#oneaday Day 793: It Takes More Than Seven Days to Build a World

I'm making a game. This is not the first time I have said these words, nor will it be the last time, but I have a good feeling about this one. A vision. Only one past amateur development project I worked on (known as Pie-Eater's Destiny) was ever completed (twice if you count the subsequent "Gold Edition" remake) and a third (The Adventures of Dave Thunder) was going extremely well but then unfortunately lost when an old computer died without warning. (Note to self: BACK THE FUCK UP) This one, though, feels like an idea that has legs, and I'm looking forward to bringing it to life, to mix metaphors for a moment.

No, you won't be getting any details on what this project is just yet save for the fact that I'm using it as a means of trying out the latest version of Enterbrain's excellent RPG Maker software, RPG Maker VX Ace. I've used several iterations of this package over the years and each has its own quirks and foibles. Previous version RPG Maker VX turned out to be a bit of a misstep which seemingly stripped out features rather than adding them, but from my limited experience so far, VX Ace seems to be an excellent piece of software with plenty of flexibility.

One of my favourite parts of creating a game — or indeed any story, since I typically have aspirations to create narrative-focused games, even if I never finish them — is creating the world and the characters who populate it. When building a map in RPG Maker, I'll find myself visualising its context in the world — in the case of a village or town, I'll think to myself "right, this person lives here, this person runs this shop, follow this path and you'll get to…" and so on. In the case of a dungeon I'll resist the temptation to use the random map generator and instead design a dungeon which makes some degree of contextual sense, even if it may descend into bizarreness at times. (The lava flow in the opening "wine cellar" dungeon at the beginning of The Adventures of Dave Thunder was a particular highlight, which our hero lampshaded quite nicely at the time he came across it for the first time, as I recall.)

I've always been this way with level construction. The earliest instance I can remember was Wolfenstein 3D, whose map editor gave me many, many hours of enjoyment and, thanks to CompuServe, even netted me $200 when ten of my levels were included in the official Apogee "Super Upgrades" expansion pack for the game. When building my selection of maze-like levels for id's Nazi-bashing shooter, I enjoyed thinking of the "real" context for these rooms and tunnels. As such, I ended up with some memorable "setpiece" confrontations (or as close as you could get to a "setpiece" in Wolf3D's limited engine, anyway) — the one that sticks in my mind most is the one where you've crept through some moss-filled corridors in search of a Nazi secret base and open a door only to discover that a briefing is apparently in progress. One of the "officer" enemies was standing at the front of the room next to a "map" texture, and the rest of the room was full of the standard trooper soldiers all facing him. (I wasn't a monster for game balancing; I provided the player with a chaingun and plenty of ammo before sending them in to mow down this little gathering. Hey, I was a teenager. Subtlety wasn't in my vocabulary.)

The point is, I found myself thinking carefully about every block I put down, every object on the map. Everything had a purpose, a place, a story behind it. I enjoyed visualising that world in my mind and then bringing it to life on my computer screen. It was inordinately satisfying to be able to hoon around a world of my own creation and think this came from my BRAIN. I feel the same way every time I create a new map in RPG Maker, every time I make a track in TrackMania, every time I build something in Minecraft. And if I had any clue whatsoever how 3D level editors worked (I've tried and failed numerous times) I have no doubt I'd feel the same way there too.

As you may have gathered, today has been about world-building. I've only created a tiny, tiny piece of what will eventually become this game's world, but already it's bringing those old feelings back. Hopefully they'll provide the motivation to take me through to actually finishing a game project for once.

#oneaday Day 696: Exclusive Preview!

I love making games — the main thing that stops me from doing it more often is the fact that I can't get my head around programming. Perhaps it's the fact that I didn't enjoy maths that much at school; perhaps it's the fact I have trouble relating the abstract code to what happens on screen; perhaps I'm just too lazy to learn properly. (I'm still badass at Atari BASIC.)

Regardless of all that, though, if an app comes along and offers me the tools I need to realise my visions, even partially, I'm all over it like a rash — and I'm normally able to push the boundaries of such applications to do unconventional things a little outside of their normal "comfort zone". Such was the case with Clickteam's excellent Klik and Play series, and such was the case with RPG Maker 2000, which I originally came across a good few years ago and decided that the best way to learn would be to put together a game using the built-in tools and resources.

Thus, The Adventures of Dave Thunder was born. Dave Thunder was the hero of the piece, named after a guy whose name we found in a person's lost phone at university. We were all a bit drunk at the time, so one of my flatmates decided it would be a good idea to phone Dave Thunder and tell him what an awesome name he had. He was at "The Golden Arches". A legend was born.

But I digress. The Adventures of Dave Thunder was quite popular among my friends because it was deliberately built as a big in-joke. I'm not sure if it would have appealed to anyone outside my immediate circle of friends had it ever been finished, but it was a lot of fun to make, and I still have fond memories of Sweary Link, tired of his life as a silent protagonist and revealing that he's a bit of a stroppy git underneath.

Sadly, The Adventures of Dave Thunder is lost to the mists of time and a failed hard drive. I'm a bit upset about this, as it had quite a lot of work put into it. Okay, I didn't make any of the graphics or music for it, but the writing was all mine, and I found it quite funny at least. What other RPG can you play where the healer in your party is Harold Bishop from Neighbours, who became an actual bishop after his wife Madge turned into a vampire?

I digress again. I acquired a copy of RPG Maker VX a while back and just recently have something of a hankerin' to make something new. Referring back to what I said yesterday, too, I have some ready-made characters to draw on, too, so I figured why not give them their very own game?

I've already started designing (well, scripting) what I want this game to be and I'm quite pleased with the direction I think it will take. I'm going to try and avoid cliche wherever possible and put together something that is amusing, entertaining and (mostly) unconventional. Sure, there'll still be standard RPG mechanics in there — I don't know enough about VX's scripting language to deviate too much from the standard engine, after all. That said, I'm using one excellent plugin to take a less-frequently seen approach to exploration, inspired by some recent titles I've been playing — more details on that once I have a prototype up and running. (No, it's not a roguelike — I haven't yet found a good script for that.)

So hopefully over the course of the next few weeks, months, years, I'll be able to share occasional progress updates on The Official RPG of Pete's Blog Stickmen, or whatever I end up calling it. For now, suffice to say that it is a thing that exists, and I will be using it as a Big Creative Project to do when I'm feeling bored or uninspired. The long-term intention is to put together the whole thing single-handedly with deliberately crude graphics (they're stickmen, after all) and a soundtrack composed by me. Whether all that will actually happen will remain to be seen, but it'll be an interesting experiment if nothing else. I'll be concentrating on getting the game right first, then adding polish like an original soundtrack afterwards if I feel it's worth it.

So there you are.World-first exclusive reveal and all that. BE EXCITED.

#oneaday Day 95: Car Pee Gee

There's a ton of things that people haven't tried in the world of video games—mostly because of certain assumptions that are made about the people who play them, or more specifically, the demographics of who plays what.

Let's take the racing game genre as an example. It's generally assumed that racing games will be played by petrolheads of varying degrees. The überhardcore petrolheads who actually know what a limited slip differential is rather than just treating it as a powerup will be into the Forza Motorsports and Gran Turismos of the world. Those who just enjoy flinging cars around corners are built for the Ridge Racers, Need for Speeds and Project Gothams of the world.

And that, it seems, is the limit of what the market assumes to be "people who like racing games". But I like racing games, and I wouldn't describe myself as a particular petrolhead as such. I also like other genres, and I would pay good money for a game that fused together some different genres and gave racing games a bit of personality. Because let's face it, however good the driving action is, the in-between races bit of most racing games is about as interesting as a spreadsheet. Sure, it might have a soundtrack by Junkie XL or The Prodigy, but it's still dull as ditchwater and completely character-free.

I want a racer with a plot. I'm not talking about half-assed efforts like Need for Speed Underground or Ridge Racer Type 4. I'm talking about a game where the unfolding storyline is just as important as throwing a BMW M5 around a 90-degree corner. It's been tried once before with TOCA Race Driver, but to my knowledge, never again since. There's also Square's Racing Lagoon, but good luck finding a copy of that ever.

No; what I envision is something along the lines of the old Wing Commander games, where there's an unfolding story and some good character interaction punctuated by, in this case, racing rather than space-shooty-bang-bang action. If your character has been talking to a rival racer and talking smack to them in these interstitial "plot" sequences, it's going to make you feel all the more inclined to do your very best against them when you see their name flash up over the top of their car in the middle of a race. Perhaps you could have a co-driver sitting in the car with you talking to you and making comments as you race as well as helping you out by warning you of upcoming corners and hazards.

Unfortunately, I doubt it's ever going to happen, because most racing games these days are treated as triple-A titles, which means that they get tightly focus-grouped and marketed at a specific demographic: the petrolhead.

I want to play the racing game for the RPG fan, the interactive movie fan, the adventure game fan. There's no reason why either side of the experience has to be compromised—just replace the battles from a JRPG with races. Why shouldn't it work?

Oh well. I can dream on.