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Frayed Knights, Late Nights

Name:	Jay Barnson
Date Posted:	Feb 27, 2008
Rating:	4.0 out of 5
Public:	YES
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Blog post

Another heartwarming tale of development of Frayed Knights - the comedy-based indie fantasy RPG.

With the This month has been a blur. A sleep-deprived, frantic blur. The "Pilot Episode" of Frayed Knights is going alpha this week. This month has been a frenzy of finishing up last-minute code, arranging content, debugging, polishing, and playing the game over and over.

I managed to go to bed at only 1:30 AM the other night (I wake up around 7:30 most non-weekends), and I found myself unable to sleep for going to bed so "early," in spite of being exhausted. I've been blowing through my budget at an alarming rate (Ah, well, maybe it'll save me on 2008 taxes), and imposing on friends to help out where they can.

Spells. Sound effects. Drama star effects. Fonts. A massive GUI overhaul. A combat re-design. Music. Facial expressions in dialogs. Improved animations. Dialog scripts. And a ferret.

Yes, a ferret. In the future, I think all videogames must have ferrets. Those, or elephant-mounted troops. Since I'm not planning the latter (hmmm... can I fit it in?), I'm sticking with the former. For great justice.

And what are Chloe and Dirk arguing about, anyway?

I'm not done. Nope, far from it. Development will continue through alpha, release, and beyond. The plan is to assemble feedback on the pilot, and use that to guide changes and further development on the full version. We've already begun work on it, but there's still plenty of time for changing things.

The new-and-improved UI is looking tons and tons better than the awful crap I've been subjecting myself and my dev team to the last several months. We went through something like a dozen different iterations before settling on a couple of themes that worked. We decided to make the controls part of a circular amulet (shown left). Each one of those segments glows to highlight when the mouse passes over. A variant pendant is used for combat, with some of the controls changed.

Not only does it look slick, it REALLY made combat work much, much better. I think I eliminated about two-thirds of the mouse clicks required for fighting, which was a huge improvement. Here are some before-and-after shots (plus a mid-way shot showing a 75% done spellcasting pop-up):

Old And Busted:

Intermediate version:

(Mostly) New Hotness:

The pilot episode of Frayed Knights is coming out in April. It's a self-contained, stand-alone adventure that will be released into the wild as kind of a test case, "First Game" (well, "First Role-Playing Game") designed to gather feedback, impressions, gauge the market, and so forth. It will be "sorta" free - the only (optional) payment will be your feedback to help us turn its upcoming big brother into a better game.

In case you missed the Tales of the Rampant Coyote dev diaries for this month (and, really, who'd miss 'em?), here they are:
Frayed Knights: Alpha Candidate Close
Frayed Knights: GUI Kablooey!
Frayed Knights: Pilot Prep
Frayed Knights: Bad Text Gone Wild
Frayed Knights - The Stupid Stuff Takes Too Long

Jay Barnson
Rampant Games
Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Recent Blog Posts

List:	04/30/08 - Frayed Knights Pilot Episode Now Available 03/28/08 - Frayed Knights - The Interview! 03/17/08 - The Future of Indie RPGs 02/27/08 - Frayed Knights, Late Nights 02/11/08 - Why Indie RPGs? Indies of the Round Table #1 01/30/08 - Frayed Knights: Beware the Priests of the Pus God! 12/31/07 - Frayed Knights Development - Frayed Nerves! 12/13/07 - Indie RPG News Roundup - December 13th

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Devon Winter (Feb 27, 2008 at 22:46 GMT)

Best of luck with your alpha Jay! Just from the blogs and the screenshots it's pretty clear you've got just about a kajillion hours of blood sweat and code in that game. And it's looking *really* nice. Love the art style you've selected for the game, and I hope all goes well in pre-launch and launch!

Brian Jones (Feb 27, 2008 at 23:34 GMT)

Awesome work. I've watched your blog progress, and paint me impressed. Keep up the good work, and I hope it pays off for the Big Brother release!

Ramen-sama (Feb 28, 2008 at 01:33 GMT)

So how's the combat work? is it real time?

Jay Barnson (Feb 28, 2008 at 01:41 GMT)

@Devon and Brian - Thank you kindly! It's got a long way to go, but I'm looking with both fear and excitement towards getting feedback on the pilot.

@Raman-sama: Nope, it is turn-based and proud of it! This game borrows from the legacy of games like Wizardry, Bard's Tale, and Final Fantasy (pre-MMO era) for combat, with more abstract concepts for things like positioning. Your exact position relative to the enemy doesn't matter, but things like who is in what row really make a difference.
Edited on Feb 28, 2008 01:42 GMT

Jeremy Alessi (Feb 28, 2008 at 01:50 GMT)

That looks really nice, it has a lot of character.

Jay Barnson (Feb 28, 2008 at 01:56 GMT)

@Jeremy - Well, I may not be able to do a lot as a low-budget indie. But I can at least do what I can to give my game character. I HOPE. Maybe not battling politician character, but something... ;)
Edited on Feb 28, 2008 01:56 GMT

Zach Gipson (Feb 28, 2008 at 02:54 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

This looks like it's going to be a ton of fun.

Kenneth Holst (Feb 28, 2008 at 04:21 GMT)

Looking forward to this game very much! Always nice to get a glimpse of the progress.. can't wait to see it completed. :)

Andy Hawkins (Feb 28, 2008 at 15:55 GMT)

That's looking great. I wish I had the time you did (or haven't) to spend on my game. I guess past the alpha I will be madly trying to cram in as much as possible content wise - good luck and I can't wait to play the alpha. You are gonna make the alpha public yeah?

Jay Barnson (Feb 28, 2008 at 16:03 GMT)

There is an alpha sign-up on my site for those who really wish to subject themselves to that level of torture. But it's definitely "alpha" not a "preview". For those willing to wait a month for a slightly less painful release version of the game, that's definitely an option. :)

And yeah - time has been at a premium. But it's been easy to quit watching television altogether this last month or so with the writer's strike impact & stuff. Cutting out the sleep and the videogaming has been harder, though I still manage a little bit of gaming in here and there to reduce stress. :)
Edited on Feb 28, 2008 16:10 GMT

Leroy Frederick (Feb 28, 2008 at 20:53 GMT)

Hmm, those Brittlebone skeletons look pissed! Oh well, great work Jay (and team), it's coming along nicely each update. How many dudes/chicks in the team (out of interest)?

Jay Barnson (Feb 28, 2008 at 21:18 GMT)

We're now up to a whopping 3 people on the team (it was just me for the first half of the project). Me, a modeler, and a level designer. However, I've also contracted out (for music and 2D art), and purchased a lot of stock content (which is where the Brittlebones come from).

I've also imposed upon friends and community members where I can to help out on things like testing and editing - and even suggesting dialogs for the characters. I think a couple of my community members have a better handle on the main characters than I do!

Andy Hawkins (Feb 28, 2008 at 22:35 GMT)

Sleep's over rated - just take a vitamin tablet and drink a glass of milo at 12am and kick on til morning - well that's my schedule for tonite to release the alpha - probably need to repeat the milo every 2 hours.

I just don't have enough time to play games anymore while I work up to the alpha. Like, the other night I finished coding, went into the lounge to play KOTR on the Xbox at 10:40pm - I think I lasted one fight(5mins), then woke up at 11:30pm with the controller still in my hands.

I'm gonna sign up to your alpha - looks pretty good to me.

Jay Barnson (Feb 28, 2008 at 23:58 GMT)

Tonight's the big night for me. I took tomorrow off work to make sure everything is set for the alpha (I also have a wedding to attend tomorrow night). So with luck, we'll have the first group of alpha testers (I'm staging the alpha so I can maintain "Kleenex Testers" throughout alpha) working on it tomorrow.

I'm really excited, but it's gonna be a LONG night...

Leroy Frederick (Feb 29, 2008 at 00:52 GMT)

Good wishes with it, remember, loads of food and water stroke red bull should help! :)
Edited on Feb 29, 2008 00:52 GMT

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