Return of the king

Richard Garriott joined the kickstarter frenzy with his game Shroud of the Avatar. It was a success in terms of funding, of course. It's as nostalgic as you can get. Ultima-series touched even me and I'm pretty solid person, a fan of few things. Ultima IV and V were influential games and I even had plans to do something similar, but roguelikes had more power so they took me into the dark side.

Shroud of the Avatar is not that interesting, although wonders may happen and it's going to be a great game. What I find interesting are the Youtube videos of Portalarium channel, a company that was founded by Garriott and some other developers. The video where Garriott and Warren Spector are talking is revealing, because of the body language both are expressing. Spector is both afraid of Garriott and also hates him. It's almost like he is forced to chat with Garriott in order to increase the credibility of the project.

I guess they have different personalities. Spector is a new generation (even he is older than Garriott) designer with less commercial thinking. He is more artistic. Garriott is like most old school game developers who joined the scene simply to get truckloads of money. It was different than now when a huge number of people is creating free games like roguelikes. Back then commercial success was an important part of game development and games itself were formed in certain direction and still today live under those rules. It's obvious when you look at what type of games are released in the commercial sector. They hope it's something people will buy.

Sometimes I feel envy of those early pioneers of game developers. It was easier to program some kind of blobs of sprites moving around and for that you got more money than you could dream of. And in 80's Internet had not yet destroyed social relationships which made it much easier to get in contact with real women. So they got money and women (and drugs judging from the games they made) like rock stars. What did we got? Nothing. I mean it. Nothing and on top of that people laugh at me when I talk about Kaduria.

Creature data design

Back a while I got excited about data-driven approach. It's still good, but if you type in data entries as C++ struct it can get messy. You know, those long lists of data for each struct data type. Then I realized you don't need to list everything as raw data. You can program a switch-case for some data type in a function that returns some data. It's better if you have like only couple of special cases and the rest of creatures are regular in that matter.

I think some of the data entries for creatures could be changed to switch-case style before I really start to add more creature types. Luckily there aren't that many creature types in Teemu so it's much more manageable than let's say the same problem in Kaduria. At the same time I need to start thinking some issues in AI and combat to improve the role-playing system of Teemu.

Actually there is some spark in the way that I feel it's possible to extend Teemu a lot from what the current release version is and it doesn't require impossible amount of work.

The plan

I drew a new world map of Teemu and placed new locations on it. It was then easier to visualize where new items would go and how they would contribute to the gameplay. The plan is now ready which is a good thing, no more wondering about what to do.

I have given up creating TEROS (TEemu ROleplaying System). It was too detailed and started to go in the direction of "never releasing it". Instead I'm going to model the damage system the simplest possible way and add only features that are needed. It's probably going to be something like accuracy and damage vs. dodge/speed and hit points.

Teemu on Bay 12 forums

There is a thread in Bay 12 forums about Teemu. I found it now about three years later. I also got some e-mail feedback when the first version was released, but nothing since then. Anyway, it was fun to read the experiences of players. I could get used to it, because it's somehow rewarding to know that people play the game.

It's also interesting to discover that players don't always do what you expect. Teemu is strictly plot-based and you should follow the plot to win. At least that was the plan. For instance the guy who started the thread didn't realize how the wire should be used. I thought it was essential to survive through the forest. Someone else told me that he killed all the pirates. How he did that? It was supposed to be impossible.

The main idea for the new version is create alternative ways to proceed in the plot (which mainly is about finding key items). The "problem" is that when the plot is less strict it can be easier to build a situation where it's impossible to continue. The good thing is that the player is responsible for that, in a way.

Tedious parts

I'm in a process to create another roguelike project. I'm kind of bored to finish Teemu 1.3 and, well, Kaduria... need to say more? One of the things in game development is that some parts of it are tedious and boring. I realized that when I think of a new project it usually ends up in my blank face staring at nowhere. You can always start with some kind of framework or using previous project as a framework.

Then what? I strongly believe that I was able to finish the first version of Teemu simply by using an actual plan written on paper. I drew the world map and locations on a piece of paper. I was thinking, why not use that approach again? Even there is no world map in this game. I should draw the layout of dungeon levels on paper and plan as much as I can.

It should prevent the blank face syndrome, because then you at least know what to do. How to reach the goals of the plan. Oh, I think I'm going to call the game 'Agduria'.

7DRL results

Over 300 game projects, some made it to a game. I think we need a summary of these games with clear indications on how well they made it as roguelikes. But who wants to do that? It's all mess now, no one knows what happened and what kind of games were made. There were too many of them.

I think 7DRL contest should be a way for developers to get contact in roguelike game development and try out ideas. But it wont make any difference if nothing else happens. If those game projects are left like that, unfinished or too light weight to be anything else than @ moving on screen.

When people talk about how easy it is to create a roguelike, they are talking about 7DRL games. Now try to create a real game with complexity of a major roguelike. Then you can call it easy.

The halls of Agduria

Agduria was kind of joke I presented back some years. I think it never was a real game project at all. Yet it has a page in Roguebasin. What the hell guys? I think Roguebasin has a lot of game projects that will never be a real playable game. Just remove them. It's difficult enough trying to find something in Roguebasin. Also I think various Angband stubs really need another web page. They aren't interesting anyway.

Jo had an idea for a 7DRL project to search an existing roguelike with tiles and then try to paint better graphics for it. It's actually a good idea, because roguelikes can have a bit rough implementation of tiles and it even feels like fun, something else than writing source code which can be boring sometimes.

The bios battery of my laptop died again. I guess it was old, because I found it somewhere. Need to get a new one from somewhere, then slightly improve the way the battery is connected. If it doesn't work then there is some problem in there. A new laptop could be a viable option, only this time try to find a computer that doesn't suck in so many ways as Fujitsu does.