kicking direction. While the success or failure of individual actions within an RPG may be dependent upon your character’s skill, player skill should play the deciding role, whether it’s methodical turn-based tactical reasoning or clever, well-executed combos in an action RPG.
Good RPG combat should demand different tactics on the part of the player. But it also shouldn’t render a specialized character useless, either. A creature that is, for example, immune to fire should have some sort of vulnerability that the player’s specialized Fire Mage with the pet Fire Elemental should be able to exploit to still win the battle.
#3 – You were in over your head
I’m not a fan of RPGs scaling the difficulty down to match your level. Or in games doling out the content in a measured, linear manner. You should be allowed to go up against challenges well beyond your character’s ability. In fact, it should be up to you to decide whether or not you are in over your head. Some of my favorite experiences with CRPGs have been when accidentally took content slightly out-of-order, and found myself surviving challenges intended for me a couple of levels later.
This may not necessarily mean more level-grinding is in order, however. Maybe the acquisition of certain equipment may be in order, or certain additional tasks might thin out the pack a little bit. Or maybe, if this is a completely optional encounter, this is really something intended for you to come back and revisit later. Whatever the case, this is one of those times where you should probably do something else for a little bit and then come back to it.
#4 – You weren’t really expected to fight this battle
This is an old-school pen-and-paper RPG-ism. Somewhere down the line, players came to expect that they should be able to “clear out a level,” action-game style. Everything should be beatable and beaten before progressing to the next level. Monsters were always assigned to the proper dungeon level based on their difficulty. Why? Why doesn’t the vampire wander around level 1, taking low-level victims?
In pen-and-paper games, players always had options, explicit or not. Besides tackling a dangerous enemy head-on in a brute-force assault, they could hide, bribe, negotiate, flee, entrap, stage a rebellion, or whatever else it took to avoid or overcome an enemy that was just too dang tough. Unfortunately, too many modern RPGs ignore these kinds of options, requiring a straight-up fight. But sometimes the games do provide some clever alternatives to fighting, or ways to turn the fight dramatically in your favor. If I recall correctly, the Rancor in Knights of the Old Republic was a good example of this.
But if you disregard the other options, jump into a fight and get your butt handed to you, well, it was your choice. If the combat was nasty-hard but winnable, then it was actually an interesting choice as well.
#5 – You were unlucky
This is the least preferable choice, and I believe good CRPGs will work to minimize this outcome. Yeah, luck happens, and every once in a while it’s just gonna hand you a load of lemons. The occasional failure due to the luck of the dice is acceptable. But if the difference between an easy win and a loss is sheer dumb luck, that’s not good game design.
Yes, the old, original D&D rules were notorious about this. Did the vampires get initiative before the cleric? Oh, you were gonna take a beating, even if you won. Did the cleric go first instead? Nevermind – it’s an easy fight. (And yes, I do note that one of my favorite indie RPGs, Knights of the Chalice, had this problem a lot).
Not a Reason – The game is just plain nasty, sucky unfair
This doesn’t come up too often with mainstream games anymore, fortunately. But reading CRPG Addict’s blog has reminded me of just how nasty some of these old games were. Did the designers actually play their own games to completion back then? Indie game developers, take note, and learn from the wealth of historical failures.
As a player, I try not to assume that this was the reason for my failure. It’s usually something else. Then again, I never played Wizardry IV, so I don’t have those scars that have never healed…
Conclusion
I personally feel that a healthy, regular dose of defeats or near-defeats for a good mix of the first four reasons are indicators of a good, challenging, fair CRPG. As long as situation #5 doesn’t come about with too great regularity, the game has a pretty firm combat foundation. The key is that the game should demand player skill, judgment, and problem-solving in combat, not JUST running the numbers.
Filed Under: Design - Comments: 11 Comments to Read
How to Honk Off the Indie Gatekeepers
Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 20, 2010
LateWhiteRabbit asked for my opinion on this particularly ugly little feud amongst indie developers for the XBox Live Indie Games channel:
The Controversial Saga of the Zombie Massage Makers
I’m not directly involved with the “Indie Games” channel. So once again, I’m probably talking about stuff of which I know very little. Please correct me if I’m clearly off-base here. But by my understanding, to get your indie game approved and put up for sale on the XBox Live Indie Games channel, you have to adhere to Microsoft’s rules, and then you have to gain the approval of your competitors. Yeah. Your competitors. Call it “peers” if you will, but really – the people active in that community that act as the gatekeepers for your games’ opportunity to even be offered for sale at all are all potential competitors.
It’s not as bad as it sounds. With small businesses and indies, competitors must cooperate out of necessity. They are allies as much as competitors. It’s like if you ran a small specialty clothing shop. You wouldn’t want to be all by yourself in the boonies, you’d rather be surrounded by somewhat similar businesses catering to your same market. Sure, there’s a chance they could steal your market share, but they are probably going to attract more business than they are going to steal away from you. Together, you can grow the pie rather than simply squabbling over the size of the pieces.
Same thing with indie games. Sure, you could say that money going to buy Eschalon: Book 1 is money NOT going to buy Avernum VI. Or you could recognize that every new customer that buys Eschalon: Book 1 is ten times more likely to buy Avernum VI at some point down the line than they would have been otherwise, now that they have “discovered” indie RPGs of this kind.
The serious indies get that. They understand the role cooperation plays. They understand that the “indie games market,” such as it is, is a common resource that they all have to work together to preserve and grow. Just like maintaining the quality of the little shopping district with all the small shops. Microsoft gave the community the power to police itself, and the success of the indie games channel so far is evidence that it’s been successful. Said community has its beliefs on how that common resource is best served and cultivated.
Evidently, releasing “the epitome of a shameless cash-grab” runs counter to this belief.
So when someone goes in, announcing their intent to create a Tragedy of the Commons kind of situation, turning the community’s mutual wool-producing resources into Lamb Chops. The community reacted harshly in response.
Duh.
I guess it’s clear where my sympathies are on this one. Look, I admire an entrepreneur’s attempt to exploit a perceived market need as well as the next red-blooded pro-free-market capitalist pig-dog. While I think the original concept of the Zombie Avatar Massage “game” (toy) is an idea so stupid only a marketing-program flunky could be so uncreative as to come up with it, it could have turned out to be the next Jump To Conclusions Mat. I don’t want to stand between a guy and his dream of making millions thousands from a dumb idea.
But what did these guys expect when they start popping off like that? If your business depends upon passing through gatekeepers – whether it is a community of peers / competitors, or a major publisher, or anything in-between – it’s rarely a good move to start out the relationship by antagonizing them. And if you didn’t know your actions or comments would antagonize them, well, you didn’t do your basic research. Free market Darwinism means you deserve to fail, so please do so swiftly and quietly so you can try again or let someone else take your place.
Besides, it’s not as if they couldn’t have made games for a more open platform, like the PC… But wait! That’s HARD! And it doesn’t get to take advantage of an audience that the community and the platform provider has carefully cultivated already.
In the real world, it generally takes much more time to repair one’s reputation that it does to destroy it, so I can understand how they came under far greater scrutiny for a while. To JForce Games’ credit, they stuck with it, and after a few months were finally able to get games onto XBLIG. Are they “bad guys?” No, I don’t think so. Inexperienced, a little stupid, and a lot arrogant coming out of the gate, but I hope they’ve smartened up and learned a little humility now. Did the community hold too big of a grudge for too long? Maybe. I can’t say. I wasn’t there.
But I think the important point is that JForce Games was able to release games to the channel again after a few months (probably after working a little harder than developers who didn’t flagrantly violate the community’s sense of honor and purpose). Hopefully, they’ve learned their lesson. And I hope they’ll go on to release many wonderful games that people will enjoy and not feel taken advantage of.
I call it a happy ending.
Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 8 Comments to Read
What of the Gaming Journalists?
Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 19, 2010
So once again, I’m gonna talk about something I know little about. That rarely stops me, anyway. Today’s topic: Games Journalism.
Once upon a time, back when it was helmed by Johnny Wilson, I was a big fan of Computer Gaming World. As a poor newlywed college student in a tiny apartment, I had little disposable income. Very few games made their way into my budget, so I had to be selective. Fellow gamers of insufficient means and I would swap games around, often buying them used from each other for cheap-date money.
CGW was my window into the larger gaming world. I read strategy articles and hints on games I did not own. I read reviews of games I wanted, but could never afford (well, at least not until they had been all but forgotten and dropped in the bargain bin). And I had favorite reviewers / journalists, like Tom “KC” Basham and Scorpia. It’s not that I agreed with all their opinions, but over time a lopsided relationship form between journalists and their regular readers. I got to know their style, preferences, and quirks, and respected their opinion (even if I disagreed). Their opinions and commentary held weight because of that long-term reputation and familiarity.
My love of the magazine faded quickly after those two ceased to write for it.
Much more recently, our local newspaper (well, one of the two) just got rid of the movie and television reviewers. Again, it was a situation where we did not always agree with their opinions, but my wife enjoyed their insight and was familiar with their quirks. She found out the OTHER local newspaper picked up the TV reviewer. Guess what? She’s switched papers as a result. Well, websites. She’s added to their eyeball-count.
Nowadays, we Internet making it really easy for anybody – even know-nothing dorks like me – to sound off with an opinion with almost no barrier to entry. And we have companies trying to emphasize their “brand” over the personalities that create it — because they can own and control their brand, but slavery has been illegal in the civilized world for a long time. Aggregate opinion, such as GameRankings, provides a valuable high-level view of a game’s popularity, but obscures the details that allow understanding. These forces work to minimize the perceived value of the expert voice, and to commoditize opinion.
I was deeply saddened by Scorpia’s site closure a little over a year ago, and found myself feeling a sense of loss with Kieron Gillen’s (The “Father of New Game Journalism“) recent departure from Rock Paper Shotgun. But there are new voices still rising, some becoming trusted sources of commentary.
But I guess the point of this rambling is this – a note to websites and those remaining print magazines. Yeah, it’s a pain in the butt to manage people, and a dangerous game to promote individual journalists of whom you cannot demand or ensure eternal exclusivity. But people connect with other people much more so than brands. Attempting to hide the identity of your voices is counterproductive to your long-term health. Look at the success of Rock Paper Shotgun, which will no doubt continue to grow even now that Gillen has left to write comics. Putting the authorship front-and-center, and helping readers become familiar with those authors and gaining that familiarity, is where I think the long-term viability of games journalism rests.
But even more than that, I find disturbing the attempt to hide the subjectivity of the journalist – their own personality – behind a facade of impersonal and supposedly impartial generic reviewerness, as if the opinion was of such empirical fact that any other reviewer would render exactly the same judgment should they be exchanged at random with any other qualified critic. It is as if they are asking to be commoditized. Maybe this is a mandate of the site they are writing for, or maybe it is a style created by self-doubt. But if I was only interested in a generic review by a generic reviewer, I’d check the score at GameRankings and be done.
And it’s not just games journalism, or even just journalism. I mean, that’s a big reason I’ve become such an indie game fan. I love being able to recognize the hand of the individual creator behind a game.
We need to bring the people back. We need more authorship.
Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 15 Comments to Read
Frayed Knights – Revisiting Pokmor Xang
Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 18, 2010
Yes, I’m doing two Frayed Knights updates in a row. One problem with being so focused on making a game is that it leaves very little brain-power left over to think about other things to talk about. Right now conversations with me kinda go like this:
Person 1: “Jay, how was your weekend?”
Me: “Uh, Frayed Knights.”
Person 2: “Jay, did you get that wrapper completed for the interface into the client’s API that was due Friday?”
Me: “Uh, Frayed Knights.”
Person 3: “Hey, Jay, what new indie RPGs have come out in the last month or so?”
Me: “Uh, not Frayed Knights.”
Person 4: “I love you, honey.”
Me: “Uh, Frayed Knights.”
Yeah, I realize this is an unhealthy state of affairs. I mean to rectify it. Fortunately, I usually manage to pull through and say something else that will NOT get me ostracized, fired, or divorced.
My buglist for the game has now doubled in size, in spite of me spending more time fixing bugs than trying to find them. This is not alarming. This is simply my beloved game telling me, “Welcome to Alpha, punk.”
Of particular amusement to me this weekend was going through the tiny sliver of the game that was featured in the Frayed Knights Pilot, the “Temple of Pokmor Xang,” such a long, long time ago. Believe it or not, I have barely looked at this part of the game in something like a year-and-a-half. (Has it been that long? Ugh.)
A reminder on what the pilot was supposed to be: from my perspective, this game is kind of a sequel to the pilot. The pilot served an unusual purpose for me. See, I may be a long-time RPG fan and an experienced game developer, but I have never written a full-fledged RPG before. Hackenslash doesn’t count. Nor do those ancient experiments on my Commodore 64 back in the day. I felt I needed to cut my teeth on something significant, release it to the public, and get feedback. So, like a pilot for a TV series, the Frayed Knights pilot was made to test the idea on an audience, see how the audience responded, and see what key things would need to be changed should it go into full production. Now, what you saw in the pilot WILL be in the full release of Frayed Knights 1, albeit with many changes. But the whole game is a new-and-improved thing based on the technology and experience gained working on the pilot.
In revisiting the pilot, I discovered a couple of things. First off, it was a nice reminder of the amount of detail I’m supposed to pack my dungeons with. Many of the later areas aren’t quite as well detailed, and they need to be. So I’ve got some more work to do. I believe that each dungeon should tell its own story – a story that exists apart from the player’s involvement. And even the Temple of Pokmor Xang is missing some of that.
Another point of note is how so much of the way I’m doing things has evolved since then. In fact, some parts were literally broken because the code had become obsolete and removed from the game many moons ago. Oops! Fortunately, it wasn’t a huge task to bring them back up to modern standards. There are quite a few more changes that need to be made to the temple itself, but nothing else too drastic.
I was also able to note a handful of bugs and issues with the pilot that I actually shipped with. How did I let that happen? Some were really simple fixes.
But lets assume you were to ask me, “Hey, if I were to play the old pilot and then play through that segment in Frayed Knights 1, what differences would I expect to see?” Then I might offer the following laundry-list as the main answers (though having forgotten how the pilot actually played, I’d have forgotten a lot of changes):
- Movement is faster, movement and looking around is a LOT easier, and can be customized by the user.
- Combat has changed substantially, though it retains the same basic feel (abstract positioning, ranks of enemy monsters, turn-based). But aside from that – well, there’s just a lot more to it, requiring more tactical play.
- More intelligent AI (especially with spellcasting), and enemies tend to be much more unique in terms of abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Pus golems, in particular, will have a gross new special ability…
- More special effects and better feedback on actions
- The ability to level up (with a new ability you can choose at every level).
- More hidden secrets.
- An optional special area inaccessible until later in the game.
- The town of Ardin is VASTLY expanded, though you still won’t be able to wander around much the first night.
- You can actually buy and sell from the merchant.
- A brand new inventory system.
- Different areas of the dungeon have titles / announcements as you enter and leave them.
- You should be able to see (and avoid) some encounters before combat begins. And yes, some of the monsters are on regular patrols.
- A little more history and stuff to poke at in the dungeon (and a LOT more in the town).
- The journal will actually update as your quest changes and you discover new things (and you can add your own notes, if you feel so inclined)
- Some loot will be randomized. So it won’t be exactly the same every time.
- Some general bug-fixes and miscellaneous improvements to the dungeon and game.
- And the best part – the story continues from there.
Of course, these are JUST changes to the slice of the game you experienced in the pilot. The game is much, much bigger than that, with about a dozen more dungeons in the game (some smaller, some much larger), outdoor adventuring areas, lots of quests, monsters, NPCs you can talk to, puzzles, spells, items, and overall goofiness.
Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 5 Comments to Read
Frayed Knights: An Impromptu Q&A… And Announcement
Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 15, 2010
Someone in the Closet: Mrrrr… HRRRRRR!!!!!
Someone in the Closet: HMMMM????? MRrrN MRRR-HRR?!?!?!!? MRRRRRRRRLLLLL!!!!!
Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 29 Comments to Read
Halloween Creepiness: A Ghostly Scream…
Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 14, 2010
My wife is now a storyteller tour guide for Ghost Tours. She’s been a storyteller for years, partly specializing the cool creepy ghost stories that get her a lot of gigs in October. That being said, she’s never really had a supernatural encounter – she just loves the kinds of stories that make you shiver.
Last week, she had her first performances of the season as a tour guide. As a junior member of the team, she doesn’t have many. Maybe next year. 🙂 Anyway, she invited a bunch of ladies from the neighborhood to attend (that’s marketing), and they all seemed to have a good time. There are two Salt Lake City ghost tours, hitting different “haunted” historical locations. Both of them end at the Rio Grand Depot, a former train station that is one of the more famous haunted sites in Salt Lake, and is now a historical site and the location of a pretty good Mexican restaurant. They don’t go into the stories of the hauntings (especially in the women’s rest room) of the station on my wife’s particular tour, but our neighbors on the bus already knew the stories.
After the tour was over, a handful of them went to the restroom of the Rio Grande to take care of business before heading home. They got to goofing around, turned out the lights, and tried to creep themselves out. Mostly they were just being silly. However, one girl turned on her record function on her cell phone as they were talking. After all, it was a HAUNTED restroom, so they wanted to record anything that happened.
Nothing did. They had their conversation, left the restroom. Later, the girl played back the recording she’d made.
And freaked out.
Nobody heard it while they were chatting, but on the recording someone in the room (it’s a big restroom) clearly screamed in the background.
It wasn’t any of them, and they were the only ones in the room at the time.
Here’s the excerpt:
Just an anomaly of a poor recording device? Someone from the restaurant screaming that they just weren’t paying attention to (and didn’t cause a commotion)? Some other sound that just sounds like a scream when recorded?
Or a ghost trying to get attention?
You decide.
Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 8 Comments to Read
The Temple of Elemental Evil
Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 13, 2010
Well, GOG.COM is kinda fulfilling my dream scenarios on making old RPGs available, so I guess I’m finally forgiving them on the whole faking-their-own-death thing. This week seems to be about encouraging me to re-buy games I already own.
This week’s double-dose offering includes Betrayal in Antarna as a free addition to Betrayal at Krondor… I already own BaK 1 and 2, and was never really interested in the non-Feist sequel between them, but I have to admit that I’m tempted now.
The BIG news is that they’ve now released Troika’s The Temple of Elemental Evil. I bought this game a long time ago, at a big discount. I never could get it to work on my machine. A little bit of forum reading led me to believe that it was because of the copy protection. The first no-cd crack I tried to grab set off my anti-virus software’s alarms. The second one didn’t work. So I have never, ever played the game. And I keep hearing people praising it, and the dude who made Knights of the Chalice called it his inspiration for his game. I really want to play it.
So I guess now I can. Go me! Now, WHEN I am going to have a chance to play it is a whole ‘nother issue.
Hmm… I still have the pen & paper module this game was based on. Who knows how closely they correlate?
Filed Under: Deals, Retro - Comments: 8 Comments to Read
Real Heroism
Posted by Rampant Coyote on
I’m a sucker for happy endings.
It’s easy to become cynical with all the strife and violence taking place in the world today. But today the story, pictures, and videos of the rescue of the trapped miners in Chile makes me proud to be a human being.
And as a side note – that whole rescue capsule thing. Is that some kind of standard emergency plan, or did engineers conceive of it and build it specifically for this rescue?
Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 10 Comments to Read
Din’s Curse Just Got Cheaper!
Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 12, 2010
Soldak Entertainment has dropped the price of Din’s Curse down to a mere $19.99. This is a fantastic game and well worth the price. You can grab it here:
So if you still haven’t been convinced, the demo remains free (and the brand new demo has a higher level limit, as well).
But here’s the deal, if you still need convincing. Din’s Curse is an action RPG in the style of games like Diablo. But like its predecessor, the also-excellent Depths of Peril, it isn’t content with simply imitating a successful series, but instead really pushed the boundaries of the genre.
The big selling point with Din’s Curse is that each adventure exists within a dynamic world. Not only your actions change how things progress, but so does your inaction. While you are fussing around on level 4, the big bad monsters on level 8 may finally come together in their negotiations, and unleash a plan that causes much pain and badness on the world above. Plans advance.
Some levels are like war-zones, but you can’t just let the monsters kill each other off. From these Darwinian struggles, leaders arrive, becoming new bosses with their own plans to further complicate your own efforts to save a town from destruction. Fortunately, you can use the enemy factions and other threats to your advantage, spring traps on your opponents, destroy the ceiling supports and cause a cave-in against a horde of otherwise lethal adversaries, and that kind of thing.
If it sounds frantic, it’s because sometimes it is. While I’m usually successful, failure isn’t all that unusual. Quests fail, prisoners get lost, enemies advance their causes and can no longer have their evil “nipped in the bud” by a simpler action. And sometimes, entire towns fall. It’s always a balancing act, but it’s a fun one. Fortunately, once the main threats to the town are resolved – the plague cured, the enemies beaten, whatever – you don’t have to move on immediately. There’s still adventuring to be had, albeit at a more leisurely and conventional pace, until you are ready to be transported by the god Din to another town in need of your aid.
While the dynamic world is my favorite part of the game, there’s a lot more to it than that.
First of all, there’s the classes. There are six base classes which sport three specialized skill trees each. Each skill tree has about ten different special abilities you can obtain and improve for your character, and also grant some additional bonuses just for possessing the tree. For example, the Rogue class has special abilities under three separate skill trees – Assassin (granting several abilities to inflict quick death on individual enemies), Trickster (granting skills which confuse and mislead opponents), and Thief (granting skills to pick locks, disarm traps, dodge danger, find more gold, elude pursuit, and more). However, you can also choose to be a “hybrid” class, which allows you to mix ANY two of the skill trees from any of the classes. After subtracting out the ones that are underpowered duplicates of the main classes, that’s something like 141 different combinations to experiment with.
Oh, and did I mention multiplayer? No? Okay. Multiplayer. Cooperative multiplayer. Adventure with friends. Get your friends a copy to double the fun.
Then there’s the usual TONS of randomly generated magical items that you can actually trade between your characters (or friends in multiplayer), a bunch of game difficulty sliders to customize the challenge, and some unique gameplay modes to make the experience even more interesting, and a whole bunch of fan-made mods available for the game, and you have a LOT of game.
For cheap.
So go grab the Din’s Curse demo and try it out.
Have fun!
Filed Under: Deals - Comments: 7 Comments to Read
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