Ophidian Wars

The Knocking Dead

2012-02-04T16:31:00.004-05:00

So we will be releasing another game this year, maybe two with a little luck and hard work. Bryan gave an update as to why there was a slow-down with Legend of Kilflame, but momentum is returning and we should have some progress to show soon. John continues to tweak the engine (see prior post) while Bryan integrates it into the framework of the game.

Meanwhile, the 2D bug bit me again and without spoiling anything too major yet, we're well underway on something a bit different. Something more present-day - something a bit more horror and a bit less magical. Something that will put the player is a real life "what if" scenario where as the main character, your top priority is protecting your family with baseball bat (or sledgehammer?).

At this point in time, we have the engine mostly built, artwork mostly completed (although lots of animation to do yet), and we're prototyping to make sure the gameplay is as fun as it sounds on paper.

I'll leave this screenshot of a prototype design level (WIP) here for now, which reveals nothing but a nice peaceful suburban Saturday morning...(foreshadowing)

I am off to eat some home-cooked Spanish food. I love my rice and beans.

EDIT: Here's another shot, for kickshits.

Glyph Engine

2011-10-29T11:20:00.000-04:00

She's very pretty.

Check Out the Poll

2011-07-18T11:51:00.000-04:00

I had put up poll awhile back and gave it a good amount of time to marinate and gather a reasonable sample size. It closed with 71 votes which is pretty solid - time to reflect.

So the goal was to get a feel for what people though the best XBLIG game concept was, just based on a quick description, and initial reaction.

Avatar Turn-based RPG (16 votes): With the popularity of Avatar games and their unique ability to boost sales (often simply based on Avatar inclusion), I actually thought this concept might have been more popular.   However, that might have to do with the demographic/type of person visiting our blog. What's interesting is that while the poll was active a couple Avatar RPG (not turn-based, but action) games were released.   And from what I can tell, they are doing very well with sales.   That said, I actually have very little interest in developing an Avatar RPG - but conceptually I thought it had success potential.

Action RPG where you play the Shopkeeper (16 votes): I was happy to see this concept get some love because I feel like it's the most unusual of the bunch.   In my mind I envision this game as a genre mash up that involves RTS and Tower Defense elements, but where you play a modest shopkeeper dealing with obnoxious heroes, annoying critters, and thieves. There are only a handful of games that force role-reversal and put you in charge of what is typically an NPC character, so it would be a fun concept to explore.

2D Co-op Action/Exploratory Platformer (with leveling) (39 votes): Conceptually this sounds like an auto-win because anything that can replicate the beauty and fun of a 2D Metroid and/or Castlevania game gets people fired up.    Add in co-op play, and you sort of have Contra with exploratory and leveling components.   I believe the catch is that execution is far more complex than the summary sounds.   Balancing the co-op elements and dealing with 2 players exploring various areas at the same time would get tricky.   You also have to allow a single player to play through alone, so co-op puzzles are void and you'd have to potentially scale the difficulty/RPG elements for 2 players.   Propper execution would be golden = offering the ambiance and pacing of games like Metroid and Aquaria (offering a less linear world), and letting two players enjoy that sense of exploration and conquest together. It could be done - and I hope to attempt it some day.

Sweet Sweet Loot! or Sweet Sweet Loot?

2011-06-23T00:25:00.004-04:00

The loot treadmill is very hard to get off of. I am guilty of logging hours (okay, months) into Diablo and Borderlands looking for shiny, super rare pieces of whatever. I am not sure of the phychology behind it - why do we care about puffing out our virtual chests - proudly trotting around with a rare item that we found because we grinded hours into a game and finally got a little lucky. Yay? Or pathetic?

Who just leaves this treasure out here in the open?

Action/RPGs in particular seem forever changed in this respect.   Diablo 2, Dungeon Siege, Sacred, Torchlight, and all of the others now hang their hat on (and seem to live and die based on) how much loot they can shove into the dungeons, and then how well they allow the player to manage all of that lootings (aka, interface).

Can a respectable and fun action/RPG be made that doesn't actively and purposely enable our loot addictions? I think so.

Treasure is a legitimate and important reward in any game that attempts to strike a sense of adventure and discovery into it's players.    But do we need to water it all down with a river of [sometimes] redundant and [often] uninteresting rewards? Lately I've found that the loot/reward scheme and progression of items is so bland, structured, and predictable that it actually sucks the life out of 99% of the loot, and thus, any real sense of reward. Maybe, just maybe, if I kill this boss for the 45th time he will drop that +5 awesomeness ring - that would be so much cooler than my +4 awesomeness ring! Ugh.

The treadmill is still tempting - sometimes I think I see tasty little carrots hanging out there - and I think, "hey maybe I'll get back on for a couple hours." It's not worth the sweat. And I don't want to have to wade through a garbage pile for that one carrot.

So what to do, what to do. Back to basics I say. Remember when treasure was rare? When it didn't diarrhea (verb) out of every nook, cranny, pot, enemy, chest and so forth? Remember when you figured out how to find the red boomerang by throwing the blue one in a little pond underneath a hidden waterfall? Oh baby. Now that is satisfaction - that is reward that brings a smile (rather than delusional excitement) to the player. And you didn't need to find 700 other worthless boomerangs first.

Legend of Kiflame will attempt to recreate the lost art of making treasure feel like actual treasure, not the gold nugget among piles of copper. Rather than "hey cover up the rare loot with piles of mediocre shit," it becomes "hide treasure throughout the game and let the player earn it."

Maybe you can talk him into just giving it to you?

I find the former design approach a bit lazy honestly. It succeeds in convincing players to hunt around for hours for somewhat inevitable payoff based on "hours in = reward out." But that experience fails as a substitution for fun gameplay - maybe not when is was a bit of novelty, but now it's worn out it's welcome.

So will there be lots of loot in Legend of Kilflame? Yes there will. But the intent is to have created a variety of treasure that is earned through the adventurous gameplay. You won't pay for the best items with additional hours of your life. It's your well-deserved reward for exploring the world and progressing through the story.

Port Town and Enemies Preview

2011-06-16T09:47:00.002-04:00

We put together another video showing one of the important towns in the game along with some of the NPCs/Enemies Maya will be facing. Lot's of subtle improvements have been made on the editor and Bryan is focused on getting combat rounded out.

The engine is custom.

The music is original and will be part of the official soundtrack.

Vos Spectrals (Creature Feature # 1)

2011-06-11T23:16:00.000-04:00

These fiery fuckers were conceived more in the vein of a "lava brute" than any sort of "fire fairy." Since Spectrals are born of special planetary "Core," I knew that we needed a worthy beast to represent the familiar fire foe (alliteration attack) often found in a good fantasy-themed game.

But (!) I am tired of the standard representation (swift, elusive, and comprised of fire itself - and often ranged attackers). So I decided to take a more prehistoric approach. You don't often think of fire as lumbering. But you definitely get that feeling about lava - more earthly and slow-moving.

So the Vos Spectral became a much chunkier, molten melee foe - pretty damn scary up close with two fists full of furious flames (oh god I am on a roll). The elongated skull-like head is sort of like a demon dinosaur. The trade off, of course, is that they aren't the most agile of fellows. Run when you must.

Vos Spectrals will lurk in and around caves because they like being deeper in the ground. In the past (before the Shift, a plot element), they were usually passive but territorial. Nowadays they will attack on sight. Also, they often will rest dormant and flame-free in compact lumps on the ground, so best to watch where you're walking when looking for loot in caves. Don't want to wake one - or a whole bunch.

2011-06-09T19:45:00.000-04:00

We recently did a little Q&A with VVGTV and they had the first look at this couple screenshots. I wanted to share them on the blog now too and provide a little captiony color.

Maya defending herself from an aggressive Vos attack.

Maya finds a remote shop in the Pampali expanse and has to fend off a
couple pesky Gubs.

Getting Frisky with an Octopus

2011-06-04T10:42:00.000-04:00

We recently worked on a 'postmortem' piece with the delightful fellows over at Armless Octopus. These guys are very much on the pulse of the Xbox Indie Games, and have an excellent stream of content ranging from reviews, interviews, news, and hot-topic issues. It's certainly a site worth checking daily to see what's going on in the Xbox Indie world.

Our article provided some history on how Opac's Journey and Legend of Kilflame came about, some of the harsh realizations we had, and where we're headed now. Check it out.

Concept art for a Vos Spectral

Where Have We Been?!

2011-05-31T16:41:00.005-04:00

Stop giving me that weird look. Progress is being made, I swear, and we should have a substantial update soon. John has made bigtime gains on the world editor and Bryan has some basic combat/AI in testing phase. Stay tuned.

Bells, Whistles, and Explosive Particle Effects

2011-04-11T13:31:00.003-04:00

Another video for you today, showing off a newly-skinned model (she's much smoother here than in the last video), better-alligned animations, and most noticibly some flashy particle effects.

Why particle effects rock my world:

Exciting eye candy - a visual delight.
Increase player immersion.
Reward/satisfaction for growing more powerful and finding new loot.
Visual cues (such as leveling up, or knowing what objects can be interacted with, etc).

Thoughts? You like?

Plants are Cool Too

2011-04-07T23:05:00.001-04:00

Bow Leaf: Sturdy singular leaves that grow in an arc and offer shade for travelers from the heat of the desert. The leaves are widely used in everyday construction, such as for roofs on simple structures.

Maula: Flowering plants with a distinct rooting formation that elevates them off the sands and keeps them anchored. The roots are poisonous and dangerous to the touch.

Palmola Shrubs: Growing in a spiral formation, these smaller plants are widely harvested for their berries. You guessed it, those berries have well-known minor healing properties.

She's Back...

2011-04-04T00:31:00.001-04:00

Ready for the full skinny? And now we present to you an actual character, Maya. Running around, going though some of her animations, and with some particle effects for good measure. It's still early on this front and as you can tell we have some syncing to do to make movement speeds and turning match the animations better - lot's of tightening up yet to come - just wanted to show the progress.

I Live in a Hut on the Beach

2011-03-28T00:15:00.000-04:00

And I sell T-shirts - you know, the extra soft faded ones with clever obscure sayings and images. Some day.

So I wanted to share some footage of our region editor at work creating a small scene. I really enjoy using tools like this and while there is work to be done and strings to be tightened, it's definitely functional and fun to use. I sat down to brain dump this little scene of a beach-side merchant who set up shop in a little nook. The movie is about 2 minutes, but the scene took about an hour to tweak and get things positioned nicely.

You 'll notice a new curious plant form here, called the Bow Leaf. They are important to the lore because they provide much needed shade from the sun and can grow to some fairly epic proportions. The big ones make for a great impromptu shelter to take a load off.

Enough talking already...

Get Ready for Loading. Well wait, hold on...

2011-03-13T23:47:00.000-04:00

I have some thoughts on loading screens. It's not something talked about very often and it's definitely not something you'd see many developers bring up on purpose.

Now obviously, loading screens can be pretty annoying. You came to play, not stare at the monitor and eat another handful of chips. Next comes my thesis on how loading screens make gamers fat.

Anyhow, they happen to be one of those necessary evils in many cases. For Legend of Kilflame, we'll be doing everything in our power (which by the way, is the Power of Grayskull, soooo not too shabby) to reduce the amount of load time players sit through. But we have to be expecting to face some load times, so we're not going to skimp on how we address it.

AAA games have come a long way on this front - well some have. We can definitely learn from them either way. Some actually throw enough resources at the problem as to heavily disguise loading screens with things like in-game elevator rides! Pretty cool, especially when they even build in some plot-relevant audio content and so forth. The shimmer fades a bit once you catch on to their little trick, but A+ for effort.

Usually though, you still just stare at a graphic (and maybe some text) and nibble on a Triscuit. If the graphic is interesting, cool. If it's relevant to the game in some way and offers information, extra cool. If you can actually benefit from paying attention to it, sexy cool.

I've personally always liked when games stuff some useful tidbits on their loading screens. Not crucial info, mind you, but useful. The problem is I think sometimes the intern is writing the text. For example, don't tell me that "A jumps over enemies." If I haven't figured that out yet, I probably should walk away from gaming. "Plant mines where your enemy is going to travel." Thanks jackass, I am trying to but this guy on the other team keeps sneaking up...oh forget it.

So the Legend of Kilflame loading screen will consist of the 7 "Core" that play a large role as key items in the game. Not only are they items in the game, but they are important to the plot and gameworld. They are iconic of Ophidian Wars saga, so what better images to convey? It'll help address the challenge of working outside the realm of the average RPG (no elves, magic, mana, trolls, strength/dexterity/intelligence - etc etc).

We'll also add tips and lore and take time to carefully craft them. Again, we went outside of the RPG standard universe "comfort zone" so I see this as another opportunity to share knowledge and educate player on interesting facts and gameplay elements.

Load me up some comments if you have any.

Points of Interest

2011-02-26T16:15:00.000-05:00

A good adventure needs a mix of danger and comfort. After braving the open desert, exploring perilous caves and fighting off all sorts of foes, the payoff is reaching a place that's interesting and hopefully safe - places that you could meet an important ally or find an item that will aid your journey. These new shots are early designs for such points of interest, Port Greatneck and the lost ruins of the Cliffs of Ashrock.

From a technical standpoint, we still have to fiddle with scales and textures to make sure that our camera angles offer a pleasing view. While most of the game will be played from a nearly-top-down perspective (for the sake of strategic navigation and combat), we're considering shooting some regions from a lower angle. Since they would be free of enemies, there wouldn't be any frustrating combat to worry about - and it will allow for a more dynamic view of these points of interest.

You might notice that Sigil has upgraded the editor as well. We now have fog effects (will be adjustable), smoother elevation changes, and more graphics installed. There is some work to be done on shadows/lighting and then we need to start accounting for more interactive objects, like sign posts, treasure chests, books, and some plant life.

Hope you like the progress so far - let us know what you think.

Indie Mission Man

2011-02-25T10:38:00.000-05:00

A quick break from the Legend of Kilflame (LoK, for the small group of insiders), to alert you to a man and a blog on a mission.   The Writings of Mass Deduction is a blog by a fellow named Steven - and Steven downloads and plays an XBLIG every single day.   He's been doing it for over 100 days now.

Seriously, and he's apparently not stopping.

That sort of willpower and dedication is noteworthy (evident by a recent Kotaku article).

What strikes me too, is that his methodology mirrors what XBLIG developers wish Microsoft could accomplish - that is, highlight so many of the good games that get lost when they drop of the "new releases" list.    The "top rated" list does a good job of making sure the top ~3% stay relevant and can actually generate further sales and high ratings.   But many would say there are another ~20% that are worthwhile and fun games that essentially fall off a cliff into oblivion after a short stint (sometimes 5 days or less) on the new releases list.

Steven and his blog find those games.    And he directs fans of specific genres to games that might otherwise never be found.

He was nice enough to cover Opac's Journey and for that I say 'thank you.'

I recommend everyone go take 10 minutes to shuffle through his reviews to remind yourself that the XBLIG platform is full of great titles at great prices.

Rolling out the Scenery

2011-02-21T20:56:00.001-05:00

I had some time today to work with Sigil's editor so I thought I would post a shot. Combining some of our object/graphics set with our new terrains is yielding nice results. It's still an alpha build of the editor, but a very slick and functional alpha. You can tell from the screenshot that I am able to scale, rotate, and translate on all axis. We've got a wide variety of rocks, a couple pillars, three types of pots, and two types of plant life.

In the pic here, I've added some scenery to a corner of the "Northern Pass" which is a smaller region that is mostly for transport to the north coast and Elder's Reach. But more thorough explorers will find a small cave to explore too.

What I notice most here is that even just the slight elevation/slopage along the lake adds oodles of realism and interest to the scene. That, and the reflections and shadows of course.

Hope you like - more to come soon.

An Editor for Champions

2011-02-13T12:54:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, and testament to the strength of the XBLIG community, we found some help making a slick region/terrain editor. Not yet done, but well on it's way, I wanted to share some work by Sigil that shows the work he's doing - and he's started employing our custom graphics set as well. You'll see some dwellings, columns, arches, plants, and a striking blue column that represents Maya (to scale). Without further ado...

Building Out the World

2011-02-08T22:40:00.001-05:00

I've been looking forward to this point in development when the focus turns to developing regions and essentially going into full time level design. Referencing the world map, the goal here is to essentially build out the Western portion of the map (everything west of the Great Wall) - that's where this story will take place.

As you can see, much of that land is made of desert - so it was important that I could create attractive desert landscapes. What's a little different about this desert though is that it's not as barren as we often think of them. It has coastal areas, an oasis, caves, and unique plant life that isn't of the good ol' cacti family.

Hey, ever wonder why beaches are comprised of sand near water, but sand in the desert is known for being in extremely dry areas? What gives, sand? Deserts are usually bleak and scathing, while beaches are relaxing and comforting. But in both scenarios you're walking on sand. I found that interesting and it's why I thought it would make for a cool fantasy world.

So here's two examples of terrain/regions I've been working on that pertain to that design. One is quite literally a rocky desert, meant to evoke loneliness and danger. The second is coastal, beach-like port area that will lead into a grassier plain - so more welcoming.

These terrains will be populated with our graphics set - this is literally just the terrain, still void of secondary rocks, walls, plant life, signposts, etc.

The "Pampali Expanse" - not the friendliest or most populated of game regions.

"Port Greatneck" - a village port town will be built here.

Now That's In the Box Thinking

2011-02-03T22:22:00.002-05:00

We work with a fantastic artist, Craig, who does our concept and box art. The box art for Opac's Journey was well-received (see sidebar right) and I am thankful for the eyeballs it snatched when it was front and center on the Xbox Box Indie Marketplace.

As an aside, I highly encourage indie devs to put that tiny bit of effort in to appealing box art. If that means working with an artist (usually to the tune of $100-200), I can't think of a better way to back your time investment. Not only should it help pay for itself, but it's quite literally the face of your game and as a whole, the service. You also help an artist (talented aspiring ones especially) get some exposure. Win/win.

I take this aspect of design quite seriously and as a result, Craig and I have had lots of odd email conversations about mystical creatures behind the scenes. Often times, he probably thought I was crazy and come to think of it... I haven't heard from him in awhile. But Craig made the extra effort to dive in to the game lore and understand the characters, and that's why it clicked.

When working on the Opac's Journey box art, I had several goals. The stark figure of Opac reaching upwards was relevant to the game's mission - which is to reach the surface from deep within a cave. It's the game's story portrayed in a very simple image. The green "core" is important in terms of game lore, but it also draws an immediate connection with the in-game "checkpoints" which are essentially dormant versions of Opac's core. Last, and probably relevant only to me is that you'll notice Opac is in a bit of a smoky form. That's not how he always looks (see pic). That's Opac being "sparked" which is the creation process for his species. And thus Opac being born (in a cave) felt like the perfect image for our debut title, aka the birth of our little company.

Turning to the Legend of Kilflame box art, we originally had a more complex design that not only featured Maya, but also a gaggle of other creatures in the background that swooped out from her cape. The idea was to feature some of the unique creatures that Craig and I conceptualized. And they were cool creatures. The problem was it was a bit too busy. Maya is the star and she deserves the spotlight. So leaving the cape as the dark background creates stronger contrast and helps bring out the profile of her face and gauntlet. And much like Opac, I realized that leaving her alone better captures the essence of the story anyhow. Maya begins the story as an outcast, alone and uncertain - looking over her shoulder for the evil that chases her.

So... there's a bit of insight to how my gears turn. Oh and she's hot - pshhhh that wasn't even intentional.

Cave Diving

2011-02-01T23:19:00.002-05:00

A winding smaller cave with a lake inside. The sand blows in from the
entrance on the left.

For RPG fans, there's something iconic about the simple concept of a cave. In fact, that's why we go by "Small Cave Games." It's a shout out to that feeling of discovery. ("holla back, cave")

As the story goes, the inspiration for The Legend of Zelda arose from the designer's childhood memories of exploring the woods around his home and discovering small caves and lakes for the first time. It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but even just describing that experience brings out nostalgic feelings. It is adventure in it's most basic and pure form. And using only 8 bits, that sense of adventure was clearly conveyed to, and re-experienced by players around the globe. So it seems to have stuck as staple of most RPGs, and I love that.

The feeling of the unknown when finding and entering a cave is immensely enticing. What will you find? Is there danger? What is hidden inside? Loots?! Caves have become places where you can find a treasure, a secret passage, a side quest, a outcast merchant, or a unique foe. In fact, a cave without something special of interest is practically a let down.

So with The Legend of Kilflame, we're making sure that caves live up to both their iconic history and their full potential. There will be many to explore and some easier to find than others. You can see from the pic that we have started work on layouts, textures, and design. Plenty of work to be done of course, (namely lighting and camera angles) but you can get a feel for how they are coming together.

Hope you like!

I Can Move Mountains!!

2011-01-17T20:25:00.001-05:00

Apologies for the lack updates. I live in the Northeast and haven't stopped shoveling snow since early December. That, and we've been retooling our entire terrain engine to make it hotter than a turbo chicken.

And I am here to report, it's all coming together nicely.

One of the first criticisms of our early "screenshots" where that the terrain appeared quite flat. And well, it was flat - we used a single 2D texture - and while it looked okay in some places and angles, it wasn't quite cutting it. Without a highly advanced (and expensive) set of 3D models/objects, it was going to be too hard to populate regions and successfully combat that overwhelming flat feeling. Diablo pulled it off quite well in it's own way, but we saw the tools to make it better and got the itch to do so. We wanted to make environments like this:

This is not flat - it's voluptuous and cozy.
Early mock up (sans 3D models/object) of the "Elder's Reach" region.

And now, several months later, we actually can. When we add in our custom 3D graphics/characters, we're pretty damn excited to be seeing a game come together with visuals unlike any other on the XBLIG service (I believe that's at least semi-safe to say). The horn has been tooted.

For those RPG/lore junkies in the house, that pic is a preview of a very pivotal area in the story, called Elder's Reach. As the Pampali Dessert extends north and breaks through the mountain range, there is a pass (Northern Pass) that eventually opens up to this long peninsula. Maya will meet someone here - someone who might not like her very much.

Feels good to be back on the bloggy blog - hit me up with comments and help us rally. :)

The Bar of Life

2010-10-21T20:35:00.000-04:00

Back on the scene (crispy and clean).

One fun element of a game design is to throw a dash of innovation and unique style on the HUD - namely, the life bar.   It's a crucial staple of the most popular genres and it's seen a fair amount of development over the years.

Life bars come in all forms and varieties, no doubt, from standard red bars, to percentage based stats, to screw-you-this-is-one-hit-death-so-we-don't-need-a-bar, to the most modern FPSs where this no health bar, but rather a "realistic" indicator of failing health (like a blurring screen, or signs of blood).

Like most game elements though, you walk a line. Innovate too far and risk adding a confusing element that puts players off, but play it safe with something too standard and you fail to impress or evolve.

The former of those two dilemmas becomes especially dangerous in the world of XBLIG.   It seems almost twice as dangerous to risk confusing players and a steep learning curve can result in a quick diss and toss. But I am one of those people that believes failing to add polish and innovation to an indie game project nearly defeats the purpose and excitement of traveling this path in the first place.

Hence, you see the end result of what some might consider overthinking our health bar system.    The goal of course being to offer something familiar and easy to learn, but not too standard and ignorable. And from a gameplay perspective, we wanted something that builds off our favorite action RPGs, but maintains the effectiveness of time-proven methods.

The life bar above holds 11 life orbs. Take a hit, lose an orb in counterclockwise order. Should you lose the big orb in the middle (which will pulse when it's the only one left) and you're eating dirt. The other key is that you will not start with 11, but players will quickly be aware that 11 is possible.   The empty slots suggest that players have some work to do in order to build up Maya's physical resilience.

The other advantage to this design is that it's unobtrusive. It's medallion shape fits nicely in a corner and has very little unused space. Sometimes full screen HUD systems end up going overboard in my opinion and we wanted to avoid block a screen full of 3D graphics that went spent so much time on. :)

So there she is. What would you like to say to her?

The Grand Opening

2010-08-22T23:26:00.003-04:00

When it comes to the introductory sequence of events in a video game, there are actually far less restrictions than people might think. Yet, 99% games begin essentially the exact same way - logo/company screen, title screen with menu - and then you usually start the game.

Those are some sizable claws bubbs.

And it makes sense why most games use this same sequence. It works. It's simple. It's gets players to the action quickly and exactly how they are used to getting there. But I wouldn't be happy with myself if I didn't at least consider a path less-traveled. Why can't the game begin before the title screen? What else could be done to help the player immerse themselves in the game content before they hit "start?"

In Opac's Journey we didn't have a traditional title screen menu. Players were able to control Opac right after our company logo faded out and the title screen was essentially a playable introduction to the game where you could enter doors that lead to typical menu selections. It's not the first time this has been done, but it's still quite rare - and we didn't hear anything beside positive feedback.

Yes that sweet glowy bird can be found in the game too.

But in the context of XBLIG, there's of course risk in delivering an unexpected intro sequence. Demo time is limited to 8 minutes, so too much content up front can frustrate a player just trying to get to the meat of the game. Also, my personal feeling is that a good number of gamers on the channel aren't looking for depth or innovation, just something that packs as much fun (and sometimes farts) into the first 60 seconds of gameplay. Anything that diverts from expectations might also divert a sale. So things like this, while classically awesome, might now go less appreciated.

That said, we're putting some serious effort into a compelling introductory sequence for Legend of Kilflame, and we might step a little outside of the norms. Don't worry, you can still press "A" to skip everything. ;)

Let's Get Familiar with Maya (again)

2010-08-11T11:27:00.000-04:00

Attitude.

It's with great pleasure that I am reintroducing our premier heroine of Ophidian Wars: Legend of Kilflame, Maya (and no, she is not named after the the 3D modeling tool).

For those of you who played Opac's Journey, this game will begin just before that story ends. While Opac is making his way to the surface, Maya is spending her first night alone, banished from her home city.

For those new to some of the backstory, Maya is of royalty, but accused of treason against her brother, the soon-to-be ruler of their kind. Her sentencing to banishment is highly controversial but upheld. Meanwhile, Opac is sent out on his mission to find Maya before another badass does. He's sort of like Reese from Terminator, I suppose.

So Maya begins the game as an outcast of her people at a time that is especially dangerous to be stranded. There are other forces, some ancient and some mostly unknown, delving into great conflict. Legend of Kilflame will follow Maya as she makes new allies, is hunted by infamous mercenaries, and unravels a much bigger story than her own.

Sexy pose or deadly slide attack to the privates?

In terms of combat, Maya uses a spear which is the traditional weapon of her people. For defense, she uses an off-hand gauntlet which is used to block. The advantage Maya has is that her spear and gauntlet are uniquely powerful items. Gifted to her by her father, they are "Elder" relics and can harness the power of what is known as "Core."

"Who wants some ice cream?!"

In the Ophidian Wars universe, Core can sort of be equated to what we think of as a being's soul, only in a solid, tangible form. We'll talk about Core again at some point, or you can dip into the archives if you're curious to see what Core looks like.

With some help from our talented friend Robbo, we recently polished off Maya's full set of animations (hence some of these pics you see). It was important to us that Maya get the full treatment, beyond the standard set of required combat/movement animations. So we've imbued her with some extra life and personality, adding animations that allow her to stretch, claim victory, show boredom, etc. And I must say, she looks very good doing it all.

Let us know what you think. Any questions about Maya? Drop a note in the comments section or post in the forums.

The Indie Community

2010-08-02T23:11:00.005-04:00

Releasing Opac's Journey has been exciting in more ways than one. Not only was it Small Cave Games's first official release, but this was the first time that we've personally delved into another layer of the indie community.

I've always been active on gaming forums and indie development forums where I met a ton of like-minded individuals and helpful peers. What I underestimated was just how many people share a common interest in [even the smallest] of indie games and are down with giving them a shout out. And for that I am very thankful.

Here's some additional reviews for Opac's Journey:

DIYGamer: "Ophidian Wars: Opac’s Journey is really fantastic stuff. It’s slow yet challenging, and there’s plenty to see and explore. A full playthrough takes only around 45 minutes to complete, but with a price tag of $1 (80 MS points), it’s definitely worth forking out the cash for." "After Shadow Complex, this is the closest to Metroid that the Xbox has got."

Sarcastic Gamer: "There are a couple of cute nods to classic games easter-egged in there – “Eastmost peninsula is the secret” – and the upgrades are actually fun to use for a bit after you obtain them."

GayGamer: "Probably the first thing that drew me in to Opac's Journey was how well done Opac's character sprite was done. He looks and animates like a character straight out of a 2D Castlevania game, with a suit of armor like a cross between Dead Space and Big Bad Beetle Borgs." ("Yay" recommendation)

GamersWithCasts: (really fun podcast here - good hosts who know their stuff) A nice review here. "Before I started reviewing games, I hadn’t played a lot of indie titles. It’s not that I didn’t want to, it’s just that I wasn’t sure about the quality that was out there. However, if they’re all like Ophidian Wars: Opac’s Journey, I will be playing a lot more."

XboxHornet: "Overall, I greatly enjoyed the albeit-short platformer, and I’m really looking forward to the next installment. If you’re a fan of exploration in platformers (such as the genre-defining Metroidvanias), then you would do well to hop into the beginning of the Ophidian Wars saga."

Pwnem: "Ophidian Wars: Opac's Journey is a memorable one that gets a well deserved recommendation to all retro platforming fans."

CrushFragDestroy: ("Must Play") "What started off as me being a bit bored with what seemed to be a very basic platformer quickly turned to curiosity and then interest when I realized that Ophidian Wars was actually a platformer with Metroidvania-style backtracking and equipment upgrades." "This one gets a thumbs-up."

Armless Octopus: "Ophidian Wars: Opac’s Journey takes that blank slate and fills it in with a bit of retro nostalgia and mixes up the formula just a bit. It is extremely reminiscent of other Metroidvania games such as Metroid and the post-Symphony of the Night Castlevania titles. There are plenty of power-ups that allow Opac to reach new areas, in addition to a number of well-hidden secrets and plenty of reflex-testing chasms to cross."

Reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, which is excellent motivation to continue pressing forward on the Legend of Kilflame. We're excited to share more soon!

Indienerds Get Nerdy

2010-07-28T23:39:00.002-04:00

Just a quick note to let readers know that Gerald over at Indienerds is running a pretty sweet contest with 21 free XBLIGs. It's a good selection of titles, if I do say so myself.

Also, regarding our next contest for 1600 MP - I've decided to run it if we can get up to 15 people in favor in the poll to the right.

Here's the "Game Rain" video from Indienerds:

A Brief Segue

2010-07-22T12:43:00.007-04:00

I am flush with the heady endorphin rush of exhilaration on our first game release. Releasing Opac's Journey and seeing many of the reviews of the game is simply one of the most satisfying moments in this programmer's life.

Y'know, except for stuff like weddings and when my kids were born and stuff like that.

That said, my head is down and I'm sallying forth with the next installment. The reason I'm bringing up The Legend of Kilflame now, amidst all the excitement with Opac's Journey is because of a couple of things which reviewers have mentioned over the past several days. One of the most mentioned items is the fact that Opac's Journey does not feature a save system.

All I can say is "Sorry about that". That was a judgement call that we made, and apparently it was not the ideal one. (It's our first game, so there was bound to be a hitch in the giddy-up somewhere). But from Day 1, Opac's Journey's intent was to spark warm fuzzy memories of Metroid, Castlevania, and other old favorites from the days of NES yore. This is why we chose a grid style arena base, and we tried to minimize button grinding, among the other decisions to create a nostalgic look and feel, albeit with its own unique ambience and mood. Unfortunately one of those decisions was to ditch the save system. Hindsight is 20/20, right?

Anyway - here's the upshot to all this... During the past week, Carl and I have already started back with The Legend of Kilflame, and during the past few days I have designed a save system component which I'm currently integrating into the software as we speak. Initial tests of the system have been successful so far, and we'll continue to hammer on it as development continues, and the complexity of the game increases and the storable data grows. After I'm satisfied with this Storage Component - and it's been tested properly - I am going to retrofit the component onto Opac's Journey and we'll release a patch. The last thing we want to do is offer a product that's going to drive you nuts. We want you to come back for the next game, because we have a great epic adventure for you, and we're not done telling the story yet.

That is actually the other thing that has been commented upon by reviewers which I wanted to address. The storyline. It seems that the plot - or more accurately, the foreshadowing - has raised a few eyebrows and piqued some interest.

This tickles me, because it tells me that the Lore throughout Opac's Journey is receiving exactly the response we wanted it to. That is: Opac's Journey acts as a stand-alone game with a completely self-contained adventure, but there are several hints and some good foreshadowing elements for gamers who are more plot oriented. So in the end, you can safely ignore the plot clues in Opac's Journey and still enjoy the game to the fullest in its own medium. However if you like depth and stories in your games, you got to see the first whispers of the approaching upheaval.

I'm absolutely delighted that this got noticed and remarked upon.

Ok, so now Carl and I are running full speed with Maya's adventure in the Legend of Kilflame, which I believe will be more plot driven, have more RPG elements and will feature actual combat. The intrepid reader already knows that Opac Sentir will feature in a vital role within that game when he actually completes his stated quest and meets Maya for the first time. And I for one cannot wait to see this unfold.

Picking up where we left of last winter (or was it fall?) much of the game's subsystems are already designed, and implemented, so hopefully development of this game will not take very long. (Duke Nukem Forever? HL2-Episode 3?). However I should point out that making Opac's Journey was a tremendous learning experience, and as I go through the lines of source code in The Legend of Kilflame, I see a bit of naiveté in the programming that needs to be squashed. Kilflame should be a fully polished, extremely attractive, FUN game where you get to kill lots of stuff, play with your settings RPG-style, and encounter many new and interesting characters.

And you'll get to save your progress.

This is How We Do It

2010-07-21T19:39:00.007-04:00

Did we mention that we also mad a game called Limbo? No that wasn't us, damn it. Anyhow here's another update with some additional blurbs from reviews.

CONTEST UPDATE: Congrats to Kyle for bringing the baby home and being our 5th and final winner. And surprise, each winner actually got 1600 Microsoft points! Call me Santa. If interest keeps up I might run another contest based around speed runs. Maybe when we hit 1000 sales.

And here's what people be talkin' bout:

(links to full reviews as well 'cause I obviously only took the good stuff)

Dealspwn: "You’ll soon find yourself gliding and wall-grappling your way around the NES-style levels with joyous abandon, discovering secret areas hidden behind destructible panels with the aid of a highly explosive vegetable. The feeling of being truly alone save for some enigmatic ancient messages makes for a powerful and compelling experience." " I would recommend it heartily to retro fans and old-schoolers."

IndieGameBlog: "A really good 2D platformer with exploration, abilities and upgrades. Definitely give this one a go."

HiddenAudioBlog: "In the beginning you only have the ability to jump, but as you explore the cave you find ancient relics that grant you special abilities such as gliding, wall clinging, blowing up rocks, and much more. This is where the slight Metroidvania inspiration kicks in. These abilities are handed-out often enough that you’re always earning new things in the game. One of my personal favorite abilities is a relic that allows you to move the right stick and look around the map (to a certain point) to foresee any upcoming dangers or pitfalls. It solves an issue that I’ve had with platformers for a while, which is that a lot of their design boils down to trial-and-error gameplay."

Mom: "I'm so proud of you!! It's wonderful!!! What is it?!"

I hope to see some more reviews trickle in from some of my favorite sites, so if I see them pop up I will post and tweet the crap out of them of course.

Bryan is working on a patch to make sure we put a save function in place fo' real this time. And we hope to have a substantial update on Legend of Kilflame soon too.

Cheers, and thanks again to all the Opac players.

Opac's Journey - The Early Going

2010-07-19T21:38:00.009-04:00

The past couple days were the most fun I've had in a long time. Granted I don't get out much, but still. Thanks to everyone who wrote us a nice email, participated in the contest, and provided feedback. The early consensus is that most of you are enjoying Opac's Journey and that's made our day. We posted strong sales and have close to 4/5 stars on Xbox Live after two days.

First a contest update - we currently have 4 winners and they already have their prizes in hand. Congrats! I am still waiting for a 5th person to get the answer correct, so the carrot dangles. Tasty carrot. You love carrots.

And the reviews are starting to appear too. I know first hand how much time to goes in to writing a review, so a sincere thank you to those who done diddy a write up. Here's a selection of the ones I have found so far:

Indienerds (video review)
Halfbeard's HUD
411 Mania
And here's an interview over at XBLARatings.

Finally, some fun facts:

The average game completion time seems to be about 90 minutes. Not that it's a race! Just sayin', and explorers are probably going to find more roots and get more upgrades. I just found it interesting and wanted to let everyone know that I can beat it, finding all roots, in a little over 28 minutes. TOOT TOOT. Beat that with a bat.
To my amazement, the game can actually be completed without the Topine Tea. I was not expecting that, but I love when gamers find another route. And with that in mind, I am thinking that beating 28 minutes is quite doable.
Also Topine Tea-related I received quite a few emails cursing me out about not being able to solve that puzzle. You need to enter a button sequence like in Contra only we have more buttons to choose from now (hint hint).

Thanks again everyone. Please feel free to reach out with more comments and/or questions.

Opac's Journey - CONTEST - Win 400 MP

2010-07-17T20:50:00.005-04:00

Hi all. As promised, we're running a special contest for those of you playing Opac's Journey. It's quite simple - here's how it works.

In Opac's Journey, part of the mission is collecting 'roots' that are used to increase Opac's abilities. These roots are spread throughout the gameworld, but none are too difficult to find or unfairly placed. The question is, how many roots are there?

The game will track exactly how many roots you find and display that at the end of the game. So do some exploring and have some patience. If you think you've found every root, then email me at cevo70@yahoo.com with:

The total number of roots you think are in Opac's Journey.
You final game completion time (also tracked for you and displayed at the end).

The first 5 people that send me the correct number of roots, I will send a 400 MP card. I will email you back either way, and if you won I will need to ask for your address (or I can email you the code from the card).

Happy hunting!

Opac's Journey has gone LIVE

2010-07-17T20:08:00.004-04:00

Well, the day is here. Opac's Journey hit the virtual shelves about 10 minutes ago! We're very excited to say the least. Wish us luck - we're hoping the gaming public likes our little project and we're looking forward to feedback.

It's $1.00 (80 MP) on the Xbox 360 LIVE marketplace.

So Close I Can Smell It

2010-07-15T21:03:00.002-04:00

And I am not talking about the guy whirling up a post-burrito stinkfest in the cubicle next to me.

Opac's Journey is making it's way through review and a couple more "passes" and we go live. It's quite a tense experience wondering and waiting. I will say though, the XNA/XBLIG community is a really great one. For all of the griping that goes on, 99% of the time you're dealing with respectful and supportive people. Group hug?

Hopefully the next post I make will be explaining the details on how players can win 400 Microsoft Points for playing Opac's Journey. Yes, blatant baiting. I know what you want, what you really really...oh god I need sleep.

In It To Win It

2010-06-21T19:08:00.004-04:00

Just a quick update to say that Opac's Journey is now successfully in playtesting with testers reporting a clean bill of health. We're getting some helpful feedback - nothing that should delay a release so far but some good ideas for tweakage. Thanks to the testers and see you on the other side.

In other news, Bryan and I flipped right back into the follow up game, Ophidian Wars: Legend of Kilflame (we were itching). So for those of you who remember Maya and her adventures, we're diving right back in to the thick of it. Bryan has created the backbone of the combat system, we've retooled the stat system to make it cleaner, and we're creating full 3D test environments that work with our custom level editor (as opposed to the flat terrain/textures of the original gameplay teasers).

Lots more to come soon on both games.

So it Goes

2010-06-13T19:07:00.003-04:00

Our first experience with playtesting was very fast! Too fast! We had some nice people ready to take a look, but we hit a mysterious "Code 4" bug right on the title screen. We can't replicate it but we're working on fixing it. (if you're a developer who wants to help and can deploy a ccgame file, please let us know)

In the meantime, the official gameplay video is completed and released here. It's a whole mashup of raw gameplay.

So we'll be back in playtest in 6 days. Tickety Tockity.

Check one, Check two.

2010-06-11T13:09:00.005-04:00

Just a status update here for those interested.

Official trailer is on YouTube here and you might find it around the web now too thanks to some helpful journalists and contacts. (thank you)

We're done with "internal playtesting" and will officially submit for peer review this weekend. (EDIT: It has been submitted)

Stay tuned for an official gameplay video early next week.

And soon after that I'll be outlining the rules for our Ophidian Wars: Opac's Journey contest that will give away 2000 Microsoft Points. So if you think you have some skillz and a competitive streak, you'll probably want to get in on that.

Wow - that was fun!

2010-06-08T11:39:00.003-04:00

Having now written the software for a game start-to-finish I can say with some certainty that I plan on doing this for the rest of my life. I thoroughly enjoyed that experience, and I have every intention of continuing. I've been writing software since I was a young'un, and I've always had a passion for it. This passion has been rekindled having done a project as fun and as challenging as this one.

I don't really have a whole lot to add to Carl's input here, except to say that I really hope that the game is enjoyable for you to play as it was for me to write. We tried to add as much polish as we could to make sure that the experience is as smooth and pleasant as possible. We also tried to make the game itself not only fun, but containing enough of a plot to keep you interested in the character's story throughout Opac's Journey and beyond.

Some of you may have been here long enough to remember that this blog was dedicated to the development of a game called Ophidian Wars: The Legend of Kilflame - and then around the end of last year/beginning of this year, we kind of shifted focus.

Well, I'm happy to say that we're going to be shifting focus back to LoK. Even though we haven't been discussing it online a whole lot, LoK has not been forgotten, and it hasn't been inert these last several months.

Carl has designed a very robust combat system that is based on RPG elements, and we've had several discussions during this OJ dev-time which have refined and clarified my perception of what needed to be done. And the combat/RPG system for LoK has been written, although I haven't yet integrated it into our game's engine just yet.

I'm sure that Carl will be adding some blog entries as we progress with this system, and I hope that I can put in my technical $0.02 as well, if anyone is interested in the Behind-The-Scenes or Under-The-Hood type stuff.

Anyway, the next several weeks should be very exciting for us in the Small Cave. We get to see some reaction to our first published game, and hopefully we'll get lots of feedback from you (I'm especially interested in hearing everyone's take on the character of Opac Sentir; he's one of my favorite Ophidian Wars characters) on all aspects of the game, and maybe I can improve on some things during our next endeavor.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Official Screenshots: Opac's Journey

2010-06-07T21:23:00.009-04:00

Here are the official screenshots for Ophidian Wars: Opac's Journey.

These are intended for circulation:

Holy Sh!t We're Done

2010-06-07T15:23:00.003-04:00

It's official - the final screws are in place and have been tightened. Opac's Journey will most like be out by the end of the month assuming we pass peer reviews and testing without too much trouble.

Right now, we're doing some "in-house" playtesting and getting our PR materials straight.

Bryan and I are excited, and believe our first project will deliver a good dose of fun to the XBLIG platform. Stay tuned this week for the official trailer, official gameplay video, and official screenshots. (it's so very official!!)

Smooth It Out Now

2010-05-31T20:14:00.003-04:00

As noted in the comments section below, we decided (with some help from our readers) to have a fresh look at the background tiles in Opac's Journey. This is one of those details that can prove a bit trickier than people expect, especially considering the way our level engine is designed. We logged a good deal of hours and believe the result is a nice upgrade. Gone is the checkerboard pattern, and in its place a smooth unobtrusive background. Screenshots below.

Gameplay Video Ba-Ba-Ba-Boom!

2010-05-27T22:49:00.006-04:00

Well, it's a step in the right direction. Framerates pushing 25 is better than single digits. I thought this video came out pretty decent, all things considered. Of course I've been working on it for 4 hours, so my perspective miggght be slanted. Let us know what you think.

Here it is on YouTube.

Opac Gameplay Video (very choppy)

2010-05-25T23:27:00.003-04:00

I debated putting this video up on the blog while I try to figure out a better way to run the video capture software. But then I figured most people understand that the game won't actually play at 10 frames per second (if that).

So here's a video of "Zone 1" and a glimpse of the game in action. These are some of the earlier moments in the game as Opac begins to find some of the relics hidden in the caves.

It can be viewed slightly larger here on YouTube as well.

New Screenshots!

2010-05-17T15:58:00.011-04:00

We've got some spankin' new screenshots to show you. We'd actually have some slick video/gameplay for you too, but the damn capture software is such a fatty mc hogster that I can't get a strong enough framerate! (had to vent)

Anyhow, these shots show off some of the more recent upgrades and developments. Here's the rundown:

Screenie 1: This is a shot of what we call "Zone 3" which is my opinion is where the platforming really starts to get tough (I still die there regularly despite designing the frickin' levels myself). You can spot some new graphics/upgrades and a new color palatte as well.

Screenie 2: Bryan has been going "full-tilt" on getting a cool blurrrrr effect for Opac. It looks fantastic in action (toot toot!) but this screenie shows it nicely as well. It only took me six tries to get it!

Screenie 3: Sometimes Opac is tough to catch in action, so I wanted to make sure I got him mid-stride. He's got a slick run animation. This is also a level from Zone 3, and you can see a Topine Shrub on the right. I don't want to spoil it yet, but Topine Shrubs allow Opac to pull off some crazy moves.

Screenie 4: It's been a little while since we showed the inventory, which we've developed further to show item descriptions among some other things. This is a reminder to people that Opac's Journey has some fun RPG elements worked in. This shot is from Zone 4 (final Zone) so at this point all of the items have been found and a couple have been upgraded.

We can taste it. Getting very close now. Let us know what you think.

Gameworld Completed

2010-04-30T14:04:00.005-04:00

I wish I had a giant fork so I could stab things that are "done" with it. We recently finished up all of the levels in Opac's Journey which feels very fork-stickable. With over 40 levels across 4 zones, many of which are of non-linear design, it's a been a long, but fun, road.

Level design has always been a love of mine. I used to spend hours with Warcraft level editors, Sim towns, and random physics games just making worlds that I would spend more time designing than actually playing. So having the opportunity to do this with my own game was extremely exciting and rewarding.

Level design encompasses so many small, yet important, decisions. Even in what most people would describe as a 'simple platformer,' the placement of each and every block, geyser, quan core, and piece of decor plays a big role. Levels can't be 'broken' or abusable, but also can't be so strict as to feel limiting. Level design directly ties in with pacing, as I wanted to mix in intense difficult areas, with short stretches of calm and plot-building. Certain jumps need to be tested and retested several times so we can restrict players in certain ways, while rewarding them for advancement. Bottom line, there were alot of goals I needed to meet to make it all feel right.

I've included some screenshots of different areas. With the entire game fully playable now, it's a careful burst to the finish.

Item Spotlight: Lancer's Bloom

2010-04-17T20:43:00.011-04:00

I covered wall-jumping in a previous post but I wanted to talk a little more about the item that grants that ability. I also need to be careful not to reveal too many details before the game hits the virtual shelves. (or do I)

The Lancer's Bloom, from a lore perspective, is a coveted flower that never wilts. Even when technically dead, the flower stays fully intact and appears living. For Opac and his brethren, the flower is a treasure because it's leaves are laced with a very sticky residue, allowing them to stick to the walls of their underground origins. It gets it's name however, from the soldiers of the Kilflame army who have long used the residue to strengthen their grip on their spears.

For players, the Lancer's Bloom becomes crucial fairly early in the game. After mastering wall sticking/jumping, players can upgrade the ability (by collecting roots) to allow for wall climbing. Obviously this is a huge upgrade (and will require tons of roots) because it allows Opac to scale one wall, rather than requiring two walls to bound between. I like that we've been able to work in a logical (aka "real") basis for Opac's sticky ability while also creating a rewarding sense of upgrade.

From a developer's standpoint, this has been one of the most challenging items/abilities to design. When you get to the bones of it, wall sticking/jumping is actually entirely different than wall climbing for the guys working behind the scenes (yep that's me and Bryan):

1. Upgrading from a "stick" ability to wall-climbing requires a fresh set of assets (new images/animation for wall climbing).

2. Heavy programming efforts (allowing for smooth vertical movement when in contact with walls), while tweaking controls to avoid frustration from "losing grip." Oh, and the aforementioned animation.

3. Level design has to be accommodating. It became very important to allow non-wall-climbers to have a viable platforming solution, while also not making levels too easy for those who focused efforts on upgrading the Lancer Bloom ability.

The Lancer's Bloom turned out to be one of the most dynamic items in the game. It's actually one of the toughest items to reach considering where/when you'll need it, and it's also the most expensive item to upgrade. Wall climbing is certainly fun, but you'll have to decide if it's worth it!

Questing

2010-04-03T23:53:00.007-04:00

I'll be the first to admit that questing is not a primary design focus of Opac's Journey. But that's not to say that some light questing/puzzles can't help drive the fun factor up a notch.

We're honestly not looking to bog players down with anything overly complex or involved. You won't be manipulating time in any way, let's just say that. However, there's a nice sense of achievement when a certain treasure or ability is unlocked with a little extra effort, thinking, and/or careful exploration.

So within Opac's Journey, primarily a game rooted in acrobatic platforming, you can expect another little taste of adventure via short quests. Once in awhile we want to slow the player down during high-action blasting, gliding, and climbing - and have them pause for a bit of thinking. Thus, you'll find that not all items will just be available for the taking, and not all progress will be accomplished using precise platforming.

Screenshot: Part of an early quest where you need to find a particularly large blue... mushroom...yes....that's a mushroom you dirty dirty person.

Item Spotlight: The Overfloater

2010-03-29T22:50:00.003-04:00

As Bryan and I put in the overtime to get this game ready for release, we do much'internal' playtesting. As I run through, one of the items in the game has become particularly interesting to me - and well this is my blog so I thought I'd share.

The Overfloater, in lore terms, is a relic that helps it's owner by quickly traveling wherever directed to help scout surrounding areas. In game terms, this means that the player can use the right-joystick to scan the surrounding area at any time. At first, I admit that I wasn't sure if this would be valuable enough to feel rewarding for players, but as level design progressed, I started to find it invaluable.

As Opac's acrobatic abilities advance and the maneuvers more challenging, the Overfloater became crucial to safe progression. Making a careless move can mean a quick death, so scanning downward, then making a move often spares a life. Same goes for crossing huge chasms where scanning ahead while in mid air helps plan a safe landing. And sometimes, a little thoughtful surveying can show a better path or secret area with goodies. Now when I play, using the Overlfloater is essentially second nature - looking forward to seeing what other players think when they get their hands on it.

Blast Off

2010-03-21T12:33:00.007-04:00

As mentioned in other posts, one design goal in Opac's Journey was to really emphasize the high-flying acrobatic abilties of Opac himself. We wanted to increase the "normal" parameters of platforming - and since Opac himself is a non-human known for his agility, it just made sense that he would be adept and be able to pull off some cool stunts.

Many of Opac's abilities will be learned as players explore the cave network and find the relics hidden within, but the ability to "blast" is tied directly to the caves themselves and used right from the get-go. (check out the screenshot - that's the peak frame of the blast animation)

While his normal jumping height is quite strong, Opac will employ the use of geysers (steam jets) throughout the caves to essentially blast upwards to great heights. Triggering a geyser will rocket Opac upwards more than double his normal jumping height.

Like most abilities, blasting will require some practice in order to learn how best to conquer tough jumps. Sometimes they are merely a means of reaching a high platform, but they are also needed to cross deadly chasms. Learning the correct angle to blast is key to a successful landing. Furthermore, combining a well-timed blast with other abilities like gliding and wall-sticking allows for some pretty impressive stunts.

Mr. Wall Sticky McJumpy Climb

2010-03-15T00:00:00.008-04:00

Because Opac's Journey is an exploratory platformer, Opac's acrobatic abilities become central to the game. The gameplay is focused on navigation of the caves (not bopping enemies on the head or avoiding spikes) so extra care has been put on providing the player a fun set of slick abilities to master.

Per a previous post, you know that one of Opac's other six abilities is gliding. In the screenshot to the left you can see that Opac can also learn to bound from walls. But this isn't your typical wall jump.

I've often found the standard wall jump to be a little unsatisfying. It's usually limited to quick upward bounding that needs to be timed perfectly and can feel more a forced hindrance than a fun ability. So when conceiving the wall jump for Opac, I wanted to be sure that players felt empowered and in full control.

Referring back to the title of this post, it's more than a wall jump. Opac actually gains the ability to grip walls at will using either trigger on the controller. So leaping from a tall ledge, players can aim for an opposing wall, easily gripping it to avoid falling and then planning their next move. Opac can then leap from the wall directly into a glide allowing for controlled upward or downward bounding. And last, [a skilled and thorough] Opac can upgrade his wall gripping ability to allow him to wall climb directly up a wall face.

If you think this sounds like it makes the cave navigation too easy, wait until you see the caves.

Atmosphere

2010-02-27T11:16:00.004-05:00

In Opac's Journey, the mission is reach the surface. As Opac makes his way through the caverns, he'll pick up clues surrounding why he must do so. While at the heart of the gameplay is a strong platforming experience, we didn't want to overlook coupling the story with a sense of atmosphere.

Some early feedback we've received, along with our own design goals led us to a couple atmospheric upgrades in the past week or so. In the first screenshot, you'll see that Bryan added a fade effect around the perimeter of the levels. This creates the sense that beyond the walls there is nothingness, and rather than a harsh wall of tiles that suddenly ends, it smooths that transition to black.

In the second screenshot, you'll see that Bryan applied an overlay on just the background tiles. This had two purposes. First, it helps blurs the harsh grid feeling on the background tiles, something we like on the foreground tiles but found overwhelming on the background. Second, it has a blur effect on the black areas around the outside of the levels, which allows the foreground to "pop" more.

We're still tweaking the details of each addition, but we think they are two big steps in the right direction. Let us know what you think.

Opac's Journey Box Art Final

2010-02-22T10:39:00.003-05:00

As the clock ticks and Bryan and I enter the last stages of development (the checklist is getting pretty damn small), we're happy to have Craig's box art finished and in hand. I think of the box art as the face to the game.

As a player/reviewer of XBLIGs, I've written some articles about important "buyer-facing" elements and box art is certainly one of the more important ones. On the virtual shelf in the Indie Games section of Xbox Live, it's crucial to stand out, look professional, and convey something noteworthy about your game. Without that, it's all-to-easy for potential players to skim right past your game for any number of reasons.

So obviously, we personally love (deep, passionate love) the finished product and it accomplishes what we set out hoping for. Namely:

1. Clean, crisp, and professional looking.
2. Direct focus on Opac (our hero) and his unique dark, shadowy, design.
3. Use of the same "Ophidian Wars" logo, but altered to fit the mood of this "chapter."
4. The upward reach coveys Opac's struggle as he journeys to the surface. It sets the mood.

All-and-all, I think that if I told someone that we are releasing a sci-fi/fantasy platformer with RPG elements, that showing them the box art would feel appropriate and create interest. At least I hope so! Let us know what you think.

Programmer's Random Thoughts

2010-02-15T15:04:00.008-05:00

Hi there,

It's been a while since I've had anything to post on the blog (this is Bryan, not Carl by the way), but things are starting to get very exciting for us as we're getting down to the wire with our first release.

Opac's Journey has been a heck of a journey for us, and it's been an exciting learning experience for me. I had been toying with XNA since it came out, but until I hooked up with Carl and started working on "The Legend of Kilflame" I was only scratching the surface of the possibilities.

I learned the graphics library so I could animate sprites and display models, and I figured out how components and services all fit together with the overarching framework - I ran through all the tutorials posted on the Creator's Club website, and all that stuff. I made an Asteroids clone (it was called Kuiper Madness, and will probably never see the light of day) and a Missile Command clone (called Bombz! which will also probably never see the light of day). I had a couple of ideas clanking around my brain (one of which is remarkably similar to what would eventually become Opac's Journey), but there was no direction or purpose - it was the programmer's equivalent of doodling on the back of an envelope.

Until I met Carl, who actually had a purpose and offered to share that purpose with me, I never realized that XNA really was an iceburg, and I only knew my way around the tippy-top poking out of the water. After the design phase of The Legend of Kilflame I learned my way around the Content Pipeline, and the in's and out's of working with Audio and Input and animating 3D characters and playing with shaders and all the things that make your gaming experience fun - and make my developing experience even funner.

I also realized that game programming is quite a bit different than working with mission critical software. I've been programming for years (and years), most of it dealing with realtime systems and embedded software. One of the biggest mental-blocks I had was the fact that games are not REAL.

I know that sounds like a very simple fundamental axiom, but after years of working with things that are real where one must consider countless real-world variables and the chaos they introduce to the system, the paradigm shift was not a trivial adjustment for my brain.

You see, when I write software for my day-job, it is for real devices that are going to be used by real people in real situations. Data must be processed in a very specific manner between components and be available at given nodes along its pipeline. There are very few constants and there are umpteen variables that must be constantly updated with fresh telemetry. Input and output must be handled very specifically without cutting corners. By contrast, in games things only have to appear real. This allows for - and often demands - cutting corners, taking shortcuts and altogether ignoring things that would be considered crucial in a realtime system.

For instance, gravity does not have to effect Opac Sentir by accelerating him downward at exactly 9.8129 m/s/s - all we need to do is make sure he moves 2 pixels faster per frame. You don't need to calculate drag or other fluid dynamics to determine terminal velocity - you simply stop accelerating at 18 pixels/frame. All the real-world calculus that is necessary in an embedded system would do nothing but reduce the performance of your game.

The finishing touches of Opac's Journey are presenting me with more learning opportunities which I hadn't yet gotten to with The Legend of Kilflame. For instance, saving games. I hadn't done any device I/O with XNA yet. I also needed to get up to speed with the GamerServicesComponent. That is the component which provides all the stuff necessary to connect you to XBox Live, store data in your profile and pretty much anything that deals directly with the XBox itself. Your XBox avatar stuff is located in that component as well. I haven't played with Avatars much, but maybe we have an avatar-based game in mind for later ?!

Anyway, the point of all this is that ..... I guess I don't have a point. I'm just rambling. I've learned a lot about XNA and game programming over the past several months although I didn't realize how much I had to learn. After programming for 20 some-odd years, I thought I could program anything.

Well - I can program anything... it's just that for some things there will be a learning curve involved. Because after all this time, I haven't even come close to learning all there is to learn yet, and I am finally convinced that I never will.

I also realize this is a good thing. How boring would it be if there was nothing left to learn?

Secret Areas

2010-02-07T11:46:00.003-05:00

I've always loved uncovering secret areas in games. There's a certain sense of satisfaction when patience and exploration pay off in the form of a small reward. I'd go as far as to say that certain famous classic games wouldn't be nearly as famous without some of the secrets that were built in. Mario without the warp zones? Pah-lease.

So without a doubt, Opac's Journey will offer a good deal of reward for players with a keen sense of exploration. Sometimes reaching a secret area will require a sharp eye to see a hidden path and other times a risky combo of acrobatics will be needed to reach one. Keep a look out!

Box Art Concepts

2010-02-05T20:29:00.002-05:00

Hey peeps. Just wanted to show some of Craig's concepts for Opac's Journey. One of these will be developed into the box art.

I've always been a big fan of concept art, probably dating back to when it was used as a crucial means to spark imagination because the graphics alone weren't vivid enough to offer a rich picture. Instruction booklets, box covers, and inserts told a story and helped link the player to the gameworld, deepening the experience.

So we want to use this opportunity to convey the tone of the game and highlight Opac as the dynamic character that he is. Hope you like.

Platformer or RPG?

2010-01-23T12:51:00.007-05:00

Well shoot me, but I love both. So when I set out designing Opac's Journey, I insisted that we include some light RPG elements. There's a long list of benefits that come from an RPG fusion - stronger character progression, fun collectible loot, upgrades/abilities, immersive story and lore, (to name a few). The mainstream comparison would be richness found in Metroid/Super Metroid or Castlevania, when compared to say a Sonic or Mario Bros.

So it's with great pleasure that I can show our inventory screen, with development/design help from our friend Alex Weldon. Alex does some great GUI design work and he took our sketches, listened to our goals, and pumped out the piece of beauty that you see to the upper-left.

Some things to note:

1. The green crystal theme carries over from the gameworld and lore of Ophidian Wars. For the Quan Spectrals, it is a green crystal that composes the Core of their kind (more info on Core in previous posts). So Alex put them to good use.

2. The items you see are also tied into the Ophidian Wars world. You may notice that these are some of the same items that will be included in Maya's arsenal for The Legend of Kilflame. How Opac uses them, however, is yet to be seen of course.

3. Opac will not start with any of these items, but most will be necessary to progress through the game. It will be up to the player to navigate the (often-times non-linear) world to find them.

4. Each item grants Opac an ability. For example, one of the items will allow Opac to glide for short distances. That ability can then be upgraded as to glide for longer distances.

Hope you like the look and feel of the inventory screen. Open to feedback as always.

Opac's Journey (Q1 XBLIG Release)

2010-01-18T21:03:00.009-05:00

Greetings. Here's the informal announcement of the secret project I've been hinting at!

"Opac's Journey" will tell the story of Opac's highly important mission to the surface to intercept Maya. As you can tell, we decided to tell this story via a 2D platformer (with a retro feel) which we felt was better to highlight Opac's acrobatic abilities and mega-agility. This story is essentially the prologue to the "The Legend of Kilflame" through Opac's eyes, and we hope it offers players a suitable introduction to our unique world of Ophidian Wars.

Gameplay-wise, we've focused on dynamic platforming - heavy on acrobatics and flashy, satisfying maneuvers. Blasting off steam geysers, soaring over deep abysses, and scaling up/down walls will be part of your repertoire. However, players will be rewarded for thorough exploration, as Opac can find unique items which grant special upgradable abilities. Paying attention to clues and visual cues is advisable!

I am excited to tell you that this game will be released Q1 2010. We hope you're salivating a little extra. I will be releasing more updates and previews over the coming weeks, so please stay tuned and offer support/feedback.

Screenshot 1: Opac finds Quan Core, home to the thoughts of his ancestors and kin. They will guide him and provide hints at how to navigate the caves.

Screenshot 2: Opac leaps across a large abyss, and using his ability to glide, aims for a secret doorway tucked into a ledge. He may need to upgrade his gliding ability if he's to make this one. :)

Secret Project: Level Screenshot

2010-01-08T00:26:00.003-05:00

So the cat is pretty much out of the bag, but I am going to keep referring to this project as "secret" so that everyone thinks it's a big deal.

Our little "retro" project is going well, and I am just showing a preview of how the levels are looking.

Secret Project

2009-11-25T14:47:00.003-05:00

I wanted to share something fairly exciting. The sprite to the left there is not for the Ophidian Wars top-down game, but for something else (yet still related to Ophidian Wars). You might recognize this guy as a Quan Spectral - one of the best received characters in Ophidian Wars so far. What is this all about? How can a 2D sprite look THIS amazing? Patience, patience.

So while our updates have been less frequent, I can assure you that we're hard at work over here and determined to release something that you will all call super mega awesome.

More Portrait Art?!

2009-11-01T17:34:00.006-05:00

Yes that's right. Here's more nice pieces from Craig that shows the up close and emotional side of our important support character, the Kilflame Soldier. As mentioned in previous posts, Kilflame Soldiers are a dynamic group, with varying allegiances and attitudes. These pieces are nice preview of the different tones that your conversations with the soldiers will carry. Some will be quite angry that you'd even have the nerve to speak with them, others will secretly and quietly try to help you, and some will aggressively come on to you. It's only natural.

These portrait pieces will be inserted into our dialogue windows, sliding in from the left/right of the screen when dialogue is active. If you are tired of their blabbering, you can hit a button to skip over it. :)

Portrait Art

2009-10-22T19:03:00.007-04:00

As we work more on the dialogue system, Craig has been tasked with creating portraits that we can use in the dialogue windows. I thought these two paricular portraits were cool as a pair because they really show the diversity of races in Ophidian Wars.

First the Pon Spectral (little gold fella), who is generally mercantile and neutral. And second the Quan Spectral (purple-ish glowy fella) who well...plays a different role.

Meanwhile, Bryan is working through the complexities of dialogue tree system as well as the interaction of the "internal monologue" system. Put it all together, and we should have a nice clean, unique, and efficient method of relaying communication between the player and the characters. That makes it sounds way easier than it actually is. ;)

Box Art - Final

2009-10-07T21:52:00.005-04:00

Well, there she is (click to enlarge). We're very happy with the result. We feel it coveys the sense of a fantasy adventure with a colorful cast of characters - while also showcasing Maya and some of her cool gear. We're hoping she can catch us some eyes on the XBLIG carousel of games!! Let us know if you like it.

Introducing: Inner Monologue

2009-10-05T19:35:00.009-04:00

Ophidian Wars is designed to evoke the satisfaction we felt when playing the old school (classic) action/RPGs. But we're also aiming to advance the genre and offer players something innovative to chomp on. No point in simply trying to rehash what has already been done.

Inner Monologue (or "IM") is a new mechanic that revolves around the interaction between the player and your character's thought (in this case, Maya). Ever wonder what your character is thinking? Why can we usually see them talk, but not think?

For me, it seemed that the real portal to understanding and relating to a character is by understanding how they think. IM will allow players to view Maya's thoughts during her adventure - both while exploring the world AND while conversing with NPCs. The idea here is to offer greater depth to the player's adventure by enriching the exploration experience. By allowing the player to see how Maya thinks and reacts, you get a better sense of her, the world that she is traversing, and the other beings she encounters.

So while it's not entirely novel to clue players into a character's thoughts, the idea is to go a step further and build it out fully. It's one thing to add richness to the story/character progression by offering a window into the character's mind, but what about how it relates to actual gameplay?

Not only will players be able to observe Maya's thoughts, but an important gameplay element will be interacting with those thoughts. Paying attention to IM will help players learn and react to certain events, picking up clues as to how best handle situations. During conversation, Maya's thoughts may govern the dialogue and help you pick up on subtleties (i.e. "Why does he look so nervous?"). While exploring, IM may provide helpful clues, or warnings. It's up to the player how to react.

Functionally, the IM window will pop up directly above the dialogue window (as shown in pic). This allows players to quickly observe Maya's thoughts and if need be, react or take note as they choose.

Do you likey? Let us know what you think.

Why the "Legend of Kilflame?"

2009-09-20T00:44:00.009-04:00

The idea of game being crafted "story first" is something that isn't widely smiled upon, but I've read good arguments on why it can make a crapload of sense.

What I find interesting is that it's often some of the best, most well-received games that deliver that extra element of a compelling story, yet from a developmental standpoint it's still considered an "oops" to start there.

Ophidian Wars has its origin in a story - or more accurately, a world. It wasn't a game mechanic, or prototype, or ragdoll physics that spurred development. It was the need to create - the need to show a world and tell a story to an audience.

So why "The Legend of Kilflame?" Well the short answer is because this first installment opens a window to a legend within a fictional world. Players will know very little of the legend until they play the game, and part of the fun is trying to put the pieces together. What if the legend is the end game? Often times games spoil their legend in the prologue, setting up a huge story of epic proportions and then sending the player on their merry legendary way - not Ophidian Wars. We're tasking you with figuring out the legend from the character's point if view.

Because if you think about it, a legend doesn't carry any weight until after it's happened. In this case, our subtitle "The Legend of Kilflame" refers to something that's currently happening in the game, not prior to the game. But the nagging question remains - what is the legend? Can't tell you, sorry. If I told you is was about three glowing triangles would you believe me? Get your own legend. I am taking mine and going home.

Animation Fine Tuning

2009-09-11T20:43:00.010-04:00

When you sit down and watch a video like this one for Dust (recent XNA Dream-Build-Play winner), you realize that great animation can have a huge impact on the player's overall experience. Dust looks gorgeous and if you talk to people about it, the conversation almost always starts and ends with how beautiful the art and animation is. Smooth, stylish, crisp = nom nom nom players eat it up.

So yes, there's the obvious difference between Dust and Ophidian Wars. Dust is a 2D animated game, while Ophidian Wars uses 3D graphics/models and aims for more realistic feel. But that doesn't change the fact that watching the characters in Dust jump off the screen is truly inspirational.

As Bryan and I have started working with Maya in-game more, there's a good deal of effort around fine tuning the animations to make them feel more natural and satisfying. Rob's animation work is top-notch, but people often forget that it's not just about the animation sequence, but how fast it cycles, how many frames are used, how the controls manipulate each animation, where effects are applied, and so on.

Many of you may have played games where the controls almost feel delayed or sluggish? Maybe the attack moves felt slow, the running seemed 'slippery', or the jumping looked a bit more like floating? We're working hard to avoid all of those issues. We want Maya's attacks to really "SNAP" and feel responsive and quick. We want the player to hit the "block" button and feel like they timed it correctly. And when Maya transitions from a jog to a sprint, we want to show acceleration, not a sudden jarring speed boost.

And hey guess what -we did all of those things already! Heck yah we did! But it's one of those tasks that almost never really feels done, so we'll probably continue tweaking like crazy people.

Small spoiler above too - Maya has a slide attack. :) And that spear tip seems to be a at potentially hazardous and crippling height.

Box Art (take 3)

2009-09-06T11:38:00.005-04:00

Ok I couldn't help myself. So this will be a four part series now. Here's an update on the box art. Maya is looking tough, and her cape provides a backdrop for a series of the prominent Spectral foes that she'll be battling.

Messin' With Editor

2009-09-02T00:33:00.006-04:00

Just showing some of the more detailed work we're able to do in the latest version of the region editor. This took about 10-15 minutes, so pretty decent work effeciency. As we add new objects and features to the editor, you'll hopefully see an upward progression of quality region design.

Here we have a sandy scene with a treasure tucked away on shallow lake.

3D Editor Alpha

2009-08-30T19:02:00.006-04:00

One of the best things about working with an experienced programmer (Bryan) is that he's able to build game design tools from the ground up, lickedy split - like his 3D region/level editor which I am calling the "Stryker Editor" (I feel like nicknames make us cooler, no?). For a more technical overview, check out Bryan's post here.

Building this editor is practically like building a game in itself, and in fact some games are essentially extensions of level editors. Having a functional editor is a keystone in development - slick animated models and a deep story are fun and important, but pretty much worthless if you can't place them in a tangible world. Having an editor that's been built specifically to create the world of Ophidian Wars, is like a a big bowl of beef stew on a cold winter night - delicious and meaty. Horrible analogy.

The couple screenshots you see here are an example of the editor and how that translates to the game itself. It's essentially a direct export, outside of important elements that are invisible to the player, like 'hotspots' and spawn points. And the editor allows us to tweak object and character properties, like what items are in a specific vase/pot, and how well a particular boss character can block attacks, etc.

So now the fun really begins. We have all of our art assets completed and functional in-game - now it's time to build a world for them. Up until now that world has only been imagined within my drawing pad. If this were a marathon, we just bashed down the wall and hit our stride. Stay tuned for more and more content in the coming weeks.

Box Art (take 2)

2009-08-26T20:11:00.012-04:00

This will be a three part series. :)

It was great to get a bunch of feedback on the box art design concepts that Craig is working on (by the way - Craig is ultra talented if you haven't noticed and you can check out more of his work on his website). So thanks to those who posted on the forums and in the comments section.

As visually pleasing and sensual as concept #2 was, most people seemed to think that some form of concept #1 was the most sensible, while still eye-catching and beautiful. I have to admit though, it was a damn tough decision to let it go. So we've narrowed down the exact pose a bit further and I thought I would share.

There's much I like of this particular pose. It's amazing how much subtle changes in arm position can affect the tone of a piece. Here I noticed that by bringing arm across her body, it actually created a more intense and active pose than by keeping the arm partially extended out in in front. While still nice, she almost looked too relaxed. The opposite direction of her arm versus the cape that extends out as the background creates a hint of motion - and intensity.

As an added bonus, we have a secondary point of interest. Her rather cool-looking ornate gauntlet (which as some of you may know plays a large role in this game) is in full view and rotated - and the curvature of her shoulder/arm is accentuated.

Thoughts? Looking forward to showing you the final product next.

Gub Spectral

2009-08-16T18:35:00.004-04:00

These nasty little bastards were once helpful 'bottom feeders' of the Pampali desert. But with the Shift, they've become territorial and started using debris as a means to move faster and attack passerbys. Gub Spectrals are more intelligent than they appear and while they never truly integrated socially, they have a strong network that relies on a hierarchical structure.

From a game design perspective, Gub Spectrals serve as dangerous early threat to Maya that will need to be learned and respected. In small numbers they will not pose much threat, but they can be highly dangerous when swarming and when higher ranking Gubs are present.

For me personally, Gubs are a shout out to the blob-like creatures that often populate the early stages of action games and RPGs. I remember hacking Bits/Bots and Slimes to pulp and that's how we'd all cut our teeth before facing the tougher enemies.

With Craig's help, we were able to conceptualize a creature with a bit more personality. Bryan and I are working on applying A.I. that allows us to scale up the challenge they pose as they game progresses and Maya delves deeper into her adventure. I look forward to catching people off guard with situations where they say, "oh just a couple Gubs, piece of cake." (evil laugh)

Our Region Editor

2009-08-13T10:07:00.005-04:00

I do not know if it is readily apparent to the casual observer, but things have been very exciting in the Small Cave Games these last few weeks.

Over the last few weeks we have gotten our animated models going, optimized a lot of code to achieve a 60 frames per second benchmark. We have gotten some awesome models in place by our talented artist and rig-meister. Plus we have added a ton of polish to make this game feel much more comfortable, natural and pleasing to you, the player. (I talk about you – yes, you specifically – in a lot in the comments within the game code. I say things like: “The player must select one of these”, “The player will want to throw their controller if I don’t change this section”, or "the player is not only good looking, but smart and talented as well" all over the place.) We have finalized our inventory screen (see screenshots in previous blogposts) and have made it intuitive, informative and visually appealing. We have even added some preliminary intelligence to some characters, and they can chase you around the screen.

In fact, I would dare say that we have made more tangible progress over the past 4 weeks than we have made during the previous 4 months. Maybe 6-8 months.

Notice that I distinguish “tangible” progress. We are currently at a point in the development of the game where there is a lot of front-end work going on. That is to say everything we are working on now will be visible by the user. And the reason the progress and momentum is currently so satisfying is due to the solid foundation of the back-end. That is, all the stuff you do not see. I went to great lengths in the design phase of the back-end to ensure that front-end development would be a snap. And it is paying off now.

The back end of the engine is almost so boring that I do not want to write about it. It is not boring to develop (in fact, I really enjoyed developing the back end to this game), but from a player’s perspective, it is probably very much like taking the cover off of your computer and looking at all the boards and storage devices. You know it is there, you know it is all important, but unless you work in there, you would just as soon leave the cover on your CPU and surf the intarwebs.

As it turns out, a very large part of designing (if not necessarily implementing) the back end of the engine was the development of a level editor, or a “Region” editor as I have been calling it (because our “levels” are not necessarily region-based, and region traversal is non-linear). About halfway through the design phase the tile-engine, an idea occurred to me that I should make it easier for the game’s level designer – that would be Carl – to design these regions, or else making regions is going to be unbelievably tedious, and unnecessarily complex. Since I am loading in the regions as content objects using the XNA Content Pipeline, the regions need to be designed in XML. And who wants to look at raw XML all day long? Not me.

It also occurred to me that if designing levels is an extremely unpleasant process, then the final results may suffer because of that. That is to say nothing of our sanity. I know that after pasting in the XML codes for the 5,000th Large Rock, I would probably snap and my poor neighbor would end up on the 6:00 news saying: “He was such a quiet guy. He mostly kept to himself. I don’t know what happened”.

So Carl and I thought it would be a good idea to develop a separate application that would allow you to design game regions, and be able to save them in a format that the game already uses. Our RegionEditor was born.

The region editor, unlike the game itself, is currently written in C++ and uses Managed DirectX (MDX), as opposed to XNA. I decided to use MDX instead of XNA because MDX doesn’t have the annoying VertexShader/PixelShader 1.1 requirements. This requirement was a serious hindrance earlier on in development because my computer was older than my oldest child, and the video card in it was even older than that – I have since upgraded to a newer model, but we kept the MDX software in place, in case we get a developer with a video card that is incapable of dealing with XNA.

I decided to write the editor in C++ because C++ is my native tongue. I prefer to write in C++, I write more efficient code in C++, I write code faster in C++ (believe it or not), and because the editor started life as a Win32 native app (using the native DirectX library) rather than a .NET app. I ended up switching to .NET and MDX for one very small (seemingly insignificant) reason. .NET has a PropertyGrid control built in and Win32 does not, nor were there any non-MFC freebies that I could find, and I didn’t have time to write a good one myself.

Here’s what it looks like now.

I think it looks pretty good, and it is definitely going to be easier to work with than straight raw XML data.

At first, this was a 2D editor. Instead of the 3D terrain in the workspace above, there was a 2D map. When you placed, say, a character on the map, you would get a little icon that indicated there was a character there. (Actually, you would get a hand-drawn circle to indicate there was a character there, and attached to the circle was a hand-drawn arrow indicating the direction the character would be facing when the region was invoked). In the 2D editor, characters and objects look identical except for coloring. The only way you can tell what type of object is specified by a given selection you have to refer to the property grid.

The 2D editor is functional, and that is what we are currently using to perform preliminary designs on a few levels. However, there are several mighty drawbacks to using a 2D editor.

First and foremost is the scaling of objects. If you want two adjacent rocks, you really have no way to tell if the rocks are too close together or too far apart, except for educated guesses and luck. Also rotation is a crap shoot. Oftentimes, especially with rocks, outlying vertices have wildly varying distances to the object’s centroid.

That could be fixed with clever manipulation of 2D sprites – and that is what I was going to do, except for the next drawback: A 2D editor simply cannot give you a good feel for what the final 3D level is actually going to look like. If you look at a map of New York City, you will see all the streets and avenues represented on the map. You can see Broadway on the map, and you can see 42nd Street and you can see Central Park – but in no way does looking at a map compare with standing on Lexington Ave. and E 85th Street buying a hot-dog and listening to a cab driver telling the squeegee guy to go !#%@ himself. The only way to overcome this problem was to create a 3D editor with the ability to actually enter the world and manipulate it.

The last problem, but by no means the least important, is the fact that using the 2D editor with lame visuals is almost as tedious as working on raw XML. As I mentioned before, if creating levels is an excruciating task, then the quality of the levels will suffer for it. Both Carl and I wanted an editor that would not only be intuitive and efficient, but also make designing levels a pleasant (even fun) experience.

I should have the first real draft of this region editor ready this weekend, and if all goes well, Carl will be cranking out areas left and right by Monday morning. This should bode well for screen shots that appear here. Right now the regions that we’ve shown you in screenshots have been designed in the 2D editor or are edited by hand in Notepad. With a fully functional 3D editor in place, we should be able to crank out stuff that is really pretty and have fun doing it.

Ok – I have babbled enough. I have a game to write.

Box Art (take 1)

2009-08-12T22:22:00.005-04:00

The XBLIG platform is pretty unique in the way players access the games, and as the catalog grows bigger and bigger, it's getting more and more important to stand out. The first thing people will see is the box art, and if other people are anything like me I think it's safe to say that many games are being pre-judged on that first initial image. For people to take that next step, select the game to read more and download the demo, they first have to be drawn to the box art.

So we've started working on box art that will hopefully be appealing and help attract our to-be fans! Below are some concepts. The second one is probably going a bit too far on the sex appeal and doesn't really relect Maya in the most "pure" light, but I bet it would grab a certain kind of attention. Thoughts welcome :).

Experience System - Rethinking the Norms.

2009-08-08T14:52:00.008-04:00

Ever sit down and wonder what exactly "experience" is? The classic RPG experience system has players striving for that next "level" - generally the more you do (or kill), the more experience you get, and the more levels you gain. It's a timeless character progression hook, and it works because we all like the idea of our character growing more powerful and legendary. We like to see our stats going up I suppose - we like to see advancement. But why so numerical?

The levels/numbers are mostly arbitrary. What is level 46 versus level 47? Why does killing monsters equal 45 experience points (for example), and why does a new level mean you can assign upgrades to stats like strength, dexterity, and intelligence? So because I killed 567 monsters worth 25,674 experience, NOW I am 3 points more intelligent? These questions nagged me, but also encouraged me to start with a clean slate when designing the experience (or rather "progression") system for Ophidian Wars. Obviously I didn't want to depart entirely from norms and assumptions that players enjoy and are used to, but also really felt that I had opportunity to start with clean slate and rethink things.

I set out with 3 goals.

1. Maintain the strong feeling of progression/advancement.
2. Keep the system simple - resist bogging it down with heavy stats.
3. Start fresh - logically approach how Maya would progress and grow throughout her journey.

Working towards those goals, the first thing I decided was to entirely ditch the concept that killing x monster gains x experience = level up = more stats. While it works like a drug I wanted to break that mold and not chain players to a number chart. I mentally sited games like Zelda: A Link to the Past (see screenshot) and Super Metroid which were able to strongly maintain the feeling of character progression while sparing players from any sort of arbitrary number/experience system (or the "grind" some may call it). While successful games like Diablo 2 (see screenshot) and Oblivion go the other route, I personally get irked by how much time in those games that I spend fiddling with my numbers and looking up player-made spreadsheets for stat optimization.

So then, with a bowl of Cheerios and fresh night of sleep, I started brainstorming on what traits logically relate to combat. What REALLY matters when you're toe to toe with an enemy? More importantly, are those traits able to be advanced through believable game actions? And if so, how?

Saving you details of how my brain works, what it boiled down to was Skill (how well-versed in combat you are, almost like summing up "experience"), Reflexes (how quickly you can act and react during combat), and Muscle (the most basic trait that leads to more powerful blows, and a more durable character). Not far from the most simplistic Strength/Speed setups, I like my organic terminology better, and avoided the trifecta of including "Magic" or "Mana." Skill became the savior - the way to take "experience" and contain it from becoming a statistical monster. Skill is quite literally... how experienced you are.

Also, what I like about those three traits was that each one could believably be advanced through combat, unlike common additional traits like intelligence/wisdom, charm, charisma, luck, vitality, etc that really don't have any relationship to combat or slaying enemies and often grant non-combat related bonuses (even "speed" often increases run speed which makes no sense, and isn't that based on leg strength?).

So in the end, Maya could gain muscle, increase her overall combat skill, and hone her reflexes simply by going on her merry way through the game fighting foes. Combat would logically increase these traits, and so might ally trainers, feats of strength, and specific quests. It felt natural. Best of all, I didn't need a back-end experience system - I could advance/level-up Maya's traits by tying them to specific in-game combat related achievements. (my lips are sealed on this until a later date)

The only problem that left me with was that all of Maya's advancement was tied only to combat-related traits and achievements. And in my opinion, a personal journey should include much much more than beefing up and becoming the ultimate ass-kicker (debatable, maybe). How else could she develop? Going back to some of those out-of-place traits like charm and intelligence, I realized what they are trying to accomplish. They are trying portray other forms of character growth - all good in theory but totally unrelated to combat.

So with a fresh bowl of Cheerios, I started thinking about other ways Maya would grow and advance beyond combat traits. How would she become more "intelligent" and gain "charisma?" Not by killing things! Thus, "techniques" were born - 8 of them to be exact that represent non-combat advancement. One of favorite examples is the "Green Thumb" technique which can be learned via a specific quest where she researches plant life. It allows Maya to better harvest healing Palmola fruits from Palmola shrubs. Thus, her research makes her more intelligent, and that allows her to be a more resourceful adventurer. It's logic at it's finest, and a cleaner methodology for advancing '"intelligence."

When you combine the 3 Trait system and the various Techniques that Maya can learn, I believe we have a simple, intuitive, yet highly satisfying route to character advancement. Throw in a cash of dynamic items/loot and we may just quench the RPG'er's thirst!

Hope you enjoy my babbling. Which kind of advancement system do you like better? Do you lean more towards the Zelda method, or the Diablo method? Is there a healthier middle ground?

Kilflame Soldier Follow-up

2009-08-05T17:30:00.004-04:00

Like any good army, the Kilflame army has ranks. Here's a look at some of the variations Maya will encounter. Like the classic RPGs we all know and love, it's a fun practice to repeat enemy types of varying degrees of difficulty. As Maya grows stronger, so will her foes. Each one will have different strengths/weaknesses, tendencies, and methods of combating Maya. As the player, you will need to learn the habits of the different enemy types to keep Maya alive. Bryan is currently working on A.I. and we're excited to show some of that work in action soon.

Inventory Update

2009-08-04T14:37:00.006-04:00

We've been putting a good deal of time into polishing the inventory to make it appealing and intuitive. And while our opinion might be a bit biased, we pretty much think it rocks. As you can see from the screenshot, we've implemented Craig's item artwork, and created a cursor that navigates around the four main areas of the screen (Items, Core, Traits, and Techniques). Then, the newly added info window in the center gives a brief description of whatever the cursor is on. You can see that the Stormpod has been selected, and pressing "A" will use the item. "Faded" items mean that Maya aint got any.

Pressing 'X' offers a dropdown menu that allows for game commands like saving and quiting. And the icing on the cake (mmm cake), we have some custom SFX and voice-over work that responds to commands within the inventory, but you'll have to wait for the game to hear those! Thoughts? Questions?

Badass Soldiers

2009-07-27T22:49:00.010-04:00

One of our first posts was about the Kilflame Soldier, the brave spear-wielders that make up the ranks of the Avagarsian Army. And let's face it, Maya's play-toys. Keep in mind though, some of these fellows will be loyal to the army that's hunts Maya, but others will secretly ally with her cause.

It's always fun to watch concept art evolve in to a full 3 model, so we're showing off more of Valri's finished work. The headshot give a good idea of their ethnic look and tattooed markings. The comparison shot shows the three different levels of Soldier, but I am not going to spoil how they are different. Hope you enjoy.

Not Gonna Happen!

2009-07-26T18:06:00.005-04:00

When Maya heard the news about the new pricing scheme for Xbox Live Indie Games, she flipped out and started punching my console. I've finally managed to talk her down and I can rest easy until my next "red ring of death."

So no, Ophidian Wars will not be priced at 80 Microsoft Points (roughly $1), I can tell you that much. And to be honest, I don't believe the new scheme to be so horrible. My feeling is that the lower price point of 80MP is perfectly-suited for many many titles that are released weekly on XBLIG ("Massage Clock Fart Machine"). Most of those apps just seemed silly even for the previous lowest option of 200MP. I just hope that the price shift doesn't drive the overall quality down and encourage more low-end clutter.

On the other end of the spectrum, there were very few titles going for 800MP anyhow, so I believe 400MP will still be the acceptable price point for the serious high quality releases. Most of the best-rated games tend to be 400MP or even 200MP. Not exactly sure why Microsoft wants to limit/cap that potential, but I'll assume they have their reasons (sales). At the very least, hopefully developers will experience more traffic and awareness of the XBLIG platform overall. I know quite a few devs who are upset about this change, so I may be a minority there. But for any consumers out there who stumble upon this post, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

For The Serious RPG Lovers

2009-07-24T21:17:00.003-04:00

If you want some high-end brain food, I suggest you head over to Bene Factum for a deep dive into the possibilities of non-linear gameplay. While AAA developers will continue to muck around and expand on things like endless dialogue trees, quest systems, and open world sandboxes, it will likely be the indie teams who experiment and bring about true innovation to what it means to be non-linear.

This sort of thinking parallels some of the design goals with Ophidian Wars and it's dialogue system. Stay tuned for more info on that.

Spectral Lore Video

2009-07-14T00:40:00.005-04:00

So I wanted to share some of the music that you'll hear in Ophidian Wars, and then I couldn't help but make a video to go along with it. It serves as a nice introduction to Spectrals. Enjoy, and let us know if you like it. If you think it's stupid, that's cool too.

Stackable Items

2009-07-04T23:26:00.004-04:00

Which one looks the tastiest?

Stackable (expendable) items will play a big role in Ophidian Wars, not unlike many RPGs. But something you may notice is the nature of these items is a bit unusual.

You may have noticed that Ophidian Wars has a very 'organic' feel too it. And no we are not trying to ride the "green" movement and market our game as 100% organic - nor does it get 50 miles-per-gallon.

What I mean is that the setting for Ophidian Wars is purposely void of mainstay RPG technologies. It's not medieval, nor Tolkien-esk, nor set in an Earthly past or future. This land feels primitive, unexplored, and unusual. This land is your land, this land is Maya's land. (tee hee)

As a result, the items that are most useful and prominent are not magical hammers, ornate platemail, silver bullets, or even Elven arrows. These items are natural, such as seeds, fruit, and tea. Some may seem magical in their effects which is what makes them useful, but they are not "magic" per say.

Take the jar of tea above, known as Topine Tea, and made from Topine Tree leaves. This tea has long been known to create an 'energizing' effect on it's drinkers and was provided to those in battle to help against fatigue. It actually tastes terrible, however.

So that's a look at some of the items that Maya will use in her adventure. More to come. Let us know what you think.

Living Indie

2009-07-04T02:15:00.006-04:00

This is a non-Ophidian Wars post - I had a moment of reflection today. It was likely due to the CNBC special on the video game industry that aired last night, and sparked by my reading of Play magazine today in Barnes & Nobles (good read, and it has Wet on the cover, so that drew me in I suppose).

And yes, I was doing that cheap-ass thing where you buy a coffee and read magazines, then don't pay for them (who's with me there?). But I did encourage my wife to buy me a subscription for my birthday so I don't feel THAT badly.

Anyhow, I was reading about various development studios who have risen to the top and then crumbled, and amazing visions/concepts for games that were diluted down to crapola before they hit the shelves. I read about once prominent mid-level studios who fell victim to the pitfalls of the industry. And games budding with innovation that were sapped of their creativity or just flat-out canceled because of low projected sales. Out of these many depressing stories about "big business" and it's devilish ways, came happiness.

You see, our small team has no deadlines, no publishers to answer to, no investors, no reason to conform - and we can develop what we want and how we want to. It's refreshing. Sure, we're limited by our home hardware, lack of reputations, and of course shallow pockets But getting to develop our game "out of bounds" is what makes this so exciting. The freedom (both creatively and operationally) is quite remarkable and rare in any profession.

If I want to spend three months perfecting the dialogue, I can. If I want to lightly reference Soundgarden or De La Soul just for the heck of it, I can. If I want Maya to shoot pickles from her nipples, she can! Well, maybe not - not sure if we have the budget for a 3D pickle model/texture.

That's my only point. It's always a strange and confusing trade off - the main goal of indies seems to be to make a big break (can't deny that). But maybe we shouldn't be in such a big rush to do so?

Building a World From Scratch

2009-06-24T20:42:00.003-04:00

Creating your own world is sort of a game in itself (Sim City). And that probably explains why building the Ophidian Wars world is a big keg of fun juice. Or fun beer. All beer is fun? Except Rolling Rock?

I just wanted to share some glimpses of the vast land we're currently creating. If you can't tell, or haven't been following along (catch up already!) much of Ophidian Wars will be based in a vast desert.

This first scene is a warm break from an often lonely mood. A pond-side dwelling with some bow leaves and palmola shrubs offers Maya a break from fighting her way across the sands.

The second shot is of Maya stumbling upon a strongbox full of loot. I can hear you drooling.

"Core" Mechanics

2009-06-18T21:08:00.005-04:00

It would be pretty silly to create a RPG and not have some cool loot to collect. Some of the most powerful items in Ophidian Wars are called Core - and finding Core will not be made easy.

Sidenote: See what I did there with the title of this post? I took my clever pills this morning, oh yeah.

In regards to the lore of Ophidian Wars, Core is absolutely crucial - it's the lifesource of each Spectral being. All Spectrals have Core, and it's believed that's it not only their lifesource, but a direct bond to the planet itself. When a Spectral is killed, the Core is usually shattered and returned to the planet to be "reseeded." In more rare cases, the Core has been maintained fully intact, appearing like the examples above. As you might imagine, fully intact core is quite powerful, and therefore highly coveted. If you want a bit of a puzzle, see if you can match up the core above with some of the Spectrals you've seen on the main website.

From a gameplay perspective, Core is essentially high-end loot. Maya will be able to find it and use it to buff her gear - namely the spear, gauntlet, and amulet that was gifted to Maya by her sister as the game begins. If you scroll down to the inventory screen in the previous post, you can see the three items, and how Core will be socketed in to each piece of gear.

If you're avid action/RPG fans like we are, I can assure you that it will be a blast messing around with different combinations of Core and finding the best effects for your playstyle. Questions and comments welcome as always!

I have sloppy joes waiting for me and they are calling my name. Jealous?

HUD

2009-06-15T21:20:00.006-04:00

One of the most intricate and important pieces of any game with RPG elements is the HUD. Our goal was to keep it as simple as possible, clean, and easy to understand. However, as with other pieces of the game, we wanted to breath some life into the old standards.

As you check out these shots of a couple HUD pieces you'll notice some twists placed on things like the "health bar" and "stats."

I never understood what healthbars where really trying to convey. What are "hit points" really? What are little hearts? What is a globe full of blood? They obviously reference 'life' in some manner but why not rethink this? In my mind, survival (life and death) is based on a series of injured states, until death occurs. I always liked the way Wolfenstein introduced the avatar that gets more battered as you take damage. Our health bar represents something similar. Each color represents a state of injury, and when you've become critically injured, it's fatal. And on the flipside, you can find ways to heal injury. Makes sense to me!!

Moving to the inventory shot, you might be able to make out the three main stats in the big circle - muscle, reflexes, and skill. To me, it's those basic traits that govern outcomes like strength, attack damage, evasion, etc. I wanted to find the most basic traits that govern the elements of combat, and start there. It keeps the number of stats managable and believable.

We're extending this thought process through other RPG elements like 'experience' and 'leveling,' trying to start from a fresh perspective rather than just accommodating standards that maybe never had a ton logic or common sense behind them - it's just what we've become used to.

And the last thing I always come back to is....keep it simple stupid. Because we're making some tweaks to the existing preconceived RPG notions, we want to make sure that the game is still accessible and easy to pick up. Barrier to entry can be a massive pitfall when RPGs become to complex and dare I say it...hardcore. On flipside, lots of tough end-game elements will be included to keep the more hardcore crowd on their toes - don't you worry.

What do you think of the HUD design?

I present to you... Maya Tempra

2009-06-13T11:57:00.006-04:00

It's usually Carl's department to make announcements or post screenshots and things like that. Today, however, I'm going to go ahead and do it, because I'm very excited about this, and I think the world needs to know right this minute!

Maya has entered the building.

What you see here is the first published screenshot featuring an animated Maya. In this image, she's facing off with a Vos Spectral who's guarding the entrance of a cave.

There she is. She's mid-swing here. She's swooped her spear in a counterclockwise direction, and what you're looking at is the follow-through. The Vos, caught right in the midsection by this attack, is getting ready to retaliate with a right-hook.

Here's one more where Maya is having a friendly conversation with a Pon Spectral. Don't let the position of the spear fool you. She's not aiming it at him. She's just standing at ease. The Pon's relaxed dancing should let you know there's no hostility between the two characters who are probably getting ready to engage in some sort of mutually beneficial financial transaction.

Since my posts to date have been technical in nature, I feel obliged to add some technical geekish mumbo-jumbo for this post to be complete.

What we have here are models that are rigged and skinned by our artists, and we use a modified version of the SkinnedModelSample from the XNA Creator's website. There is still some modification that needs to be done.

I'm making a custom model class which will contain information about the animations. The models contain all the animations in a single timeline. If you're familiar with the SkinnedModelSample, you know that the timeline is loaded and cycled in the display. In FBX format, all the animations available are contained on this single timeline. So, what I'm going to do is isolate the frame-ranges of each individual animation along this timeline and play a single animation clip by calling a function such as Idle() or Attack1(). These animations will have loop or noLoop specifiers.

Later on, I'm going to add a mixer which will allow a blend of animations. This will provide a smooth transitional effect when switching from one animation to another. That way there's no popping effect when switching between animations. It wouldn't look right if Maya was idling one second, and suddenly she's mid-stride the next. It should be a smooth acceleration/blend in order to be natural looking.

I've always loved Cal3D and I have some experience animating characters with this library. So I'm probably going to use some of the techniques used in that library for mixing animations, and hopefully the techniques I garner from this library will compliment the SkinnedModel sample to give us a very robust, realistic, smooth and professional look to our animated characters. I do not plan on duplicating the behavior of Cal3D, nor do I plan to write a Cal3DXna library. I merely intend to study some of the desired behaviors used in Cal3D and mimic it within our existing software.

I have to mention that the models I'm working with now, are of much higher quality than the models I used when I was playing with Cal3D. Higher quality by several orders of magnitude. Kudos to our artists who made these characters! They did a great job and I hope the screenshots convey that to you as thoroughly as it should.

The User Interface

2009-06-10T12:13:00.006-04:00

One of the most important parts of any game - or any program for that matter - is the User Interface, also known as the UI. It is also called the Human Computer Interface (HCI) or the Man Machine Interface (MMI) or the Human Machine Interface (HMI). We don't usually call it a Man Computer Interface (MCI) to avoid ambiguity with the Media Control Interface and the Medical Council of India.

It's a lot easier for me to type UI, so that's what I'll call it.

The two base portions of the UI are the Input and the Output. In our game, all user input is registered through the game controller. All output is directed to the player from the monitor, speakers and force-feedback on the game controller.

There is an extremely well-done starter UI available from the XNA Creator's Club called the GameStateManagementSample that is a very popular jumping off point for a lot of XNA games.

We didn't use it.

Well, I shouldn't say that we didn't use it at all. I garnered a lot of useful ideas from that project - including the concept of a ScreenManager component class and a base Screen class used by the ScreenManager component - although we decided early on that we want almost everything to be data-centric, including the UI. The GameStateManagementSample is not data centric. Everything in that project that drives the behavior of the UI is hard-coded in the source.

The upshot of writing a data-centric game like this is that if we ever need a non-programmer type to adjust pieces of the game (without disturbing the very busy - and extremely good looking - programmer) they should be able to do so without running into too much trouble, provided they possess the knowledge of reading and typing, and have even the most rudimentary deductive reasoning skills.

Every screen that you see in our game - from the title screen, to the splash screen to the screen where the game itself is played - all are configured using external data that can be modified by anyone with a text editor (and access to the game content, of course. However, I'm afraid, that is a very short list of people).

Another excellent benefit of writing the game like this, is that it saves tons of compiling time when we're making changes to the contents of the game, without having to change the source code.

When a project reaches a critical mass, compiling to software becomes a time-consuming and quite boring task. If you make a typo when making a menu item that needs to be fixed, or if you need to add a new contributor to the credits, you can make these changes in a configuration file, and rebuild the project without having to compile everything again. This makes tweaking little things in the game much less frustrating. And fast.

I said above that the GameStateManagementSample has much hard-coding to define the behavior of the UI. For instance, if you select a menu item, a handler is written in the source to determine which menu item is selected and what should be done in response. Our design, being much more variable in nature, does not define these behaviors in the source code. So the software needed a mechanism for determining what to do in response to, say, the player making a menu selection. Or the splash screen timing-out. Or the player skipping the storyboard narrative. Or anything that signals the next part of the sequence.

Enter the Sequencer.

I'm not going to go into all the details - on account'a I don't know how Carl feels about me spilling the proprietary guts of our operation on the interwebs - but I'll try to give you an overview of what it does without invoking the words "Magick" or "Miracle".

Basically the Sequencer is a class that loads a list of sequence items that defines the flow of the game. Different items within the sequencer can be called up by performing various actions in the UI. For instance, on startup, you will see our splash screen (the Small Cave Games logo + a groovy signature sound effect), which is Sequence Item Zero. Item Zero is the the default sequence item, and all future sequence items are launched after that. After the splash screen, the Title Page sequence item is invoked, either by the user clicking the "Skip" (B) button, or waiting until it runs its course, which includes admiring our logo and listening to the Small Cave Games sound effect.

The title page sequence item allows the user to invoke one of several different sequence items, by choosing different menu items. Selecing "Start New Adventure" will invoke the Start Game sequence. Selecting "Load Game" will invoke the Load Game sequence, etc.

That's about it for the sequencer. All the sequence items are stored in a sequence configuration file, and every player input action that causes a sequence item to be invoked is also stored in a configuration file. It's all about the data. Very flexible. Very scalable. Very slick.

If I do say so myself.

The last part of the UI that bears mentioning in this post is the Transition Manager. One of the things I noticed about the GameStateManagementSample is that everything transitions from one state to another. There is no "state-popping" in that application. I cannot express in words how much I agree with this approach. Objects should never pop from one state to another. They should glide smoothly from one state to another over the course of time. Even if that time is 1/10 of a second, it's better than a jarring instantaneous mode snap.

However, I don't use this apparoach only in the UI. I use it everywhere. I use it to transition our in-game camera from combat mode to navigation mode (I'll tell you all about that some day), I use it in-game when the player exits one region and enters another. I use it with narrative storyboards and subtitles. I use it in the game when the player opens or closes an auxilliary screen. I use it during HUD transitions (I'll also tell you about that some day). I use it ... pretty much everywhere.

So instead of writing all these transitions into the source, I extracted it all into a neat tidy little package called the Transition Manager. The transition manager allows for any game element to switch from one state to another smoothly. The element defines the amount of time it takes to transition in, and the amount of time it takes to transition out. It provides a property that indicates amount along the current transition (if any) the transition has elapsed. And although it pained me to do so, I allowed for instant transitions. (Just in case).

Hopefully we won't use that. Ever.

That's about the long and short of the UI. The rest of the UI is pretty basic stuff. If I stumble across a part of the UI that I forgot and bears mentioning, I'll stick it up here. I'll probably write a long-winded rambling post soon about the tile engine.

Gaining Perspective

2009-06-09T00:25:00.007-04:00

Ever play a great game that is ruined by a wonky camera? Ever read a review that chalks up poor gameplay to that same wonky camera? How many leading questions before I get tedious?

Right, so we're making it a priority to create a camera system that is not a barrier to enjoyment - that would suck. It's typical for developers to NOT want you to notice the camera, they just want it to silently do it's job and go unnoticed. We'd like to accomplish this basic functionality, but also have it ADD to the adventure experience. I'll come back to this goal.

When talking about "camera issues" we often think of third person action games (i.e Tomb Raider, Ninja Gaiden, Prince of Persia, etc) as the primary culprit. But top-down action RPGs are not free of guilt either. With an isometric view, players often find their character hidden behind the landscape while trying to battle off a horde of zombies, or run for cover (stressful, not fun). With a pure top-down view, players sacrifice a sense of depth and the world tends to look flat (not attractive).

On the flipside, both views offer benefits. An isometric view allow for a better sense of depth and viewing full objects/characters within an environment. A top-down view can be advantageous when navigating through the world (hence the helpfulness of a "mini-map" feature).

Our solution? Allow for both - choosing the best camera angle for a particular situation. I've always liked having the option to see the world from multiple points of view - I was the guy who played Oblivion over and over testing out the first person view versus the third person view. Not because one was really "better" but because I was getting twice the experience and could mess around with how different scenarios played out. I realized how much the different views created new enjoyment. This often holds true for racing games as well.

Back to Ophidian Wars, the two screenshots shown here are a preview at the two in-game views and you can see for yourself what each one has to offer (exact zoom level is still being tweaked). We're also considering adding a "dialogue view" for up close conversations so we enjoy close ups of our [hot] models. :)

Thus, we hope to accomplish a camera system that is certainly not a hindrance, more than just functional/effective, AND adds to the experience. We're confident that we'll get there.

AND AS A BONUS, we've snuck in some new graphics in to these screenshots just to see if you're paying attention. As always, feedback is welcome.

Technical Introduction

2009-06-08T23:25:00.008-04:00

Welcome.

I hope this post finds you in good health. My name is Bryan Ecker and I am the programming lead in this project. There are links to our project website all over this page, however, I feel somehow obliged to point you to it anyway. There are lots of great pieces of viewing material on that website. You can also keep up with what the artists are doing because there's a section there showcasing our art assets. As well as some glimpses into the plot and the rich tapestry of the world of Avagar, where you will hopefully begin your journey later this year. (Or early next year depending on how fast I can make my fingers wiggle across my keyboard).

Ok - I'll leave the rest of that kind of talk for Carl, who's got dibs on the design talk. As for me, my world revolves around the programming aspect of the game. I will pop in occasionally to give you some glimpses into the back-end.

If the game was a car, I would be talking about distributor caps, pistons, and head gaskets, and it probably wouldn't be of much interest to those of you who like to get into the drivers seat, turn a key and drive to the mall without thinking about the combustion and suction that goes on underneath the hood. But if you're the kind of person who likes to change your own oil and you know exactly where your fuel filter is, you might get down with this.

When Carl was explaining to me what he wanted in this game, the words "nostalgia" and "retro" came up a few times. When he described his vision in more detail some images solidified in my head. The first image that solidified was the original Final Fantasy. After more talking a better analogy presented itself: The Legend of Zelda. Not in terms of plot and gameplay, but in terms of genre. It is a top-down tile based game where you engage enemies in the same environment that you explore regions. It is a game that will have secret areas and secret rewards and just secrets. (I love this stuff). It is a game that you can cut down bushes and sometimes receive money, and sometimes reveal a hidden cave rich with treasure... which, of course, will cause you to look for every bush in the game and obsessively cut each and every one down looking for glorious loot or new areas to explore.

But technology is so much better now than it was when Princess Zelda first enticed Link with a little leg and cleavage with the promise of more. How cool would it be to make a game that has the nostalgic and familiar look and feel of classic 2D tile games (that we old-timers all know and love almost as much as our wives) and yet still use the XBox360's top of the line graphics to their full potential to attract the whippersnappers who whisper amongst themselves "Zelda who?"

So that's what we're doing. We came up with an (I believe) unique blend of 2D action in a 3D world with camera angles and reminiscent of the old-style tile engines, complete with auxiliary screens (like maps and inventory screens) also reminiscent of those same games. With a little RPG thrown in for good measure. The gameplay action will be all done on a 2D plane. Combat will consist of walking right up to an enemy and bludgeoning the piss out of them, and getting kicked in the head a time or two yourself. The terrain that you traverse will be 2D and contain untraversable bodies of water, untraversable mountainous areas and other obstacles (like rocks and trees).

The game is written in C# using the XNA platform, specifically for XBox Live Community Games. We're using the Farseer 2D engine to handle the collision and physics within the game. Everything else so far has been written by Yours Truly.

My next couple of posts will go over the first few software milestones, and the actual design and implementation of the game. First I'm going to review the GUI framework, and then I'm going to review the regional tile-engine.

World Map

2009-06-06T19:09:00.007-04:00

Remember when you'd buy a new game, open up the box, and you'd get to unfold the hand-drawn world map? You'd get a taste of all of the areas to explore and a feeling of how vast your adventure would be.

We wanted to make sure to offer a similar sense of expansive adventure when you play Ophidian Wars, and so we carefully crafted this map above (click to enlarge). You will have access to this map in game, so you can find your way to key locations and maybe uncover some secret areas.

Macabre (he brings the death)

2009-06-05T18:52:00.007-04:00

When dreaming up a boss character, I often reach in to actual nightmares that I have. Enter Macabre. Yes I have odd nightmares, I know.

Craig and I had a great time conceptualizing Macabre, as an unstoppable, cold, merciless killer. What makes this guy frightening is that he's more than just brute force and sharp spiked fists - he's actually intelligent, and void of compassion. He works for the highest bidder, and enjoys his work.

Macabre is a "Lok Breed" which is a sort of mutant race that was once a type of Spectral. But when they broke the rules and began to replicate in ways that went against the natural order of the Spectrals, they were shunned, rejected, and decided to build their own civilization with their own set of rules.

Lok Breed learned to reproduce asexually and without Core, quickly building a substantial population and army. Some "purebred" Lok Breed still exist though, meaning those that still have Core - and Macabre is one of them. He is larger than most of his kind, and one of the most feared mercenaries across the land. Some won't even speak his name in fear of becoming his next target. What makes the Lok Breed different is also what makes them dangerous - able to morph their bodies to create organic weapons and armor at will. Macabre has fashioned custom armor over most of his body, but also wears a fitted faceplate to protect a vulnerable area.

With the advent of the Shift, and the presence of the Ophidians, some believe Macabre is hunting for a new top bidder. And after a recent shaky, but effective, truce with the Lok Breed, a worrisome number of Lok Breed are amassing outside of their homeland in the East.

Animation Demo Reel

2009-06-02T11:00:00.004-04:00

My mom always taught me to share (except for steak, I don't share my steak), so I wanted to provide a link to Robert's new demo reel. He's a fantastic animator, and a swell fellow to boot.

Check it out to see some of the cool work he's been doing, along side Ophidian Wars of course.

Pon Spectral

2009-05-31T17:47:00.008-04:00

One of our most positively received characters tends to be this little gold guy, the Pon Spectral. He's like the Volkswagon Beetle of Ophidian Wars - cute, little, resilient, and just looks really freakin' friendly. They like carry stuff around on their heads, and are often found dancing. While their armor-like skin makes them essentially impossible to injure, their small stature and tiny limbs make them quite harmless.

And it's true - there's nothing truly to fear about the Pon Spectrals. They maintain a peaceful relationship with just about everyone. After all, as merchants, isn't that the wise thing to do?

With the aforementioned Shift in effect, twisting many Spectrals into aggressors, Pon Spectrals have simply withdrawn themselves from most cities and have become more nomadic in nature. Thankfully they will still offer Maya a good source of supplies when she finds them (assuming that she's willing to pay, of course).

One word of caution though - treat them nicely, or else they tend to supply Maya with bad advice.

The Ophidians

2009-05-27T22:16:00.006-04:00

Sometimes people ask me why we named the game Ophidian Wars. Or sometimes, it's more like, "What the hell are Ophidians?" Well, I thought I would shed a little bit of light on that (without spoiling anything major of of course).

The Ophidians are one of the races that play a key role in the game's plot. As you can tell from the picture at your left, they have a mysterious vibe. They are few in numbers, and rarely seen, but it does not take many to stir up strife. They are the catalyst behind the event dubbed the "Shift" - an event that marks a major behavior change in another important race, the Spectrals.

And with the Shift, comes a ripple of disruption across the land, including the powerful city of Kilflame (home to Maya). It's there that a legend begins to take shape, and a chapter in the Ophidian Wars begins.

So you'll have to wait to learn more about the Ophidian's motives, the effects of the Shift, Maya's role in bigger picture, and who else will fight along side her. Stay tuned for the occasional bit of insight. Or head over to the main site for more info on races and characters :)

Environment Screenshots

2009-05-26T23:41:00.008-04:00

I've always enjoyed level design, and thanks to Bryan, we have a nice little editor that's allowing us to mock up test regions for gameplay. And what better way to show off some of Val's nice models, than a couple of screenshots?

These two shots are rough designs of some early desert regions in the game, where Maya will awake after being outcast from her city. It's here that Maya will begin her adventure. Notable pieces include an explorable cave, some original plantlife, a strongbox (or treasure chest), some rocks, vases, a high wall, and a dwelling.

The other important element here is the camera angle. Ophidian Wars will allow for both a pure top-down perspective (upper left) and angular perspective (bottom right). Players will be able to choose the preferred angle, or allow the computer to enstate a 'battle cam' - essentially switching to an angular zoomed view for combat and interactions. We're still playing with the specific settings of course. :) Enjoy, and let us know what you think.

(please note: screenshots may have some pixelation due to being taken direct from screen - looks better live :)

Quan Spectral

2009-05-24T12:59:00.007-04:00

Another dynamic character in Ophidian Wars is the Quan Spectral. As you might be able to tell, this is one foe you will probably want to avoid until a little later in the game.

Maybe they're not exactly what they seem however?

Kilflame Soldiers

2009-05-22T22:13:00.009-04:00

Developing and designing the basic "grunt" of the Kilflame army was a fun task for Craig. These fellas will play a dynamic role in Ophidian Wars as aliances are split - some stay loyal to the corrupted Crucef while others secretly side with their general, La Singa (also Maya's sister). Maya will encounter plenty of resistance from the army of her own people, but can also find help within their ranks.

In these sketches, we see a typical guard in standard Kilflame army gear. To be suited for the desert where most reside, heavy armor is not an option. Instead, breathable light layers of cloth and and a material known as vidrias which is a durable glass-like material are used for protection. The heavy garb on the leading shoulder is to absorb frontal strikes. And the official emblem is worn just below to protect the vital organs and legitimize their rank.

In the end, we felt that the heavy-looking pants in the lower sketch, looked too 'cold-weather' and opted for the tighter light greaves instead. Equipped with spears, the Kilflame army is a formidable force. Better trained and skilled, these soldiers are able to face off with the much stronger and larger Lok Breed.

We hope you like the design. Let us know what you think!

Maya Animation Sample

2009-05-22T21:57:00.002-04:00

Here we have Maya showing off some of her basic animations. You'll see a jog, normal swipe attack, and a pound attack. We've got a couple more attacks and some other surprises too.