Posts published during February, 2011

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February 12, 2011

Seeker: Antagonist (Probably)

“Witnesses claim they left towards Freehold, we’ll be taking this road at a hard ride. Our goal is to get my son back, the Seeker is secondary.” The six man posse surrounded the reef, as close together as their horses would allow. “With any luck we should catch up to them by dusk.”

“Sir, there’s someone approaching from the road.” They reformed into a single file line attempting to appraise the cloaked figure approaching. The figure was obviously a woman, a halberd with an oversized blade strapped to her back. As she walked her upper body jerked and spasmed at regular intervals. One of the posse, Milak, broke formation and rode out to her.

“Clear the road, we’ve got a party about to ride out!”

“Ahh, what terrible music…” she said. Her pupils seemed dilated, her clothes torn and stained by varying shades of red. “Can you hear… the music?”

“Hear me!? Make way!” The rider closed and gave her a hard kick in the face, knocking her to her knees the halberd clattering from her back onto the ground.

“I suppose… their song has abandoned you…” In a single boneless movement she grabbed the haft of the halberd and spun around. The force of her movement carried the blade through the man’s body without so much as a pause. She danced around his falling torso to charge at the Reef’s formation along a swaying almost drunken route.

“Kill her, quickly!” The Reef’s men charged as well, some drawing swords while others leveled spears. One of the spear carriers came in for first strike, thrusting for her torso. She smashed the head of the halberd into the ground, using it’s haft to vault over the spear head. Rather than letting go she spun around so that she kicked the haft just below the blade, launching it into the air. Using her body as a fulcrum she spun the hooked end up into the air piercing the rider to the lung and dragging him off his horse. She landed gracefully both feet on the ground her stance low. Then she swung wide to the left to avoid the sword of a rider who was passing nearby.

A third rider approached, hoping to thrust his sword into her while the halberd was caught in his companion. She dove to the ground, but kicked the haft up into the air. It’s metal capped tip caught the man in the sternum knocking him off his horse winded. the force of impact jarred the hook free of it’s previous victim. A spear man charged her from the front while a swordsman came from the back, hoping to trap her in a crossfire. With a scream she balanced on her heels and spun the halberd around in a circle. The spear landed a blow in her left upper arm, but the forelegs of their horses were cut. Collapsing, their horses threw them violently to the ground. She pulled the spear from the wound with her right arm, her left obviously falling to the side useless.

The final rider besides the Reef charged hoping to take advantage, but she effortlessly lobbed the spear through the air towards him. He charged dismissing it’s slow arc through the air, only to have the tip slice through his throat, killing him near instantly.

The Reef finally dehorsed, and approached the woman cautiously on foot. He dodged her initial swing. Sensing it was too wide he dodged again, barely avoiding a back swing with it’s hook. He lunged in with his sword. She blocked with the haft of her halberd, turning it into a clinch. He leaned on her with all his might, hoping to overpower her guard. It gave for a second, causing him to lean ever harder, then he found himself sailing through the air from her sudden push upwards against him.

For a few seconds it seemed as though timed slowed down. He hung in the air watching the blade of her weapon sail in a graceful arc towards him. He had no way of moving. No chance of dodging. He could only watch the blade gliding ever closer. Finally it slid into his stomach. Searing pain shot out to every inch of his body. It was made that much worse by then being crushed into the ground when he landed on his back.

He silently watched. He felt his life run out as she pulled the halberd from his body and began walking towards the village. “Who.. are…” the man who had only been winded began to ask. She fluidly swung the halberd around, crushing his head with the dull back edge of the hook. “Silva… wait, should I have said… before killing him? Better next time… I guess.” Silva of the blood lakes, the three kingdom killer, at least he was killed by a legend he thought before it all finally went black.

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February 9, 2011

Painting and the Akido Tank

A link to the DeviantArt of this weeks art piece.

Just got a new style of brush worked out, doing a lot of work with it.

On a completely unrelated note…
Akido Tank
Akido tanks don’t require any specific focus, all of it’s skills draw from the immediately available unarmed skill cloud so leg strength can be especially important if you intend to also do damage.

The basic setup for an akido tank is to set up each row so that you have a redirect, evasion and counter/invasion(opener)/throw(closer).
Redirects: Change the direction of their strike and add to it’s cooldown time. It’ll prevent them from parrying as well, so it’s a good way to open up a tougher opponent for your teammates to get some undisturbed attack time. If a redirect fails you’ll take 2x normal damage.
Evasion: Some basic dodges to avoid taking damage. Even if an evasion fails the damage dealt will be reduced 33%.
Counter: An attack timed to strike slightly faster than an opponent, disrupting their current attack. Very powerful against AOE opponents.
Invasion: A form of counter where rather than just striking an opponent, you instead enter their space and use their own movements to increase the power of your attack. Deals base kick damage + 33% of the enemy’s base damage for the attack countered.
Throw: Does no damage on it’s own, but knocks down opponent and moves them several meters away. Requires the lower body strength to overcome their weight.

Akido tanks have a slight disadvantage due to their requiring the opponent to be attacking, but it isn’t they themselves that necessarily need to be under attack. They are pretty much always light on the damage dealing, but a well timed invasion can floor an enemy who was going for a big burst damage attack. They are one of the few types where their effectiveness tends to decrease as you go upwards in base size, they are at their best with the speed to get in their counters and completely evade attacks.

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February 5, 2011

Seeker

He sat at the fire, the warmth of the hearth seeping into his bones. The villagers in the inn avoided him, a few of the more brazen snickering into their mead. It wasn’t a bad feeling, to have the space to simply eat without anyone intruding on his thoughts. Of course, this wouldn’t be much of a story if that lasted long.

The young man sat down across from him. Usually the ones who came to him were the sociopaths looking for a good laugh, but this young man seemed more earnest and straightforward. The silence continued for a few moments as the young man obviously gathered his courage.

“You’re a dragon seeker.” It came out as more of a statement, no lilt to the end to indicate a question. The older man simply leveled an even gaze on him, not denying it. “Will you take me with you?”

“How old are you?” he asked. He felt the conversation die off in the rest of the inn.

“Seventeen, sir. I may be young but I’m good with a bow and can take care of myself on the road.” The young man’s eyes didn’t waver even though his jaw tensed and released several times after he was done.

He leaned back. It was a surprisingly brave request, delivered boldly. Any chance he may have had at a peaceful life in this village had just been destroyed in any case. “Parents?”

“I’m making this decision on my own, I’ve already got my gear ready in the stables, with my horse.”

Nodding he said, “All right then, we leave within the hour, just let me settle my tab with the barkeep. Go out and get my horse ready to go.” The young man nodded and left to the stables. As he settled his tab with the barkeep one of the patrons leaned over.

“Ki’s the so’ing Reef’s son, you’re asking for ‘ouble just walking ou’ with him, Seeker.” He said.

“He’s a man by tradition, therefore as ready as any seeker before him. I can understand the situation well enough, it reminds me of someone.”

“An’ who migh’ tha’ be?”

The seeker simply smiled then walked out to the stables.

*Later on the road.*

“What name should I know you by?” the Seeker asked.

“Kron” he answered.

“Apprentice Kron then. I am Noi Hargen, you will address as me as Seeker Hargen, or just Seeker, until you are officially inducted as a Seeker.”

Kron looked off into the forest around them. “Seeker Hargen, is it true… what they say.”

The Seeker nodded to himself, he’d figured it would come down to this in the end. “If I’m understanding you correctly, to some extent yes, though I myself am not. The Seekers are as much a place of last refuge for those who feel there is no place they would be truly welcome. I’m sure you can understand why there would be a great deal of overlap. In any case, we should pick up our pace, I’m sure that as soon as word of your recruitment spreads we’ll be in for company you may not be ready for.”

The two goaded their horses into a fast but not especially taxing trot, hurrying away from the shire and township they’d just left.

“No time like the present to begin your training though,” Hargen shouted over the sound of their riding. “Tell me, what do you know of dragons already?”

“Nobody has seen one for at least four hundred years. Long ago, however, they lived side by side with humanity, but finally faded with disease and then the hunts.”

“Good, and why do you think we seek the dragons?”

“I don’t know. I mean they said around the village that the Dragon Seekers look for them to vanquish them as in the old tales from the hunts.”

“And do you believe this?”

“No. I can’t imagine anyone seeking out something so long forgotten just to get a trophy.”

Hargen rode in silence for a while before finally speaking. “Our task is not the eradication of dragons, you are correct. You will not be made aware of our full task until your training is finished and you’ve been recognized by the order at Drakemont. However, I can tell you that we desire to discover and preserve the unique beauty that dragons brought to the world. This means we seek not only living dragons, but also dragon relics from both before and after the hunts.”

The young man nodded, taking the revalation in stride, or perhaps simply too preoccupied with his steed to fully process the information.

“Now, the three guiding principles of a Seeker are…”

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February 4, 2011

Friday Project Post: Writing and Games

I’ve noticed there are some major differences in the careers of designers based on what kind of game they started with. It mostly seems to manifest itself as a difference in what tools they tend to dust off first in their design toolkit, and where they really work on expanding. I’m not sure I want to go into where I see this in anyone else’s work, wouldn’t want people to take it the wrong way, but I’m more than happy to talk about how this has effected mine.

This may surprise some people, but the first few games that I worked on were all interactive fiction. A few attempts went into straight up, room by room, interactive fiction that lightly mixed in some of my favorite crpg standards. This all culminated in my final C++ project, which was the last code I’d touch for about a year afterwards, Birth. It was an unconventional, to say the least, mix of fiction and simulation, using a full 3d simulation with a text based interface. I’d gotten the overall project fairly far along, I no longer remember why I didn’t go ahead and follow through on it. In any case, one of the major points I focused on in Birth was the introduction and early story telling, it was here that I developed my love of self explanatory backgrounds. (In Birth the player was an AI that had just been “born”, neatly putting player and character on the same page.)

Anyways, the point of it all is that my early exposure to design was not “design in absence of narrative” rather it was “design as narrative”. To me working out the story elements of a game is not something to done once I’ve discovered stable fun gameplay, it’s a starting point which I work from to discover possible design elements. Those elements may then be worked into the story making them two parts of an inseparable whole. This isn’t that odd, art direction is used similarly all the time, it’s just the kind of thing that you don’t see done as much with story due to the tendency of story to come later in a development cycle.

One of the things this allows is the use of much more diverse storytelling elements. For instance it’s easier to include a first act and not have to just reach for in medias res because I’m not having to fight a bunch of design decisions that won’t allow me to show the protagonist’s earlier states. Unfortunately, I can’t go into Officer’s story too deeply, for a few reasons. In large part because I’ve found it’s a terrible idea to write a whole bunch of stuff about a game that’s still in a very malleable stage.

What I can talk about, though, is Officer’s approach to The Call. Most first acts, even if you break things down in 4 acts or 9 acts (where we would really be talking about the first 2-3 acts), are basically introduction, the call, and acceptance or a reversal. In games we usually start the second act at The Call, the acceptance may be given, but it’s almost always assumed, i.e. packaged in the call itself, since it’s usually before the player can even act. Sometimes the ground between call and acceptance is covered as a tutorial segment. In Officers, we have the basic call that comes AFTER the tutorial intro, Foira’s parents are killed and she has to take over one of the most elite military forces inside the empire to prevent her cousin from taking her inheritance from her. The game gives you a fairly aimless time period for a while, your strategist will give you advice and there are some things you can’t do, but otherwise your free to mess around in the nearby area. After a while we get what looks like second call, the emperor is dead with succession in doubt, but this is actually the moment where we finally get to the acceptance. Before now Foira hasn’t taken on the responsibility of being the head of one of the main factions of internal politics, only taking care of her own fief and direct vassals. The sudden change in circumstances forces the issue, she cannot surrender without a very close friend being executed, and literally all routes that might lead out of the country would be guarded. Cornered and holding many lives in the balance, she accepts the call to be more than just a gentry, but to be an actual hero.

An interesting counter-example to the gaming norms are the Bethesda games Oblivion and Fallout 3. In those cases, the player is given the call during the introduction, but the acceptance is actually the point where the player arrives at the first main quest location. If the player decides to ignore the main quest at that point, it’s the same as refusing the call. There are two examples that immediately come to mind of it being played straight. In the Magicka demo, the player is dropped down a shaft, literally dropping them in medias res into the game play and adventure. It can be debated, though, that the true call isn’t until after the tutorial level when you find the village being raided by goblins, but I assumed my character’s motivation was to get back to the party, which would make that first drop the call. My second though is actually the Vanilla WoW starting areas. By and large they tend to start things off with only a short introduction to who you may have been, then explicitly give you a call, by completing the quests in the zone you wind up accepting the call and then from there head out into the world.

As you can tell from the examples above, it’s not necessarily bad to have only a short first act. To be honest my aversion to the short first act is more my *stubbornness in relation to the role of “in medias res” in the writing, than a noble agenda for the improvement of games. Still, having a feel for how to make a good, playable first act is something that I feel will set me apart in the long run. In all honesty, if somebody really wanted to make me giddy, they’d show me an example of a good third act that includes a playable resolution. I have an idea off the top of my head, it roughly comes out to go around giving away all the things that made you powerful until you return to the power level you began the game with. Still if anyone has actually done it at all, I’d be interested to see.

One thing that just came to my mind is it’s interesting to see how completely focused on that acceptance to defeating the big bad story segment games tend to be. There is plenty of room for game mechanics in character introductions, especially a lot of room for game mechanics in those moments just after the big bad has been defeated but the end of the world not yet averted. Nonetheless, most games pick up after our hero is definitely our hero, and end as soon as the big bad has met his final end. Imagine, for instance, that SW: The Force Unleashed ended with a mission about destroying a rebel base and killing Luke if you turned Sith, or playing Luke saving the same rebel base if you stayed light side.

* I once read that it was advised that all beginning authors make their first few projects in medias res, at which point I decided that for the next few years I would absolutely not start in medias res.

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February 2, 2011

Wednesday Art: Foira Edemaera

Unfortunately I really suck at drawing the same character multiple times, but that is supposed to be the same character up there just in and out of armor. The first one is her in the attire she wears around her own court, the second she is wearing her mother’s armor and wielding her father’s zweihänder.

So Grand Marchioness Foira Edemaera is the 19 year old main character. The Edemaera family are one of the imperial family’s strongest supporters. Originally they controlled a northern march along the border, battling foreign invaders and conquering ever greater swaths northward. Their main force was South quelling a rebellion when the Jolla horde’s conquered their way across the continent and finally invaded the Empire. During a several day battle at the pass leading to the capital, Dorell Edemaera turned back the horde and chased them northwards until they eventually disappeared into the jungles. For their efforts they were awarded the fortress built to protect the pass and it’s nearby village. For several generations they were the primary power in imperial politics, until a succession dispute led to their losing the better part of their northern territories to treachery and foreign invaders. When all was said and done, the family had split in two, the Edemaeras and the Montgraives with the Edemaeras controlling only the fortress near the capital and it’s lands. The Edemaeras however kept the title Grand Marchess, allowing the holder to assume command of the imperial army during war with foreign powers.

Although their star may not seem to be on the rise, they are still renowned for the quality of their soldiers, and carry a high rank in the imperial court. It is widely accepted that anyone hoping to attain power over the court will have to deal with them in one manner or another.