Blogs - Ruined_Games

Hi again my little 'still non-existent' readers!

I thought I'd just post a little update on progress for RoE.

FIrst of all, I posted the 1.3 Combat Demo on the 25th of March, and just getting to that point was around 8 months of working every evening into dreaded 3-4 am territory, where you *know* you're gonna feel like shit all the next day...
However, you do it because you're excited to see this...creation forming in front of you (warts and all).

Anyway, since releasing that I had a little break for a week or two to recharge for the final push to Alpha, Beta and A Gold/Release version.

Now I'm back working on it, and the first port of call is to add some variation to the names of loot, based on the attributes they have. This will make loot more unique and fun.
The approach I'm taking allows the names to be split into three descriptive words. So for example if you find a magic longsword that has a STRENGTH, MELEE and DEFENCE bonus on it, it may be called:
"POWERFUL Longsword OF SLICING SHIELD" or "HULKING Longsword OF BASHING FORTRESS" and so on, with as many randomised words as I want to match the skill bonuses it gives.
It's not an ideal system, and it the variation won't be quite as unique and nuanced as I'd liked but they key is - it's achievable. I designed some systems on paper that when it came to implementing them, were just too complex and I ran the risk of spending many, many evenings trying it out and then days/weeks later finding out I have to revert the change due to unforeseen problems.

This is the reason why when playing RoE, there are many criticisms that can reasonably be levelled at the game mechanics. Ways to streamline actions, more functionality or skills, more variation in AI behaviour etc. Now these are all valid and things I have already identified many myself, but this is where the difficult choices are. I have to pick things which I know I can achieve. Don't get me wrong, I am not averse to getting my hands dirty spending potentially weeks defining and implementing a system, but I rate everything by a RISK value. Sometimes I have an idea, I run with it and quickly realise I cannot safely take it to completion, and other times I think the bang-for-my-buck so to speak will be very high and although a lot of work, that particular feature will add a lot and I think it's within my skill level. Then I will add it.

There are still many things that I cannot do, or cannot do well. I know that if a coding professional looked at my code in RoE they would point out ten thousand things I am doing wrong, or can structure better or more efficiently etc. I know this, and I refuse to let it deter me from my path. I am not striving for perfection here.
I want to make a fun little game to get the company name out there. I want that game to be a game I would play. I want the game to get finished. I want to sell the game and make at least a few quid, mainly to help with my impending fatherhood!

Please, if you get the time go to the Greenlight page and vote a nice big YES for me - and I promise the game at the end will at least be fun, the product of passion, hard-work and lots of thought!

Thanks,
Daz

Hey non-existent readers.

You do exist, I'm *quite* sure of that. What I mean is I am probably right now, this very moment in fact - writing to nobody. The words I am hearing in my brain as I type them may very well be the only time they get uttered in this order by a human being. Well, maybe an admin will read it and feel sorry for me, then laugh and point.

Anyway, today I will be talking about..............

How do you draw 'silence'? I did an empty space on the line above and to me that represented perfectly what I was trying to convey. Then I realised that to a casual observer that may very well just look like a space. It's hard this writing malarky, isn't it?

So my demo for Ruins of Endoth is out and I am absolutely and totally underwhelmed by the reaction. yes, I know these days us 'indie developers' have to act as our own marketing department, PR and also coders, artists and designers all in-one, right? Well I'm crap at that, and how people find the time, patience and energy to work on a game every hour of the day and then just know the best ways to get people to take notice - well I applaud them.

I have spent 8 months working on my little, basic-looking aRPG game. I worked until 2 or 4am most nights, 7 days. I worked a full-time job at the same time and tried to live a 'normal' life in a relationship with my fiance. It was hard. Very hard. At times I almost gave up, convinced I was making a pile of sh*t look even worse, but I persevered because I wanted to make something that was my own. All my own design and scripting and gameplay art. Of course, I am a designer by day anyway - so ideas and implementation are not that much of a problem but the coding and the art do not come naturally to me - and it shows!
Nevertheless I struggled on every day/night making progress on procedural generation, randomisation of loot, art problems, monster balancing, AI pathfinding and behaviour etc beg, stealing and borrowing whatever I could (I didn't steal really) and modifying things to suit my game, or rewriting things or creating from scratch my own code. It was a learning curve, made worse by the fact I was making it in GameMaker 8.1 and unless you're using Unity or making a cloned product for a phone these days - you're not cool!
Well, I'm not cool anyway so that's not a problem either.

To cut a long story short, my demo is out and the cold, hard indifference of the internet has claimed another victim!
I'm not begging for sympathy, I'm not blaming anyone else, I'm reflecting on the current status of my game (and my mind) for future reference and possible entertainment.

You see, as I said earlier - I am no good at PR. Not that great at scripting/coding, almost awful at art and not the best designer in the world (though I have known worse!) but I have the passion to make my own things, to look at something, follow a dream and say "I did THAT!". Which is great, obviously but now it's out there I feel I actually want people to play it, but the limited feedback I have so far has not been terribly encouraging, to the point that I believe this game, this thing that has dominated my life, my dreams, and my spare time, I believe it may actually not be good to anyone but me.

Maybe I needed to make this, for me. Am I actually really upset that not many people are playing it and that the internet is not literally abuzz with mentions of Ruins of Endoth?! No! *checks twitter feed*
No, no really I am a little narked but I think for the wrong reasons.
Maybe the game is only good to me because I am so close to it. I know it's heart, it's mind. I saw it grow - nurtured it even. I wiped it's ar....no wait, that's a baby I'm talking about. The game is getting non-excited feedback even from people close to me that I so desperately wanted to like it. That either tells me they are horrible people (not likely!) or they are holding back their real feelings.
If I was a stranger and this game was in front of them they would probably laugh at it. Most people would.
Where I see clever algorithms for procedural generation which meant I could have a random level every time I played - they see something that is old-hat and in most games in this genre these days, and are much, much prettier than RoE too.
While I see all the art in the game as lovingly crafted, pixel by crappy pixel - they see sub-standard art that in their heads 'they could do better'. In some cases they probably could too.

However, It's very easy to critique something detached from you and look at isolated areas of something and identify fault and even see quick and simple solutions, but to be there with the pressure of life and work and time and money. that;s different. each evening ending is an evening I haven't finished the game, another evening closer to another day-job shift. When you have limited time you identify very early on what you CAN and CANNOT achieve. Something has to give.

Now on RoE, I knew I had to do it on my own. i had sat for nearly three years working in UDK prototyping a 3D version of the game. Teaching myself art packages and modelling programs, learning to rig some models, UV mapping - the lot. I bought myself a second PC to act as a perforce repository and set all that up. i made ruins, backgrounds, tons of weapon models - all textured. Months and months of work. i tried recruiting friends, colleagues etc into the fold. Some accepted even, only to bail out later, or others to just...fade.
In the end I realised I had almost wasted that three years but it had instilled in me a new desire to create and to succeed. So I lowered my scope. i decided on GameMaker as Spelunky was one of my favourite little distraction games, and also GunPoint had just been released and was using GameMaker so i knew with some hard work and a modicum of talent I could do something.

Of course, being responsible for everything means the quality of some things has to suffer and it's very apparent what has suffered in RoE. I hope that by reading this you can maybe tell from the garbled ranting that this game means something to me. It's mine. ALMOST all mine and that means it's success/failure is important to me.

i will be working now on the full game. Adding things like randomised quests, more monsters, more loot, better AI, refined combat, maybe even an art/FX pass etc etc. Months of work, but I will do it because it is not finished yet. Despite the stoney silence of the internet, I will plod on and we will see if I am better than I'd hoped, or worse than I'd feared!

Download the demo and pass some feedback onto me will you. Stroke the screen lovingly - even if you hate it. You know, like you would a dying cat that spent most of it's life terrorising your face and hands.

Spread the word - RoE is coming! Watch out silent and stoney cold hard faced internet!!

Daz