Thanks everyone for your comments on the last post. You folks posted a lot of useful stuff up there. Ben’s suggestions were particularly inspiring, but what really lodged itself in my brain was Vaconcovat’s comment about scrap hauling. The scrapper stations are relatively simple game systems, but because they interact with several other game systems they invoke complex and interesting player behaviour. In a few minutes of Captain Jameson I might do the following:

1. Decide to explore further along bearing 90 from 0,0 (go right)
2. Log in to the nearest nav station, and notice that I would need to cross a large gap between oxy stations
3. Visit a recently reactivated factory that manufactures Charlie class Mk II Boosters (which should provide enough thrust to get me across the oxy gap)
4. Realize I have insufficient credit
5. Reconnect with the nav station, and this time bring up a list of ships in the area
6. Identify, track down, and destroy a couple of hostile ships
7. Rebuild my ship using the newly earned modules, configuring it for fast movement because my oxy is running low
8. Crawl back to the second nearest oxy station, because it’s closer to the scrapper station I’m ultimately aiming to visit. I begin to doubt my decision as oxy hits 2%, but I make it there in time.
9. Visit scrap station and get a quote for my wares. The quote is very low because some of the modules were damaged in the fight.
10. Sell the undamaged modules and rebuild my ship out of damaged parts
11. Take the damaged modules to a nearby repair station, and spend the credits earned in step 10 repairing them
12. Return to the scrap station and sell of newly repaired parts
13. Refill oxy
14. Return to the factory and purchase a shiny new Mk II thruster
15. Bolt the thruster to the back of my ship and zoom off into the unknown

It’s not a great story. There are no characters, there is hardly any plot, and it says bugger all about the human condition – but it’s a start. You’ll also notice a huge hole in point 1 – why go East? In fact, why go anywhere? This was the question that got me caught up in this stuff, but I think it was a mistake to try to answer it while also addressing generative narrative issues. I’m going to try treating them as separate problems for now and see where that leads me.

I’ll add asteroid fields on Monday.

<3 Farbs

(image source)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<3; Farbs

I keep accidentally typing indiedrome

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

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

“Die, fcker!”

We asked Farbs’ public relations manager for further clarification.

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

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

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

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

<3 Farbs

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

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

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

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

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

<3 Farbs

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

<3 Farbs