Archive for December, 2007
Freeware Game Highlight : Dark Disciples
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in Indie Games, Must Have Freeware on December 8, 2007
I’m having a bit of fun with an old school turn based RPG called Dark Disciples – I sure do like my turn-based games 
This game stands apart from the crowd of freeware RPGs, where most are either dull or only short demos that never actually get completed.
The interface is pretty good, and the NPC dialog is neither too wordy, nor are they just moving signposts (as in some console games that will go unnamed) parroting the same sentence over and over.
I’ve only been playing for about two hours, and the game seems a little hard at the moment. But you can save anywhere, and apparently the author has encouraged multiple pathways to solve puzzles, so maybe I’m just thinking a bit too much with my sword and not with my head.
If you like RPGs and don’t mind a bit of old school style give Dark Disciples a shot – Hey, it’s free.
Underkeep Alpha 1.0 Released
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in UnderKeep on December 6, 2007
Ok, the time has come to unleash a public preview of my new game. You can play Caverns of Underkeep in your browser. This demo contains the first 3 levels of what I hope will become an approximately 12 level game.
The main reason behind releasing a game this early in the development cycle is so that I can get outside feedback to make sure that I’m on the right track, and to gather suggestions from players, and find and fix any major bugs that might have slipped me by. I can’t afford a QA department, so I’m letting the people tell me.
I will also be archiving all releases that I do – Alpha 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, Beta 1.0.. etc.. etc.. And hope to have no longer than a month between each major release. That way a year from now, anyone who’s interested (including me) can look back and see just how far the game has progressed.
Alpha version of Underkeep coming very soon
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in UnderKeep on December 6, 2007
The Alpha version of Underkeep will most likely be available for a public outing this weekend. I just need to run it by a few of my friends-who-I-use-as-testers before pointing people to the url.
Once the alpha is out I’m going to sit back for a bit and catch up on some game playing as well as some research so I can steal er.. liberate some ideas for caverns 
There is an interesting looking article on dungeon generation over at Ascii Dreams. Currently my generation algorithm is laughably simple and I will need to revise it for alpha 2 – Especially as I want to add a bit more variety to the types of dungeons that get generated.
Caverns of Underkeep Update
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in UnderKeep on December 5, 2007
Got a good lot of good stuff done over the last two days.
- Implemented a ‘Minimum Requirements’ check for certain items. So no longer can you wield the Huge Axe of Doom (If you’re a level 1 newbie with strength 4 that is)
- Added a Quiver that has to be loaded with ammo in order to use any of the Bows in the game, as well as revamping the ranged combat engine.
- Ability to buy/sell multiple items in one go in the shops, sorta inspired by the introducing the quiver as it became a bit painful to buy arrows 1 at a time.
Tomorrow will probably be a playtesting/balance/minor polish and bug fixing day. The next fairly major feature on my to-do list is sfx – Which should be interesting, not sure if I’m gonna try find some good stock sound effects or try to make my own?
Perhaps I should try to predict when the public alpha 1.0 release will be? Hmmm… Dec 12?
Why Caverns of Underkeep won’t have classes.
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in Game Design, UnderKeep on December 4, 2007
Its not that I’m anti-class when it comes to my RPGs. Infact I enjoy replaying games as different characters provided the game has been designed well enough to be played in different ways – And that really is key.
If I were designing a normal cRPG I’d have specialist quests for different classes, but there’s a bit of a problem I have with this new tendency for modern RPGs to omit classes and have an entirely skill based system, and that is I always end up playing the same character – A fighter/magic user who can pick locks
Personally I’d rather play a game that let me into the thieves guild if I actually were playing a rogue, rather than if I just managed to get past all the traps and pick the right locks. I think I’d be more inclined to play through an RPG a second time (or a third) if I knew there would be new quests, new locations and new content that wasn’t available to me the first time round. Also quite often at the begining of the game I’ll not be sure where I should spend my skill points, should I take hide-in-shadows, white magic or detect-traps? If I haven’t even played the game yet, how would I know? So I tend to fudge and become a jack of all trades type. Starting with a basic fighter/magic user type and adding pick locks.
I’ve got a feeling that if I were to pick a character class at the beginning, selecting something from the usual trinity of rogue, magic user or fighter. I’d reasonably assume that the game would be balanced for each type, and offer unique experiences for each. I really enjoyed the way Quest for Glory offered different quests and ways of solving puzzles for it’s three main character types.
But anyway, why won’t Caverns of Underkeep have classes? Because it’s a dungeon romp, theres no real roleplaying going on what-so-ever. Your job is to kill monsters, and to do this you’ll need to be able to fight, use magic and pick locks.
However, I’ll probably steal an idea from Cute Knight (which is a nifty little game) And let the player choose a star sign which their character was born under, this will give various different starting abilities and bonuses/weaknesses.
Echoes
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in Indie Games, Must Have Freeware on December 4, 2007
As well as being a song by Pink Floyd. Echoes is a totally cool freeware 2D shooter. Yesterday I posted that I was thinking about doing a 2D shooter for my project after Caverns, and Echoes has the exact control scheme I had in mind – which is good, because now I know it works
The controls are basically an updated version of Robotron which I’ve never actually played. Movement and directional fire are de-coupled from each other. You can either use the mouse for movement and the keys for directional firing or (my favourite) mouse for directional firing and keys for movement.
This game is very, very good. I usually rate 2D shooters by how many curse words come out of my mouth and Echoes gets a score of about 4 cwpm (curse words per minute) – I only wish it had a more relaxed mode, so you can kinda chill out for a bit longer before the difficulty ramps up. I also like the mini-tasks in the game like ‘get 150k points without moving’ and ‘get to level 7 without using any powerups’ which apparently unlock a bonus game. I haven’t got to unlock it yet, but I’m trying!
Lots of things to remember when I come to code my own shooter.
How to get artwork for your great game idea
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in Game Design, Indie Games on December 2, 2007
Danc over at lost garden has just posted a very good article on “How to bootstrap your indie art needs”
If you’re a newbie, hobbiest game developer, semi-pro, or seasoned indie you should add lost garden to your RSS feed. (If you haven’t already.) Most of my RSS feeds on my list are from various programmers, but lost garden’s focus is more to do with art/design issues and it’s nice to see the view from the other side once and a while.
Go read the article, but briefly the summary is, in order to get art assests for your game you should either:
- Design a game that doesn’t need professional art i.e Pick a project that complements your own artistic ability
- Use free/stock graphics where possible
- Set up a rational budget/savings plan to hire an artist
I’ve been thinking about my next project after Caverns (which at the moment is using method 1 with a little bit of 2, and will hopefully progress onto method 3 by about the time the game is mostly finished. I’m doing most of the graphics myself until I have some money saved to get it over-hauled.)
I want to tackle a project where I can do the majority of the artwork – which means that it can’t be anything ultra difficult. I’m leaning towards doing a semi-retro, semi-abstract 2D shooter because even though there’s lots of things I can’t draw, most paint programs come with a circle and a square drawing tool.
Tweaking, tweaking and balancing
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in UnderKeep on December 2, 2007
Ive been spending my time balancing the first three levels of Caverns of Underkeep.
Balancing takes quite a while because I have to adjust stats for the monsters, the frequency of items generated in dungeons, the gold value of items, how combat is resolved, how resistances work, how much one gains by leveling up and so on… and so on. This also means that I have to actually play through the game and many bugs are brought to my attention during these tests, which just adds to the list of stuff that’s needed to be done. Occasionally I find something that’s very broken and I have to recode it to make it fall into line.
What usually happens when testing the game is that I find it far too easy. I make some changes, and then the game is far too hard. I make more changes, the game is too easy again. Make changes, hard. Make changes, easy. Rinse and repeat. Hopefully soon, it will start to converge to a well balanced (and more importantly) fun game.
Finished Eschalon
Posted by Joshua Smyth (Admin) in Indie Games on December 1, 2007
Last night I got to the end of Eschalon. Clocking in at 18 hours + 3 hours spent playing the demo. (I started a new character when I purchased the full version, even though you don’t have to.) I tend to play through games quite fast, and there were a couple of minor quests I didn’t complete and I never did find out what was in the mysterious cave or what a couple of odd looking items were for. Maybe I’ll have another play through as a different character when someone has written up a good spoiler walkthrough, but for now I need to devote my time to gettting some work done on my own game.
Eschalon is definately worth the $25 usd price tag and brings back fond memories of RPGs of old. There are some minor improvements and additions I’d like to see for the sequal such as more quick travel points and faster walking speed on the map. Most of those complaints can be aimed at almost any game in the RPG genre anyhow.
If you like RPGs and want a good turn-based varient, you can’t go wrong with Eschalon.