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#Post#: 36--------------------------------------------------
Adventure Architect #2
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 5:10 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Deirdra Kiai — May 7, 2007
Adventure Gamers
HTML https://adventuregamers.com/about/author/1309
[center]Chivalry is Not Dead[/center]
My name is Deirdra Kiai, and I am in the process of creating an
Underground adventure game.
I am by no means new to amateur adventure game development,
having been a part of the scene for about a good eight years
now. My previous work includes the silly, pseudo-noir Cubert
Badbone, P.I., the ambitious experiment in branching narratives
known as The Game That Takes Place on a Cruise Ship, and a short
but sweet Flash game by the name of When We Were Kids. I have
also had the rare experience of foraying into professional game
development, having worked as a programming intern at Telltale
Games throughout most of last year. And now, building on all
this past experience, I have started a brand new project: a
twisted fantasy adventure called Chivalry is Not Dead.
This series of articles will serve as a chronicle of my quest in
developing Chivalry, taking you behind the scenes of its design,
production, and eventually, testing and release. If you yourself
are at all involved or hoping to be involved with amateur
adventure development, I hope you'll find something of use in my
methods; otherwise, just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.
Now, first things first: before I decide to create a game, I
find it absolutely necessary that I know the scope of what is
possible for me to achieve in a given period of time. You don't
need to look very far on the Internet to find examples of
ambitious, epic-length projects-to-be that simply never get
finished because the person or team responsible for the project
took on much more than it could handle. Admittedly, it may take
the development of a prior game or two to fully assess one's
capabilities; however, putting at least a bit of thought into
the questions of "What can I do?" and "How much time am I
willing to spend doing it?" is definitely useful in the long
run.
At this time of writing, I happen to be a university student,
meaning that I am only able to work on the game in the time I
squeeze in between assignments and exams. I'm also a rather
impatient type who tends to get sick and tired of working on one
thing for far too long; ideally, I would like to complete
whatever project I undertake within a few months' time. Given my
schedule, a full-length game would be out of the question, as
would a series in the currently-popular episodic format. Bearing
this in mind, I decided early on that I wanted to create a game
of equivalent length to a novella or a short film.
Another thing I find of paramount importance to assess is my
skillset: what tools of the trade can I bring to game
development, and what, if anything, do I need other people to
help me with? I have reasonably strong programming skills, owing
to my studies in computer science. Although I'm not a
professional artist, I've been a long-time doodler with
rudimentary animation experience from a high school art class I
took years ago, meaning I can whip up a semi-decent looking
cartoon style with relative ease. I'm also not a professional
musician; however, I've had enough experience studying music
since childhood to be able to compose a catchy tune or two. I've
also dabbled in a little bit of acting, meaning that if I were
to make my game fully-voiced, I could contribute to a female
role or two. Finally, I like to think I can write, with my
strengths mainly being in the comedic, satirical sense.
Given this set of skills, it's plausible that I'd be able to do
the majority of the game's work on my own, enlisting the help of
others when it comes to testing and perhaps voice acting. (I
cannot, after all, manage a believable male voice without the
help of testosterone injections.) Many would claim that I could
significantly cut down on the amount of time and effort needed
to produce this game by adding more team members in some of my
weaker areas, such as art and animation. Though I wouldn't argue
that it would produce a much more polished-looking game -- it
does make a difference when you have specialists able to add
more detail and nuance to a specific area -- I have worked in
enough teams and would-be teams to realise that there's a cost
involved in working with others. Constant communication is
necessary in order to make sure that all team members deliver
their assets in a timely fashion, and that every piece fits with
the game designer's creative vision. In the case of many amateur
projects where team members reside on opposite sides of the
world and have their own hectic personal schedules to deal with,
this can be very difficult to coordinate. Considering that I
would personally prefer to focus on creative work than deal with
scheduling and managing other people, I tend to make it a rule
of thumb to keep the teams I work in as small as possible. In
this particular case, I will therefore be doing most of the work
alone.
Be that as it may, I do enjoy employing workarounds to make game
production go more quickly and smoothly. One of the ways in
which I tend to do so is by using a pre-existing game engine
that handles such things as pathfinding, collision detection,
and rendering, as well as higher-level adventure game-specific
implementations such as inventory and interactive conversations.
After all, if something has already done many times before, why
bother reinventing the wheel? Fortunately for adventure game
developers, many options do exist when going this route,
particularly for 2D games. Some engines are more art and
GUI-oriented, such as AGS, Lassie, and Visionaire. Others are
more scripting-oriented, such as SLUDGE and Wintermute.
Prior to working on this game, I'd had experience in SLUDGE and
Lassie, and had subsequently decided that owing to my
programmer's background, I preferred working in a predominantly
scripting-based environment. SLUDGE, though fully-featured
enough to result in complete games, unfortunately hadn't been
updated much in the last year, so for a change of pace, I
decided to try out Wintermute. Once I did, I found that I liked
the engine so much that I wanted to use it for my next project.
The documentation was well-detailed, the object-oriented
scripting language was familiar and easy for me to learn, and
there were many features I found very useful, such as support
for images with alpha channels. Hence, my choice was made.
Now that I've made these important decisions for the project, I
now have a set of criteria that I can build off of: a game that
is reasonably short, predominantly comedic in tone, cartoonish
in style, and to be completed mainly on my own using the
Wintermute engine. Bearing this in mind, it then becomes time
for the next step: figuring out the story and subject matter of
the game.
#Post#: 37--------------------------------------------------
Re: Adventure Architect #2
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 5:31 am
---------------------------------------------------------
The way in which I like to approach the adventure game is as an
interactive story; as such, the very first thing I focus on when
creating a game is the story it will tell. But I feel that it
isn't enough to make up a story solely for the sake of
justifying the gameplay that emerges from it. While doing so in
and of itself is certainly a lofty goal to strive for, it does
tend to make for a shallow and formulaic end product. For a
story to truly stand out as a meaningful work of art, it must
convey a purpose and make some sort of statement about the
world. Hence, this next article in the series will focus on the
process of coming up with such a story.
A recurring question that I hear being asked of storytellers of
all mediums is "Where do you get your ideas?" Obviously, I can't
speak for all storytellers, but in my case, the answer is
"everywhere". It doesn't matter whether I'm watching cartoons or
watching random strangers on the street; in the end, every
interesting thing I observe is fair game for contributing to the
swirling miasma of inspiration located inside my head.
HTML https://cdn.nivoli.com/adventuregamers/images/articles/18042/6774.jpg<br
/>
I've noticed that when writing a story, some people like to
begin by developing a setting, whereas others prefer to focus on
creating characters. While I acknowledge that both are
important, I tend more towards the latter category, considering
that the stories I find most interesting are usually the ones
with complex and memorable characters. After all, no matter
where and when a story takes place, its characters, when done
well, have a human quality to them that allows us to empathize
with their situations and relate them to our own lives.
In the case of Chivalry, the ideas for characters stemmed from
various epic fantasy novels I read throughout my teenage years.
While I found such stories entertaining and enthralling in and
of themselves, one thing that always bothered me was how in many
cases, every character would fit neatly into a pre-defined
archetype: the hero, the villain, the love interest, the wizened
mentor, and so on. And complementary to such archetypes came
clearly-defined categories of "good" and "evil", with little
room for the hazy shades of grey one tends to see in real-world
interactions with others.
As a result, one day I started thinking to myself: what if I
took these archetypes and twisted them around somehow, in an
attempt to illustrate the absurdity of such a black-and-white
view of ethics? Why don't I turn the hero into an arrogant,
deluded fool of nothing more than average talent, and the
villain into someone who ultimately turns out to be harmless?
Furthermore, why don't I have the true protagonist of the game
-- in other words, the character that the player controls -- be
the villain's henchman, an archetype that traditionally plays
only a minor role in your typical fantasy story?
HTML https://cdn.nivoli.com/adventuregamers/images/articles/18042/6772.jpg
Several brainstorms, long walks, and caffeinated beverages
later, these ponderances began to shape their way into some
semblance of a plot. Right around the point that this happens is
when I usually start to write things down concretely in a design
document of sorts. I say "of sorts" because I don't follow any
specific format when creating my documentation; in fact, in past
projects of mine, much of the documentation consisted of pencil
sketches and messy handwritten notes in point form. In this
case, however, I decided to create a nice, clean Word document
divided into two sections: one describing the major characters
in the game, and one summarizing how the plot will progress,
including every scene that the player will be visiting.
HTML https://cdn.nivoli.com/adventuregamers/images/articles/18042/6775.jpg
Here's a snippet from the first section:
Phlegmwad -- This is you. Extremely ugly to the point that you
must wear a paper bag over your head at all times, everyone
hates you and thinks of you as a disgusting little creep. You
make your living as Lord Horrible's personal assassin, mainly
because you're pretty good with a dagger and no one else in
their right mind would ever hire you.
And here's one from the second section:
1) Lord Horrible's Lair -- Lord Horrible briefs you on the task
at hand: kill the Queen so that he can usurp the throne as ruler
of Everything. You accept.
2) Castle Balcony -- The Queen is standing here, contemplating
life. Whatever you try to do to her, she will recognize you and
offer to free you from the clutches of Lord Horrible forever.
From here, you have a couple of options:
You could ignore her offer and kill her. Lord Horrible will then
rule over Everything, and the game will end.
You could accept her offer. She will tell you of a prophecy she
found in which a farm boy named Leslie from Badger's Fields is
fated to defeat Lord Horrible using the Sword of All That is
Good...
HTML https://cdn.nivoli.com/adventuregamers/images/articles/18042/6776.jpg
The document in its entirety is a mere three pages long, which,
compared to most design documents (or so I hear), is rather
short -- I'm intentionally leaving out such details as dialogue,
puzzle solutions, and interactive items. The reason for this is
simply because at this point in time, I don't need to include
them. Traditionally, when games are created as part of a team,
and every person is in charge of one specific part of
production, it makes sense for a designer to create a document
detailing every single thing that must go into the game.
However, since my approach is more holistic, bearing more
similarity to other solo creative endeavours (e.g. writing a
novel or a comic book) than to team game development, I'm
allowed more leeway to keep some of these finer details in my
head, and to make some of them up as I go along. A brief outline
like the one I've created brings about enough of a balance to
make such leeway possible, while at the same time keeping me on
track so that I have an actual ending to work toward.
Thus, I now have a purpose and goal to strive for in my
storytelling, and an outline that forms its skeleton. Next time,
I'll discuss the process of putting meat on these metaphorical
bones; that is, adding various forms of interactivity in ways
that complement the story.
#Post#: 38--------------------------------------------------
Re: Adventure Architect #2
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 5:38 am
---------------------------------------------------------
In my previous installment, I mentioned interactive storytelling
as my primary approach in the creation of an adventure game. I
also emphasized how important a role the story plays in such a
game, and how all other things must be subservient to it. This
time around, however, I am going to be placing my emphasis on
the word "interactive" in interactive storytelling, which is of
equally paramount importance. After all, without interactivity,
I wouldn't be creating a game so much as I would be creating a
machinima movie.
How, then, does one make a story interactive? The most
conventional model of doing so in the adventure genre,
popularized by various well-loved commercial games from the
eighties and nineties, is to create a set of logic puzzles
splattered throughout key points in the story to serve as
obstacles. Gameplay then proceeds in small chunks of "solve the
puzzle, advance the plot slightly, solve another puzzle, advance
the plot a bit more", and so on.
Though I've used this approach myself in earlier games of mine,
in the process of learning to imitate the classics I loved and
admired, I have since come to realise that there is something
fundamentally frustrating about it. Don't get me wrong; I love a
good logic puzzle. I've been known to spend hours and hours
playing Sudoku on my Nintendo DS, for crying out loud. Still,
what makes Sudoku different from a heavily story-based adventure
game is that in the former case, my primary goal is to solve the
puzzle in and of itself, whereas in the latter case, my primary
goal is to see the story progress, and the puzzle-solving
becomes a hindrance to that goal. Thus, when my desire to get on
with the story outweighs my desire to spend time trying to
figure out the puzzle (and trust me, this tends to happen quite
often), I find myself entering the very familiar state of
"getting stuck", with no choice but to either bang my head
against the keyboard in agony or minimize the game window and
hunt around the Internet for a walkthrough -- a practice that I,
personally, find very detrimental to a game's sense of
immersion.
Of course, there are many people who actually enjoy this
approach to interactive storytelling; luckily for them, there
already do exist plenty of games that satisfy their tastes. But
what about those who, like myself, do not? One obvious solution
is to make all puzzles brain-dead easy, with all the items and
tools you need always right there in front of you, to the point
that even a monkey randomly clicking a mouse could solve them.
Unfortunately, the result is, in fact, a loss of interactivity;
the majority of players will now end up feeling like they're
being led by the hand throughout the entire game, with little
sense of agency. Essentially, all we have left is a machinima
movie that we can click through.
What I am going to attempt to do instead is implement puzzles
with multiple solutions -- which I hope to frame as ethical
choices rather than as brainteasers -- and have these solutions
affect the remainder of the game in some way or another. Case in
point: when Phlegmwad reaches the Queen of Everything's castle,
he must first get past the guard at the front door. The most
obvious option Phlegmwad has is to kill the guard using his
dagger. Yet, if he does so, then the Queen, having been watching
the whole time from her balcony, will end up reacting to him in
a more guarded and hostile manner, and will be less willing to
be of help to him later in the game. On the other hand, if
Phlegmwad sweet-talks the guard into leaving his post instead,
the Queen will end up somewhat friendlier in her demeanour.
This, however, is an approach that will take a little bit more
careful thinking on the part of Phlegmwad to accomplish, as the
guard does not look upon him in a particularly positive manner
in the first place.
I feel that this shift in focus from challenge to choice does
its job of preserving interactivity, while at the same time
reducing the level of frustration involved in the traditional
approach to puzzle-solving and resulting in greater
accessibility to players who may not be as experienced in the
adventure genre as others. What this dimension of choice also
does, in a very deliberate fashion, is highlight the underlying
themes of moral relativism in the story in a manner more
effective than a purely linear structure ever could. It is,
after all, much more meaningful to show players the consequences
of their actions than it is to merely lecture at them.
But that's far from all there is to it. To make the issue of
morality even more complex, I plan on playing around a bit more
with variations on this structure. There will, for instance, be
a similar situation further in the course of the game where
Phlegmwad can either act hostile or diplomatic toward a
character from whom he needs a certain item to progress. This
time, however, no one will be around to see him, and what he
ultimately does in the end has no bearing on the rest of the
story. My hope is that this will encourage the player to think
about the deeper philosophical implications in his or her
actions than simply those of cause and effect, i.e. is there any
point in behaving in a good or just manner when it will not be
of benefit to you, personally?
It's worth pointing out that one thing I've always loved about
developing adventure games over other genres has been the focus
on careful, cerebral thinking over quick reflexes. By creating
puzzles that are arguably easier in a logical sense than those
in traditional adventures, it is not my intent at all to
discourage the practice of thinking; rather, I see it as
enabling different kinds of thinking not often practiced in the
context of a game. Of course, whether I succeed or fail in this
regard still remains yet to be seen.
Be sure to stay tuned for Part 4, where I will take this
discussion of interactivity even further through the creation of
interactive non-player characters, whose relations with the
player and amongst themselves dynamically change in response to
player-influenced actions and events.
#Post#: 39--------------------------------------------------
Re: Adventure Architect #2
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 5:41 am
---------------------------------------------------------
By far, one of my favourite things to do in classic adventure
games is to have conversations with non-player characters. As I
stated in Article #2, it's the characters that make a story for
me; thus, it makes sense that I would thoroughly enjoy any
opportunity to actually interact with them, from asking
questions and hearing their experiences and thoughts about the
world to provoking them in various ways and witnessing the
comedic value of their reactions. Grim Fandango, for instance,
wouldn't have been the same for me if I weren't able to have
Manny flirt with the security officer, nor would The Curse of
Monkey Island have been as much fun without Guybrush being
allowed to irritate the cabańa boy.
Sadly, in many adventures, character interaction has presented
itself as extra window dressing rather than as a primary
gameplay element. At most, it is useful in the way that talking
to a character sometimes provides clues as to how to solve a
puzzle; other times, it is simply a fun little diversion and
nothing more. Save for a relatively minute handful of
exceptions, what you say or do to characters has no significant
effect on the game itself -- if you make someone angry by
choosing one dialogue option, it is virtually forgotten by the
time you go back and choose a different one. Although a mixture
of clever writing and careful limiting of possible choices can
effectively maintain the player's suspension of disbelief in
this regard, it still begs the question as to what an adventure
game would be like if non-player characters did remember how the
player treated them. This is a question I plan to explore at
length throughout the making of Chivalry is Not Dead.
What I am doing, inspired in part by an IGDA article
HTML http://web.archive.org/web/20050207022423/https://www.igda.org/writing/InteractiveStorytelling.htm<br
/>I read some time ago, is implementing a simple affinity system
between characters. The way one character feels about another is
represented by a nine-point scale, where a value of 1 represents
extreme loathing and a value of 9 represents extreme admiration,
and all other values represent something in between. To
illustrate how this system works in the game, imagine a
hypothetical scenario in which Phlegmwad first meets the Queen
of Everything. She begins by feeling neutral towards him;
therefore, her affinity level is set to a starting level of 5.
Once Phlegmwad begins to interact with her, certain actions will
change this affinity level. A compliment about her interior
decorating style, for instance, will increase affinity by one
point, whereas having Phlegmwad pull out his dagger in a
threatening fashion will decrease it.
As the game progresses onward, Phlegmwad will be able to
continue interacting with the Queen and affecting her affinity
towards him as a result. However, just as in real life, the
Queen's perception of Phlegmwad's actions will be coloured by
her prior impressions of him. A remark about her physical
appearance, to give an example, may be taken as a compliment in
normal circumstances, but if her current affinity level is less
than, say, 4, she will take the remark as an insult and retort
with an appropriately cutting response. Likewise, when it comes
time for Phlegmwad to ask her for favours, such as allowing him
to borrow money to purchase an item he needs, her willingness to
do so will also vary according to her affinity level. This
directly ties in to my discussion of alternate puzzle solutions
from Article #3.
To further complicate matters, there are some instances in which
a non-player character's affinity toward another non-player
character can be affected by the player. Suppose, now, that
Phlegmwad and the Queen arrive to meet Leslie, the farm boy.
Upon laying eyes on the Queen, Leslie finds himself immediately
infatuated with her, placing his affinity level toward her at 9.
Hence, the way he feels about Phlegmwad is very much affected by
the Queen's opinions; if she finds Phlegmwad suspicious and
untrustworthy at this point in the game, then Leslie will feel
the same, whereas if she finds him harmless, Leslie will act
slightly more forgiving around him.
I should also mention that the numerical values of a character's
affinity will, in fact, be hidden from the player, i.e. there
won't be a menu in which one will be able to check affinity
levels, then adjust behaviour accordingly. Instead, the player
knows only what the characters decide to reveal about their
feelings for others, which is variable according to their
personalities. Some will be forthright and direct, expressing
their like and dislike of a person in a very obvious manner.
Others will be more difficult to read, sometimes feigning
politeness to hide their loathing of a person, or conversely
acting aloof in an attempt to conceal feelings of love.
All in all, the main advantage I see with implementing this
affinity system is that it creates further functionality in
allowing for a narrative that meaningfully reflects a player's
choices and preferences. I can't count the number of times I've
read a novel, watched a movie, or even played a game in which
the hero's romantic interest was a character I neither liked nor
related to instead of getting together with the nerdy best
friend, or had the villain turn out to be a far more interesting
character than the hero and consequently wished to see the
former prevail in the end. Hence, in Chivalry, although the
non-player characters have minds of their own and will not
automatically acquiesce to the player's suggestions, I do want
to at least allow for the player to have a say in whom Phlegmwad
attempts to develop allegiances with.
Furthermore, for those who wish to replay the game in order to
see the results of a different set of choices, there will exist
an added benefit of getting to see contrasting sides of the same
characters under varying sets of circumstances. This is
something one often doesn't get to see in most forms of linear
fiction, particularly with a short story, such as what I am
attempting. I anticipate that doing so will reveal that there is
no clear protagonist or antagonist in this game, and that, as in
real life, every individual has a mix of good and bad aspects to
them.
There are, of course, a number of challenges I have to face in
my implementation. For starters, to account for all the options
I provide the player and all possible responses that may result,
I have to write significantly more dialogue than I would
otherwise. Fortunately, dialogue-writing is an activity I
thoroughly enjoy doing when developing a game. I can see this
becoming a problem if, say, I were writing a commercial game,
and needed to pay voice actors more money to record all these
extra lines, but this is not an issue that concerns Chivalry.
Moreover, the decisions of what options to include in the first
place is, in itself, a challenge. I cannot always anticipate
every single interesting choice that the player may want to
make, and often I find myself thinking of new possible dialogue
lines for a situation I created earlier on, and adding them
simply because I see no reason not to. This, too, could be a
problem if the game were on a tight schedule and budget.
Still, given that I am creating Chivalry as freeware, I feel
that the strengths in experimenting with a character affinity
system in an adventure game greatly outweigh its disadvantages.
It is my hope that such an experiment will, in the end, lead to
a new kind of gaming experience that is at once fun,
interesting, and personally meaningful for the player.
#Post#: 40--------------------------------------------------
Re: Adventure Architect #2
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 5:43 am
---------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: At the time of writing, Chivalry is Not Dead has finished
production and is now undergoing beta testing. Visit the
official website on Saturday, October 13 for its grand
unveiling!
Conventional wisdom often states that you can't judge a book by
its cover, implying that the ideas and themes behind a work of
art are far more deserving of one's attention than its surface
elements. While I do agree with this sentiment to a great
extent, this isn't to say that such surface elements are
unworthy of attention altogether; on the contrary, putting a
decent amount of thought into a game's aesthetic style can go a
long way in actually enhancing the ideas present within. This
article, therefore, will delve into the art direction and
interface design of Chivalry is Not Dead.
HTML https://cdn.nivoli.com/adventuregamers/images/articles/18106/7584__large.jpg
From the beginning, I deliberately sought to distinguish
Chivalry's visual style from those of professionally-developed
games. The most obvious reason for this was simply because,
unlike commercial game companies with dozens of highly skilled
people working on art alone, I simply do not have the time,
talent, resources, or patience to create graphics with the same
high level of detail, whether they be hand-painted 2D or nearly
photorealistic 3D. More importantly, however, given that the
very nature of Chivalry is that it is a game created by one
single person rather than by a corporation and thus has the
freedom to explore ideas on a far more personal dimension, I
believed that the game's art would do well to convey this
independent aesthetic. I wanted to prove that creating a style
that looks good does not necessarily imply creating a style that
copies those of past games. Instead, I firmly adhere to the
notion that every game developer can and should bring their own
unique look to their work.
In the same vein, I also did not wish to go the pixellated retro
320x200 route, as seems to be popular with many Underground
adventure games in recent times. This is due to the fact that,
ultimately, Chivalry is not a game about nostalgia; while its
roots and inspiration may derive from classic adventures, it
isn't meant to emulate classic adventures. My goal is to
demonstrate that I am attempting to create something new and
forward-thinking, and I, personally, feel that if I were to use
low-resolution graphics with a such a distinctively retro
aesthetic, I would not be sending that message across.
HTML https://cdn.nivoli.com/adventuregamers/images/articles/18106/7583__large.jpg
Hence, the style I have adopted for Chivalry is a very iconic
and simple one, with smooth, thick lines and bold colours
similar to what one would see in a comic strip. I create this
style by sketching from an old, cheap drawing tablet straight
into Flash, then exporting the vector graphics generated into
PNG files with alpha channels, to be viewed in-game at an
800x600 resolution. By keeping my methods relatively low in
complexity, I find that I can generate art assets a lot more
quickly, allowing me far more time to focus on the game's
content while still allowing for a look that I find visually
pleasing.
Looking at the screenshots, you may notice that I have gone for
a very minimalistic look in comparison to many adventure games,
with sparse backgrounds and few objects to interact with. This,
too, is very deliberate, as Chivalry is primarily about people
rather than things; most of the gameplay, after all, is
dialogue-based rather than inventory-based. Character sprites,
on the other hand, are a bit more detailed, but still very
iconic and cartoonish, and are animated very simply rather than
realistically. I have done this first and foremost as a matter
of personal taste and talent, but also because cartoon
characters, by nature, are far more adept than realistic ones at
conveying symbolism, favouring my artistic tendency towards
abstract ideas as opposed to concrete representations.
HTML https://cdn.nivoli.com/adventuregamers/images/articles/18106/7585__large.jpg
Adding to this general sense of minimalism is Chivalry's
interface, in which all interactions happen by merely clicking
on characters and objects, and Phlegmwad's rather limited
inventory appears as a single bar accessed by hovering over the
top of the screen. I felt that having fewer buttons and settings
for the player to fiddle with on-screen would divert greater
attention to the content of the game itself. Furthermore, by
keeping possible verbs to a minimum via a one-click interface, I
wanted to reduce the number of default "I can't X that"
responses as much as possible, as I often tend to find them
irritating. In many games with so-called "guess the verb"
tendencies, it seems as though the interface is a puzzle in and
of itself. Considering that one of my goals is to make Chivalry
as accessible as possible to those who do not regularly play
adventure games, I find myself erring more on the side of
friendliness rather than frustration in this case.
The end result of all this, in my opinion, is a product that
looks and feels very smooth and polished, while at the same time
possessing a stylistic flair that gives the game an unmistakable
personal touch echoing the independently-developed nature of its
content. Next time around, I'll be posting the final article in
this series, which will entail taking this finished product I've
created and finally unveiling it, first to a small group of
testers, then to the world at large.
#Post#: 41--------------------------------------------------
Re: Adventure Architect #2
DIR By: Pam
Date: May 23, 2021, 5:47 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Well, Chivalry is Not Dead has been released to the general
public for a good while now, and player feedback has been
trickling to me slowly but surely, providing useful insight into
how the game has been received. I've also had time to reflect on
my own impressions of the finished product and the process of
reaching that point, so I'll begin with a few words about how I
feel it turned out in the end.
From a development standpoint, I think I managed to meet my
initial expectations and goals for the project; I wound up
including pretty much every feature I wanted to include, and
delivered the final product within six short months. I'm very
proud of that, given my natural tendency to procrastinate. It
seems like I'm gaining more experience in knowing what I'm
capable of and scheduling my time accordingly, which I certainly
didn't have when I first started making games.
Yet, despite this, what I find myself more concerned about is
how Chivalry presents itself as an artistic experience; that is,
how far does it come in reaching out and inspiring people in the
same way that my favourite works of art do? Admittedly, I don't
think I'm the greatest of storytellers, and still have a long
way to go before I get anywhere near where I'd like to be in
that regard. That said, my impressions of my games are coloured
by the fact that I know them inside and out, and therefore
cannot see them as an audience would. This is where player
feedback becomes important to me. It becomes my measuring stick
to gauge where I am with respect to creating my ideal gaming
experience, and what I can do to come closer to that ideal in
future projects.
First, I should preface my thoughts by noting that although I
sought to create a game that would be accessible to anyone
regardless of whether they had already played adventure games or
not, the areas of the internet to which Chivalry has been
exposed the most so far have invariably been adventure
game-specific sites. Though I have also attempted to submit my
game to some general freeware gaming sites and to the IGF
Student Showcase, it appears that most people who deem it
interesting enough to try are those who have indeed played at
least a few games of the adventure genre before. The
observations I share, therefore, will generally be skewed in
this direction.
Contrary to what I had hypothesized previously, only a minority
of players were disappointed in Chivalry's short length and lack
of difficult puzzles. It seems as though the novelty of having
many choices in the plot's progression was in itself enough of a
satisfying playing experience for a number of people, and this
pleased me greatly. One thing in particular that I noticed
through forum comments was that several players started their
first playthroughs not by having Phlegmwad do what they
themselves would do in the same situation, but by attempting
silly actions that adventure games don't normally allow them to
do, such as stabbing virtually everyone in sight. Considering
that I, too, enjoy trying silly things when I play games, I had
hoped to provided responses to such actions that acknowledged
them in a tongue-and-cheek way, and even went so far as to allow
alternate endings to take place as a result of such actions. I
tried my best not to make these seem like “death” endings that
punished the player for doing the “wrong” thing, but more like
portrayals of an alternate reality. Since it appeared to me that
people were more amused than frustrated by such endings, I think
I succeeded.
Of course, I also soon noticed that when one gives players the
option of choice, the first thing some people will complain
about is not having enough of it. While I as a player can
understand this sentiment – it can be quite difficult to enjoy a
game about choice when the choice that you want to make doesn't
exist – as a developer, I also recognize the difficulty inherent
in allowing for sandbox-esque freedom in a story-based game.
Aside from the highly daunting task of creating an
exponentially-growing number of possible branches, when one
allows the player to do nearly everything, it becomes harder and
harder to illustrate the theme and purpose behind your story.
Thus, having known this from the start, it was in my best
interest to limit the choices available to what I believed would
most effectively show the points I was trying to make, rather
than provide as many choices as I possibly could.
This brings me to the thematic content of the game itself as
first discussed in the second article in this series, namely a
discussion of the not-very-clear-cut concepts of “good” and
“evil”. Most feedback I received from others didn't really
mention much about my treatment of this subject, leaving me
uncertain as to whether I succeeded in properly portraying this
theme through the gameplay and my writing. I find that I
generally err on the side of not being too preachy in my work,
couching some of my stronger views in lighthearted humour so as
not to offend too many people. However, I also recognize that
this may cause players to completely miss the points I try to
make, meaning that my personal writing style continues to need
refinement in this regard. Still, there were a handful of people
who successfully managed to “get the point”, so to speak,
signalling to me that I had at least done something right.
Perhaps the most interesting thing I observed regarding Chivalry
was that players, by and large, had more difficulty figuring out
non-violent, diplomatic solutions to problems than they were
with those that involved hurting or deceiving people. This was
mainly unintentional on my part, as I didn't particularly want
to frustrate people into behaving in ways that contradicted
their own personal ethics. Still, I hypothesize that because
games typically force one to “win” through violence,
acquisition, and/or shrewd trickery, those are the solutions
that both gamers and game developers are accustomed to by
convention. By contrast, when it comes to the murky waters of
negotiation and diplomacy, abstract representations of what
constitute success and failure don't have as many conventions in
gaming, and are rather perplexing to depict, particularly
considering that in a good story, not all characters would react
to all well-meaning actions in the same way. Then again, perhaps
part of the problem is that my idea of how to respond to
characters in a way that doesn't irk them is not necessarily the
same as everyone else's, meaning the approach I've taken in
implementing this as a gameplay feature might sometimes have
created precisely the same “read the game designer's mind”
frustration I tried to avoid by making puzzles with multiple
solutions in the first place.
With these final thoughts, I conclude the second edition of
Adventure Architect; however, in my eyes, it is still quite far
from “the end”. Rather, I see this as the beginning of an
ongoing collaborative discussion, which I hope will work towards
more experimentation and refinement of the adventure game as an
interactive story, perhaps morphing into a completely new genre
altogether. Henceforth, if you, the reader, happen to have some
thoughts of your own regarding Chivalry is Not Dead and this
series of articles, I invite you to either leave a comment here
or on the forums. And of course, play the game, if you haven't
already.
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