Geldonyetich's BYOND Development

Malaise Abated

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:47:34 GMT

I think I've been feeling out of sorts of the past 3 weeks. I don't want to call it "swine flu" because it didn't have a fever, but then again, apparently that's not uncommon.

In any case, I'm feeling a bit better today, a mysterious ache I've had in my right hand for days is gone and I'm thinking clearly for a change. I actually completed my homework before class instead of booting up the laptop - amazing!

I've begun work on my project again. Barring making much progress this week, next week should be a breeze, as I've actually all Thanksgiving week off. If having 10 days in a row to myself won't get me to make major progress on my project, nothing will.

From Out Of The X-Universe

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:06:35 GMT

"It's not gaming, it's research for game development," certainly sounds like a cop out. However, to a great extent, I think this might have been greatly behind my motivation to play X³ lately.

I've reached a point in my project where I'm trying to establish a great and sweeping overall purpose to play in the long term, and X³ offered perhaps a glimpse at the tried-and-true "accumulation" model taken to a great extreme.

In X³, you start with a fighter or freighter (maybe more depending on which start you choose) and eventually build your way into a whole trade empire of various capital ships, fighters, freighters, marines, and facilities.

What I accomplished last week.

However, though the game allows for a great deal of dynamic content, it has one critical shortcoming and that is that the territories are immutable (they can be conquered and built on but they're never new patch of space) and the various factions are equally static. Once you've isolated the main antagonists and nailed them down with fortifications and patrols, what then?

In the end, the accumulation model has a problem because you can only accumulate so much before there's a question of, "why bother?" When you've a billion dollars free and have everything you could want in life, pretty much all there's left to do is retire... and die.

Now, I was raised in a capitalistic society and I recognize that some of this might sound downright socialist, but it seems to me that this is just poor design, at least if the goal is to have players striving to do their best. Rather than accumulate to the point where it's pointless, I would instead prefer more of a systems building perspective where players are put in the position to simply continually improve what they've already got.

That is what I'll probably be looking into this week.

Distractions Galore

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:20:16 GMT

What can I say? There's far too many good games distracting me right now.

Dragon Age is so good as to be genuinely addictive. I had thought Bioware was just going to make a quick buck off of a Baldur's Gate throwback, but it's really more like they advanced the state of the art of that type of game. Aside from having a riveting, epic story, a feature I really like about the game is the inclusion of Tactics, which are customizable conditionals that streamline out the monotony out of commanding your PCs to perform obvious actions. (It's almost an identical copy of Final Fantasy XII's gambit system.)

Borderlands did not have that same hold over me, but it's certainly a game worth playing. If you're willing to overlook the general infeasibility of where ammo and money comes from - hey, in the old days we'd just have floating boxes of heath and ammo in any ol' place - it's simply a highly refined and relatively open-ended RPG/FPS fusion. A surefire formula for entertainment if ever there was one.

I spent the last post complaining about X³: Reunion... then I realized that I'm talking about a 4 year old game, found a place selling the heavily revised stand-alone, X³: Terran Conflict, for $10 and (with some regret of the time I wasted in Reunion last weekend) restarted my trade empire anew.

Though Terran Conflict looks nearly identical to Reunion, it's really heavily modified and enhanced in hundreds of ways. Every one of my complaints from the previous post - inability to run minimized, not being informed when a unit needs orders, and so on - have been addressed. It's a bit like a space shuttle in itself, identical on the surface but a much different beast under its skin thanks to the constant meddling of astronomy-minded thinkers. They probably could have got away with calling it X⁴, and probably chose not to simply because the core engine hasn't changed much.

Terran Conflict is about a year old, but the last patch (version 2.5) was released last month. It was released with several issues, perhaps owed to the additional complexity added since the relatively flawless Reunion. Fortunately, Egosoft's diligent patching has made a major difference, and now it's a pretty solid game. The remaining holes (e.g. glitched mission difficulty, little cheats you can do here and there for profit) seem to be erring on the side of being a more open-ended experience.

Now, the main trouble with the game is that it's a grind. I can spend days or weeks just slowly making money to earn something big I want. Eventually one's trade empire becomes neatly automated, a steady credit-generating thing in the background, and I can focus on more interesting things like commanding an armada of warships. What is this if not the age old grind's possibly empty promises of a good end game awaiting you?

Of the three games, I've mostly been playing X³, Reunion until yesterday when I picked up Terran Conflict. I'm not sure what this decision in entertainment proves more. My attraction to the idea of an open-ended and dynamic game or that I can't prioritize worth a damn?

What I'm going to try to do is schedule myself to get the things I need to do done. It's tough - I've forgotten a great deal of my motivation techniques, and I haven't exercised much lately so the body isn't particularly willing either.

Truth be told, I'm on one of many sticking points in my game design. We're getting down to the nitty gritty of what it really means to be a player on the side that represents human expansion over the world in face of the indigenous forces. There's many ways I could do that, but relatively few ways I can make it entertaining to do.

It will take quite a bit of contemplation to decide on a definitive course of action. Right now I'm leaning in the direction of Dwarf Fortress-like automation in the colonies coupled by a few powerful customizable combat units which you give standing orders to.

Vehicle Wars Progress Report #10

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:53:34 GMT

As I mentioned last week, this was a week I largely spent devoted to classes, and so I did. I pulled my fat out of the fire for one of the classes, perhaps the other. I still have a couple of tests this upcoming week to study for, so I'm not completely off the hook yet, but I hope to return to developing my game soon.

Another little distraction is that Borderlands came out. I haven't really been able to enjoy it much because of all these little pressures in my life preventing me from making any gaming time spent last week feel obligation free.

I hope I'm sure about this - coding all those little interface controls will consume a fair later half of a day, at least.

I put a lot of rumination into my game over this weekend. It's beginning to look like what I want to put together is going to be closer to X³: Reunion in that I want the players to have the control over a small number of powerful units (customizable mechs/vehicle) without having to be in control over them constantly. Like in X³, it would be a bit of a trade wars game with a vehicle piloting interface. A beginning player might start off piloting a single vehicle but, as they become a more accomplished player, eventually have several of vehicles operating under their control, even their own bases.

I don't like how X³ does it in that the game doesn't quite have very robust remote control mechanisms in some ways. You either give your units one order which they complete (you are not immediately informed when it has completed its task and is waiting for additional orders unless you are monitoring your possessions screen) or you give them Trade Software Mk3 and they become completely autonomous. I like a medium, where the player gives several orders in succession with the option of repeating those orders, like Space Empires V. This is my goal.

X³ is also wantonly demanding of the player's attention. You get kicked out of accelerated time mode at the drop of a hat, so you can't just leave it running. You can't alt-tab out of the game, or it will pause. Yet, if all vehicles are dutifully fulfilling your orders on autopilot, why do you even need to be there? X³ could be a great empire building game but it's held back by these problems.

X³ would also be a lot more significant if it were multiplayer, as my game is intended to be, because in a wholly single player game your space empire will impress no one but yourself. Yet, EVE Online has the same trouble in that you're not really able to control more than one unit (expensive multibox "solutions" aside). The trouble with that is that there's not really enough substance to controlling only an individual unit to keep the game interesting.

Simultaneously, I want to keep things relatively small scale. This is because I've played games like Mankind or your typical Trade Wars-style game, and they no longer have that sense of personal involvement. There's far too many units involved, it's just a whole lot of redundant bulk, and the players have no real sense of relating to them anymore. I want the players to be as intimately connected to their units as they would a squad member in X-Com.

What I'm hoping to push here will be a good medium. A game in which the personal involvement still feels poignant but simultaneously one that allows the player to build something truly epic. Something that doesn't get boring when you've mastered controlling just one unit because eventually you'll be in the position to control several.

Vehicle Wars Progress Report #9

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:48:50 GMT

When I first started my Vehicle Wars project, I had in mind the old Battletech MUX I used to play as teenager. These were persistent online environments that centered on players piloting mechs using a real time conversion of the popular FASA franchise.

3 months later, I still haven't added the core vehicular combat system. I was largely distracted with a life simulation, trying to make something interesting happen within the virtual world I develop. That's a lot of what you saw in the video I posted up early last month.

After about a month vacation in Champions Online, I've returned to development, and have been focused primarily on inserting the player into the game. I've now quite a bit of working interface to show for it:

Of course, this interface is not set in stone, not by a long shot, but you get the general idea of where I'm coming from.

I still haven't added the vehicular component, but I have added a great deal of a world building support. The economy (and there will definitely be a robust economy) isn't in yet. However, the important thing is the game can now interact with a player.

I also taught the indigenous creatures of the game to burrow underground. They're very fast when they do this, so now they can accomplish more much quicker. I anticipate the experience of building a base and needing to repel a sudden attack of burrowing enemies will be a significant one this game will offer.

That's about all the development I have time for awhile. While I was largely in a, "screw my classes, I want to develop" mood this week, I've got some pretty big class projects due throughout next week. The more of that I finish now, the more time I'll have to get back to what's really important to me: working on this game. Hopefully things will be pretty much resolved by next weekend.

Decisions, Decisions

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:40:31 GMT

I think what I set about to say in my last entry was basically I was coming at developing a game from a perspective of somebody who hadn't really done so in two months and ran smack into a liberal dose of, "making game is hard."

However, a couple days in, most of the cobwebs are off the cogs and I'm plugging along nicely now. As it turns out, my solution to yesterday's interface problems was to use an old standby mechanic I had developed for some of my past prototypes.

How it works is basically to set up a global list of function objects, these objects contain all the code related to their function in the game, and all I really need to do in order for the players to access these functions is add them to a grid skin component. What stops this from being a security concern is that all the necessary code to verify if the player is allowed to perform that function takes place whenever that function is activated. It's efficient because only one copy of these functions need exist: that which resides on the global level.

Now I'm mostly dwelling on what to do with our little Terrans.

1. Merge them with my old Pirate idea and have each Terran player drive around an upgradable unit that represents their character's presence in the game.

2. Give the players a more hands-off perspective that allows them to easier control multiple units at a time.

3. Some kind of modular variation in between.

I am trying to make things feel personal, but I'm discovering that the line between RPG and RTS is surprisingly thin once you draw the perspective out far enough. The perspective I've currently got is a view from a space station high above the map, so it's way impersonal. On the other hand, if I push the perspective in too far, it's really hard to play a game of the scope I'm working on. A fair solution is to have multiple modes, preserving best parts of both - but would this be too complicated for the players?

Bottom line - this is a subjective thing, it matters less which I would prefer and more what the average player would prefer. Hence, pollage.

Interface!

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:55:50 GMT

Once again, the gears have started to turn, my fingers come in touch with the keyboard and on the other side is BYOND Dream Maker indiscriminately recording my deluge of mistakes. I've picked up my old Vehicle Wars project and decided to work on turning it into a game.

Instead of having 3 controllable factions, I'm now working on simply having one faction: our Terrans, who have arrived on a planet to turn it into a colony. Behold the power of the Keep It Simple, Stupid principal, as everything comes together beautifully at that point: the existing Native AI works excellently as an opposing force of wild, unsophisticated creatures, and the Terrans already have the mechanics in place to build whatever they're told to build. I was much closer to a finished (if not complicated or refined) game than I thought.

Unfortunately, I've run into an immediate hitch: I need to bring the player's commands into the game where the existing code already is, and that's proving quite a mind bender (especially after a two month vacation from hard development).

Here I thought before I was developing an advanced artificial intelligence because I was distracted with it as a bit of an experiment. Now, I think perhaps I was doing it because I was taking the path of least resistance. It seems I've still a rather important thing to learn about BYOND, and that is how to create a really good control scheme.

In this entry you'll see where I was: I had hotkeys, I was trying to manipulate things through objects that were placed in the contents of things, and decided against it because it's very obj bloaty and technically I already have verbs to do that.

What I need to do now (instead of blog about doing it) is get really comfortable with verbs, to the point where I can take a verb list and create those hotkey banks from them. The goal is for the players to simply click on a hotkey, then double click on the map, and the appropriate verb activates there.

It's beginning to look like what I might need to make a compromise instead, because I don't think BYOND's verb functionality was really built to do that. The access control would probably tear apart any attempts to access them by proxy in this manner.

So, what will be my final solution? Perhaps ditch this idea of there being a bank of 12 hotkeys and simply create one scrollable list of currently available verbs. Perhaps simply use the native right-click verb functionality, put the verbs on the turfs as accessible by all players and control access via verb arithmetic. I've gotten rid of the stat panel, my point-and-click interface makes things very easy on the players, but not so easy on me.

Development Imminent

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:28:22 GMT

As I mentioned on my other blog over the weekend, though I've often mentioned "busily burning out from Champions Online," one would hope that a game does not truly evoke burnout. Alas, I'm there now, and with that comes a return of my motivation to perform development.

I think perhaps my brain needed a vacation. I had ground it so much into my previous project that I was no longer creating a game. I was creating an artificial intelligence experiment. A successful artificial intelligent experiment in that, yes, I now had a working hive of little bugs that were able to be self-sustaining against this virtual backdrop, but not really something that would entice a player to participate.

The winter months are once again upon us, and so I have been able to wear a coat with increasing frequency. With that coat comes pockets, and with those pockets I've once again taken to carrying about my notebook with me and jotting down ideas to burn time.

I've definitely a few interesting things rattling about in my head. The thing is, I think I get MMOs better than most professional developers. They tend to want to emulate World of Warcraft these days, since it was ludicrously successful, but they don't really understand why. They think it was because it was so casually focused, but the truth in that WoW is not a casual game - it only puts up this initial facade and uses it to funnel the casual masses into becoming hardcore players.

WoW's developers understand (or else lucked out) in realizing that any game you play for as long as an MMORPG is a transformative experience. Players are capable of learning, the process of playing a game is a learning process, and everybody becomes an experienced player in time. Thus, if your game is 100% casual play experience, the player will quickly get bored once they're so experienced that they no longer need to be babied. "The game begins once you hit the end game" was always their real mantra - everything before that was just the education. (Their only mistake is not facilitating a quick enough transition for players who have already reached that level.)

It is with this kind of understanding I approach my projects. I can't keep it simple, I want to make it start out simple but become more complex as the player is ready for it. I want to make a game that adjusts dynamically to the players' needs, the same idea behind Fl0w, but leverage this against a backdrop of online gameplay.

Mundanity Defined

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:24:10 GMT

So, what was accomplished last week? Not too much, really.

The most momentous thing was probably being interviewed by Randolf Carter of Grinding To Valhalla. The interview can now be found here.

I think I'm about done with Champions Online for awhile, level 40 or not. I just went through a weekend where, instead of advancing a character I knew worked perfectly well, I ruined another of my previous existing characters by "retconning" him out of a perfectly good Dex/Ego Munitions build and trying to swing a Dex/Ego Dual Blade build. Martial Arts in that game right now? Not so good. I also dabbled a bit with my Sorcerer.

Of course, the real evidence I'm done with Champions Online is that I've started playing other games.

I gave Scribblenauts a spin, and apparently really enjoyed it.

I had re-upped my GameFly subscription specifically because I was trying to get a copy of Scribblenauts (ended up having to buy it instead if I wanted to get it that soon) and they sent me Professor Layton And The Curious Village and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring Of Fates instead.

Both are astoundingly good games in their own right, but I prefer the PLatCV more because I'm actually quite bored of dungeon crawls and FFCC:RoF is nothing if not a cunningly crafted and elaborate dungeon crawl. That, and PLatCV oozes charm and plays remarkably differently than most games - about the only thing a gamer such as myself can really appreciate these days - but steer clear of it if you hate the idea of being assaulted by hundreds of little brain teasers.

My Spanish has largely gone neglected. I expect this to be a week of much catching up. In about one hour I'll be in Spanish class, and probably thoroughly embarrassed by just how badly I'm lagging behind the rest of the class.

I'm feeling the itch to do some more BYOND development... I'm thinking I'll probably cancel my GameFly subscription. What the hell was I thinking? I don't have enough time for all these games right now. Apparently, I haven't even made the time to do the things I really need to do in life right now. Perhaps this will be the week I turn that around?

Now

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:20:23 GMT

My weekly update is a day late.

I think my Champions Online vacation has about come to an end. My alt-a-holicism has settled on a nice power armor wearing gadgeteer who is neatly trivializing content as only a nanite infused fletchette chaingun wielder with robotic backup can. I'll probably take him all the way to 40 (the cap in that game). At that point, I'll put the game on the back burner for a bit and allow the developer a few weeks/months to shore up bugs, balance, and content issues in the game. I did buy a discounted 6 month subscription, MMORPGs always improve, so putting up my feet and waiting is actually a pretty good plan here.

I need to knuckle down on my educational commitment some more. When you get right down to it, it's not all that hard to do for a fellow with unemployed timetable, and therein lay the problem: I have a subconscious conviction that I can put them off indefinitely. Truth of the matter is, I need to study now and then I'll have plenty of time to relax afterward.

It's interesting how cyclical human progress can be. Relent for a moment, and you're back into old habits. Grounding this point home, the scale (that bastard) is telling me I'm back up to 235 lbs. Focus, and you head in the right direction... looks like I need to start counting calories again.

I'm looking at my BYOND game I was working on before and wondering if perhaps I had been bearing down on it so hard that my head wormed itself up into my rear end.

Right now, I have a hive of sorts. It grows in a very convincing ant-like manner. Resources are moved back and forth. However, it's no game - it's more of an artificial intelligent experiment. It was a relatively successful one - yes, in fact, a hive of NPCs do behave fairly well as game pieces - but it's still no game.

I lost perspective. A good online environment is about letting things happen. I was trying to let only the right things happen. No game came about because the parameters were too stringent to allow player choice to really enter the picture.

I don't think it impossible to shoehorn a microcosm like this into an interesting game -- no, there's quite a few ways to do so, in fact -- but clearly this needs to be my primary focus now. It may well be worth starting over from scratch, richer from the practice of the thing if nothing else.