Frayed Knights Development - Frayed Nerves!

Dirk: So this is the temple of the goddess of disease?
Benjamin: Nope, that's Neutoxis. This was the temple of Pokmor-Xang, the god of boils, blisters, and pimples.
Chloe: Ew! I don't feel bad about raiding his temple, then. He owes me for my teenage years!
Dirk: So, what if you get a disease that gives you boils? Which god is responsible?
Benjamin: I think they both are.
Chloe: I really don't like this god.

So here's the latest update on Frayed Knights, the comedy-based fantasy RPG.

Some of you may know that I'm a full-time "mainstream" game developer by day, and an indie by night. I wasn't when I first started this indie game thing, but game development is kinda like the mafia. You think you're out, and then they pull ya back in again.

And it just so happened that during two thirds of December (and most of November), I have been in "crunch mode" for a couple of key milestones for a game that I can't talk about which will be on many different major platforms at some date I'm not allowed to mention. All this hush-hush stuff. It's like being a secret agent, except not nearly as sexy.

But since the day job pays the bills, I had to give it a little more priority this month. This meant development slowed, and I'm frantically racing at the end of the month to get the initial dungeon 100% gameplay complete.

It ain't gonna happen. But I think we'll be close.

It's amazing how much stuff breaks when you've not been maintaining it. Bit-rot, we programmers call it. Like the trap & lock system. Traps and locks are handled by the same code. You guys may remember - I wrote a whole mini-game about it. Well, it turns out the "lock" side of thing hadn't been maintained through a few bug-fixes of the trap code. So now I test it out, and I find out my locks are now exploding on me.

But since locks don't have a payload of any kind, they do no damage whatsoever when they explode. Yeah. They just blow the door open. Nice game balance there.

Oh, and speaking of game balance - it's pretty out of whack. I'm getting clobbered all the time. Potions aren't working. The "Negligible Healing" spell is too negligible. And the "Angry Flowers" spell doesn't actually do anything yet. Pus-golems and cultists are cleaning my clock. I'm having flashbacks to the original Bard's Tale, my party is getting killed so often...

This can be pretty frustrating. Except when I realize how very close it all to actually - you know - working 'n stuff. There's triggered events 'n things going on. And wandering monsters. You wouldn't notice how close the dungeon is to actually working, yet, because you'd get wiped out in the second fight.

I guess I could ship it now as "Frayed Knights- the unfairly hard RPG" and call it done, right? I'm not sure how many copies I'd sell, though. And then I've written all these pages of dialog for the game that would go to waste. So I guess I'll keep soldiering on.

I'm still working with stand-in art right now, though we're getting a little closer. As you can see, James has been working on the pus-golem. And Kevin has really been polishing the dungeon, giving it some fine details and trim. It's gonna be the best looking Pimple God temple you have ever seen!

One trick that we're trying to do as indies: We're trying to go deep instead of going wide. We don't have the time or budget to do a sprawling, gigantic world with a dozen towns, a hundred dungeons, and miles of terrain to cover. So instead, what we're trying to do is to pack what few areas we do have with things to do and click on. I'm trying to take some cues from adventure games here, which packed a lot of detail and a little re-use in every room, so that the pace is slowed without throwing tons of meaningless combat at the player.

As if these random, rambling details weren't enough to cure you of any and all curiosity, here are some more weekly notes:

Frayed Knights Updates
Save Me, You Jerks!
What's the Big Idea?
Frantic Dungeoneering
Poor Spelling

Jay Barnson
Rampant Games
Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Adventures in Indie Gaming!