The start of a round

Milky doom is a game about aliens, who have become trapped in a bowl of delicious, corn-inspired sugar cereal, and are panicking as they are stranded in a sea of deadly milk! Silly? Yes. Very.

Life in the cereal bowl

Players try to stay out of the milk. It’s a King-of-the-Hill style game; the aim is to be the last alien standing. All of your friends and allies may be drowning at the bottom of a terrible milky grave, but it doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate being the last and, clearly, the best.

Players can run and jump, and we hope to later add power-ups and grabbing abilities. The playing field is a bowl of cereal, and players run across the top of floating cereal kernals to stay alive. The cereal is crazy-realistic; it floats, bobs and bunches in to islands, and was a triumph for us. Bump in to other aliens to launch them. AI agents are littered in with human players, adding a lot of chaos.

Fear the spoon!

It’s not all about your fellow aliens, though. Fear the spoon of the unwary (or cold-hearted) eater! It makes the playing field more hazardous, smaller, and can kill slow and unsuspecting players!

We’ve been having a blast creating this game, and we hope to share it with the web soon, once it becomes available on the TOJam website, sometime soon (we hope).

Some Milky WIP

It’s the final day here at TOJam6!

So yesterday was completely lost in a haze of productivity! Milky Doom has gone from a collection of assets in a weird technical demo of cereal physics to a legitimately fun program that just needs some minor structural additions. Our models are (mostly) textured, our code is nearing completion, and we still have the rest of today! Really, it’s gone much better than I could have anticipated.

Still, there’s a number of things left to do; can’t relax yet!

So what’s happening? Well, Team Cardboard Box, which consists of myself, Andrew Tarzwell, Moh Al-Sahaf, Darius K Zoot, and Megan Robertson, are working on a game for this well loved 72-hour Jam. We’re reprising the idea we were pursuing during our failed Easter Weekend Prejam, Milky Doom.

So what the heck is Milky Doom? Well, it’s a king-of-the-hill style survival multiplayer game, in a bowl of cereal. It’s hilarious, and we’re making great progress; hopefully a playable prototype will be finished early tomorrow (we’re still implementing player functions).

I intend to write in more detail about the project and the Jam, but my bed beckons!

That said, we’re undertaking a Prejam! What’s that? Well, it’s a laid back, online 72 hour Jam. We’re doing it as a team exercise, so that we’re working at full capacity when TOJam hits! But you can join in too, and make a game through the weekend! (And you know, you can take Monday to finish it if you reeeally want to.)

The themes we picked for our Prejam are: Coffee, Cereal and “Who Dunnit?”
Use all of em! Use none of em! It’s up to you!

I’ll be tweeting about this as we make progress; follow @GregPXL or, just look for the #prejam tag! Send me a link to your progress or final game and I’ll link em all from here at the end.

Woo!

Jammers at TOJam 4

When I was in university and spent more time doing studio art, I was introduced to the idea of public studios. The basic idea is you pay a cheap membership to take advantage of a community space and tools. If you’ve ever tried to do large-scale art, it’s very easy to understand the benefit of such a space to store projects and work, but the real value of such a space is having regular access to your peers in what can otherwise be a very isolated lifestyle.

In the past few years that I’ve been attending Gaming events, it occurred to me that I don’t get to spend a whole lot of time with my peers. Especially when I’m doing independent and contract work, when I spend almost all of my time at home. And I know my situation isn’t terribly unique.

Game Jams and other local industry events help to bring Toronto’s Game Dev community together, but only on occasion. So I was thinking about how we could change that, and it comes back to the idea of emulating a public art studio, but for game development.

Before I go any further in discussing the idea, I want to mention that I’m looking for input — you can help out by filling out a super quick survey.

A studio like this wouldn’t have to be a very complicated place. I imagine it of something between a art studio, an internet cafe and a coffee shop; my inspiration and two places people already drag their laptops.  At it’s most basic, it would need to have table space, comfortable seating, and internet connectivity.

But I feel we could do more than just that for game developers. We could keep equipment on hand like spare monitors, game controllers, tablets and sound equipment for people to use. We could have white boards and projectors for public use. We could have small concessions, or even a fully featured cafe on site to meet the sugar and caffeine needs of your typical computer-bound developer.

This is all possible, if there is interest and enough demand. Toronto’s game development community is growing, and quickly, with a host of studios, indies, students and hobbyists.  And if we could start a place like this that meets the needs of that community and encourages a day-to-day place where peers can meet, it can act as a hub to allow the community to grow and interact.

I really like the idea of a place like this, and I’m looking in to starting one if only because I want to have a place like this to go to.

So once again, I’m looking for your help — I need to know how other people feel about this sort of project. What you would want and what you would need to make it a place you would want to be. This is just the first step — we’ll figure out things like costs and location once we know there’s sufficient interest. So go fill out the short survey, and feel free to drop comments here to discuss it further!

For the uninitiated, Aberrant is a X-Men style super-hero setting, where some humans have experienced a miraculous mutation that gives them their powers. The initial onset of the mutation is a violent presentation of those abilities, normally preceded by a week of migraines and then triggered by a stressful event, called an eruption. It a very cool basic idea, which suggests that the character’s powers are normally selected based on their personality, and the nature of those events.

The problem with this, is that most players of RPGs aren’t interested in events they can’t control — role playing gives people an opportunity to confront situations that they couldn’t approach in their normal life. We create characters, give them abilities, and set them loose in adventures; give them challenges to overcome — challenges within our control. That’s part of what most people find fun. They generally don’t like situations entirely outside their control, especially regarding their character — more so when those uncontrollable events spill over in to the mechanical operation of their character. So when players are made to play characters and not given control over the progression of a major component like their powers, they tend to have less fun.

This isn’t universally true, however. I’m a fan of seeing how characters — mine and others — adapt to very usual situations outside of their control. Many of the most interesting Super Hero stories are about people adapting to abilities thrust upon them. And I thought — hey, why not we make the random selection of powers a bit more predictable? It creates something of a middle ground between players wanting to direct their mechanical growth and the setting wanting that growth to be uncontrolled.

The Mechanics
There’s two key mechanics here — first to determine how players gain new powers, and second to determine what powers they gain. These basic systems are pretty easy to apply to any system with powers.

So, you need to determine what should cause the players to gain new abilities; there’s a few different approaches you might take with this. Here’s my favorite.

• Players purchase powers as per normal (with XP in Aberrant) but they don’t choose which power (or what level), nor do they get access to it immediately
• When players improve their stats relevant to their powers (Quantum for Aberrant), purchase new powers, use their powers (generally in a spectacular way), or are exposed to something related to those powers (other powers, radiation, whatever), they earn a point to Potential
• Whenever a player earns a point in Potential, they roll a d10; if the roll is equal or less than their potential, they gain access to a new (purchased) power, and their Potential is reset to zero

This way, players often earn new powers in the  heat of the moment, or at key points in time, but not as they demand. You may also use some sort of familiarity/penalty system to give players a mechanical sense of adjusting to their new ability.

Next, we need to determine what power they get. This one is a bit trickier — as we need a way to identify what fits the characters actions more ideally. Here’s what I did.

• We gave the players three spectrum stats to represent their demonstrated personality: Fight/Flight, Direct/Lateral, and Introverted/Extroverted
• When players create their characters, they can distribute 10 points across those spectra however they like
• When players encounter a problem, the GM determines the means they used to over come it (which is normally pretty obvious)
  • Fight: Did they choose to combat their conflict?
  • Flight: Did they retreat or flee to avoid the problem?
  • Direct: Did they approach the problem head on?
  • Lateral: Did they approach the problem from a novel/outside-the-box approach?
  • Introverted: Did they act alone (by choice)?
  • Extroverted: Did they (try to) act with others/as a team?
• Whether or not they actually accomplish their goals, the intent of the player action determines which spectra are selected — we generally avoid picking more than two spectra at once if possible
• Depending on the scale of the problem encountered, players will have to reallocate up to 3 points from their spectra to the spectra they used
  • You can handle this in two ways; let the players pick which spectra they take their points from, or have them take points from the opposite side of the spectra they are assigning their points to
  • You can additionally allow them to allocate their spectra points to any of the viable spectra (if there is more than one) or require them to allocate them evenly
• When players acquire new powers, they roll 2 d10 and then count to see which spectra each die lands on
  • If you end up with two opposing spectra (ie: Fight/Flight) you take only the category with more points assigned to it; if tied, the player can pick
  • You can use 1 die if you want the system to be a little simpler
• Now — here’s the work intensive part — you’ll need a list of the powers available to the players, categorized in to groups of spectra categories; you can do this in three ways
  • roll 1 die, and have 6 categories, one for each spectra
  • roll 2 dice and let the player pick which category they choose
  • roll 2 dice and have 18 categories and use both spectra
  • The intent is to match the most common application of each power to the personality type is suits most
• Finally, randomly select a power from that list and give it to the player

This might seem like an overly complicated way to determine who gets what power, but it comes with some definite benefits. In foremost, the personality spectra do a  good job monitoring a character’s base actions, and can provide feedback to the players on how their character has been behaving and help them dictate their personality. Then there’s the benefit of how the system mediates the natural and directed growth of powers. And in practice, it’s actually fairly easy to put to use.

So, just a little housekeeping today. I’ve got a lot of posts up here — not many compared to larger blogs, but a substantial amount of writing none the less — and I’ve wanted to make it a bit more accessible for a while now. As such, I’ve introduced a new Table of Contents, available in the sidebar. I’ll update it every now and again, but right now it’s got all the existing posts listed for your convenience.

I have lots of material not fully written up that I’d like to post in the near future, so let’s hope that happens.

TOJam 5

This week is going to be a whirlwind for me. Not only is it a fairly busy work week for me, but this weekend is TOJam 5! I’ve been buzzing excitedly about this event since it was first announced in late February, and this year I will be competing along with the talented Andrew Tarzwell as Team Cardboard Box. Exciting!

We got to give some serious credit to the fantastic TOJam organizers again this year, too. This year, we’re set up in a larger space at George Brown college (which took virtually no time for sign-ups to fill! There’s already a waiting list!) along with equipment for those without, and all sorts of hosting niceties, like free dinner and prizes. Seems like TOJam is only getting bigger, and only getting better.

We’ve got great ideas and a lot of planning to do before this weekend, and I’ll try to document as much as I can. I will also be reviewing ALL of TOJam’s games this year as they’re released, just like last year! More updates to come!

Restraining Order

Here’s a game I’ve been meaning to write about for a while:
Restraining Order by Bigpants Games

Restraining Order has been out for a while now, though I was lucky enough to get to see it mid-production thanks to the perennially awesome Jim McGinley. It didn’t change a lot from when I saw it first to when I thoroughly replayed it again recently, but that seems to be mostly due to the accuracy of it’s vision.

Restraining Order is a baleful tale of love and longing. It puts you in the shoes of a hopeless romantic seeking your perfect love. The premise is… twisted, and the play is simple. You can do left and right, jump (and make a little double jump), and attack. You can’t really lose, as far as I could see,  though you may be tempted to give up at some point, as it does get increasingly frustrating (and silly).

Essentially, you chase a fleeing woman (usually) by running right across the screen. Police officers try to stop your pursuit, and you need to either avoid them or take them out — both of which are fairly easy to do. Run right long enough and eventually, you’ll make it closer to your muse and begin to croon some incredibly creepy love songs to your beloved. And then you go to prison.

The game has a selection of oddities added each level to keep things a fresh. You meet four kinds of police, eventually — the usual blue, electrified yellow, jumping red, and then eventually you’ll find giants. each one is likely to trip you up the first time you encounter them, but the only consequence of getting caught is being ‘Restrained for 1 Year — then released!’ (I may be paraphrasing), which doesn’t detract from your progress, it merely slows things for a second. (In fact, the ‘caught’ sequence can be skipped entirely.)

Restraining Order has an old school arcade vibe to it (unrelenting difficulty, narrow player options and abilities, and a single minded goal) combined with more modern sensibilities (infinite retries, forgiving controls). So as the play goes, it’s nothing really new. What makes Restraining Order worth the 2o-odd-minutes you’ll need to complete it’s 5 or so stages is the really effective, creepy story that surrounds its concept.

The player is doing something ‘wrong’, and is repeated ‘punished’ for it. The flavor of the game does a great job contrasting our goals as a player (reach the end) with our understanding of morality (stalking is bad) by overlapping them and does so with a signature Bigpants silliness.

I don’t know if it was the intent, but I couldn’t help but feel that Restraining Order is making commentary on a number of gaming tropes — like the contrived ‘save the princess’ mentality present in many games, or how games will often ask you to do something violent and terrible and reward you for them (ala GTA). It’s probes the idea of portraying the player as a hero, by letting you play a weird, drooling, singing, flailing, creep.

The game is accessible, hilarious, and features some very nice music and sound. While it can drag on a bit at times, or get a little frustrating, it’s well worth the effort to get your ‘happy ending’.