(image source)

My brain’s in a knot. Any way I push or pull it draws the knot tighter, leaving me ever less capable of unravelling. Here’s how it happened:

Captain Jameson, in its current form, is fun. It’s fun to explore the galaxy, hopping from station to station and nav point to nav point, picking a path between laser beams and oblivion. Unfortunately, this exploration doesn’t serve any purpose. I usually invent my own goal by setting off in an arbitrary direction, but for most players that isn’t enough. People need a reason to journey into the black. Initially I thought the problem trivial, and I set out to build a quest system. I figured it’d take a few hours. All I’d need to do is create a station visible from a long way off and tell the player to go there. I haven’t done it yet.

The reason I haven’t built this system is that I’m not sure I should. I want Jameson to have procedurally generated quests, so that each time I start a new world I have new things to discover. Unfortunately every generated quest I’ve ever seen in a game they have been utterly, utterly dull.

“Hi! My name is charactername. I need your help! Please deliver itemname from placename and I will reward you with lootname. Thanks!”

No thanks. This led me to think about generated narrative content, about which there are many articles suggesting it should be possible, and very few examples of it working in any way. Most of the articles focussed on the Hero’s Journey, otherwise referred to as the Monomyth. Here’s an overview:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” – Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The idea is that most myths follow this template, with other elements (such as supernatural guides, vision quests, death and rebirth) often contributing to the tale. Working from this formula it seems trivial to automate the process of building a good narrative, but despite all the talk nobody seems to have managed it. Thinking more, I’m not even sure I’d want to do this. After all, this formula is tailored to non-interactive storytelling. I’m sure there’s a lot I could learn from it, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to just dump it into a game and assume it’ll work. No, I think I need to understand how and why it works, then consider how that effects the design of interactive systems.

Now all I need to do is learn narrative design, discover some incredible way to make it procedural and interactive, and code it. People have been trying this for years without success, so my expectations are extremely low. Still, I have a giddy feeling about it so I won’t give up just yet.

<3; Farbs

I keep accidentally typing indiedrome

Yesterday I launched IndieKombat, a site dedicated to one-on-one game development contests. The first bout was announced like so:

Enraged by Fearon‘s recent Twitter attacks, superstar game developer and current INDIEDOME champion Farbs issued the following challenge:

“Die, fcker!”

We asked Farbs’ public relations manager for further clarification.

“Farbs statement clearly embodies the issuance of challenge, whereby both parties (Fearon and McFarbs) are bound to Indie Kombat. Both parties may spend up to one (1) hour per working day between the date of issue and the date four weeks thereafter developing a single video game, built from pre-existing video game components. In this particular case both parties may draw upon source material from the Fishie Fishie and SYNSO series. Once both games achieve public release the contest enters a voting phase, lasting no longer than one (1) week. Interested parties are invited to submit votes for the most deserving game. The winner is to be the developer of whichever game receives the most votes. The loser is to carry the forfeit of the name Fearon.”

Farbs’ Fishie Vs SYNSO is now hotly anticipated, with Fearon’s SYNSO vs Fishie drawing early criticism for its cumbersome title.

IndieKombat also includes a small hot-or-not style minigame, whereby you can help determine which indie dev is the indiest and even measure your own indiehood. Much <3 goes to the TIGDb project for making this possible.

Captain Jameson development resumes now. Today I’m planning quest structures.

<3 Farbs

When will Captain Jameson be released?
I’m aiming for December this year. It’s already playable, but it should be much larger than previous episodes so I have a lot left to do.

When will Captain Successor be free to play?
I currently have no plans to release Successor or Impostor for free.

Is the Captain Forever series really set in the 1990s?
Yes, sort of. The Captain Forever games are set 20 years in the past from now, right down to the second. You can see the current in-game time at the top left of any page on the Captain Forever site.

Why are your blog posts this week a bit rubbish?
This week I’m catching up on a few side projects. I can’t talk about either of them yet, but I’m hoping to announce one of them early next week.

What are these secret projects?
They are projects which are secret.

<3 Farbs

I got sick of carrying Civilian #14 to Station #147 (run by Civilian #2), so I decided to start naming things. I had hoped to generate names algorithmically, but after a couple of hours I realized I didnt want to populate the world with people named Tiniett, Ter, and Evirlis. Instead I figured I’d just build combinations of common first and last names, with name and distribution data drawn from the US census. I used 1960s baby names since these people would be in their 20s-30s at the time of the game’s setting (currently 1990). I plonked the name recombinator into a test harness and churned out a hundred results, among which I found the names of a brilliant science fiction author and a recently deceased popstar. Whoops.

<3 Farbs

(Click for full size)

Several hours in to my current test game I started to wonder – how big is this ‘verse? I whipped up a quick debug map (pictured) to see what was going on. See the letters huddled together in the middle? That’s everywhere I’ve been. All four hundred or so dots are undiscovered stations. The ‘verse is rather big.

<3 Farbs

 

Haulin’ and scrappin’

Something that bugged me about CF and CS is that there’s no reason to build large, intricate ships. All they did was make me easier to shoot. I would never build a ship like the one pictured on the left here, for instance. Now I do it all the time. I have to haul those modules out to scrap stations, so I can sell them and use the profits to fund repairs and better gear. It’s surprisingly satisfying, chugging along in a big ol’ rig like that. Then I dump the parts and zoom off in a sleek fighter configuration.

<3 Farbs

Bluh.

I hit the snow yesterday along with other members of the 5P supercrew. We had a great time, and now my everything hurts. Hopefully I’ll finish my PAX10 entry before diving into a coma.

Captain Jameson certainly isn’t finished, but then I hadn’t expected it to be. I’m still pretty sure it won’t be done ’till December, but what I have now is almost presentable and indicates where the episode is heading. I like where the episode is heading. Whenever I play I get sucked in to it for at least an hour, and I dread making updates that invalidate my savegame.

Fishie Fishie Fifty hit the marketplace on Sunday, but due to a bizarre quirk in the payment system I can’t see how many people are downloading or buying it ’till I sort out some US taxation issues. It’s weird and a little frustrating. Oh, and I have an interesting project planned for next month that might draw a little more attention to the game – more details soon.

Today’s musical selection (left) comes recommended by Andrew “I make the music for Captain Forever” Leys. I rather like it.

<3 Farbs

Whoa! All these things are happening right now (or thereabouts):

• IndieCade announced that PlayPen will feature in their E3 showcase
• Fishie Fishie Fifty has nearly completed peer review and could go live this weekend
• The Australian ski season starts tomorrow
• The PAX10 submission build of Captain Jameson is feature complete, which means I now have to make it fun

I’d better get back to it.

<3 Farbs

Not a minimap

This is not a minimap. It does not center on your ship, it is not always available, and it is not free.

This local area scan was transmitted to you by a nearby nav station. It is available because there happens to be a nav station nearby, and because you reactivated that station at substantial cost.

<3 Farbs

I don’t like menu screens. I don’t like how they break immersion, and I don’t like how long they take to make. Unfortunately in any game where you perform abstract actions you need an abstract means of representing them, and Captain Jameson has exactly this problem. When I started considering an exploration based episode I realized I’d need a map screen, screens for communicating with other characters, quest screens, inventory screens, options screens and more. You’d spend all your time clicking through laboriously hand crafted panels, it would feel utterly artificial, and it would destroy the game’s retro technology aesthetic. I had to find an alternative.

I brainstormed common alternatives for abstract game control, and two words wedged themselves firmly in my mind. Text. Adventure. I considered creating a new episode where all control was handled by text console, with the player entering commands to toggle individual thrusters and fire weapons. I might still go back and make that some day, but after Captain Impostor I figured I was due to make something a little meatier and less experimental. I still liked the text command idea though, and started to think about how it might fit into the fiction of the game. Eventually I realized that a faux terminal window (or DOS box, or commandline prompt, or whatever you prefer to call it) would let me do all these things and perfectly suit the game’s fiction and character.

In answer to Vaconcovat’s question, the terminal window does all the things you would expect to find in in-game menus.

Crunch Status update:
Monday: 100%
Tuesday: 50%
Wednesday: 0%
Thrusday: 50%
Am I behind schedule: Sort of

<3 Farbs