Tag Archives: game design

Chat and Item Placement

Time for the weekly update! This last week was another productive week but it took an unexpected turn. At the start I was planning to get chat, item placement and some other feature done. I breezed through chat as I suspected, and once I started digging into item placement I realized there was much more potential (and work!) than I had originally anticipated.

Item placement is the feature the enables a player to take an item from their inventory and place it into the world.

I knew right away that I needed item placement to be dynamic and any item could provide a placement component to enable it to be placed into the world. Another thing I knew is that items should be able to define how it can be placed (known as the axis) – on the ceiling, floor, wall, and/or backwall. One last thing that entered my mind before I started programming is that some items should be able to be placed on top of other items – such as a candle can be placed on a table. Once I got the basics implemented and began looking into items supporting other items I had an epiphany.

Items can provide a list of different axes it can be supported on (think ceiling, floor, wall) and for each axis it defines the area the item takes up in the real world and also a list of supports that the axis provides. These supports can specify the side the support is at (top, bottom, left, right) and where the support is at on the item’s side. This basically boils down to one word: Awesomeness.

I will admit that it is a confusing without seeing it in action so here is a quick peek with more to come soon. This is a poor man shrine my friend David threw together.

The tables and shrines are all dynamically placed on a pixel basis and this is why I am truly excited about this feature. Later in the week I plan to write a more thorough write-up on how easy it is to create items with a placement component. I may even include a video of it in action!

Building anything just got personal.

Crafting in Crea

When I first started brainstorming Crea and how I would do things differently from current sandbox games, crafting was the second thing that came to mind (after modding of course). The positional crafting system in Minecraft is an interesting approach but it, like other crafting systems, share a common problem: The player has no idea what can be crafted and/or what materials are needed for an item. Nearly everyone (if not everyone), loads up Minecraft, plays around a little bit and then opens up a wiki to find what items to craft and what is needed. The same goes for Terraria for the most part. In the end, players become wiki dependent and consequently the game does as well. This stops in Crea.

A player must first aquire the recipe for an item before being able to craft it.There are several means to acquiring recipes: monster loot; treasure chests; quests; and, most importantly, the Researcher NPC.

The Researcher is specifically for discovering new recipes. First you provide the researcher with materials. Upon returning to him after some time, you gain any recipes his research turned up. We are also considering a hint system that will help steer players into being able to discover more recipes.

This should help give new players direction and also keep them in the game. Basically, crafting will feel like a natural and intuitive aspect of the game rather than a mystery that requires switching in between the game and a wiki. Another exciting aspect of this crafting system is that it lends itself to the ever-expanding content Crea will see.

Stargazing

I have mentioned Terraria on several occasions here. One thing I have neglected to mention is that a month ago Redigit, one of the developers, announced that Terraria’s development has ceased. The other developer of Terraria, Tiy, has gone on to work on a spiritual successor to Terraria, Starbound.  One the surface Starbound looks familiar to Terraria, but once you start digging it becomes apparent that the design direction is quite different. Nearly everything is going to be procedurally generated as hinted at in this indiegamemag.com article. In Terraria only the world is generated and all other content is predefined. In Starbound, weapons, monsters, worlds and I’m sure basically everything else is going to be generated on the fly.

I wonder if monsters attacks will be randomly generated. One attack would be the creeper attack, which is a Minecraft monster that gets next to you and explodes. Just imagine you’re walking through a forest and then you spot a deer-like creature grazing. You really want to pet it so you slowly walk up behind it. Just as you extend your hand to touch its side, it turns its head toward you, glares for a second and then begins to flash. BOOM! The deer explodes and leaves a nice crater in it’s place. I’d buy that.

Starbound Arctic Planet

This design approach is not all too surprising. Sandbox games lend themselves quite well to generated content. I think this is mostly because sandbox games are all about exploration of the world and your imagination. When the world is generated with lots of parameters the sheer number of possibilities becomes nearly limitless.

There is one problem with this though. Because Starbound is putting so much focus into the randomly generated content it limits the exploration of your imagination. I am of course talking about modding. It does sound like there will be some support for mods but it seems to be more of an afterthought. Regardless, this game is going to be legendary.

Terraforming in Crea

Randomly generated content can be great and sometimes not so much. If the input is too constrained, then the result is something that is different and yet all too familiar. I think this can be seen in the Terraria world generation. Terraria has a fairly limited number of biomes and how they are used is restricted. Such as a large world will always have 6 floating islands and there is always one dungeon. After a few worlds patterns quickly become apparent. Don’t get me wrong though. Terraria can provide dozens of hours of exciting exploration, but the novelty does eventually wear off.

World images created with MoreTerra

When I set out designing the world generation for Crea, I knew I wanted to enable players to be able to have unique experiences with every world. The answer was quite obvious – moddable biomes. If players could easily create their own biomes or play with other player’s biomes then the possibilities are endless. Here is an example of what a biome content looks like.

biome.name = "Plains"
#How often this biome should be used
biome.frequency = 50

#The minimum and maximum dimensions of the biome
biome.minWidth = 80
biome.maxWidth = 300
biome.minHeight = 80
biome.maxHeight = 300

#Specifies that this biome only occurs on the surface
biome.surface = True

#The elevation of the biome
biome.elevation = 100

#The amount of elevation changes (hills) in the biome
biome.hilly = 10.0

#How much the lowest and highest elevation can differ
biome.relief = 2.0

#A list of biomes that cannot neighbor this biome
biome.blacklist = ['Volcano']

#List of actions to apply to the world
#This part is still being worked on.
biome.placeTiles('stone', frequency=20, pattern)
biome.placeTiles('mud', frequency=10, pattern)
biome.plant('grass', frequency=40)
biome.plant('tree', frequency=5)

Some of these details will change but this gives a good idea of what a biome looks like. Most of the contents are explained. You can do simple things like increase the ‘hilly’ and ‘relief’ properties and have mountains. For the real power we have the actions section at the bottom.

After the basic terrain has been generated, each biome has it’s list of actions applied to it. In this case all Plains biomes will have stone randomly placed, then some mud, then lots of grass will be planted, and finally a few trees. I plan to include several basic actions that players can use to make creating biomes as simple as possible, but what if you want to do something completely different? Lets say you want to build a crazy dungeon. For advanced modders, I have added a special action that takes a callback function which provides you ample power to twist the world to your desires.

Now that we know how biomes are made, the next logical question is “How are they used”? Players will have the option to create a world with simple or advanced options. With simple the player chooses a name and the world size and is good to go. From the advanced options the player is also able to adjust the frequency of biomes. Want a world consisting purely of bunny warrens? Kelley, our artist, does!

Not only will players never have to see the same world twice, but they will be able to explore the worlds that they want.

Behold the Power of Modding

I have been rambling on about this sandbox project being mod friendly, but I haven’t given any details. How will the mods work? What will they look like? I want to take the time to answer these – please bare with me as this is  more technical than previous posts. Mods will work through the power of Python, a scripting language, and a component-based engine. Each piece of content has its own text file that describes how to create it in game. This file is actually a python script. I will touch on why this is so important soon. The content definition file is very readable and I am doing my best to simplify it. Before digging in too deep lets look at an example – a simple pickaxe.

name = 'Pickaxe'

render = Render('mods/base/item/pickaxe.png', SpriteData("Pickaxe"))
add(render)

item = Item()
#How many of this item can stack in one inventory slot.
item.stack = 1
#How often the item can be used. This is in milliseconds.
item.delay = 200
add(item)

#Adding a craft component enables players to craft the item
craft = Craft('tool')
craft.add('mods/base/tile/stone.py', 2)
craft.add('mods/base/tile/wood.py', 3)
add(craft)

#Tool components makes the item be able to break down compatable tiles
tool = Tool()
#Each tile has a life amount that is decreased by tool's power - once zero the tile breaks
tool.power = 1
#How far can the tool reach - this is in pixels (tiles are 24x24 pixels)
tool.reach = 125
#Which tiles the tool is compatable with. This can list tile groups ("soil") or specific tile names ("stone")
tool.compatable = ['soil', 'stone', 'sand']
add(tool)

Any content created in game is known as an ‘entity’ and each entity is composed of one or more components. Every component has a specific function such as a render component is used to render the entity to the screen and a craft component is used to provide information on how to craft the item. An entity can have any combination of components added or removed from it, which makes the system very modular. At entity creation the content script, such as the above pickaxe script, components are added with the add() function – such as add(render). You’ll see that a pickaxe is composed of a render, item, craft and tool components. Don’t want the pickaxe to be craftable anymore? Simply remove the craft component. Remember how I said that this is a python script? Because of this it opens up all kinds of doors. Some components will provide the power to define custom functions. What this means is that content can have unique logic inside of it. Here is one quick example.

Say you decide you really hate monsters attacking you while you’re trying to mine for some copper. You’re a simple man with simple pleasures. You don’t ask for much. Then suddenly you have an idea – lets make a new piece of equipment that insta-kills any monster that comes in contact with you. This can easily be done by adding in a custom OnHit function to your newly crafted equipment piece. You won’t worry about those monsters anymore as they squirm on the ground in agony at your feet.

If I lost you with my first mention of functions, then don’t worry because as I have previously said, all of the included game content will be a mod. Consequently, there will be plenty of examples to copy from. Also we’ll do our best to provide lots of documentation on modding. This is just one example of the true power of modding.

Sandbox Modding

My last post I introduced this idea of building a sandbox game that is mod friendly. What does this “mod friendly” actually mean? Isn’t decompiling the game’s executable and editing the source code considered as supporting mods? Not quite. Decompiling is obviously a way to mod games, as Minecraft and Terraria have proven, but it is still far from being truly mod friendly. To be fair, these games were built by very small teams (1 and 2 people respectively) and being mod friendly can be a lofty goal. To me, mod friendly means to make creating, sharing, and managing mods as simple as possible for the average player.

Creating mods will be simple and fast but still provide much flexibility for those with big plans. Tools will be provided to help perform the more basic tasks such as setting up a mod. Adding content will be as simple as creating a new file, typing in a few lines, saving the file, and then loading it up in the game. No compiling will be required. One goal I have is to make it possible to reload content in game to help streamline the creation process. No restarting necessary!

The provided mod tools will help with packaging up a mod as well. Once packaged a player simply has to drop the mod package into their directory and the game will take care of the rest. We are also considering providing an official hub to upload mods to. Eventually, if the game gets onto Steam, we would love to support Steam Workshop. This is a service provided by Steam that allows players to easily share, search, and subscribe to game mods.

Players will be given the ability to enable/disable mods and even completely remove the mods all in game. The goal is to minimize the amount the player has to manage mods externally. We even have plans to make the multiplayer host (aka server) provide any missing mods to joining players.

The way that we will ensure that this game is truly mod friendly is by dogfooding it. All of the game content will actually be a mod to the game. With this philosophy we will be able to ensure that nothing is hardcoded and nearly every single aspect of the game can be modified. This won’t just include the basics such as items, monsters and tiles. It will include much more such as biomes, NPCs, character customization, and eventually the ability to add entirely new systems to the game.

In my next post I will go into the more technical side of how the game will be made mod friendly.

Sandbox Concept

I am almost ashamed to admit it, but I have never played Minecraft - “Minecraft is a game about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine.” I remember first hearing about it when it started to really pick up momentum about a year and a half ago. I watched videos of all of the amazing things that people would make in it but I never caved in. Due to Minecraft’s popularity, several Minecraft knock-offs have been done to only mimic the core basics, not add anything substantial to the formula, and then profit like mad. The first true exception I saw was Terraria, which actually builds onto the core mechanics of Minecraft and its inspirations. Terraria adds NPCs, much more in-depth fighting (bosses included!), and some more RPG elements.

Back in November Aaron, my brother and Siege Games designer, picked up Terraria and before too long I was sucked into it as well. We played an alarming number of hours before we even started to slow down. To revitalize the game some, Aaron began looking into the mods for the game and even tried making his own. I watched and cringed as he fumbled around trying to decompile the executable just in order to add a mod to the game. After much hackery he was able to get the game recompiled but broken. It wasn’t much longer when we decided that the game had ran its course.

Fast forward a few months, I had been struggling to get the movement down for Crazy Old Me for a few weeks. I knew its importance but it was really starting to take its toll on both the project and me. So much so that I began an innocent brainstorming of “If I were to make a game like Terraria, what would I do differently?” The answer was clear – “Easily moddable”. My excitement grew exponentially as I began to realize the implications that this could have. Many people describe Minecraft as a virtual Lego set. My envisioning is to not only let players play with the Legos but make it easy for them to build the Lego blocks as well. I’m sure Aaron and I could still be playing Terraria if we had at least some freedom in modding it. Of course, the core game has to be enjoyable enough to warrant mods and so Aaron and I had a more official brainstorming session. We came up with some more answers to my original question that could help set us apart.

We were thoroughly seduced by this sandbox idea. So much so that we knew we had to at the very least play around with the idea. Crazy Old Me had not been forgotten but and it did slow us down some but “we can come back to it in 2 weeks” was enough to convince us. So for the last two weeks we have been working adamantly on fleshing out this concept and working on an early alpha. The likelihood of us returning to Crazy Old Me dwindles everyday as we march forth to the holy procedurally generated land. Here are some (random) main points planned for the game. I will go into them in greater detail soon.

  • 2D platformer with building (somewhat given)
  • Easily moddable but with extreme flexibility
  • Unique crafting system
  • Core RPG elements (such as leveling)
  • Colorful and stylized art from Kelley McMorris
  • Multiplayer

Prototype Shipped

The prototype for Crazy Old Me has been published to two flash game sites, Newgrounds and Kongregate. Yay!

The prototype is getting reasonable ratings and reviews. The general consensus is that the core mechanic is good but the execution could have been better. This is good news considering that the focus of the prototype was on the core mechanic, phase shifting, and only mild effort was put into the other fronts.

Now that I have confirmed my suspicions that phase shifting has potential, it is time to stretch the core mechanics and expand on them as well. I will divulge some information once we have narrowed down what we want to do.