Frayed Knights - The State of Alpha

Dhruin

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An update from Jay Barnson on Frayed Knights' progress. A sample:
Making things worse, I’d developed some of the systems back in the early days of FK development to be WAY too complex and flexible. I’m not using half the capabilities I designed for it, and it has made things harder to develop (complexity = more work). Silly me. As much as I rail against “kitchen sink design” (throwing in everything but the kitchen sink), I have fallen into that trap myself. And now I have to figure out how to balance all that crap. Brilliant work, Jay.
(Have I mentioned that besides having 75 76 77 unique “feats” characters can take in the game, that the spell list is GIGANTIC – probably something like around 500 spells if you include the “upgraded” versions? Yeah. I’m an idiot. Nobody’s gonna use all those. They are gonna stick with a tiny subset…)
More information.
 
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I bet this is the stage where many indies are dropped. The developer has a neat idea, starts creating the game with the force of a railroad at full steam, they finish their idea, complete the main point, but then when they have to bother with all the 'fluff' (which probably takes 95% of the development resources), the steam is gone.
 
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Not to mention how hard it is to bring in the chainsaw, and cut out lots of things that you have worked forever on... that just won't work.

The more I read about this game the more confusing it kind of gets.... it is a little strange that it appears to have quite a lot of depths and decisions.... yet the characters and setting feels so light hearted and humorous. You are stuck with stock characters with defined classes like in a J-RPG but it still appears to have quite some character development.

Going to be interesting to see how this turns out for sure....... either way the entertainment value just from reading the developers blog has been worth more than a lot of games I have played :D
 
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Well, if nothing else, I provide some entertainment. :)

My thought process going into this was that I was NOT going to rely upon the humor factor of Frayed Knights for gameplay value. If I were to remove all of the goofiness out of it, it should still stand on its own as a good game. The humor and parody side of things is really there more to make the game stand apart from the crowd a bit.

As to wolfling's point --- I think the average indie drops out significantly before now, but that's based on distant second- and third-hand knowledge. Some time between the pilot and here. This isn't exactly my first rodeo, but I can tell you there were some dark days there for a while when I was seriously wondering how the hell I'd get this thing done. Pretty much most of 2008, actually. Then again, I was working 15-hour games for a foundering mainstream (ish) videogame company at the time dealing with bounced paychecks and never seeing my family at the time, too, which may have had an impact on my development schedule. :)

So yeah, if I had to do it all over again, I'd have GREATLY simplified some things. Live and learn. It may not be my first videogame by a long stretch, but it is my first RPG. I think I went for overkill on many areas, which makes some other areas look undercooked by comparison.

Live and learn.

The part I didn't capture in the blog post was the sense of excitement being at this stage, finally. Seeing the light at the end of a very long tunnel (I'm dead serious about it being the largest, most complex project I've ever been involved with) is pretty dang thrilling. Barring disaster, the game is coming out this year - probably more sooner than later.
 
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So yeah, if I had to do it all over again, I'd have GREATLY simplified some things. Live and learn. It may not be my first videogame by a long stretch, but it is my first RPG. I think I went for overkill on many areas, which makes some other areas look undercooked by comparison.

What? You're "streamlining" the sequel already? :)
 
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