An Independent Game Developer’s Diary

I’ve just come back from watching the new Indiana Jones movie, and while enjoyable, I had to turn off my brain while watching (obviously unsuccessfully) as many of the traps, secret passages and so forth were clearly designed with the movie in mind, not any form of realism.

In some cases this is a good thing, in some games, realism is exactly what is not required, a good fantasy yarn should allow you to cleave through a goblins skull, kick an orc down some steps and swing on a chandelier without needing you to stop and think, is it realistic that I could do this?

But when it comes to dungeon, adventure or trap design, sometimes realism is necessary. You don’t want the player to be thinking, How did this get here, and why does it work. In many games, the players feel like they are the center of the world, which may be true, but it can break the illusion. A dungeon which has been abandoned for centuries, contains a host of different monsters, and has a hidden entrance that is guarded by a deadly trap, might make your players stop and think. How did these monsters get here? What do they eat? Why don’t they eat one another, and how did they get past that trap?

When writing a dungeon, always thing about it’s intended use, and it’s current use. A trapped tomb, that the builders put the pharoh into, and then set all the traps as they leave would be fully trapped, with no way of getting past the traps because nobody was expected to go back inside. But the busy entrance to a network of goblin caves probably wont have an unpassable trap.

Also think about intended usages of your dungeon features. In Indiana Jones, the entrance to a major set of rooms involved a large stone pyramidal structure with a column in the center. The column was held up by sand, which when some stones were removed, emptied from under the monolith, allowing the gigantic stone monilith to drop, presumably triggering a counterweight which caused the area they stood upon to collapse. They land on a staircase which starts to recede into the wall.
This made for an exciting pair of scenes, a scene of discovery (finding the feature which allows the dungeon to be entered), and a “chase” scene, the protagonists being chased by the specter of the lack of a stairway.

But I wondered how the natives would reset the entrance. I mean they would have to lift up a multi-ton monolith, and then put the sand back in, so it is supported. They also need to re-extend the staircase.
And what is the deal with that staircase. The creators presumably didn’t want to open the “door” and then have to run down the staircase as quick as possible to avoid falling, so how did they use it day to day?
In the film, an explorer is supposed to have been here before, some 500 years previous, got through a door that is only passable with a magic dongle, stolen the magic dongle, and got out. I presume that this explorer didn’t bother to reset the trap, and the local natives didn’t seem to possess the intelligence necessary to do so.

Don’t let thoughts like this ruin your dungeon or adventure. If you are writing a game that is supposed to be movie like, then these concerns don’t need to bother you. But if you have thinking players, then ensure that your traps and dungeons have some thought to them.

The Guardian games blog are running a competition to design a puzzle for an interactive fiction game.

I’m involved in programming the IF game, and think this is such a cool way to write a game.  Get a chance to try out your writing skills, and possibly win a prize, or eternal infamy at least!

So my setting is decided, and the game is going to be a classical RPG style game.

So the design of the game is based around the user experience of starting a new character, exploring a new area and fighting creatures. Other ancillary activities will include inventory management, item trading and inter character fighting.

So we are going to need some way of representing how good our characters are at various activities. Now dipping into real RPG design there are various thoughts on ways of doing this.

Advancement

Most peoples role playing heritage can be traced directly back to Dungeons and Dragons, which provides a levelled class based system. For example a level 5 mage is more powerful than a level 3 mage, and only cleric classes can cast priestly magic, mages can’t use armour and so forth.

In many games, and gaming systems this is the default way of thinking about character definition and character advancement. In these games, your characters power and skills are directly tied to their “level”, and this can cause problems, with level 10 characters being able to withstand many more solid hits than a low level character.
Other RPG systems completely abandon a class system. Warhammer RPG is one, you pick a profession, and at various points you can advance in your profession, gaining a small bonus to your statistic block, and opening up new careers to you. An older, more powerful adventurer has more resources, may have better skills, but they’re raw health is exactly the same.

Personally because of the realism I prefer the idea of skills improving, but not your raw health or main attributes, so I think we’ll go with that kind of advancement system.  Remember that in most games, you are looking for the system that enables the most fun.
Stat Blocks

I tried to look around the internet for a comparison of various role playing statistic / skill systems but couldn’t find anything appropriate, so I’ll have to sum up from my knowledge of a couple of systems.

The DnD way of describing a characters attributes is to have Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. This system or something like has been used over an over, and many people are familiar with it. It provides two sets of statistics, Physical stats, Str, Dex and Con, and the Intellectual stats, Int, Wis and Cha. You may have played computer games with those statistics blocks, or you may have played with similar systems (Endurance replacing Con for example).

The White Wolf games, Vampire: The Gathering has a system that contains nine attributes (or Traits), rated between 1 and 5, and separated into 3 groups. Physical stats, (Strength, Dexterity, Stamina), Mental stats (Perception, Intelligence, Wits) and Social stats (Appearance, Manipulation, Charisma). Character generation allows you to assign 7, 5 and 3 points to each stat group, and assign them between the stats within the group freely.

The Warhammer RPG had a stats block, that covered a number of statistics, some of which could be described as skills in other systems. Each player had WS (Weapon Skill), BS (Bow Skill), S (Strength), T (Toughness), Ag (Dexterity), Int(Initative), WP (Will Power), Fel (Fellowship), A (Attacks), W (Wounds), SB, TB, M (Move), Mag, IP, FP. (I Cant find a reference and my rulebook is packed up in a box, so I can’t remember what they all mean).

So there is a number of ways of representing the core statistics. In general Tabletop RPG’s have stuck with just a few statistics, as that saves on complex calculations at the table. Computers have ported Tabletop rules, but haven’t generally added the complexity that computers could do. There could be two reasons for this,

1. Players want to be able to see their statistics, and lots of pages of stats makes them unsure how to min/max decisions about armour, weapons or skill increases.
2. Designers can’t effectively balance a system that contains lots of attributes, the formulas gets too complicated to balance easily.

Skill Systems

There are various ways of representing the skills and knowledge of the characters. The Warhammer way says that all actual tasks are run from those 16 attributes. Nothing else is needed.

Original DnD didn’t have skills, 2nd edition added Proficiencies, and 3rd edition added feats and skills. Each consumes a skill slot and is just usable, and associated with a statistic.

Vampire: The Masquerade has a defined set of around 35 skills, each valued at between 0 and 5, including skills like Handguns, Drive, Occult, Dodge, First Aid etc.

Diablo and some other Computer RPG’s have a skill tree, with learning the first skill enabling the next couple.

I hope this has covered some of the many ways in which it could be possible to describe a character.  Really when you get down to it, describing what the character can do is pretty fundemental to a computer role playing game.  With a human games master, they can make a judgement call, like “Well you have a high dex, and you come from a human settlement that has horses, I’d guess you can ride a horse pretty well, and even manage to jump on or off a moving horse, but nothing fancier”.  The computer can’t do that, so a more complicated system will come out.

For our game, given that it is only a prototype and I’d rather be programming and getting something working than trying to come up with the best ever design, so I’m going with the following decision as I think they will be simplest to implement

• Attributes: 3 Physical (Strength, Agility, Endurance), 3 Mental (Perception, Intelligence, Social)
• Advancement is via skills only
• Skills: Combat (Clubs, Blades, Bows, Dodge), Environment (Hunting, Hiding, Tracking).
• Magic: Nothing at this time, maybe later

So once I’d decided I wanted to write an MMO, I needed a setting, an idea that might make a good setting.

To generate the list below, I simply started by listing as many different, one line, settings that I could think of. I don’t worry at this point about feasibility, how the game will look or anything, just get the ideas down.

Once I’d come up with basic ideas, under each idea I tried to think about 3 lines or so of things a player would do in the game. Essentially the twenty second elevator pitch for the game. Anything I couldn’t think of a description for, got knocked out at this point.

I also discussed them at the office, seeing if anybody liked an idea, seeing what people thought of the concept. You can get immediate feedback, and remember an idea like “A Web based MMO like the old game Syndicate where you build or train agents and execute missions” is worthless. Don’t be afraid to share ideas around.  Preach em up came from this, as the people I sit with started discussing other ideas and given my faith, decided a “Preach Em Up” would be funny, still it goes on the list.
You may also notice that I have shamelessly stolen ideas from old computer games, old Play by mail games, and classical fantasy books. There’s a reason that these ideas have sold well and been successful. Providing you are not producing a like by like copy of something it’s good to think across as many sources as possible.
So without further ado here’s the list I came up with:

• Fantasy Realms Battle
• Build an army
• Manage your kingdom
• Invade other kingdoms
• Provide food / arms for your army
• Wizards War
• No Ideas
• Space station wars
• No Ideas
• Planetary Exploration
• Start at local system,
• Buy a ship
• Explore the universe
• Build mines
• Setup trade routes
• Space Traders
• Buy a ship
• Outfit it
• Fill your cargo with trade goods
• Steal cargo from others
• Mutiny
• Pirates Vs Sea Traders
• Buy a ship
• Outfit it
• Fill your cargo with trade goods
• Steal cargo from others
• Mutiny
• Monster Island
• Explore the island
• Fight local monsters
• Get Loot
• Cthulhu Investigators
• Manage your madness
• Research the dark mythos
• investigate unexplained incidents
• Fantasy Hero
• Start with a character
• Delve into dungeons
• Win treasure
• Fight in arena
• It’s a Crime
• Manage a criminal gang
• Loot, Rob, Pillage your area
• Fight other gangs
• Syndicate
• Setup a team of agents
• Send them to regions
• Complete missions
• Outfit the agents
• Manage R+D
• X-Files / Investigators
• Run a intelligence department
• investigate weird happenings
• Always miss the important plot piece
• government conspiricies
• Preach em up
• Convert people to your spaghetti monster religion
• Rewrite your holy texts
• Execute the heretics
• Publish pamphlets
• Programmer em up
• Open source your code
• Fight flame wars on usenet
• Produce a blog and flame new technologies

Once I’d written this out, the one that most captured my attention was the concept of exploring an unknown island and defeating it’s natives. It’s based loosely on a Play By Mail game I used to play a long time ago, called Monster Island, run by KJC Games. Of course this is a different game, a totally different system, but it’s good to honour your sources.

So with the setting decided it’s time to start designing a game.

So here’s the plan,

I’m going to design and code this game in public, as I go along.

this game is not supposed to be releasable, fully playable, or anything like that at this point. Instead this is a prototype of how a real game might look.

Therefore, the game design will quite possibly be not fully balanced, and will be simple.

I favour Agile (Extreme Programming) development, so I will be only building as much complexity as I need, as I go. however, in real Extreme Programming, I would normally have a customer. That’s a person who has an idea in their head of where we are going, and what things are the most important to them.

In order to provide something like that I’ve started to write essentially a very basic design document. This is what would be in my customers head. From it I am going to generate stories, which are single units of development.

The overall plan is to attempt to finish a system that allows user registration, players to create a character, explore the game world, spend time units, and potentially even fight something. All developed within a month.

To achieve that, I need to not think about creating a lasting codebase that is beautiful, I need to instead get down and get stuff working. I will be applying my software design principles to try to write good code, however I will not be attempting to build a framework that could run any MMO, various game specific things will be hard coded within the model, and the system structure.

So that’s that’s the plan, it’s crazy, it’s stupid, and it probably wont work. But it will be interesting to see what I come up with.

Design notes are being transfered onto the wiki provided at http://code.google.com/p/shipwreck and code for the shell has already gone up, the rest will follow as I do it.