Scars of War - new indie RPG

[Merkaal]

Yep, definitely sounds good to me so far. Good luck with the project, I look forward to getting my hands on it sometime in the future.

 

[Helton]

While I respect your opinion, remember that in the game I am writing characters, not myself. I wouldn't murder someone to achieve my ends, but that doesn't mean I can't write characters that would. The factions and players in the game don't see themselves as "evil"...

But you do. At least that's the impression I get.

...and there isn't a big bar showing where you stand on an absolute scale.

If you break a promise to achieve a goal, you aren't going to be awarded dark side points. Some factions/characters will dislike your actions, some will agree.

Yes, it sounds good on paper when you put it this way. This is something I feel Fallout flubbed pretty badly, actually. They did a good job dressing the main quest and giving "The Master" realistic motives and character. Granted, he was insane. But Gizmo vs. Killian? Raiders vs. Shady Sands? Decker vs. The Sheriff?

The game never came out and said "Evil vs. Good!!!", but it seemed pretty clean cut to me. I knew who the game favored.

And most importantly, I'm going out of my way to make it so there isn't a clear "right" choice in every situation. I consider murdering someone immoral, but if it saved many lives? What about torturing them? Is it justified? I'm going to leave that up to the player, and I've writen characters that see it from both sides. How good a job I do of that, well, you'll have to decide when you play.

Yeah. And I don't mean to be negative or discouraging. I just don't see how you can keep your bias out if you go into the quest design thinking "Now, this will be the well disguised evil path." Or design a character who you think is immoral and have him act in a realistic way. Would you present a character you found reprehensible in a good light?

Evil almost shouldn't be a part of your vocabulary.

But I don't mean to turn this into an argument, and it isn't as if I have extensive writing credentials, just something that always sets alarms off in my head. "Evil character" or "evil path" are not phrases I like hearing from developers.

 

[Shoelip]

Um, you know, telling someone you don't believe they can do what they are saying they will do doesn't really help anything.

 

[xedoc gpr]

And it goes nowhere. Better luck next time, Helton (try something meaningful).

 

[Helton]

Um, you know, telling someone you don't believe they can do what they are saying they will do doesn't really help anything.

Skepticism? On the Codex?

Unheard of, man. Completely out of place.

I saw something I thought could hurt the development of his game and suggested changing his mindset a little to avoid that. He can take or leave my advice, consider it stupid, useless, or unhelpful.

I don't see what that has to do with you, though, or why you need to protect him from soft-as-fuck constructive criticism. Lame.

 

[Shoelip]

Well I guess that's the problem. Somehow I missed the criticism and only got the 'I don't think you can do it.' It's not like you've got any prior experience with the developer to base your negativity on. You just assume he'll do it badly out of hand.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Thanks guys, but don't be too hard on Helton, I get what he is saying, and I appreciate any real attempts at constructive criticism.

Helton, the way I see it, certain acts are evil. If you walk into the maternity ward with a flamethrower and start burning newborns and their mothers, it is hard to justify that. It's evil. But it is also a completely 2 dimensional scenario. It's too easy to judge that, to go "Oh, he is the bad guy, stopping him = Good, helping him = Evil". That is the kind of scenario you see in most RPGs.

Now let's try a completely made up example from real life. Say a jewish survivor of the concentration camps comes across a man in a restaurant and recognises him as a commander of one of those camps, someone who has commited terrible atrocities. In rage he pulls a gun, shoots the man, and in the process kills an innocent bystander. Now lets say you are the judge who must decide what consequences await this man. How do you judge him? It's not that simple to say that he is "Evil".

That was a quick example off the top of my head. My belief is not that you need to forget any kind of belief in right and wrong to make an RPG, but that you need to create more complex ethical scenarios, the kind you see in real life, where people aren't (often)cardboard cutout villains, but have complex motivations for their actions. I don't believe grey is the absence of black and white, I believe it is a mix of the two.

I have actually gone through drafts of the factions, where I look at them, decide their motivations are too easy to clasiify as "good" or "evil" and revise them.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

Thanks all.


And it's not they, it's me. Singular. I am the lone developer of this game.

Good luck always great to hear about another indie. Get a team, doing it single handed will wear you out.

 

[galsiah]

It looks pretty good in general. Good luck etc.

On the good vs evil issue, I think NN seems to have things pretty well covered. Myself and others might disagree with his notion that there are moral absolutes - but he doesn't seem to be letting that outlook cloud his design. What he's said so far on the issue makes sense.
One point I would make is that the discussion often seems to be about a two-way choice. Perhaps that's just for the sake of illustration, but I don't think it's a useful mindset. A grey two-way choice is preferable to a black-and-white one, but more options are preferable where it makes sense. Clearly it doesn't always apply, and time is an issue, but I'd prefer quality/complexity/nuance over quantity in terms of quests. Pushing the player into a two-way decision when many intermediate options would make sense can seem very artificial.

I'm pleased to see that the skill system isn't neat and symmetrical. Not that there's anything wrong with symmetry - but there is something wrong with shoe-horning non-symmetrical gameplay into a symmetrical system.

A question on factions etc.:
Will faction relationships with each other change much during the game, or only faction relationships to the player? If they do, does this happen at a few scripted plot moments, or as a result of more general stuff (various quests/PC actions/faction actions...)? Similarly, what would the result of any such changes be? (NPC deaths? NPC movement? Guard changes for an area? Fights in contested zones? NPC attitude/dialogue alterations?...).
I'd like to see this sort of thing - unscripted if possible - since it gives more meaning to PC actions, while at the same time hopefully avoiding the PC-as-centre-of-the-universe syndrome.

 

[MF]

Your game is real-time first person you say. What do the weapon skills and dexterity and strength attributes do to the game-play? I've never seen this work the way I'd want it to.

Daggerfall was a click-fest but you could run away, Morrowind was the same click-fest but had modern FPS controls so you could circle strafe and gain an advantage. I never bought Oblivion, but from what I've seen it's the same thing. System Shock 1 & 2 are definitely harder to play if you're a gunslinger without weapon skills, but pretty far from impossible if you're a good twitch-gamer, and the same goes for Deus Ex. I played Bloodlines as a charismatic pussy Toreador, but was able to shoot the most horrible baddies with puny weapons using circle strafing. Now, an old doom-engine game called Strife actually worked around this by foregoing weapon skills altogether, but that strays too far from the RPG realm to be considered a true RPG.

I'm really wondering what you did to counter this. If you modeled the combat on Bethesda's brain-farts, my hopes will be lying in you making a game not focused on combat. I'm not saying it's impossible to develop a first-person real-time cRPG that prevents the player's FPS skills from breaking the game, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

 

[aboyd]

An alternate character may feel completely opposite, and that's fine. Neither is evil. But you, in your mind, have already defined one as evil. I doubt you'll manage to keep that bias out of quest design. This is not good.

I'd suggest trying to stamp any preconceptions you have out before writing quests or characters. Don't design a quest with an "evil path" in mind. An NPC can consider an act evil, and he can express that, but the game -- the designer -- shouldn't offer any moral judgement.

Ah, skirting the edges of brilliance and stupidity. I think you're probably shooting toward a good goal -- since most real-world villains do not considers themselves "evil" it would make a more realistic game if you didn't create characters in traditional evil roles. Even Hitler had a very warped but very genuine belief that his people were besieged by impurities, and he besieged the world right back. I imagine he felt his cause was pretty damn justified. So a developer creating evil characters should certainly understand the motivation, as well as what kind of societal rules such characters are willing to break.

But the idea that the developer cannot engage his moral compass or have in mind a definition of what is evil in his game, that I cannot co-sign. I feel a game is actually improved when a developer puts his moral bias into the quest design. Of course this can play out badly. Ham-fisted. But I do believe that, for example, Planescape: Torment was basically a morality play. And a damn good one. By exposing me to another view of good & evil (or at least noble & corrupted), it actually made me re-evaluate my own sense of right & wrong. The developers clearly had a deeply ingrained notion of evil for that game, and I appreciated it.

Or, for example, consider the evil djinn in BG2's Trademeet area. They basically held the town hostage, and it was easy to see the evil in what they were doing, even though I don't recall reading any text such as "I am the evil djinn!" Instead, the djinn were trying to do right for their own kind -- they were trying to capture a fugitive, and it just happened that starving a town was their way of smoking out the criminal. But the developers were making some kind of statement about precisely the most wrong and hurtful way to get what you want. They have to have these notions in order to differentiate characters and create the tension of the tale.

Anyway, I'm sure you only meant the best when you posted. I'm just agreeing with others who seemed to think that maybe it went overboard. But I'm pretty sure you had a good point in there. It just depends on how extreme you were pushing for.

 

[Helton]

Ah, skirting the edges of brilliance and stupidity.

But the idea that the developer cannot engage his moral compass or have in mind a definition of what is evil in his game, that I cannot co-sign. I feel a game is actually improved when a developer puts his moral bias into the quest design.

If I knew every other illiterate soft-skin was going to take issue with this I wouldn't have posted. There are different design philosophies. Obviously in DnD where there's a bloody Good/Evil scale, people are going to project their own bias. They want to, they have to, they plan to. It isn't my style, but I wouldn't be saying this same thing to someone making a DnD game. This developer, though, expressed desire to make things morally ambiguous. He demonstrated this by talking about a hypothetical "evil path" for a quest. I feel these two things conflict and I think one can be set aside for the sake of the other.

Maybe I'm wrong. And if NN thinks I am, I'm fine with that. It's his game.

Helton, the way I see it, certain acts are evil.

And that should really be that.

Anyway, I'm sure you only meant the best when you posted. I'm just agreeing with others who seemed to think that maybe it went overboard. But I'm pretty sure you had a good point in there. It just depends on how extreme you were pushing for.

You're a bunch of fucking pussies, honestly. I wasn't "pushing" at all. I don't express interest in a game by saying "Gee wiz, Batman, it's so LOLERTASTICALLY AWESOME!" I find things to discuss about it. This is the Codex, right? 'Cause I feel like I'm in bizzaro world. Over in the News section we're crucifying media outlets, and rightfully so, for being brown-nosers and not daring to dissent. Then over here I can't express my concern without the moron train derailing to chase me down.

 

[aboyd]

If I knew every other illiterate soft-skin was going to take issue with this I wouldn't have posted.

Ah, the ad hominem method of backing up your argument. Very convincing.

You're a bunch of fucking pussies, honestly.

This coming from the thin-skinned guy shrieking the loudest. OK.

Over in the News section we're crucifying media outlets, and rightfully so, for being brown-nosers and not daring to dissent. Then over here I can't express my concern without the moron train derailing to chase me down.

Yeah, the Codex has this thing for backing up assertions and critique with citations, historical quotes from the developer, etc. It's not my fault you don't have any of that and broke down under the weakest of cross-examination. Maybe you want the Sycophant Codex or something that caters more to your own fragile ego.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Whoa there. Chill guys.

I'd like to keep this thread about general SoW discussion. I appreciate both sides of the argument, but I don't want this to turn into a brawl. Please guys, lets keep it somewhat civil, or take it to the general forums.

 

[MF]

Whoa there. Chill guys.

I'd like to keep this thread about general SoW discussion. I appreciate both sides of the argument, but I don't want this to turn into a brawl. Please guys, lets keep it somewhat civil, or take it to the general forums.

Ok, then maybe you could ignore these guys and answer my combat question above? They're just reiterating the relativity argument elsewhere, I think you and me are both tired of that shit. We already established you deal in absolutes and black & whites, so I take you saying 'moral ambiguity' to mean 'multiple paths with hard-set morals', which could be just as much fun. I'm more interested in how you plan to deal with the ramifications or real-time combat in a stat-driven game.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Well, not to go too much into the mechanics here (will set up another thread for that), here is a run down of the combat calcs that I posted in another thread :

When you hit an enemy, your attack rating (+ a random number) is compared to his dodge rating. The difference determines how well you hit him. There are more levels to "how well you hit" than in a lot of RPGs. This is the basic calculation, but it is still being balanced so don't take it as gospel.

1-100 + Attack – Dodge.

Outcome determines hit category :

1-5 = Critical Fumble, 100% chance Impediment applied, 0 damage. (5%)
6-10 = Minor Hit, 1 damage, 50% chance Impediment applied (5%)
11-30 = Glancing Hit, half damage. (20%)
31-60 = Normal Hit, full damage (30%)
61-80 = Good Hit, 1.5 x damage, small chance of crit effect (20%)
81-90 = Telling blow, 2 x damage, small chance of crit effect (10%)
91-95 = grievous wound, 3x damage, 50% chance of crit effect (5%)
96-100 = near-fatal wound, 4x damage, 100% chance of crit effect (5%)

Body hit point chance :

50% torso
25% legs
20% arms
5% head

Once the damage value is calculated, your armor absorbs a portion of that value, based on the armor rating of the piece of armor on the body part where you were hit. The location where you were hit would also affect which crit effect would be applied if you scored one. For instance a critical hit to the legs might slow movement, to the arms might apply attack penalties, to the head might apply a short stun.

So, if you have a crap attack rating, and the enemy has a good dodge rating, chances are high that not only will you do very little damage, you have a good chance of having an impediment applied to you (like a fumble, a short term penalty because you are off-balance). Add armor absorbtion on top of that and there is a good chance your attacks aren't doing any damage.

Now, if the enemy has a good attack rating and you have a crap dodge chances are he has a multiplier to his damage as well as a decent chance of a critical effect ( a penalty which is applied to you, like a stun or bleeding)
Add the two up and chances are he will slice you apart. In my testing I've had AI who are more skilled than me shrug off my blows and chop me down in 2 hits.

Also, stamina plays a part. Attacking uses stamina. But once you start getting tired you get a penalty to attack and dodge. So if you are attacking, doing little damage, and tiring quickly, expect problems. (FYI. There is a skill in the combat tree which increases stamina and stamina regen. Warrior types might want to invest in it )

So your combat skills play a major role. I understand the concerns about FPS action combat, but I think this system is pretty solid. And easy to understand. High skill rank = asskickery.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

How do they say, a project made by a single man is always better than a project made by many men. Let`s see if this is the case here.

I would like to see some birds or chickens and other animals in that gameworld, its a very immersive aspect, imho.

 

[Naked Ninja]

It looks pretty good in general. Good luck etc.

On the good vs evil issue, I think NN seems to have things pretty well covered. Myself and others might disagree with his notion that there are moral absolutes - but he doesn't seem to be letting that outlook cloud his design. What he's said so far on the issue makes sense.

Thanks Galsiah

One point I would make is that the discussion often seems to be about a two-way choice. Perhaps that's just for the sake of illustration, but I don't think it's a useful mindset. A grey two-way choice is preferable to a black-and-white one, but more options are preferable where it makes sense. Clearly it doesn't always apply, and time is an issue, but I'd prefer quality/complexity/nuance over quantity in terms of quests. Pushing the player into a two-way decision when many intermediate options would make sense can seem very artificial.

True. But mostly it was just for the sake of illustration. Generally I focus on designing in the grey zone and letting the player put the meaning into his actions.

I'll give you an example from my game. I don't want to give too much of the plot away but I'll sacrifice this one for illustration. It's one of the first quests.

[MINOR SPOILER]

In the start of the game you are in Korrinport trying to find out why/where some goods went missing from a merchants shipment. Jeman (read the blurb, NPC guy ) wants you to get the dock masters cargo manifest so he can compare it with what the merchant believes should have arrived. (The dock master keeps logs of all goods that come into Korrinport via ship) So he sends you to get it. Now, the Dock Master is a bit of a self-important beurocratic type.

You can resolve the quest in a few different ways :

- Persuade the Dock Master to give you the log. Involves a persuade skill check (hard) and a small sum of money (as a show of appreciation).

- Bribe the Dock Master to give you the log. Involves a larger sum of money.

- Try to intimidate the dockmaster into giving you the logs. (Intimidate check, hard, he has guards and is stubborn)

- Break into his back office and steal it. (Lockpick check, relatively easy)

- Persuade the Dock Masters assistant Ivid to make a copy of the documents for you. Ivid is a bit mistreated, with a small bribe and a persuade check (medium difficulty) he will make a copy for you.

- Attempt to kill Dock Master and take documents. Hard, he has personal guards and will try to flee to town watchmen. Could result in player being classified a criminal.

Notice how few options are in the "Black/White" moral zone? The quest/game doesn't care how you complete it, when you bring the documents to Jeman it counts as success. You aren't judged on how you achieved the goal by me, the designer. That is up to the player. For instance, take the "Picking the lock and stealing the document" option. Perhaps you chose that option because you are playing an unscroupulous rogue. But it could also be that you are roleplaying a character that is like a TV show action-detective, a character who persues noble goals but isn't afraid to bend the law a bit to achieve them.

I agree with VD that it's better to offer roleplaying actions and consequences rather than personality. It leaves things more open to player expression.

[/MINOR SPOILER]

However, although I won't judge you, the games factions will. Kill a civilian in front of a guard and expect them to brand you a criminal, etc.

Will faction relationships with each other change much during the game, or only faction relationships to the player? If they do, does this happen at a few scripted plot moments, or as a result of more general stuff (various quests/PC actions/faction actions...)? Similarly, what would the result of any such changes be? (NPC deaths? NPC movement? Guard changes for an area? Fights in contested zones? NPC attitude/dialogue alterations?...).
I'd like to see this sort of thing - unscripted if possible - since it gives more meaning to PC actions, while at the same time hopefully avoiding the PC-as-centre-of-the-universe syndrome.

Inter-faction relationships will change, yes. Each faction has a matrix of relationships with the other factions. A scripter can easily open up a dialogue or quest branch by checking a condition as so :

if( factionRelationship(RedFaction, BlueFaction) > 30 ) ....

likewise, you can trigger a faction relationship change during a quest or dialogue as so :

modifyFactionRelationship(RedFaction, BlueFaction, - 20);

Dialogues and quests triggered off faction interrelations are simple to implement and will definately be in. Also I will have (one of the things I still need to code, pretty simple to do though) is conditional AI spawners. So you can set it that if a certain flag is set it spawns more guards in an area etc.

Now something to remember is how an AI actor evaluates other actors (including the PC). During their Think cycle they have a Percieve function. Inside that function they classify other actors as threats, non-threats, etc. This is based on a faction-relationship check, combined with certain AI specific settings like aggressivenes. So if the AI percieves another actor as belonging to a faction which it "doesn't like", and it is aggressive, it attacks it.

Combining those three aspects, the ability to easily activate conditional spawners, the AI perception based on faction, and the ability to modify faction relationships in quests/dialogue....and you have a system which can do most of what you said.

Now as to your question about whether it will be prescripted only or more general...this is trickier... it will definately be as a result of PC actions/Quests. But I'm not guaranteeing that you can do it for all factions, all the time. If I did it might get completely out of hand. For example you might be able to incite rival street gangs to duke it out, but getting the town guard to attack the merchant faction, no. Likewise, some of the factions are more plot centric and you won't be able to drastically sway their attitudes except at certain plot points. I want to allow the player as much freedom as possible, but not to the point where it destroys the plot. It's a delicate balancing act, you understand?

One thing you might like is that as a modder you will be able to set up these systems yourself, using the editor. So you can play around with your ideas.

 

[FrancoTAU]

It's been awhile since I've been on the forums, so this announcement was a nice surprise. The biggest surprise is how well the introduction is written on the first post was. I'm hoping for some top notch writing in this one, if nothing else.

 

[Durwyn]

So how's the development going NN ? Any news? I recently found out a small gem named "GG dev blog"... Axiously waiting for more news, details, and stuff related to SoW...

 

[Naked Ninja]

Thanks Durwyn :D

On the Scars development front, nothing really "news worthy" right now. I continue to chip away at it, recently I've been hammering some bugs in the code I introduced a while back, decided it was about time to track them down and squash them permanently. Ahh, the glamorous life of a game developer

I'll try to post up some more setting details this week...

 

[Murk]

I've been fascinated with first person real time combat in an rpg for a while now but always seen in fall to shreds in games - I am however enjoying what I've read about the game so far.

Best of luck and patience in developing it, I'd definitely love to give it a whirl.

 

[Dmitron]

Yeah, I second the "good luck". Indie is always good.

Hope the rolling blackouts aren't effecting your work too much, Ninja. :wink:

 

[Naked Ninja]

Hmmm, you a SAffer Dmitron? Those blackouts....they piss me off so much.

Getting time to dev SoW is hard enough as it is. I have to juggle work, my social life, playing games...and then you get a nice solid chunk of time to work in...and the power blacks out from 8 to 10 pm. PRIME work time. Bloody annoying. Frikken government grumble grumble grumble...

 

[Naked Ninja]

Lol, and just as you post that the power goes down, unbelievable. Hooray for generators.