Permission

I can’t do much else on game work right now, so I’ve been spending time thinking about it. Daydreaming a bit, even… Still on some painkillers, still not well, but improving. No more throwing up, which is a HUGE improvement. 🙂

I was even able to get online briefly enough to read over my first few blogs. Not hanging out online much though, still hurts to sit up. But reading those few blog entries again, I think I had something right. My whole “simplest game” focus was right on target. My idea for building a game around one simple idea, and not letting too many frills mess with the design was on target. Where I have started to have issues is that I picked a player-interactive story as the focus…

…and that led me back to player freedom, which led me back to mandatory pvp, control of castles, player-created factions, and so forth. Bigtime complicated features that are largely just beyond what I can reasonably add at this point. But which are essential to create The Game I Really Want. So, what I have decided is that I need to do whatever it takes to give myself permission to create The Game That Can Be Finished, instead of The Game I Really Want.

That might involve a name change of the game. We’ll see; it’s worth considering, because that allows me total freedom in design, without any preconceptions that are still hooked in to the ROTH name. I definitely need to focus back on my core element – story – instead of messing with other stuff.

Masterpieces

I was reading a book on storycraft the other day – more work for the game, really, and helps take my mind off the pain. Don’t let anyone fool you, incisions in your belly HURT. Vomiting with one because the painkiller makes you nauseous is just insult added to injury, and hurts even worse. Anyway, I can’t find the book, not sure where I left it… Which is a shame, because there is a nice bit in chapter one I wanted to quote. I’ll paraphrase instead.

The author is talking about a novelist who had a book he REALLY wanted to write. He worked on it, but stalled. The novelist went on to write several other books and collections of short stories, other bits and pieces over the years. Each time he finished something, he went back to the novel he truly wanted to create. Years and many publication credits later, he finally finished his work, and it became a bestseller. When he was asked if something had clicked that allowed him to finally finish, he said no – he just kept stalling out, and finally managed enough raw effort in those bursts to finish it. But because he gave himself permission to put DOWN the “great work” whenever he stalled, and make something else, he wrote quite a bit in the meantime.

The lesson is clear: if you are stalling in some sort of dream project, put it down, make something else, and then go back to it later on down the road.
I did this once before. I was working on Role of the Hero in Realmcrafter, and getting very frustrated. My skills were much weaker back then – this was over two years ago. RC was much newer and less developed back then. And I kept hitting brick walls – ROTH was my Dream Game, the game I really wanted to make, and because I wanted it to be *right*, I was hitting snags in making anything at all. So I put it down, entered a “MMORPG in a Month” contest, working on something entirely different. I created Zones of Contention, a spacefighter realm vs realm game using Realmcrafter. It was a simple game: two realms, some pve vs enemy realm npcs, some pvp vs enemy realm players, mining rocks in space, a couple of quests, some basic crafting, leveling, and shopping. The raw elements of an MMORPG, really. But it worked, it was playable.

Oh, and I won the contest. 😉

Really one of the high points of my MMORPG design ‘career’. I took the engine, found a design that *would* work within the constraints of what the engine could do, and made the game. It’s funny, and maybe it’s the percoset induced haze, but I am almost feeling deja vu here. Again, trying to make a Role of the Hero ubergame, and again, running into issues with getting the engine to do everything I want it to do, inside of the skillset I have available.

The Problem

I’m having some design issues. And I seem to be about to have plenty of time to think about them. So, first step to resolving a problem is to identify the problem.Role of the Hero is a game I’ve had in my head in concept for a long time now. The central idea has usually been to allow massive player freedom, mainly via conquest of terrain and conflict over resources. A wargame and rpg wrapped into one, not unlike Shadowbane but with better storyline and a world that changes dynamically as the story progresses. It’s always been my feeling that pvp is essential to real roleplaying and real heroism; and not just any pvp, but open pvp (so players can make continuous choices about whom they work with and whom they fight) with enough loss to make it meaningful.

I’m starting to question some of those ideas. Well, I’m being forced to question them. While I could initiate one heck of a game in Realmcrafter, using many of these sorts of features, trying to do so in Torque is going to be problematic. I’ve got two real options for Torque game platforms: Gryphon or the PG Kit. Gryphon isn’t done, doesn’t look like it’ll be done enough by the time I need it, and I lack the Torquescript skills to kick it along myself. The PG kit has its own huge set of issues. The biggest one is that it is inherently GREAT for making a clone of early Everquest; but not so hot at doing anything else with it. The built in feature set really was based on MMORPGs as-they-were five years ago – pre-DAOC – not modern games.

My scripting skills are increasing, but still not up to massive mods of either platform. Any serious mods, I will have to hire out, find someone to team with me for, or simply not do. So I’ve been looking at the original main thrust of what I *said* I was trying to make – a story based game where player action mattered. And wondering if some of the things I thought were essential for that really are.

So, to answer that first question: the PROBLEM is that the engine platforms I have to work with are going to make my desired featureset very difficult to impossible. Now, to find a solution. Like I said, I should have plenty of time while recovering from this surgery to think about things.

Preface

OK, this next few posts is going to be a bit…unusual. See, they were written, on notebook paper, a few weeks ago. I just haven’t really been able to type – or sit at the computer – for more than a few minutes at a time for a while. This post is written in the “now” of late October, but will get posted as a “then” post, because it explains where I’ve been these past few weeks. WordPress insists on chronological order for blog posts.

It started in late September. I work a fairly physical job – nursing, doing geriatric care mostly for patients with dementia or alzheimer’s disease. And while I was there, I popped a spot in the muscle wall of my abdomen, just north of my navel – a hernia. Not a huge one, but enough to be trouble.

Six zillion doctor visits later – my primary care, the workman’s comp doctor, a surgeon, etc… – I was scheduled for surgery. I approached this with some trepidation. I’m 34, and been lucky enough to have my only ‘surgery’ experience be inserting two screws to help a broken radius heal (Army injury), and a couple of wisdom teeth removed. But the day came, the nice anesthesiologist squirted something into my IV, and I remember talking with him about what it was (something similar to Ativan, can’t remember the name), and then NOTHING else til I woke up afterwards. Nice nap. Not so nice wake-up.

Percoset makes me nauseous. Nauseous enough to vomit. Vomiting with an abdominal incision is not recommended. I spent five days in this wonderful world where I *needed* regular doses of two pills to dull the pain, but that level of painkiller made me sick enough to vomit, which was excruciating. Anyway, long story short – it’s been a nasty few weeks, I’m just now really up and about again (although I’ve been able to do brief surfing for a little bit now), and trying to get back to my project.

I haven’t been able to do anything physical on the project during the worst of the recovery. But I have been doing a lot of thinking and some writing about it. I knew I was going to need some nice blog entries if I was going to keep up, so I kept writing them, and thought I’d share the chain of consciousness from those thoughts with you all.

Enjoy!

More modeling

A shop I worked on. I’ve already created three other variant buildings based on roughly the same structure.

Thanks for the comments about TGEA.  I might go ahead with working on it.  Have hit a few snags; I got it to compile, but not to run once it was compiled!  Hope to get it kicking shortly though so I can take a better look.

Another model…and some fun TGEA news!

Yet another model, this one for a Hill People dwelling.  This is a roundhouse, modeled roughly after Iron Age Celtic roundhouses.  Unfortunately, a Constructor screenshot does not do complete justice to it, so I’ll try to get some ingame shots soon.  The thick stone base at the bottom is designed to sink into the ground, to allow placement of the model on uneven terrain.  Roundhouses were constructed with wattle and daub sides – that is, woven branches covered with mud.  A frame of logs was pegged to this base, and thatch applied to the logs as a roof.

I’m pretty happy with how the modeling is going.  I’ve got a number of additional models built, along with the ones shown here, and I’m continuing to work on new ones – around a building every day or two, at this point.  I’ve also been working on terrain generation with L3DT, which can generate some truly wonderful terrains!

I’ve been getting some great help in the use of TGEA – that is, the Torque Game Engine Advanced.  With shader-generated water reflection, superior lighting ability, and full use of shaders (including my choice of normal or parralax mapping) for both static and animated objects, TGEA represents a powerful tool.  The downside for this eye candy, of course, is the absolute requirement for Shader 1.0 capable video cards, and Shader 2.0 cards if I opt for parralax mapping.  This trims down the potential userbase some.  I’m leaning toward using basic normal mapping, under the theory that by release, most cards *should* be Shader 1.0 capable anyway.  Even the recent built-in graphics chips can handle 1.0, so it should be a safe move.  What do the readers here think?  Stick with the more accessible basic TGE, or the prettier TGEA that requires Shader 1.0 or 2.0 capable clients?

Updated Tower

Showing another shot of the same tower today, basically to demonstrate workflow and progress.  Lots of changes, some visible, some less so.  The walls were made thicker, to make the building more architecturally sound.  The battlements were thickened and pushed out over the edge of the roof as an overhang.  Supports were placed for the battlements.  Windows were added to each landing of the interior stairway – true arrow-slit style, narrow on the inside and widening as they exit, with stone trim on the outside of the wall for each slit.

Thanks to everyone who dropped a comment on the initial screenshot!

Progress…!

Work is continuing apace on modeling for ROTH.  I’ve uploaded another teaser screenshot, this time of an outpost tower:

Along with this model, I’ve been building a number of house type structures, all prepping for the creation of the Knight Stronghold zone.  I’ll save those for the ingame screenshots coming soon though!

I got news yesterday on the status of our sponsored server.  It should be ready for us within the next week, so we should be in great shape for an initial alpha very soon.  We were expecting it a couple of weeks ago, but the delay has just given me a bit more time to work on models, so it’s worked out well.

I posted this material to my GG blog last night, but it seems to have been delayed a bit, maybe due to the holiday.  Anyway – my model shots got some nice replies there last time, so I’m looking forward to seeing what people think of this one, and *really* looking forward to being able to show some ingame shots very soon!

Website

The initial website is up on the web! Check out http://www.roleofthehero.com to take a peek. Comments are welcome!

Right now, there’s no content for it; it’s just a framework. The nav buttons on the left side are not hooked up yet, and the blocks on the right side are for screenshots that don’t exist yet. I’ll be adding to the site in the coming weeks, as we gear up for an official announcement.

I’ve also been working on models for the game this past week, starting to push through DIF models for the first ‘dungeon’ environment. Hoping to launch the alpha with two zones – the starter Knight zone, and an initial dungeon area.

More on all of this soon, folk! 🙂

Back home again…

We’re home.  I’m tired, but it was a good week.  I’ve got some nice images to use for concept art, and some nice video to use for animation.  Both should prove valuable in the coming months.

This week should see me working on getting that initial zone up and running.  Lots to get done, so although this week has been “vacation week” without a lot to report, next week should be much more substantial.  My pool of alpha applicants has roughly doubled while I was away, too, so I’ve got some work ahead getting a playtesting plan in place for the initial alpha.

Fun stuff.  Very excited about people possibly walking around in the world in a month or so!