RPG Design: Declaring Victory. A lot.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 17, 2013

I’ve been doing a little bit of course-tuning of the combat system for Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath, which is to be expected as I’ve radically changed some significant aspects from … well, anything I’ve played before.

The spell system, which is quite possibly the most complicated spell system “under the hood” ever seen in a computer RPG (the same could probably be said of Frayed Knights 1: The Skull of S’makh-Daon), has been the subject of a lot of this attention. As I am trying to balance things out on a rough level and make sure that circumstances may demand different tools, a painful thought came to mind:

All these painstakingly coded spell effects, ultimately, all do the same damn thing.

Not exactly, but ultimately all combat is a “race to go slow” – you are trying to get the enemy to zero health before they get you to zero health. That’s  pretty much it. And so every spell effect – and all the dynamically generated spells in the game are all built around that very simplistic goal. Every effect is about increasing your damage output, decreasing your reception of damage (or its impact on you), or some variation that allows you to better conserve resources (like gold) so you can be more efficient in your damage-dealing / damage-taking.

That third bit is something that was more common in older games, but seems to be a layer of depth that is getting removed from more modern games, in favor of simpler, flashier games. So that’s something. But as a hardcore long-time RPG junkie, my feeling was that the very nature of combat and victory conditions may be a limiting factor.

We’re frequently limited by one of the very things we’re so focused on in most RPGs – the simplicity of combat and victory conditions. It’s generally a very binary thing. While there may be opportunities for either side to flee, for the most part it’s kill-or-be-killed, using a single indicator (health, hit points, whatever it is called) as the deciding factor.

In the real world, combat is often more of a means to an end. Two or more sides have a goals that they wish to achieve (or deny to their opponents). In fact, there are generally multiple goals of varying priorities being weighed throughout the battle, as “survival” (or “minimal casualties”) is usually pretty high on the list.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if there were multiple paths to “victory” in combat… even a case where it would be possible for both sides to declare victory and disengage? By interesting, I mean, “more interesting combat choices.” While utter and complete defeat of the enemy forces in the traditional manner as fast as possible might be a handy brute-force approach to full victory, that may not always be an optimal, necessary, or even possible approach. It gets even more interesting when victory isn’t an all-or-nothing thing, but sides could gain partial victories and losses.

Suddenly, things like battlefield mobility, distractions, prediction, counter-magic, and so forth might become far more useful than massive spell-nukes. At this point, even things like negotiation might be key combat abilities, when you can conserve resources and guarantee key goals by conceding some victory conditions to the enemy. Or vice-versa. If goals aren’t completely mutually exclusive, there may be some real strategy involved (even in an RPG) in losing a battle in order to win the war.

This isn’t completely unprecedented on the RPG front. In modern RPGs, we’ve been confronted with escort or protection missions. While very simple (but sadly, often frustrating), they are perhaps a first step into really creating much more interesting conflicts. The upcoming Torment: Tides of Numenera promises something even more interesting with their Crisis System, which makes combat just one part of a larger challenge.

I think there’s a lot of fascinating potential to explore, here. If any other indie RPG developers are looking at ways to push the boundaries of the role-playing experience in something beyond mere graphical pizzazz, this might be something to think about.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

My Philosophy of Quest Design

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 16, 2013

… Maybe I need an intervention.

“But there was no other way…”

“Really?”

“… As epically awesome!”

Seriously, it sometimes feels like half my writing & design efforts (in the content phase) are focused on justifying just why the player has to do things in such a convoluted manner. But then I volunteered for that when I opted to make a game series that directly deals with the often weird, illogical tropes of fantasy RPGs.

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Rampant Games’ Official Stance on “Let’s Play” Videos

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 13, 2013

I thought I’d done something official about this already, but if I did, consider this a reiteration of my stance on Let’s Play videos:

I love ’em. Please go ahead and make a Let’s Play video of Frayed Knights – or my ancient game Void War, if you really want to… Just make sure appropriate copyright and IP notices are given, and provide a link to this website so that people can actually find and purchase the game. And of course you cannot redistribute the game itself. The game is mine.

I’m totally fine with you making a “Let’s Play” video that goes into depth showing the game… Even if you monetize it. Awesome for you! Enjoy! Profit! Have fun!

From a ruthless capitalist perspective, I believe it is a win / win. I get free advertising, and hopefully gain more customers through the publicity of your LP video than I might lose because they’ve now “seen the whole game.” I don’t have a problem with other people making money (legally) with my game… I do it all the time through affiliate sales, anyway. I love it!

From a philosophical perspective, I feel like games are meant to be enjoyed. I think there’s a certain level at which you, a creator, have to be willing to share. Where do you draw the line between a magazine or website that reviews your game (and makes money from visitors) and one that goes through an extensive Let’s Play (and makes money from visitors)? For me, personally, I can’t draw the line. Maybe others can, but I cannot. I can only wish more people were willing to make such an effort. And I think the companies that are hijacking revenue streams on LP videos… well, while technically it may be within their rights as IP owners, it just seems to be a jerk move. I don’t want to be that jerk.

So have at it. I just hope I can create more games worthy of Let’s Play videos. Have fun.

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

Game Dev Quote of the Week: Lee Perry

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 12, 2013

This week’s quote of the week comes from Lee Parry, formerly a lead designer at Epic (and now an indie):

“If there’s one single thing I would drive into any developer’s head if I could, it would be the importance of great player feedback.  When I talk about feedback, I mean the classic loop between hitting a button and the game responding in a way that simply feels great…

“Simply pressing a button has to be an experience people want to repeat.  It’s what makes a game addictive, intoxicating… it’s the recipe for a game that “feels” right.

“The best game in the world, regardless of high concept or awesome mechanics, can feel absolutely neutered when these principles are disregarded or neglected.  Conversely, there’s many simple games that nail player feedback and become extremely successful while people scratch their head wondering how they pulled it off so well.”

Read the whole thing. It’s gold. Stuff I need to be reminded of constantly.

Like everything else, this can get taken to ridiculous extremes. I’m reminded of the Bioware mock-worthy “Button-Awesome” meme that came up during the Dragon Age 2 promotion. It should be a means, a tool in a designer’s bag of tricks, not an end-goal. It is the sizzle, not the steak.

One of the very first (commercial) games I ever worked on should have driven this point home to me. The control dynamics of the player’s ship in Warhawk for the Playstation 1 were praised pretty universally by reviews and playtesters. Things like an Immelman turn (where you do a partial loop and then roll out) or a barrel roll were automatically handled by the ship logic when the player tried simple commands. When the player entered a “loop,” for example, simply attempting to exit the loop would automatically roll the ship out level.  Double-tapping the turn would automatically launch a barrel roll. We did this in a lot of places, and it made flying the ship pretty intuitive and easy. I can’t say we invented it all whole-cloth… there were other examples of games that we drew inspiration from. But for a game that looked at first blush (and for the era) to be more of a hardcore “simulator style” game (it really wasn’t), it was a lot more comfortable for average gamers to play.

The other thing that should have been a no-brainer in retrospect was the “swarm missiles.” I coded the logic and special effects on these, and I tried to emulate what I’d seen in countless sci-fi anime shows. The idea was to launch lots of little tiny missiles that flew a little erratically and independently towards their target, like a swarm of angry bees. They weren’t especially effective, from a game mechanics standpoint. But players loved ’em. You pressed the button, and yeah, something awesome happened. By 1995 standards, at least.

You can see a little of both the flight dynamics and the swarm missiles in this video:

We had some help and feedback from the producers at Sony on this one, so while a lot of it was stuff we kinda stumbled into, not REALLY knowing what we were doing other than going by “gut feel,” we did get some direction. The lesson I learned – and I have to be reminded of from time to time – is exactly what Perry states in his article. Given whatever you’ve got for video, audio, or any other kind of feedback, make it responsive. This can be applied to anything from interactive fiction to the latest AAA shooter.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Twenty years of Doom

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 11, 2013

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Doom‘s release.

I guess, in a very round-about way, it is because of that day in 1993 that I became a professional game developer. Doom took the industry by storm, and I think it was a not-insignificant factor in convincing a bunch of engineers from the simulation industry to try their hand at gaming, and in convincing a major publisher to fund them. Doom was what convinced the industry that 3D was the future.

It was kinda dumb for the rest of us, because we’d been enjoying both 2D and 3D just find, thankyouverymuch, for years. We could boggle at the suits in the industry (which, not long before that, hadn’t had many suits), both because they were jumping on an old bandwagon, and that they were suddenly abandoning 2D as if it were the plague.

But regardless, the company was founded and funded on a wave of “going 3D,” and I was one of the first employees. Number sixteen. I got to be paid to make games. Really cool 3D games with cars shooting bullets and flamethrowers at each other, giant tentacled flying skulls that shoot missiles, and flying shark-ships. That was just in my first year. So, thank you, Doom.

As a fan of Wolfenstein 3D, the Wing Commander series, Ultima Underworld, and several flight simulators, Doom was probably more evolutionary than revolutionary for me.  I was in the middle of finals on the day it was released, and downloading the thing was an exercise in frustration until it had gotten mirrored at enough sites to deal with the demand. So it was a few days later (the 15th?) when I finally copied it from a friend who had managed to download the shareware episode – actual physical shareware! I was finally able to play, albeit in a reduced-sized window on my underpowered 386/40.

But… wow, what an evolutionary step! Even at somewhat less than 320 x 200, it was amazing. That’s what most people remember – how incredible the graphics were at the time. Of course I was blown away. Everybody was. I’d expected something significantly better than Wolfenstein 3D, but Doom was even better than I’d expected. I was happy for weeks in single-player.

One of the cool things that I think we lost for a while (but regained with indies) was that very free-form, crazy, do-what-sounds-fun design of the game. I mean, the whole thing with John Romero’s head being the “boss” in Doom 2. The secret levels. Commander Keens being hanged. The swastika on the floor (later changed). Telefrags. The “BFG 9000.” The bunny head on a spear. The game was over-the-top, and reveled in it, and the enthusiasm of the tiny team of developers shone through in a big way. In some ways, it feels like the modern counterparts are often too safe and too serious. Doom was rough, wild, and ready to party.

If there was a revolution (or, again, revelation), it was the first time I played cooperatively. Deathmatch was very fun, but playing coop gave me a real vision of how awesome multiplayer could be. Sure, I’d caught glimpses of that playing the coin-op arcade game Gauntlet cooperatively, or playing some multi-user dungeons (MUDs) over the years, and tried (semi-successfully) to play a cooperative mission in Falcon 3.0 with a friend. But Doom was a more free-form arena with (at the time) the most realistic graphics, and it was just amazing. Even for a jaded gamer like me.

But the real trick – as it had been for Wolfenstein 3D and Commander Keen for the id guys – was how a tiny little team of upstarts without a “real” publisher, without going through the “proper” channels for making and distributing games in an industry that was rapidly being dominated by a few big publishers – could pretty much upstage the entire industry like that. Their story became fuel for a later age when the industry was truly in need of an indie revolution. They were there first.

I still love Doom. While being able to actually look and shoot up and down – and to have a true 3D environment – has been a significant improvement, and there have been all kinds of minor innovations and enhancements, the core gameplay for most modern First-Person Shooters has not strayed very far in 20 years.

I have a tough time believing that it’s been that long. But it’s a milestone worth noting. And playing.

UPDATE: A well-done birthday wish…

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

RPG Design: The Forgettable Fight

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 10, 2013

Maybe it was the link to the Richard Garriott quote last week, or the Matt Chat interviews with Guido Henkel, or… more likely… my current coding and rebalancing of Frayed Knights combat, but I’ve been thinking about combat in RPGs a bit more lately, and how it has changed between the old classics and modern games.

And then something snapped.

I really need to go back and re-play Ultima 7 to completion. Many people – including me – cite it as one of the greatest RPGs of all time. I’m not sure how much the rose-tinted glasses figure into this. But part of me wants to answer this question:

Is Ultima 7 such an awesome RPG in spite of the fact that the combat system sucks, or because the combat sucks?

Maybe some people might argue the combat system doesn’t suck, but I’ve never heard anyone really defend it. I remember getting to the point where it was somewhat manageable, but for the most part it was a hideous real-time brawl with little control over what was going on. I have faint recollections of a couple of fights, but none of them were memorable. The best that could be said is that due to the real-time nature, they were over with pretty quickly.

That’s actually pretty core to the question. Because combat sucked and over so quickly, it wasn’t central to the game.  It wasn’t part of the “main gameplay loop” as it is in most games. It didn’t dominate the gameplay. It was more often an obstacle (and sometimes one to be avoided) – one of many. In effect, the game played much more like an adventure game with stats. It was more about exploration and problem-solving than fighting.

So of course, Origin gave us this gigantic world full of stuff to explore and solve. It was an interesting counterpart to its contemporary competitor Wizardry 7, which also seemed to have a pretty huge world – and lots of fighting.

The modern trend in RPGs – especially mainstream – seems to be on focusing on combat as the primary gameplay activity. Hey, I’m just as guilty with my own designs. The assumption is that if the combat sucks, nothing else matters.  Yet we have a pretty compelling counter-argument in Ultima 7 that this isn’t necessarily true.

I have played a lot of RPGs lately where it feels like all the other things that can be done in an RPG are merely brief interludes between fights. At the extreme, you have the Diablo-style games which are about very little more than killing and looting.

I’ve been playing a few little indie RPGs lately off-and-on – revisiting The Real Texas, Driftmoon, and some others – and maybe that’s where some of this stuff has entered my thought process. I could argue that both games do combat far better than Ultima 7 did. Both use real-time systems. But both seem to have a far greater emphasis on exploration and problem-solving that most modern RPGs. The Real Texas maybe takes this to an extreme – for me, there’s a lot of wandering around interacting with stuff trying to figure out what I should do next.

I definitely love a good, deep, challenging combat system. If I played an RPG where every combat was as interesting an encounter as a battle in XCom (either the new or the old, I’m not fussed), I’d be really happy. But that would also require, in my mind, that fights should be fewer and further between, with lots of really interesting, fun things to do in-between those epic encounters.

Has combat been over-emphasized in RPGs? If so, it’s hardly a new problem. But perhaps what’s needed to push the boundaries even further is not an emphasis on making the fights more interesting and tactical with lots of ever-more spectacular weapons and armor to turn the tide of battle in your favor, but rather breaking outside of the comfort zone on everything else. After all, the success and reverence given Ultima 7 is based almost entirely upon everything else.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 15 Comments to Read

Opportunities Going Into Overtime…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 9, 2013

Looks like the Groupees Dan “Indie” Long bundle deal has been extended an extra couple of days… if you wanted to get in on the deals there, you have a few hours. Very few, as of the time of this posting.

Dan “Indie” Long hand-picked Indie Game Bundle

Also not-exactly-expired this weekend: Guido Henkel’s Deathfire: Ruins of Evermore. The Kickstarter campaign failed to fund, getting just over half their funding goal. This was sad but not unexpected as the campaign progressed over the last couple of weeks. Now that it is over, they’ve gotten creative about the funding of the game. As we’d expect (and as I certainly hoped), the game is still on, assuming “Plan B” works.

Plan B involves going for a lower level of funding, bypassing Kickstarter entirely. Assuming they hit the minimum goal, they are going to be producing the game in episodic format. This has serious repercussions on the design and development, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But to kick things off, they are looking for about 1/8th of what they needed for the complete game. Now that sounds like a pretty extreme reduction, but by eliminating the physical rewards entirely (for now) and bypassing Kickstarter (and their cut), they can stretch each funding dollar by 20%+.

My concern would be that the bulk of the work still has to be done up-front, getting the game system and everything up and running. But I assume they’ve priced everything out and know what they are doing. It’s not exactly Henkel’s first rodeo.

Anyway, if you are interested in participating, click the links three paragraphs up.

And as a final little bit of enjoyment of lost opportunities… Noah “Spoony” Antwiler and Richard “Lord British” Garriott de Cayeux had some fun during his interview (a stretch goal for Garriott’s Kickstarter) and re-enacted a scene that was probably in everybody’s imagination during certain frustrated moments playing the early-to-mid Ultima games.

 

 

Have fun!

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Game Development Quote of the Week – Early Richard Garriott

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 6, 2013

Now, bear in mind that this was said less than a third of the way into his career (so far) – around the time of Ultima 6’s development. But here’s an old quote from Richard “Lord British” Garriott on his RPG design philosophy during Ultima’s heyday:

“My philosophy is that once you get people compelled enough to sit down and play the game, the whole way you make the game successful is by giving them enough unique ways to do things. First, let them deal with pulling levers and things like that for a while. Then after they’ve mastered that, you give them something else to do, like getting through doorways by blasting them down with a cannon… Next, you give them a monster-finding quest, followed by logic problems to figure out. You pace it that way. Assorted activities and the diversity of activities are what makes a game rich in my mind.”

— Richard Garriott, as quoted by Shay Addams in The Official Book of Ultima, 1990

So there you go.

Actually, that’s not too wildly different from most games today. The standard formula is to provide an activity, let the player master it, then keep adding new skills / activities and then test them in combination. So maybe you start out by learning to move, then learning to jump, then being able to move and jump in combination, then learn to double-jump, then require all three skills to be used in a level, etc.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

DLC for the Next Gen

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 5, 2013

I don’t know who made this, but it feels painfully accurate. Click on it to embiggen…

 

I was particularly amused by the 2005 expansion offering… more of the same.

It’s one thing when you have “freemium” games that make up for free or really cheap installation & gameplay in exchange for several layers of optional(ish) premium DLC. It’s when a full price or near full-price game feels incomplete without the DLC that I have a problem. I’ve managed to stay away from most games like that – it still feels like those have been the exception rather than the rule.

But here’s what it has really done to me, marketing gurus of the video game industry: It has really, REALLY encouraged me to not be an early adopter of games. When I know (or strongly suspect) that the cost of the DLC will add up to be far more than the original game, it encourages me to wait for a lower-cost, “gold” or “platinum” or whatever release, where I can buy what feels like a “complete” package at a discount. I rarely buy a (mainstream) game new anymore. I feel like the game won’t really be complete and fully released for a couple of years, once all or most of the DLC has come out.

 

AND ON A TOTALLY DIFFERENT SUBJECT:

The Dan “Indie” Long Indie Game Bundle:  There’s only two and a half days left, as of this writing. If you are looking to get some great, often off-beat indie games (including Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon) for a bundle price, this is your chance, but it’s only for a couple of more days.  Enjoy!

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Indie – A Revolution Only to Those Who Weren’t Paying Attention

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 4, 2013

I’m an indie cheerleader. Or “evangelist” as I sometimes call myself. I’ve embraced the term, as ambiguous as it is. It’s a useful term. Part of the reason I embraced it is because I was in the mainstream industry back in the 1990s, and I saw the best and worst of what it had become. For me, “indie” got back to the roots of gaming, bypassing the giant machine that through the 90s was an overwhelmingly powerful gatekeeper.

As “Shareware” (the usual method of bypassing the gatekeeper) was no longer an applicable term, some folks adopted the “indie” label. It wasn’t much of a label describing who they were as who they were not. Literally, it was “everybody else.” The numbers were never that small, but they were mostly unknown.

The whole point of “indie” was to draw attention to “everybody else,” in an environment where attention is a scarce commodity and often required hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to obtain. That’s really what the indie revolution was to me – a capturing of a portion of that spotlight. Of course, it had serious (but not bad) repercussions — like an explosion of new indie developers. But it’s not like indie is anything all that new. In my mind, it’s a continuation of how games were made back at the dawn of the hobby.

So really, my opinion isn’t that much different from Robert Fearon’s in his recent article, The Indie Revolution at Gamasutra. Aside from my fondness for the term, “indie,” I think we really see eye-to-eye on the whole phenomenon. The article is awesome, anyway. Well worth the read.

Having worked in both fields, I am acutely aware of both the differences and similarities between working on an “indie” game (or should I say, “small / low budget”) and a larger, more mainstream game with a traditional publisher. I prefer the former in most ways, but it’s nice having the steady income and layers of support of the latter.

But ultimately, the core similarity is that you are making games. I won’t lie: there’s no end to the awesome of that. Yeah, it can be stressful, long hours, lots of pain in the butt, but if you love video games like most game developers do (at least the guys down in the trenches), it’s still something incredibly cool.

The whole “revolution” and term “indie” was really about a back-door way to set ourselves apart from the guys spending millions of dollars on TV ads, so that gamers *might* take look off the beaten path once in a while and see what we were doing. To the people (especially the press) who weren’t really paying attention, sure – it’s a revolution. Or maybe just a revelation. They turn the corner from their thoroughfare and say, “Holy crap, when did all THIS stuff get built?” and don’t realize it’s all been there forever.

Better late than never. I celebrate the revolution, such as it is. It means indies have a chance – maybe not a very good chance, but much better than they used to have – of getting noticed and being successful doing their own thing, without having to beg favor of the Big Publishing Overlords as they did in the 90s and early aughts.

I’ll take it.

 

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Guido Henkel Talks About Arkania, Writing, and Really Old Ports With Matt Barton

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 3, 2013

I posted a couple of links last week to the previous parts of the interview, but I found this part to be even more… I dunno… informative? inspirational? Probably both.

This is the “last ditch” effort to get his new RPG off the ground via the Deathfire Kickstarter Campaign. It’s not quite half way there with just a few days to go, so it needs a tremendous surge. I’ve seen that happen before, but at this point I’m doubtful.

Matt Barton has even taken the opportunity to suggest that instead of supporting his page this week, viewers chip in to the Deathfire campaign. Now there’s a class act. And a guy who really, really loves his RPGs.

This makes me sad, because I really want to see Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore made. It sounds like it is custom-made for me. Hopefully Henkel & company will find some way to get it funded and produced even if this campaign doesn’t pan out. ‘Cuz hey, if you are truly an indie, that is what you’ll do. You will get your game made, one way or another.

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Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon featured in a new bundle!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 2, 2013

This week only –

Dan “Indie” Long has hand-picked some favorite games (including the Cognition series, which he worked on) for inclusion in a pretty fun game bundle. Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon is one of the second tier features, available for those who pay more than $5 for the bundle. A portion of the proceeds go to charity – in this case,  the Southern Oregon Humane Society.

A fellow Utah Indie is also featured in the bundle – “Asteria” by Brian Livingston (and friends…). It’s a 2D platform sandbox game with tons of crafting, and a mix of hand-crafted and procedurally generated content. It’s a very cool game.

The bundle also includes the first two episodes of Cognition, 99 Levels to Hell, 99 Spirits, Sky Nations (sort of a Minecraft meets Steampunk multiplayer game), QuestRun, Pyroclysm (a bonus game now unlocked),

I believe this is about the second time I’ve purchased my own game in a bundle… 🙂

The Indie Bundle – Hand Picked by Dan Long, AKA “Indie”

Cool games, and the bundle is well on the way to the third bonus already. Check it out! I know, bundle deals are pretty common these days, but hey – you can send the games as a gift for the season, and also support charity!

Have fun!

Filed Under: Deals - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Game Development Quote of the Week: Markus “Notch” Persson

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 29, 2013

I changed the title from last week’s “Game Design Quote of the Week” to “Game Development Quote of the Week” Because as important as design is, it’s only part of the equation.

This one comes from the fedora’d one, Markus “Notch” Persson of Minecraft fame, in an interview at Bafta Guru a couple of years back, about his early days as a game programmer…

“It was kind of intense. We spent one or two months on each game. During my time at King.com I made around 20 to 30 games. I was the programmer and I had a games designer and an artist. That was basically it. The thing I learned there was how to actually finish projects, which was very, very valuable.”

Lots of little nuggets of wisdom can be pulled from this:

#1 -Learn to finish projects. This is probably the single most important skill you can have as an indie developer. Sadly, a lot of indies fail because they don’t know how to do this… and I fear a lot of the Kickstarter projects out there right now are run by people lacking that skill, who believe that a little bit of money is a good substitute.

#2 – Tiny games with tight turn-around can be invaluable training as a game developer.

#3 – And once again, we see how years of butt-busting usually precede becoming an “overnight success.” There are never any guarantees as an indie developer, but “You aren’t going to knock it out of the park on your first try” comes pretty close. Even with tiny little projects, an indie team should focus on the long haul.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 28, 2013

In the U.S., it’s Thanksgiving Day.

I have a lot to be thankful for. Life is pretty good.

May you have an awesome day.

 

 

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Matt Chat Interviews Guideo Henkel

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 27, 2013

Sometimes I feel like I could just spend half my blog posts simply announcing Kickstarter RPG projects. There are a lot. Long ago, after seeing the surprising failure rate for indie game projects, I made the decision not to discuss indie games in development unless they were likely to actually be released, which meant they either had to be pretty far along in development, or under development by a seasoned team with a history of completing projects.

Most Kickstarter proposals are neither.

Guido Henkel’s Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore is solidly in the latter category. With only a little more than a week to go, and not yet at the halfway mark for the campaign, I’m a little bit concerned. I want to see this game get made.

At least this means that Matt Barton has had a chance to interview Mr. Henkel in his weekly Matt Chat, so we can hear a bit more about not only this project, but his past games as well – including many classic role-playing games. Here you go!

There are several more parts of this interview planned – which I look forward to. As always, you can support Matt Chat here. And the link up in that third paragraph will take you to the Kickstarter.

Filed Under: General - Comments: Comments are off for this article

White Water Rafting vs. The Amusement Park

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 26, 2013

As a teenager one summer, I went whitewater rafting down the lower New River in West Virginia. Several class 4+ rapids, and tons of lower ranking rapids in about a 14 mile stretch. It remains one of the the coolest memories ever.

It was exhilarating and exhausting. There were times where the water felt like stone, and I couldn’t get my paddle to “bite” more than a couple of inches. There were times where we were we had to navigate three sets of rapids in a row – where very precise turns were absolutely necessary, yet our muscles were giving out. And there was the famous “swimmer’s hole” which I took the “hard way” – right down the middle, not realizing that the “dip” was actually a whirlpool that sucked me down several feet – life preserver and all (or “flushed” as the tour guides call it – with the obvious metaphor). There was absolutely nothing I could do to escape until it decided to let me go. It was only a few seconds – too quick for me to even get frightened – but it taught me a lesson about the power of nature.

My cousin was our tour guide. The following year, they had an accident, and one of the people on his tour died. Even with experienced guides, these rapids were not “safe.” You would do everything you could to be safe, but the danger was always there.

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. I highly recommend the experience. I’d just say – listen and obey the tour guide, and make sure you are in halfway decent shape, physically.

That same summer, we went to Hershey Park, Pennsylvania. It’s a big amusement park. By most measurable standards, it should have been far, far more extreme and exciting than the rafting trip. They certainly looked more exciting. But as much as I enjoyed the rides, in the back of my teenaged mind, I was comparing it to the rafting trip, and it came up wanting. I enjoyed myself, sure, but it wasn’t nearly as fun.

Why? It wasn’t just because it was “safe.” Failing to listen to the tour guide would have been like failing to obey the “do not stand up on the roller coaster” rule – stupid and possibly deadly.

Part of it came down to interactive vs. passive participation, and to unscripted vs. scripted experiences. At the amusement park, everything was designed to force me through a very safe, pre-defined, scripted experience. You are an audience, not a participant. The rafting, on the other hand… well, that river had been there for a long time before people ever thought of sticking inflatable rafts in it and going down it for a fun day-trip. The rafting was a real adventure. The rapids changed based on the water level. The tour guides did their best to keep us on a designated path, but every trip was a little different. Our success – and possibly even our survival – was dependent upon the combined effort of the few people in my raft. Sure, there were times you could sit back and just enjoy the scenery. But when you hit the class 3 or class 4 rapids, there was no such thing as “keeping your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times.”  There was no room for passive observers. You were fighting the water.

The amusement park was a fun little experience. But white water rafting was a legitimate adventure.

I think a lot of modern game designs look more to an amusement park (or, of course, movies) for inspiration that actual adventures like white water rafting. They are slick, polished, and graphically just ooze everything that an adventure should be. But in the end, they feel like very scripted experiences. Your path is linear. While you do need to participate to keep going, and there is often some leeway in how you do things (in what order you kill the attacking hordes, for example), things are still going to be very similar from player to player. They just need to follow along and aim correctly.

Because the player is not allowed to deviate more than a few feet from the correct path, the world is actually really small regardless of how large it may appear. This allows the artists to really pile on the lush details. Because of the limited interactivity, there isn’t a lot of room for bugs to hide. Everything can be polished to a fine sheen. It’s the ultimate amusement park.

But I find myself feeling the same way. There’s a huge difference in feeling and gameplay from something like ARMA 2 (which is still nothing like a “sandbox game”) to a Modern Warfare, even though both are dealing with… uh, modern warfare. It’s like the difference between white water rafting and an amusement park. Likewise, this is traditionally the difference between JRPGs and Western RPGs – although the lines have been blurred and crossed now on both sides to the point that I don’t see much difference anymore.

But again, that doesn’t mean a game has to go all-out “sandbox.” Just – not so linear and scripted. Not so tightly constrained. Yeah, that means that the player might be tying their shoe when the T-Rex appears in all his glory, but while that might make for a crappier “Let’s Play” video, it makes for a more involving game. Just make the player a more active participant, with real choices besides the order in which he takes out ambushers. While it’s fine to still act like a virtual tour guide giving the player assistance and direction where necessary, that’s not the same as holding the player’s hand and forcing them along a linear track.

If that’s the kind of game you want to play, then as a player or reviewer, you are going to need to be more tolerant of the compromises that must take place to make the world more open, and for the player to have more choice in his adventures. If the developers have to design an entire city block instead of the five rooms in two buildings that you are intended to go through, they are going to have to skimp on some details. It’s just how things work sometimes.

While I can play both styles of games (and the various shades in between), in general,  I’d rather have the adventure.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 6 Comments to Read



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