Catching up on an item from last week, Jay Barnson has posted Frayed Knights update about fixing up the "last" dungeon:

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working on content. Specifically, the LAST dungeon of Frayed Knights 1. Actually, it’s not the last one the player will visit, but with its completion we have all of the world geometry in place. It’s all tweaking / polishing / optimizing now.

This was a replacement for another level that had already been “done.” Done, but it just wasn’t working. The previous was poorly laid out, and had proven impossible to optimize correctly. (Programmers terms – the engine uses portals – old-school tech – to optimize “interior” geometry. These are notoriously finicky in this engine and have very explicit requirements to have a prayed of a chance of working correctly. And without them, your interior level runs poorly and the lighting looks like crap).

Jay Barnson talks about a major milestone for Frayed Knights, with the game about to reach a stage where it is playable from beginning to end.  He's clear to point out there's still a long road to travel but it's inching closer, it seems:

If Frayed Knights was a house, this would be the point where the foundation is long complete, the house is framed, the exterior walls are up, the wiring and plumbing have been done, and we’re almost finished hanging the drywall. Which means if you squint really hard, you can see a whole game – er, house – there. But there would still be a lot of painting, trimming, carpet-laying, tiling, fixture-hanging, cabinet-installation, and all that other fun stuff ahead.

In his latest blogupdate about  the developement of Frayed Knigts, Jason Barnson discusses artificial intelligence and how it can be difficult to keep the frustration low while keeping the challenge high.

Jay Barnson has penned a new blog entry on Frayed Knights, titled It's Not What You Do, But How You Do It.  The piece starts with some self reflection after reading one of the recent articles on choices-and-consequences in Alpha Protocol; here's the intro:

One of the dangers I face on this blog, where I occasionally criticize aspects of games that I feel were done poorly, is that I leave myself open to the same criticisms of my own work. And deservedly so. The pure critic has it easy – they can rip on other people’s stuff with relative impunity without ever having to produce anything in return other than the occasionally clever prose. But I not only realize that I have the potential to be savaged by the very standards I apply to others, I also recognize to my chagrin where my own deficiencies are occurring, and I doggedly continue down the same path of weakness and failure.

I’m finding myself making the same mistakes others have made (and I have criticized), and allowing myself to live with certain weaknesses and limitations of the engine and game system  that I’m not particularly happy with.  But the thing is – if we had to get it perfect, we’d never release a game. By “we” I mean pretty much everybody, indies and mainstream developers. But in the way of the alternative lay madness. And Duke Nukem Forever. The tough part is knowing where to draw the line – what battles to fight, and on which ones to yield the field.

A bit of a general update from Jay Barnson on Frayed Knights, talking about their development approach and how they can be creative within their resource restraints:

Speaking of design documents: when it comes to designing the gameplay – scripting up the environments -  I typically approach things kind of “bass-ackwards” from how they are supposed to be done. I’ve found that much of the initial plan changes (yes, even in “mainstream” game studios) between design and production, and many of the best ideas happen when things are into production. And a lot of other ideas that I thought were great turn out to be… well, not so hot. So I tend to put less detail into the initial environment design – really more of an outline of major encounters, theming, and general gameflow – and I do more of the “fleshing out” of the world and encounters later in the process. This works fine as a lone-wolf developer, but can cause problems working with even a small team. We’re still evolving the process.  But for me, working with a more fully realized 3D environment really helps make ideas flow.

The latest Frayed Knights update from late last week brings interesting news.  Apparently the game has ended up some five or so times bigger than originally planned, so it will be split into three, cheaper, separate games.  Here's the intro and head over for the full explanation:

Well, it’s been a learning experience, alright. I’ve learned I suck as a project manager. So here are some things that happened to greatly expand the scope of this “little” indie project:

One: I over-estimated how much time it would take for a player to complete the pilot, and under-estimated the amount of time that could be spent in the rest of the game (at least, so it seems right now).

Two: I panicked a little bit when I found out that I had under-estimated the length of the pilot, based on the feedback I received.  This made me concerned that the game was too short. Short is not bad, but too short is not cool. So I deliberately added some more to the game than I’d originally intended.

Three: Feature and content creep happened. As it often does.

Time for a new Frayed Knights update.  This one catches up on some rules changes, like a new combat system:

Oh, and combat. The old combat system (in the demo) didn’t actually have the concept of turns. You took an action, and then had a delay (based on the action) to when you could perform the next action, in “phases”. Slower actions took more phases.  That led to a nice, fluid system of actions based on character speed, action timing, and a bunch of other features. It was also pretty confusing, and made balancing kind of a pain. Especially when I had effects that lasted in terms of “turns” (which I’d defined as 10 phases… the average length of time of any action). When it became too confusing and difficult to balance for me, it was time for a change.

Combat is now broken up into distinctive turns, and most actions simply take “a turn.” However, some weapons are slightly faster, and there are spells that speed things up. So there is still something of a phase system underneath the turn-based combat, but it is mainly used to calculate whether a character gets to go twice (or three times) in a turn or not. I’m pleased with the new system. It seems to include the best of both worlds.

This tiny Frayed Knights update is simply one screenshot - but it does look cool.

Rampant Coyote has kicked up some lore for Frayed Knights titled Nepharides and the Wizard War:

The Wizard War “ended” about three hundred years before the beginning of the game.  Nobody’s really certain when it really began. Stories tend to begin when the war finally engulfed the original storyteller’s life. What is understood is that it began – and ended – with the arch-lich Nepharides.

Spellcasters of great power can sustain their lives well beyond a normal human’s allotted time. Some wizards are rumored to have been able to sustain their lives almost as long as that of the elves, who have been known to reach the ripe old age of a thousand years. But some spellcasters are powerful enough to take this one step further, and not just extend their lives, but replace them with an undead existence. The process to do this is rumored to require some pretty horrible acts of torture and murder, so it’s not an option for a wizard with an ounce of humanity.

The headline of Resting, Sleeping, Fatigue, and Exhaustion may well apply to developer Jay Barnson but this update is actually about fatigue in the adventuring party:

Adventurers lead strenuous lives. When they are slinging spells and swinging swords in life-or-death conflicts, or traversing treacherous trap-filled, uh, territories.... they are traveling great distances, hunting quest threads, and performing conversational acrobatics. All while lugging around more equipment and loot than any human could really be expected to carry. It's an exhausting career choice!

So unlike certain other, newer RPGs, the heroes of Frayed Knights are not going to be able to go all day without taking a breather or getting some well-deserved shut-eye. Well, probably not. Unless you blow all your silver on Liquid Nap potions. But that's another story.

Time for an update on Frayed Knights.  Here's a snip from Talk Ain't Cheap.  Apparently.

I knew when I signed up for it that making an RPG would be a pretty significant undertaking. I had expectations of a lot of work. Even though I had elevated my expectations of the amount of work I had to do, there were a couple of areas where I woefully underestimated the amount of labor involved.

And dialog is one of those areas. I mean, it's just text, right? Sounds easy! I'm not even doing voice-overs for this game!

If my quests were just of the "bring me six rat tails" variety, and my dialogs were of the one-or-two-line variety, I wouldn't have so much work to do. Now I know why other games do that. I'd have three things for an NPC to say: "Hi there, get me six rat tails!", "Hi! Do you have my six rat tails yet?", and "I see you brought me six rat tails! Here's your reward!" No other NPC (Non-Player Character... anyone not controlled by the player) in the world would care or be involved in that quest in any way.

Easy. Simple. Straightforward. And of course, not what I chose to do.

The latest Frayed Knights update introduces the Adventurers Guild from the game:

This time, I want to talk about the Adventurer's Guild.

Those of you who played the pilot may recognize the Adventurer's Guild as the reason our non-traditional heroes are seeking the Eyes of Pokmor Xang in this "test" adventure. The Adventurer's Guild plays a role in the storyline of the full game. But what is the Adventurer's Guild?

The Adventurer's Guild was started over ten years ago by Argus Stormhammer, a veteran and highly successful treasure hunter / adventurer. His fame came not only from his successes, but also by his tracts which he created to try and help other adventurers. In these pamphlets, Stormhammer noted that he had seen many a fellow adventurer suffer not only loss of life and limb, but failure and insolvency. His writings not only aided fellow adventurers, but inspired many people to take up the the life of an adventurer.

Not so much as development update as a genuine blog entry but Rampant Coyote's 2:30 AM Ambushes is a good read for anyone following Frayed Knights:

As usual, I started losing productivity after about 1:30 AM. And after 2:00 AM, I should have called it quits. But I didn't. Because I was ... almost done. I am just testing now, see?

Yeah, right. So now it's almost 2:30 and I find myself walking into an ambush, not remembering how I got here.

When I open my eyes (after just blinking for a moment... I'm sure), I find myself in the hobgoblin bunker. I realize I was in the middle of testing something, but for the life of me I cannot remember going through the entrance, fighting through two waves of attackers (I have a cheat key installed that auto-kills all enemies... it makes testing a bit faster) to get to the landing where I am now subjected to scripted arrow fire.

Jay Barnson has posted a new update for Frayed Knights, describing how he goes about building dungeons.  There is also a short FAQ at the end, so worth a read.  The intro:

Today, I'm going to talk about how I build a dungeon. I do not pretend that this is the correct - or even a competent - way to do it. It's just how I do it. Members of the development team who are also working on dungeons for the game (Kevin and Brian) may do stuff differently - and much better than me, I should add.

But it's still me who ends up populating and scripting them.

First of all - my design document (when I update it) doesn't have much by way of specific information about each dungeon (or "adventuring area", if it's an outdoor location). Really, I don't have much more than some basic themes and objectives for the location. Maybe some specific events that need to happen here (like, "a prisoner has a hint as to the identity of Moonshadow.") And then some key "signature" locations that serve those encounters.

There are 3 new screenshots of the Hobgoblin Bunker up Rampant Games. They are pretty basic and a work-in-progress. In Jay's blog he talks about how it is getting easier to make:

What I did notice is that this was far easier to create than the Tower - partly because it's a much simpler design, but also because I think I'm sucking a little less. Go, me!

Jay Barnson's latest Frayed Knights post talks about explaining some of those little anomalies...

In the early days of the hobby, very few game masters (or game designers) thought too hard about the rhyme, reason, or ecology of their adventures and worlds. Why are the monsters segregated by difficulty level in this dungeon? What's with the weird, bizarre artifacts in the dungeon that nobody but the players actually try to use? How come these traps aren't set of by the gazillions of giant rats that seem to infest the dungeon? How do the lower levels of the dungeon stay ventilated? What do these monsters eat (besides adventurers and giant rats)? Why are there all these devices that serve no practical purpose to anybody but to vex the occasional treasure-hunting adventurer?

Hey, Rampant Coyote's words - not mine.  The latest Frayed Knights development update is titled Why Is This Game Taking So Long?

You know, when I was working on the pilot episode of Frayed Knights, I had a couple of ideas. Really silly ideas, in retrospect. I should have known better. While I've never made a full-fledged RPG before, I've made plenty of games. So I don't have an excuse. Maybe it's some kind of suppression of bad memories taking place that made me believe these things.

But here were my beliefs: That when I finished the pilot, I'd have "most" (75%+) of the code for the game finished, and that my job from there on out would just be cranking out content, which would be easier and faster than code.

Wrong on BOTH counts. But I'm just gonna talk about the code part today.

Jay is a little frustrated with progress on Frayed Knights, in this update called Skull Drudgery:

Some weeks, it feels like my progress on Frayed Knights is inexcusably slow. This was one of those weeks. Much of this last week has been devoted to a skull.

One. Frickin'. Skull.

And poetry.

Kinda.

See, I've been working on a little bit of "black triangle" stuff again. While I'd hoped to just start populating dungeons with all kinds of stuff, I've found myself having to go back and support a lot of new functionality. This is because I'm not satisfied just throwing a bunch of combat encounters in my dungeons and calling it done. I figure if that's all somebody wanted to do, they'll be playing Diablo III or something like that.

Jay Barnson chats about progress with Frayed Knights and needing to understand and re-work a number of aspects from the original design:

I attended the standing-room only session at GDC one year when Michael Abrash spoke about the development of Quake. While some of the technical details of what they had to do don't have too much relevance with today's technology, the talk had a number of anecdotes that still hold up. He said that he and John Carmack tried a number of different rendering methodologies over the course of a year before arriving at one which - surprisingly - brought them full-circle back to the BSP trees Carmack had used for Doom. After going through about eight different flawed rendering engines before getting it right, Carmack remarked to Abrash that if they'd known exactly what they were making before they started, the engine would have taken less than two months to write.

That's how I'm feeling with some aspects of Frayed Knights. Like character progression.

A small update for those following Frayed Knights that illustrates the tedium in any job - even a labour of love:

It can be astonishing to me just how much time gets consumed - even when I'm wide awake - doing something simple like placing doors in doorways. The allure of a tile-based engine becomes pretty clear as I'm tweaking the size, the angle, and the position of the collision volume (which, in this engine and the way I'm handling things, has to be a completely separate entity from the door). I find myself spending something like 8 minutes per door.

On a freakin' DOOR. Yeah, something that in a tile-based system would amount to, "which of the eight door styles do I choose." A 30-second job. And this is just for doors that aren't locked or trapped or blocked off...

Jay Barnson has kicked up the latest Frayed Knights development update, introducing the character of Edgar and opining on the difficulties of writing good dialogue:

Here's the concept art for Edgar. Edgar is a magic user in the Heroes of Bastionne, rivals of the Frayed Knights. In keeping with the theme, Edgar is in many ways Chloe's equal and opposite. He's clear-headed, tactical, subtle, conservative, restrained, fabulously well-educated in the art and lore of magic but pretty badly lacking in terms of street smarts and field knowledge. He has an inflated opinion of his own skills, and how cool he looks in that blue robe. If Edgar was a player character in a dice-and-paper RPG, he'd be the guy run by a somewhat uncreative rules lawyer / power gamer.

Jay Barnson brings us up to date on Frayed Knights, introducing a new character and discussing the town of Ardin:

So I've been shuffling things around, adding / creating new buildings, like my half-finished three-story tudor-style house there in the screenshot. The village also needs a focal point, besides the river. And then there's the various people in the community, and on the outskirts, with rumors, quests, hints, shops, and stuff to do.

The idea is that Ardin is something of a boom-town. Adventurers have come here on rumors of excitement and treasure. And they bring money with them. The villagers - old and new - are cashing in. So they've got a brand new (and I should add, totally rockin') inn, and some other new construction going on (hmmm.... I should probably create one or two half-finished buildings under construction, shouldn't I?). Some of the long-term residents resent the sudden appearance of adventurers, but it's still new enough that many - particularly younger citizens - find it fresh and exciting.

Jay Barnson has kicked up an update on the development of Frayed Knights that includes cold medicine and haunted dreams - it's hard to quote in context, so head over if you are following this one.

Rampant Coyote has an informative update posted on his site dealing with what he calls 'the next 5 minutes'. Here's a short sample:

One thing which I wanted to experiment with was changing the time-of-day. Now, I'm using the Torque Game Engine, which has some pretty nice lighting, but it comes at a cost - it relies heavily upon "static lighting" which it can pre-calculate in a lighting pass in advance. This is time consuming, and it caches the results so that future lighting passes take less time.

I spent a bit of time this week working on a dynamic time-of-day system, which unfortunately has a lot of ugly side-effects. For one thing, it breaks the lighting cache, so that it means we always have to relight all the time to make sure we've got things lit properly for whatever time-of-day you are entering the world. And it is time-consuming. Annoyingly so. Especially as the scenes and towns get more complex (as Ardin is about to...) .

So I'm looking for an alternative. This probably means having duplicate versions of areas -- one for daytime, one for nighttime -- which is going to be quite problematic, especially for setting up triggers and events based on area geography and my existing flag / event record system. There may be other solutions as well that might not look as good. Or I may have to fall back on not having time-of-day - which would suck. Because I'd hate to lose this:

There's lots more so check it out if you're at all interested in this Indie RPG.

Jay Barnson has kicked up an update on Frayed Knights, talking about inventory management, accidentally treading on Morrowind's toes and other work in progress:

But I now have a somewhat more functional and user-friendly inventory management screen. Inventory management is already a pretty boring subject in its own right, and layering a bunch of boring UI development over top of it is a recipe for curing insomnia. But now we've got the ability to drag 'n drop, nicely animated scrolling between pages of ... you know, stuff... and... gah. Man. I can't even talk about it anymore. Moving on...

The latest Frayed Knights update talks about writing a murder mystery:

This chapter is opening up with a murder mystery. Well, a death, under vaguely mysterious causes. "Okay," you might say, "I already know that is a vampire story. We've already read / seen / heard the Dracula story a zillion times in different forms. The vampire caused the mysterious deaths. Is this any different?"

Well, yes and no.

I meant to come back to this a couple of days ago and forgot...a tired Jay Barnson has kicked up an update on Frayed Knights as he overhauls the combat system:

But that's the interface side. On the underlying mechanics side, the high-level game was also getting out of control. Balancing things was getting insane. So I chose the better part of valor and wussed out. Things are a lot more "level-based" in the game now than I originally intended, but frankly I didn't see a clear path out of this without a serious round of simplification. There were basically too many moving parts in the underlying rules system, and as I deduced from literally hundreds of feedback forms, nobody was really clear how things were working under the hood anyway. It didn't make a difference to anybody. So I replaced some of the more "simulation-esque" rules for simpler, more game-y rules.

Jay Barnson discusses a suggestion he received for Frayed Knights to remove the towns and focus on the missions as well as giving a general update towards the end.  Here's the idea:

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from Ruber Eaglenest, AKA El Clérigo Urbatain, with a very interesting suggestion. In a nutshell - his suggestion was to get rid of the towns, and any of the other space "between missions." All the narrative could be done with non-interactive cutscenes, and shopping could likewise be handled between missions.

He admitted that the town in the demo was rough, but expressed concern that the town added very little to the gameplay, and instead sucked development resources that could be better put into the dungeon adventuring. He also noted - very rightfully - that the limitations of 3D require a level of sparseness in the town layout, which means a lot of empty, open space. Which is boring. "The town doesn't add anything to the narrative that you could accomplish with traditional approaches. And I, like a player, just want be from mission to mission without so much waste of time in town."

Rather than just email him back with my response, I thought I'd respond here. Because he brings up a very good point. Not that I necessarily agree with him, but I think he's spot on in that the decision to the contrary demands justification.

Over at Tales of the Rampant Coyote, Jay Barnson has put up an update for his indie rpg in development, Frayed Knights,  focusing on the design side of creating explorable wilderlands:

...For me, it was all about the exploration. The expectation that behind every tree, over every hill was an adventure, beneath every rock there was a treasure or mystery to be explained, and behind every closed door was something wonderful or terrible waiting to be discovered.

I'd love one of these Wilderlands-style encounters or discoveries to be around every corner. I want an open-ended game-world bursting at the seams with details, mysteries, mayhem, adventure, and wonder...

...In an RPG, you don't want the player to have to go moving around too long or too far without stumbling into something to do or a decision to make. Big, empty worlds are boring.

Likewise, the modern design school of blocking off all the "uninteresting" parts is also frustrating to my exploration-seeking mind. As someone who is always wondering what is behind the next door, it's frustrating to find that all but three doors in the town are merely backdrops, untouchable and unenterable, and those back alleys and side-streets are blocked off. As my brain is always seeking what's beyond the horizon, I'm always disappointed to have those horizons taken away from me.

If you've been following Rampant Coyote Jay Barnson's Frayed Knights development, his blog has links to a lengthy (!) 4-part critique of the pilot from one Diego Doumecq and Jay makes a few comments.

News from the Rampant Coyote that Frayed Knights won a "Game In a Year" competition from Dream Games as well as looking forward to where next from here:

Obviously, the Frayed Knights Pilot was just the first step. It served its purpose, as a scouting mission to see where I was on the right track and where I was completely in a different timezone from the right track. It was a complete game, albeit not a perfect one. We were able to get a lot done in a single year, and I'm very proud of it - particularly as my first released RPG (if you don't count Hackenslash).

Now comes the hard part - to make twelve times the game in less than twelve times the development time. Neither you nor I have the patience to wait twelve more years for its release. So what's it going to take? I don't entirely know the answer to this question. I have ideas, but not answers.

Rampant Coyote has posted a development update on his blog for the indie crpg, Frayed Knights, discussing the latest stage in the project:

And then there's the AFX code. In a nutshell, it includes a whole slew of changes to the decal and particle system - primarily, though there's more to it than that - that allow some pretty awesome spell effects. There's a screenshot to the right of AFX in action in the Torque demo.

With that done, I'm back to working on some core technology. I am considering some massive changes to how AI works, how combat plays, and how inventory management is handled. I also need to finish the journal system and the transition map system now that we'll have more than two areas to go between.

There's also a link to a video of the first five minutes of the pilot, for those who haven't seen it yet.

Rampant Coyote Jay Barnson has kicked up a lengthy post on the current happenings with Frayed Knights.  All sorts of changes and plans are discussed, such as this:

For everyone who wanted the "Z" key to be a toggle for freelook, you've got it. It locks the cursor to the center of the screen when you do it, which means you'll be forced to hotkey everything rather than click on buttons... and you'll have to look directly at objects in the environment to click on them - but it works. Movement speed has also been significantly increased. It feels too fast for me, personally, so it may need to be adjusted further, but I also think there's a lot of speed-demon players out there for which this is not a problem.

Yay!

Rampant Coyote Jay Barnson has kicked up some comments on the feedback from the pilot trial of Frayed Knights, which has apparently been a huge success.  While it looks like Jay has a lot of work in front of him, he isn't shying away from criticisms:

* Movement Speed - this is a sensitive issue. People expect first-person-shooter speeds in first-person games. The "walking speed" in Frayed Knights is far faster than realistic - it's more like a real-world run speed. But people like to zip. Especially in the village or another safe place. I'd deliberately tried to slow things down to closer to Ultima Underworld speeds for Frayed Knights - a more deliberate "dungeon crawl" / exploration pace (at a good run speed, but still...) But it frustrates people. So I'm gonna have to come up with a happy medium.

* Randomness - there's too much randomness in the game, between the random encounters and the wildly varying difficulty of combat. People might mow down four groups of two cultists four times in a row, but then get clobbered by the fifth while at full health and endurance. And the random encounters - while usually paced reasonably, approached ridiculous "Final Fantasy" levels in some cases.

* Combat - not exciting enough. And not clear enough. The melee characters don't have enough options, and the effect of some of the spells is too subtle (due to randomness and lack of clear feedback) to really tell what makes a difference. And some of the balance is off, like endurance / resting. Some things we need to focus on include better / clearer options for the characters, easier target selection, feedback on the upcoming combat order (who is going to go next), and easier spellcasting.

Strategy Informer has added Rampant Coyote's indie RPG to their database with two screenshots. You can view them here and also pick up the pilot if you haven't yet done so.

 Jay Barnson, the Rampant Coyote has just released the Demo Pilot for his Indie RPG Frayed Knights. All the details are on his Blog page including links to two download sites. Grab this one quickly and give Jay some feedback. He has some novel ideas and a game with humour as part of its design has got to be worth trying.

If you read our news regularly you've probably come across something linked from Tales of the Rampant Coyote - you may have even come across said Coyote on our forums. In addition to his blog, Jay Barnson has an off-beat indie RPG in development and it's time to catch up on it:

RPGWatch: So, your current indie project is Frayed Knights – what is it and what is it all about?

Jay Barnson: Frayed Knights is Rampant Games’ upcoming comedy-based fantasy RPG. It’s a blend of old-school style (first-person, turn-based, party-based adventures like Wizardry, The Bard’s Tale, Dungeon Master, and Might & Magic) with “real” 3D graphics, a healthy dose of character-based humor, and some quirky gameplay innovations. It’s part parody, part homage to both CRPGs and pen-and-paper RPGs.

It’s primarily a story about four misfit adventurers in a world that tries to justify all the weird things that happens in RPGs. The world of Frayed Knights is one with a subset of the population that were “adventurers” and acted like Player Characters tend to act. Which is to say, often amoral, ruthless, and greedy. Most of the time.

However, the adventurers are starting to die off. That in itself is not too surprising – the life of an adventurer is often short but exciting. But something is changing, and the rate of “morts” (deaths) is becoming alarmingly high. Plus, there are rumors of an “Ancient Evil™” rising out in the boonies. Things are going bad for the “adventurer community.”

But the Frayed Knights – themselves pretty much the laughingstock of adventurers everywhere – may be the only ones who can save them.

Read the whole interview here