Most of you reading this blog will probably have heard about Hinterland, the new indie RPG-Civ game out on steam? Well, you might be unaware, as I was, that Hinterland was made with the Torque Advanced engine, the same engine powering SoW.

There’s a bit of a post mortem up on garagegames, it might interest budding devs. Checkit out here. They also provide a few details about their next project, an American Civil War game.

Go Torque!

Ironically, one of the harder parts of creating a setting is coming up with the names of people, places and things.

I have the same problem when playing RPGs, naming my character. Generally I just use a variation of one of the couple of names I have used before. Sadly, this is not a principle that would work when creating an entire game setting. I suspect players would notice if every NPC wondered around with some variation of the name “Jaxom”

In these situations the internet is your friend. I used to own a thesaurus, back in the mists of time, these days sites like this provide me with inspiration. If you’re looking for a word that means something, just type that meaning into the thesaurus and see what comes out. Someone asked about the word “Tellar” from the previous post. Well…I wanted a word representing the mundane world. Something which sounded, well, not too fancy. Earthy. Mundane. So, entering “earth” into the thesaurus got me a few entries, including “Telluric” which means “earthly". Which led to “Tellur".

But I already have a race/empire in the game called the Talurians. Sounds too similar, Tellur and Talurian. Swap a vowel out and it sounds different enough to pass.

Occasionally I take it a bit further. I have various cultures in the setting, cultures which I have a theme and a concept for in my head. Sometimes I want to create words related to that culture, titles for nobles or something. If you search around it is quite easy to find language translation sites on the net, places where you can type in a word and get, say, the German translation. Since I have an idea of how I want certain races to sound I browse through their word lists and pick something, change it slightly, and there you go. The fact that it is derived from a real language makes them sound, I hope, more authentic.

And there you have it. Now you know one of my trade secrets. I’m a word poacher, heh.

(Note : I thought about getting rid of the word “mana” and using something else, something completely made up. But mana already has the mental framework, the associated context, built up around it in the gamer psyche. I decided to leave it in. Changing words just for the sake of it is silly IMO, see the Star Wars movies and the word “youngling” which Lucas used to replace “child". Ugh. No matter how good the actor, it just sounds awkward.)

An Introduction to the Fundamental Nature of Existence and Magic (part 1)

by Professor Murandus, head of the Department of Metaplanar Studies, Torvaire University.

At the heart of all things, at the root of matter, energy, life, death and everything in-between, is Quan. The primordial essence, Quan is the foundation of everything that is, was, or will be.

Yet Quan, being the foundation of everything, is also, itself, nothing. Quan is the fundamental potential, the primal becoming, the foundation of being. The entirety of existence is built upon Quan, yet you could not see Quan, nor taste it, nor hear its sublime song, not with any mortal perception. Only those born with the gift can sense Quan, those we call magi, sorcerers, witches and wizards. And for them it is a double-edged sword.

The existence that mortal men know as “reality”, the solidity of stone underfoot, the wisp of breath in one’s lungs, the sweat on one’s brow in the hot midday sun, all these things that men hold as substantial, tangible, reliable in their natures and properties, all these things are merely some form worn by the Quan like a garment, some shape it has been bent into, a single possibility out of the infinite shapes that Quan can take.

Yet Quan, for all that it is infinite in its potential, is formless, shapeless, inert. For it to attain a form, for it to take on any of the infinite possibilities it embodies, requires Mana, the second of the three Primal Aspects. Mana is the essence of action, force and direction, “doing” to Quan’s “being”. Mana is the hand that shapes the clay of Quan, that gives it form and purpose. Mana interleaves Quan throughout all existence, like mortar binding brick to it’s neighbor, the two together forming the structure of reality.

But even the hand that shapes the clay would be powerless without a Will to guide it. Will, the third and last of the Primal Aspects, is the purpose that drives Mana to shape Quan into all of its varied forms. Yet Will is itself subject to Quan, born of it’s substance, shaped by it. We call this interaction the Primal Trinity, for it represents the relationship between the three Primal Aspects as they tug and pull at each other.

Yet it would seem, to the casual observer, that if this were an accurate account of things then surely each and every man should be a God unto himself, for has he not Will? Should he not be able to shape the Quan to that very Will, to gift himself with anything that he should desire?

Indeed, it might be so, if men weren’t born with their Wills shackled, smothered under the oppresive weight of a Will far greater than their own. We call this greater force “Tellar”, a word that means “World-Seed” in the ancient tongue, for this unseen Will is what gives shape to our world, our plane of existence. And while this Will is titanic in its strength, it is also, seemingly, unconscious. Lacking of any detectable guiding intelligence, any form of mind with which to communicate. It is simply a seed of pure Will, a will to be a certain way, to hold to a certain form, the form we call our world.

And there are many of these world-seeds, or so the old texts tell us. Each self-contained, each a world within itself, governed by the rules imposed by the uncaring Will of the Tellar. These worlds drift within the greater sea of Quan, a sea scholars call the Umbra. A sea is indeed a most appropriate metaphor, for the Tellar could well be thought of as blocks of ice floating within a body of water. Both the water and the ice are fundamentally the same in substance, yet the ice is frozen into rigid shape where the water is free to shift and flow. What created these Tellar, we know not. Seemingly, they have always existed. Perhaps they are the unborn minds of gods, or the dreams of the Creator, drifting within his sleeping consciousness, as the Vadrii say. Perhaps it will always remain a mystery.

But, whatever the case, we mortals are all children of, and subject to, the Tellar. They give us shape and form, rule and reason, yet they are also a prison. For most, it is a prison they never even know they reside in, a veil over the eyes, an illusion that has grown more real than it has the right to be. Only those with the gift can sense the hidden truth behind the illusion. That all this, that stone over there, the restless seas, the roof that shelters you during the storm, that all of that is merely one of an endless number of possibilities. And that, with the right push and enough Will behind it, it could become any other of those other possibilities.

For all that the Tellar is all-encompassing, it is also a dull force, an unfocused pressure. A magi can focus his Will and strength to guide the local Mana and thus alter the shape of the Quan around him, at least for a time. But only for a time, mind; for while the pressure the Tellar exerts is unfocused, it is also unrelenting. When the mage’s Will fails and the Mana slips his grasp, the unrelenting force of the Tellar will cause the Quan to snap back into its original form, like a willow branch that one pulls back and then releases, springing back to its original position. It is this pressure that a mage pits himself against that results in his spells coming to an end. The more powerful the mage, the longer he can hold back that “branch”, with the proper knowledge he can even attempt to anchor a spell to physical items. But, eventually, no matter what he does to prevent it, his strength must succumb to time and that of the Tellar, and his magic will be undone. Remember that, young magi, for all your might, in the end it will be as if you had not moved at all. A humbling lesson.

And, for all the power at a mage’s fingertips, the gift is both a blessing and a curse, as I said. We all know the stories of those poor mageborn whose gift is so strong that it manifests in their early childhood, the ones the Illin Pyrar Seekers search out. Those who can sense the Quan and the Mana nearly from birth. One can’t help but pity them their burden, for what must it be like to grow up with the sense that nothing is solid and reliable, not even a mother’s comforting touch, not even their own body and senses? It’s no wonder so many of them lose their sanity.

In the next part of this introductory text we shall discuss what lies beyond the Umbral Veil, the Border Realms and the Deep Umbra…

Blizzard has made a few big announcements this weekend. The first unveils the latest Diablo 3 class, this one with a bit of an Asian flavour, the Wizard.

Oh hell yes! Sign me up. If you’ve been paying attention to this blog you might have begun to suspect that mages are my favorite class. So this makes me deeply, deeply happy. I foresee many a satisfying hour blowing the crap out of assorted ghouls and demons with this class.

Thankfully, this Wizard class isn’t just another variation on the Fire-Ice-Lightning elementalist mage that is so common in RPGs. Splitting your spell trees into the classic elements seems to be the default mage design in RPGs, frankly I find it relatively boring. So I’m specialized in Fire Magic. How many variations on Fireball, Wall of Fire and Meteor can you play in games before it gets boring? Thankfully, D3’s Wizard has some neat new toys to play with across the three talent trees of Storm, Arcane and Conjure; disintegration beams, dancing swords, bubbles of slowed-time. Two thumbs up . Between this class and the Witch Doctor the magic side is looking mighty tasty.

What’s more, they’ve announced a rune system for skills, which sounds pretty interesting :

They also talked about the new Rune System, that can completely change the gameplay of a skill. You slot runes in a skill, and they dramatically effect the way that skill works. Also, the runes aren’t locked in once you use them, you can take them out and put a new one whenever you feel like it. Runes also come in tiered and rare flavors, and they’ll definitely be sought-after items. They don’t have class-specific Runes right now, but it’s something they are considering adding.

Can’t wait to see how it works out.

On the flip side, they’ve also announced that Starcraft 2 will ship as 3 separate games, one for each race.

SC2 now a trilogy

Now, on the one hand, it’s hard not to feel that this is a bit of a money gouging maneuver. I have to buy three games to play each campaign? The pitchforks are already being sharpened around the interwebs.

But, on the other hand…this is Blizzard. No other developer has their track record, no other developer can point to a more than decade long string of out-of-the-park smash hit games. There is no developer I trust more to deliver a great gaming experience.

So, while a part of me is with the pitchfork sharpeners, another part can actually imagine that perhaps they just had so many ideas for what they wanted to do for SC2, ideas which they felt would be a mish-mashed mess if done in one game, that they decided “screw it. We’re rolling in cash. Let’s pursue all these directions…simultaneously".

From the link :

Each campaign will be very different, with [Blizzard bossman] Pardo announcing the Zerg campaign will contain RPG elements. The Protoss campaign will likewise be differentiated by elements of diplomacy. In addition, the Terran campaign will feature a Protoss mini-campaign.

If each game plays differently, and ships with the usual Blizzard standard of sheer polished fun, I would consider it worth it. I know a lot of angry internet types are going on about how they won’t pay for 3 games, and this move will probably be used to justify piracy again , I personally don’t find that there are enough games released to keep me happily entertained every month of the year. I go through many periods where I desire something new, but the next wave of interesting releases is 6 months -> 1 year away. If there is 3 games worth of gameplay in those separate campaigns I will happily fork over the moolah.

We’ll see. It will depend heavily on how much variety is actually in those 3 campaigns, I reckon. I mean, if Blizzard announced they were releasing a proper RPG set in the Diablo universe at around the same time they released the action-RPG D3, I’d be extra excited. I know it isn’t quite the same, you’d expect all three races of an RTS in one box, but from what I understand all 3 races will be unlocked for multiplayer from the start anyway, which is the meat of the Starcraft experience, really. For competitive gamers it sounds like you can just choose one campaign to buy and go with that.

At the end of the day, Blizzard has just bought themselves too much credibility with me for me to dismiss this announcement out of hand as pure greed. I’ll decide once I’ve actually sampled their product. Hopefully, my trust will be rewarded.

I may ramble a bit now. There may even be preaching. Be forewarned.

When I was younger, I used to have a lot of faith in “talent". Or, more specifically, intelligence.

I used to believe it to be the most significant factor in determining success in life. I dunno, I was young, I guess when you’re a teenager you’re looking for something to associate with, some thing you can cling to as making you special from all those “others". Probably why kids fiction focuses on stories of young people who live with their dull, ordinary family until one day discovering they are special and get whisked away to happy-magic-fun land. And why teens all join cliques so they can scorn people in other cliques.

I guess that, since I read a lot, I always associated with the bookish archetypes. To this day I play mages and scholars in RPGs, first and foremost. And I am fairly smart, or so my tests tell me, so I liked to harbor the belief that this made me special and that a glorious future awaited.

It takes a while for life to knock that out of you. Trying to be a smart-arse. I still have a tendency to run my mouth when I shouldn’t, but ah well. It’s a process.

Anyway, this post wasn’t intended to be self-analysis dinner theatre. I wanted to talk about what I now actually believe to be the most important traits to success. Within the context of indie game development, of course, since that’s really what people read this blog for. I think. Either that, or the free ice cream. What, you didn’t get yours? It’s in the mail, promise.

Well, you’ve probably guessed by now, talent isn’t one of them. I’ve been doing the indie thing for a while, hanging out on the sites, chatting with the folks in the “scene", reading forums and whatever. And, unfortunately for those of us who still want to feel “special", talent is fairly plentiful. There are lots of skilled, intelligent people out there. And most of them spend a lot of time half building prototypes of games, then moving on. Seriously, there are some tech demos out there that would make you drool. This one guy on garagegames was showing some demos of what he’d done with the shader tech, eye-bleedingly beautiful.

But surprisingly few of them ever produce finished games. After a few years of seeing these guys post up screens, you begin to do the maths. There are X of these guys out there, and less than a tenth of them produce games…why? They certainly have the talent. I now believe talent is nice, but it can be bought or hired or mimicked via lots of practice.

And it isn’t passion either. That one is also a surprise. You’d think that’s what it was, wouldn’t you? Passion? There is this image of independent developers as these sort of passionate dynamos, driving deep into the night at some project because that’s just how filled with the fires of creativity they are. It sustains them. Right?

I don’t think so.

I can’t really talk for other people, but from my own experiences, this isn’t it either. Passion is a fleeting fire. And fairly common. It’s not hard to feel passionate about the thought of making your own game. That passion burns hot, bright, so very bright. And while it burns you revel in it’s warmth. But then it gutters out and dies. Life throws a bucket of cold water on that sucker. You see this time and time again, as well. Someone starts up a project, all vigor and vim, ready to shake the world at it’s foundations, to reinvent and reinvigorate genres, to build their dream game…and then 6 months later they’ve stopped posting updates, and they’ve stopped responding to mails, and the project gets added to the great graveyard of half-completed indie games that exists in cyberspace. (I must admit, I’m a little concerned about The Broken Hourglass project.)

That kind of passion is too fleeting. It doesn’t last. It’s like a relationship, fiery and exciting in the infatuation of those beginning months, easy to go with, but over time that fades and the shine dulls a bit and you actually have to work to keep it going, work through shite and pain and things that aren’t fun or exciting at all.

Game dev suffers from the same problems that relationships do. Over time, the next exciting “prospect” can seem a lot more enticing than the one you have now, the one you’ve had all these problems with, the one that is mentally associated with pain and effort and sweat. And so you see those very same enthusiastic devs shortly later, all fired up and excited about this new project they’re working on, the one on which they will take all those lessons they learned and apply them, the one that is sure to win! Except it probably won’t, because they didn’t learn the most important lesson, the ones you learn from finishing something.

Perhaps it is discipline? Maybe, I dunno. I really hope not. If you saw my work desk you’d know I would be doomed if that were the case. My mind is a chaotic, untidy thing. Someone once told me they admired my discipline. I laughed to myself. I’m really no more disciplined than anyone else. I put things off, I get distracted, I lose time to my bad habits. I long to be able to work at 100% efficiency, or even 80% efficiency, but I know that I rarely achieve that.

Well, enough beating about the bush. What are the trait/traits that determine success, in my opinion?

There are two of them. The first is conviction. Belief. Faith. I’m not talking about spiritual faith, although that is good. I’m talking about belief in a goal. That it can be done, if only you put in the effort and time. And that it is worth doing. This one is the most important, because life will knock you down, often, and hard. The world will heap shit on your shoulders, with no regard for your desires or goals. Your passion will flicker and die. You may not believe that, but everyone has a limit. A point where there is just too much and the candle flickers out. No matter how cool you thought the project was in the beginning.

Conviction is the thing that gets you through that stage. Because it cannot be avoided. There will be a point when life just throws too much at you and your efforts, your momentum, comes grinding to a halt. In fact there will probably be many times. Conviction is what restarts the engine, what allows you to get back up, to set yourself to pushing the boulder up the hill again.

The second trait is persistence. Persistence of action. Conviction is not enough, it needs to be put into action. Believing you can do something is great, now stop talking about it and bloody well do it. Like conviction, persistence will drive you through the tough parts. Again, there will be times when life throws too much at you and you just can’t continue. Persistence will get you moving again and keep you moving forward.

Now, the great thing about these two traits is they are learn able. You can’t really teach passion or intelligence. But these two traits are attainable by everyone.

Conviction is simple. You just choose to believe. What? It isn’t that simple? Yes, yes it is. A simple secret : Faith is a habit. You tell yourself you believe often enough, you walk the walk and talk the talk…and it becomes real. You just choose what you want accept.

You might not have heard the story of the 4 minute mile. Basically, no one believed it possible. No one could do it. Then one athlete achieved it. And shortly afterward many athletes had done it. Because someone had changed their beliefs about what can and cannot be done. The moral of the story is many of the barriers we face are artificial. When you choose to believe or not believe something, you unconsciously make it so. Most people are like those other athletes, the ones who came later, who achieved it because someone had shown them they could. But you don’t have to be. Just choose to believe that you can do it.

(Within reason, of course. You can’t go believing yourself into being a flying, purple dragon. Well, I could, but that’s because I’m a level 25 Belief Mastah, you probably couldn’t padawan.)

Persistence is trickier. Because most of us are lazy. I certainly am. Work is a chore, my brain immediately deploys distraction flares whenever it detects any significant quantity in the vicinity. And developing a game is a long, hard slog.

So how do we learn this one? Well, I use a trick. A fairly common trick, adapted from exercise. I promise myself that I have to do just one, small thing. Anything really, so long as it is some progress towards the goal. Then I can go play videogames or whatever. And I mean it. It’s not a trick in that regard, you can’t easily lie to yourself here. If I finish that one thing I can blow the rest of the time off on fooling around.

The unconscious is a simple thing, easily fooled. Turn it’s focus from the huge mountain of work needed to reach the end goal towards a much smaller step, with fun and rewards afterward, and it falls for it.

And most of the time that is enough. Starting is usually the hardest part, once you’re in the groove you tend to go with it and get ten times the work you thought you’d do done.

And sometimes it only partially works. You get your one small task done and then still want to quit for the day. That’s ok too. Like I said, sometimes life beats you down, sometimes you have put in too much overtime and you’re exhausted and all you can manage is to write some dialogues in a text document. But you got something done. You made progress, no matter how incremental. Keep doing that, keep taking one small step after the other, keep taking small steps while believing the overall task is achievable, and you find you can achieve your goal, no matter how far off it is.

It just becomes a matter or time.

(Of course, now I have to finish SoW or I’ll look right silly, won’t I? )