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5 minutes of gameplay and player character

Arcana Manor, magic systems, Uncategorized


I’ve heard that describing five minutes of gameplay can often help to crystallize the tone and core mechanic of the game.

5 minutes of gameplay:

The player character, Eliza, runs along a crenellated castle battlement and executes a succession of graceful jumps and flips across a massive chasm in the stone, where a glowing red skeleton (death from the tarot deck) blocks her way. She summons up five pentacles that hover around her as protection, then traces a flaming scarlet pentagram in the air with her sword to banish the skeleton, who recoils in pain and disappears. A door in the form of Death from the tarot deck looms up in front of her, but it is locked. She gazes up into the sky and sees the planet Saturn glowing darkly. Consulting her journal [actual player brings up architect’s notebook, which functions as journal and magic interface] and sees that Saturn corresponds to the Death card. Using these clues, she traces a glowing violet hexagram staring at the top point, which is attributed to Saturn. The door booms and creaks open in response to this spell, and ominous darkness looms inside the next room of the manor.

Here’s one shot of what the magic interface could potentially look like, or at least a version of the game’s title screen.


Notes:

The manor is incomplete because the architect didn’t finish it, which means that there are some outside areas, such as these battlements and broken bridges, allowing for varied environments and more 3d platforming action.

Ron Smith asked an important question about the time period of the game, and I’m going to go with 19th century to hit the neo-Gothic explosion in the Romantic period, which works for a surreal occult mansion. This means that “surreal occult mansion” might be more important tonally than “funhouse,” but funhouse remains the model in terms of trap doors, secret passages, revolving hallways, and other disorienting architectural features. It’s just that there are no demonic clowns or cotton-candy. Though Ron had a good point that the architect must have been building the mansion for a very long time, which means that other earlier architectural styles, including ancient or far eastern, can be present in the earliest levels of the maze.

I’m also thinking about a player character, since as an action-adventure game the player won’t be customizing her own avatar but rather playing the role of a particular person. I guess I wasn’t entirely joking when I thought that the Joan of Arc modeling tutorial could almost provide a player model.

Player character:

The architect’s sister, Eliza Knossos, a 19th-century student of neo-Gothic architecture who shared her brother’s passion for mysterious buildings but not his Faustian hubris. She wears a gray cloak with a hood, slim leather boots, and carries a satchel with surveyor’s equipment and blueprints, which will eventually hold her magical implements.

She is fiery and rebellious, has bright red hair, and is lithe, even acrobatic, in her movements. She has voyaged into the mountains to try to find and rescue her brother after receiving a strange package containing his architectural notebook full of mad sigils, wild blueprints, and with pages torn out. A bloodstained note included in the package, with the words “find me” has led her to believe that her brother is in grave danger.

Programming: first steps

Game Ideas, , , ,

I’ve been working in Torquescript, using The Game Programmer’s Guide to Torque by Edward Maurina (which is published by A.K. Peters, the same company that publishes Quests).

Specifically, I’ve been working on setting up a GUI or Graphical User Interface for an inventory system, using some resources and tutorials on the GarageGames site.  The process of scripting such a system is extremely complex, because a game in the Torque Game Engine Advanced is a maze of directories and sub-directories containing thousands of scripts.  Even when working with a pre-existing resource, a programmer has to figure out exactly where to put specific snippets of code in many different files on both the server and client side.  My license of TGEA actually allows me full access to the engine’s source code, which can be modified in C++ and then re-compiled to add functionality to the engine, but this is both a blessing and a curse because their are now hundreds of thousands of lines of C++ code than can be potentially altered and recompiled.

And, despite the complexity of all this (or maybe because of it) I absolutely love the process of programming, which is like solving a vast and intricate jigsaw puzzle.  When I have a working interface, I’ll post screenshots.

Interface Design

Arcana Manor, Game Ideas, ,

One of the issues not discussed in Quests is the design of a game interface, both for basic functions like saving games and for gameplay interactions like casting spells or equipping items. The reason for the deliberate omission of interface considerations is that the book primarily discusses modding toolsets, which typically do not allow for significant modification of an existing game’s interface and certainly not the creation of a new interface.

Interfaces are crucial, though, when designing one’s own quest-based game, because an interface shapes the way that players can interact with the system of rules that constitutes the game. Here are some thoughts on the interface for Arcana Manor, which I’ll be putting into practice in the Torque Game Engine Advanced.

Main GUI

Accesible at the game’s beginning

The game’s title written in an appropriately arcane font

A brightly lit color scheme that looks like a tarot card from the Marseilles deck, with sharply angular buttons and a background colored like a mosaic or stained glass window

card from Marseilles deck

card from Marseilles deck

Start game option

Resume game option

Save game option

Load game option

Quit game option

Arcana Manor Magic Interface

Gestural (with mouse, xbox 360 controller, or maybe even Wiimote, since the Torque Game Engine Advance is cross-platform)

Trace sigils/glyphs/runes in the air with the index finger of a hand as well as magical weapons/items based on the tarot suits (wand, sword, cup, and disk).  One model for this interface is the spell-casting system of Undying.

casting a spell in Undying

casting a spell in Undying

These sigils include geometrics sign (pentagrams and hexagrams)

The point of the sigil at which the player starts tracing it has an effect, because different points have varying elemental, planetary, and/or tarot correspondences.

hexagram attributions

hexagram attributions

Each sigil consists of particle effects and emitters, so they leave glowing trails of fire. The colors of these trails have varying magical effects.

Spells are powered-up via the number of wands, swords, cups, and disks collected by the player. These are displayed on the HUD interface as rows of each item, i.e. the standard mana-meter has four parts.

a tarot disk for the interface

A hand

Uncategorized

Today I modeled Joan of Arc’s glove and hand–one of the armored gauntlets that constitutes her accessories, midway between quest item and character design, I suppose.  This particular object had many complex cuts and folds, and while the end result is stiffer than I would like, it does look like a metal gauntlet.  I’m leaving the model’s mesh visible (with its smoother polymesh hulls underneath) to better display the details of the modeling process.

modeling a hand

Joan of Arc model

3d modeling, ,

Here is a screenshot of a model that I’ve been making in XSI.  This is the XSI version of the famous “Joan of Arc” tutorial.  I had to do the body portion of the tutorial twice, but the second time produced smoother results.  If I finish the entire tutorial, which is excellent but very long and complex, I will need to make Joan’s hands, ears, and all the pieces of her armor.  Then, I’ll need to UV unwrap all of her accessories, paint textures for them, and assign appropriate materials to each of her body parts.  Lastly, I’ll rig her for animation by building a skeleton of bones and chains inside of her body.  The complexity of this process shows just how involved character design can be when one designs one’s own art assets, but it is very satisfying to watch a single cube slowly be extruded and shifted until it forms a human body.

JoanofArc

Color Symbolism, Magic Systems, and other Arcana Manor thoughts

Arcana Manor, Game Ideas, magic systems, , , , , , ,

Some rough conceptual notes on Arcana Manor: I’ll illustrate them and provide screenshots, links, and notes later. For now, here are the ideas that have been percolating while I’ve been working in Torque and XSI (more screenshots soon).

The magic system of Arcana Manor will be deeply tied up with symbolic color. The system at its heart will be gestural, involving the tracing of geometric figures such as pentagrams and hexagrams using the wand, sword, pentacle, and cup, with precedents in Molyneux’s Black and White as well as Arcane Studio’s Arx Fatalis. But the sigils and figures that players trace will consist of burning, glowing light whose colors constitute a systematic language. I want these colors to be as wild and intense as possible given today’s hardware: violets so deep and burning that they seem to verge on ultraviolet, scarlets so fierce that they leave marks on your retinas. Not every aspect of the project can look good technically, but the magic system should. If I weren’t worried about excessive terminology, I’d call this system “chromomancy”: “chromo” for color and “mancy” for “speaking,” as in necromancy.

(On a side note, there are technical special effects packages, such as Arcane FX, that could be modified to work with a Torque-based game with a vivid magic system. The designers of Arcane FX are already halfway there in rejecting generic-looking spells and incorporating visual symbols of animated zodiacs, pentagrams, and smouldering summoned towers.)

(On a broader side note, Arcana Manor is now definitely a Torque-based game, not an Unreal mod. I bought the engine I’m using—Torque Game Engine Advanced– and am working in it.)

There are precedents for this type of color-based magic system in literature and gaming, and the more aware I and my art team are of it, the more effective it can be.

Color symbolism is apt in part because Arcana Manor is already tarot-based, and the tarot makes extensive use of color symbolism—so much so that the B.O.T.A., a contemporary esoteric group with roots in masonry and the Golden Dawn, publishes its tarot deck in black-and-white outlines, with instructions that initiates should color the images themselves in order to better acquaint themselves with the resonances of the images. The centrality of color to tarot work is part of why Alejandro Jodorowksy’s Holy Mountain has such a rich palette, especially in the scenes in the Alchemist’s tower, including the room with cards from the director’s own tarot deck lining the walls. If I could give two examples of the color palette I’m looking for, they would be de Chirico’s paintings and Jodorowksy’s film.

Here is a link to the Alchemist’s tower in The Holy Mountain as symbolic chamber, functioning on multiple levels

4 weapons scene in this film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik2GmeLaRm8&feature=related

Jodorowksy is actually an expert on the history of tarot, especially the Marseilles deck.

I associate surrealism with a color palette of bright, vivid shades—the kind of crimson, sapphires, and emerald hues not found in everyday life. In fact, one of the ideas that I keep returning to in terms of correspondences are colors and their symbolism. There is something about color, especially vivid color that evokes symbolism: the shades of the visible spectrum suggest the simultaneous variety and systematic division of life. In Ultima IV, each of the colors stands for a virtue, and in Eternal Darkness each Ancient and school of magic has its own color (red, green, and blue, with some added complexities hinted at through purple runes and “yellow magick” alluded to by Dyack in interviews as the suggestion of a possible sequel). These two games are the primary examples in my book, but symbolic color runs throughout other games, such as the five schools of magic and their corresponding colors in Magic: The Gathering, as well as the divisions of magic spells or “rotes” in Mage: The Ascension. The multiverse of the Planescape D & D campaigns seethes with a secret code of colors, often denoting portals between the planes, as in the color pools, portals, and curtains of the astral plane. The most exciting part of The Legacy of Kain: Defiance is imbuing the Reaver blade with elemental and other enhancements, which are tracked by a set of runes and colored dots and the bottom right portion of the interface. The more varied one’s selection of hues, the further one has progressed in the game. The whole system is beautifully set up with the colored pillars of Nosgoth in Blood Omen: The Legacy of Kain—symbolism is an emergent property, since even when Silicon Knights lost the rights to the franchise they had invented, Eidos had the basis for four sequels. Dyack says that his guild creates universes in which many stories can be told, and the capacity of his systems to keep generating

There is probably some historic basis for this idea in the poetry of the French symbolists, especially Baudelaire and Rimbaud. Baudelaire’s poem “correspondences” articulates the notion of systematic, synaesthetic linkages between sensations and ideas, perhaps in its most overt modern form. Rimbaud’s poem Vowels associates A, E, I, O, and U with colors, which some critics associate with the poet’s alchemical studies. The various stages of transmutation from iron to gold are designated with Latin color names: nigredo (black), rubedo (red) and albedo (white). Both Baudelaire’s and Rimabaud’s poems will be clues found as scrolls in the manor, and there may be an alchemical tome as well.

Other ideas:

A gigantic rubik’s cube with symbolic designs, whose solution opens doorways, provides powers, allowing players to reconfigure the game’s symbol system

This might not be a cube; it might be a weirder geometry, like the Lament Configuration of Hellraiser or the dodecahedron puzzle box that was tantalizingly alluded to but never modeled in the Infinity engine of Planescape: Torment, which relied (perhaps excessively) on text-based dialogues to solve puzzles

Parts of the manor might constitute a macro-level architectural cube or puzzle: cf. the colored, trapped rooms of Cube and the rubik’s cube 3d dungeon of the diabolically difficult wireframe CRPG, Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna

The manor’s architecture is Gothic (besides its surreal, paradoxical Escher influences). It would be worth checking out some books on Gothic architecture, blueprints of mansions, and survival horror games that have successfully used this trope so as to figure out how to push it further. Realms of the Haunting, Eternal Darkness, Undying, Resident Evil but stranger, weirder, more labyrinthine and full of secrets (if that’s possible). This is Arcana Manor, and arcana are secrets, so hidden passageways, trap doors, pop-up staircases, trompe-de-l’oeil walls should be all-pervasive. The unfolding of secret spaces is why I played Castlevania: Symphony of the Night all the way through, twice, to get 196.7% castle completion, and why I still want to play it to 200.6% even after I’ve earned the game’s best “ending.” Come to think of it, all the Castlevania games, including the critically panned 3d versions, are an inspiration. There will be blog entries on the magnificent video clips of the Castlevania arcade game, which looks wicked, and the teaser for the 360/PS3 Castlevania that might make up for what looks like the awful Wii fighting game Castlevania: Judgement.

The enemies in my game, essential to provide combat obstacles, are demons. I want to push this aesthetic as far as it can go, and for that one model is Todd McFarlane. Nobody does demons like McFarlane: Spawn is, even ten or so years after the heyday of the comic and its excellent animated HBO series, absolutely gorgeous. The various attempts at a Spawn game have received mostly mediocre reviews for derivative Devil May Cry-style combat without the variety and grace of that series, but on one thing reviewers agree: the game looked devilishly good. While I’m at it, the hidden inspiration behind a lot of this game is Clive Barker’s cancelled Majesco title Demonik, whose premature termination after the construction of a successful alpha build is both tragic and inspiring in a back-handed way. This is the game that I most wish existed. It will get its own blog entry soon also.

Below are some of the correspondences upon which this magic system will be based. The last two columns are all important: its furthest metaphorical extent (the magician’s virtues, not exactly morally based but definitely tied into a code of imagination and belief) and its most concrete game mechanics.

The motto of this game, its “point” or one of them, might be summed up in an epigraph from Goethe’s Faust, spoken by the angels, which goes loosely: “he who ceaselessly strives, him we can save.” The redemptive side of the Faust legend.

Magic schools (obvious D & D)

Elemental (obvious also, cf. Soul Reaver, Zelda, etc.)

Powers of a Magician

(Levi, Crowley Jodorowksy)

How the metaphor plays out in gameplay

Wand

Alterative

Fire

Willing

Re-shaping an environment (freezing water, raising platforms)

Cup

Restorative

Water

Knowing

Mastering a body of symbols, gestures, maps

Sword

Aggressive

Air

Daring

Conjuring and facing demons

Overcoming obstacles (high chasms and abysses)

Pentacle

Protective

Earth

Keeping Silence

Not being overly chatty with deceptive or distracting NPC’s

Keeping Knossos’ secrets safe

Cf. Dante’s fourfold allegory

I’ll start working on a GUI for the magic system soon, since the Torque engine allows for as much custom interface design as the designer can program.

Modeling Quest Items for Arcana Manor

3d modeling, Arcana Manor, Uncategorized

For the last few weeks, I’ve been using a 3d modeling program called XSI to model quest items for Arcana Manor. I started with a famous 3d modeling tutorial for building Joan of Arc (who for this game’s purposes I will adapt as the Queen of Swords), and more recently I’ve been making 3d models of the tarot suits. The suits of today’s playing cards are highly abstracted versions of the four tarot suits (swords, cups, wands, and pentacles), which in many tarot decks are concrete items worn or used by allegorical characters. These suits are associated with complex systems of symbolic correspondences, including the elements of air, water, fire, and earth, and in mystical lore they are literal and metaphorical weapons wielded by a magician. We can see these items:

in their symbolic and ritualistic function on the Magician card of the Rider-Waite tarot deck,

The Magician (Tarot Card)

arrayed on the table of Aleister Crowley as he poses with characteristic flamboyance,

Crowley with Weapons

Crowley with Weapons

and brought to life in the moving pictures of Alexander Jodrowksky’s glorious film The Holy Mountain.

Holy Mountain cover

Holy Mountain cover

Given my argument that one of the key principles of meaningful quest design is the use of re-configurable symbolic correspondences expressed through a fusion of gameplay and narrative, what better basis for a magic system than this?

Here are some screenshots of my models so far. The learning curve of 3d modeling is steep, and I’m progressing slowly but surely. These beginning results are rough, but the hard work is compensated by the liberation of being able to design one’s own custom items beginning with only primitive geometric polygons whose edges, faces, and vertices can be shaped in complex ways.

Here are a few first screenshots.
wands

tarotsuits(rough)

Sword(Stormbringer Style)

Broadsword

shadedhead

Quests at ITU Copenhagen, a podcast, and other news

Quests Book, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , ,

I was excited to see that Quests is listed as part of the required reading in a class called “Storytelling and Games: Challenges, Theories, Techniques,” which will be supervised by Espen Aarseth at ITU Copenhagen in this coming spring semester.  In fact, Quests is the first book on the required readings, followed by the Cambridge Companion to Narrative.  (The class was originally listed as being taught by the new head of the game department, Gordon Cabellas, and supervised by Aarseth.  At this point, Aarseth himself is listed as teaching.)

This news might be interesting to readers of Quests, since Copenhagen has a Center for Computer Games Research whose past and present faculty (including Aarseth himself, Susana Tosca, Jesper Juul, and Gonzalo Frasca) produce some of the finest academic game scholarship.  Aarseth specifically is famous for popularizing the term ludology to refer to the academic study of games, resulting in Aarseth being identified with an anti-narratological stance that seemed at odds with storytelling in games.  Aarseth’s decision to supervise this class tends to reinforce the notion that the diminishing intensity of the narratology/ludology debate signals a rapprochement between the representatives of both sides.

While visiting Dakota State University, I was pleased to encounter two bright students and game enthusiasts named Daniel Wise and Jim Howard who were kind enough to interview me on their Cherry Chocolate Podcast, which can be downloaded from Itunes here.

Steve Vink at The Game Creators wrote a thoughtful and positive review of Quests in the November edition of The Game Creators Newsletter.  Steve also embedded the quest spaces video in the December edition of the newsletter here.  Steve’s company produces some very exciting game development software, such as FPS Creator, aimed at young game developers.  Microsoft has bundled some of these applications with Visual Studio, suggesting that The Game Creators software could be a low-cost and accesible alternative to XNA for educators and students.

Arcana Manor development continues.  While waiting for Torque X 3.0, which will contain the crucial development software Torque X Builder 3d, I’ve been learning the 3d modeling program XSI.  Specifically, I’ve been working through a tutorial that teaches users how to model Joan of Arc.  Modeling the human form is extremely difficult and time-consuming but also rewarding, and I hope to be acquiring some of the skills that would allow me to make some of Ron and Trent’s sketches into 3d characters.  Screenshots and videos of this work will follow soon, supplementing the chapter in Quests about character design by showing some of the skills associated with creating one’s own NPC’s outside of an RPG toolset.

Concept Sketch # 1

Arcana Manor, Game Ideas

Here is a first concept sketch for Arcana Manor by my friend and collaborator Ron Smith. This sketch effectively conveys both the surreal, de Chirico-inspired spaces of the game as well as the creepiness of its starkly minimalistic inhabitants, who look like skeletal mannequins made of wax.  Thanks to Ron for this.

Concept Sketch # 1

Concept Sketch # 1

Small Arcana Manor prototype

Game Ideas, Videos

Below is a video of a small, rough prototype of one area Arcana Manor. I prototyped this section in the Unreal2 Editor a week or two ago and have since been working in Torque X. This video represents an extremely early stage of the process, intended only as a reference to illustrate the visual and spatial aesthetic for which I’m aiming.

Arcana Manor Team and Puzzle Ideas from Kris

Arcana Manor, Uncategorized

The Arcana Manor team is beginning to shape up, thanks to friends and colleagues who have generously agreed to contribute concept sketches, models, and possibly music.

Kris Maxwell: audio and some 3d models

Trent Troop: some 3d models and concept sketches

Ron Smith: concept sketches

Thomas Falk: some music

I am moving ahead with Torque X 3d (which includes C#, Microsoft Visual Studio, and XNA), and I’ve just started working through tutorials in the Softimage XSI Mod Tool, a 3d modeling program that is bundled with Torque X 3d. I will be recruiting from the Torque and XNA communities to find other programmers familiar with this engine.

Here is a first screenshot from a very rough, small prototype I made in Unreal2 a while back.

Prototype Screenshot # 1

Prototype Screenshot # 1

Kris Maxwell came up with the following puzzle ideas for Arcana Manor. These ideas are good examples of innovative puzzle design, as advocated in the “challenges” chapter of Quests.

“theres’s a room with an empty picture frame suspended in the middle of the room. It is door-sized. Also in the room are several painted panels with sections of a stairwell painted on them. The player has to arrange the panels in 3D space, so that when they are looked at through the picture frame they complete the stairwell, which becomes real and the player can walk through the frame and into the stairs up to the exit.

alternatively it would be cool if you could put different things behind the frame to make different doors open. like panels that show a small room with a sword in a stone.. put them all in the right place so they look right through the frame, and then you can walk through the frame, into another dimension which contains the actual room with the sword, but that is not “physically” in the room with the frame (like a hypercube).”

“i also had an idea for a section of the funhouse that is not finished yet. This could progress from being unfinished in the gameworld (i.e. panels missing, surfaces half-painted, etc), through conceptual level (the section begins to be made of sketch lines, notes by the creator, and the look of scratch paper), and then onto a more meta-narrative level, where bits of the “engine” start to show through, featuring snippets of C# code and such, just to mess with people’s minds about the multiple layers of reality that are going on, and the peeling back of the layers of fiction that must be accomplished in order to solve the creator’s problem.”

“I think it would be spooky to have a scene in the game where the lights go out, you hear a sound, and then when you get the lights back on, things in the room have changed and there’s some ominous message left for you in the environment. (I just remembered the scene in Via Domus in the hatch cell with the lighter and the dead woman)

On that note, that’s something that Realms of the Haunting did well- using the environment to send messages, not just inventory items like notes (which it also uses). Hand-painted scrawls on walls and such just make things creepier. Maybe some of these could be linked to the blacklight stuff too.

Playing off the cancer theme, I think it would be good to work in references to that fear in some of the level designs or enemies… the idea of self-replicating growths, tumors, and the body turning on itself would make for a nice resonance with the underlying themes. It might also be thematically interesting to make the protagonist into the mythical Theseus, sent to slay the Minotaur, but the minotaur in this case is the creator transformed, and death by the hand of the protagonist is his salvation- he is set free having had someone complete his puzzle and play his game, and he can rest free from the pain of his rotting flesh and the demons of his infernal bargain. Just an idea.”

“some imagery/elements that might be fun/spooky/interesting:

a rickety elevator that descends extremely deep into the bowels of the manor
disembodies footprints that lead the character through a puzzle
statues that turn their heads to follow the hero as he moves through the room
a hallway where the camera does a “vertigo” effect (by moving forward and zooming out)
a hall of mirrors
a carousel with creepy/decaying animals as the seats (maybe one crepy one among all the pretty porcelain horses)
a fortune-teller
creepy cartoony eyes in the darkness
you have to have a room with black and white zig-zag tile floors and red curtains. period.”


Quest syllabus

Quests Book, , , ,

Please click here to download a syllabus for a college-level class based on my book Quests.

I wrote Quests with many audiences in mind, and two key audiences are students and teachers within a college-level class about new media and literature, with an emphasis on game design and interactive writing. In fact, I wrote Quests to be sufficiently accessible and wide-ranging in its approach that teachers of many different classes could potentially use it as a textbook by adapting it to the needs of their students. Teachers of classes with titles like “Writing for Games,” “Writing for Interactive Media,” and “Introduction to New Media” could all use the book in different ways by putting varying degrees of emphasis on its theoretical and practical components, including its tutorials and exercises.

With these classes in mind, I have put together a syllabus for a class that would incorporate Quests as a textbook. The class has the same title as the book, but any of the course titles listed above would work equally well. In a syllabus divided into a the fourteen weeks of a standard college semester, I’ve assembled a set of discussion topics for each week, as well as accompanying assignments in reading, playing, and designing.

I’d love to hear back if anyone finds this syllabus useful in putting together his or her own course, and I’m very willing to discuss ideas for adapting this framework to the needs of particular teachers at the college, high school, or middle school level.


Design Document: Arcana Manor

Arcana Manor, magic systems, Uncategorized

Design Document

Arcana Manor

3D, first-person action-adventure/platforming game about leaping, swinging, and crawling through a surreal funhouse while battling demons

Genre and core mechanic:

  • Action-adventure game from a first-person perspective
  • Environmental obstacles and platforming elements: swaying bridges, tilting rooms, staying alive while negotiating perilous environments
  • Spell-casting in combat and to solve puzzles by altering the environment (e.g. raising platforms, lowering bridges)
  • Combat with demons who have overrun the funhouse (see narrative section below)
  • Magic system based on the symbols of the minor arcane and their elemental correspondences (wands = fire, pentacles = earth, cups = water, swords = air), which are acquired as pick-ups and deployable through combination

(The player finds the spellbook/architectural notebook that belonged to Knossos. This becomes the game’s journal/interface, from which spells are cast. A tarot-based pattern to the layout of the funhouse (22 rooms of the major arcana))

Level design and visual style:

  • A twisted funhouse
  • Surreal
  • Hearkens back to 1950’s funhouses, but twisted and drenched in arcane symbolism
  • Bright, primary colors
  • Surreal, bizarre graphics
  • Artistic Influences:
    1. Giorgio de Chirico
      The Tower by Giorgio de Chirico

    2. M.C. EscherRelativity by M.C. Escher 3. Christopher Manson’s Maze

  • Pervaded with symbolism, like Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain, which could inspire tarot rooms (walking around inside tarot cards)

Small sample map (a section of a part of a level)

  • Strange marble sculptures
  • Sigils and runes and surreal paintings on the walls, maybe hinting at a way through the maze, or maybe red herrings (as in Manson’s Maze book)
  • Stairways running in every direction (on the walls and ceilings, like Escher)

Narrative

  • Funhouse built by mad genius who was dying of cancer, evangelizing about the necessity of play for the human spirit
  • He was an architect and engineer, a connoisseur of optical illusions and paradoxes, who entered unwittingly into a Faustian pact in order to bargain for time enough to complete the funhouse and the magic to make it truly wondrous.
  • The funhouse architect’s name was (several possibilities)

Dedalus Knossos, the Hierophant

Maximillian Knossos

Dedalus Minos

Dedalus de Chirico

M.C. Knossos

  • Knossos is sort of like The Alchemist in The Holy Mountain (mysterious figure taking followers on a journey of initiation).
  • He summoned minions to help build the funhouse but did not understand that these servants were actually demons.
  • Now the architect has disappeared and there are demonic enemies in the funhouse, who are taking it over, corrupting it, destroying it. (In metaphorical terms, these demons are all the perils of creativity, the fine line that any eccentric artist must walk: obsession, isolation, madness, addiction).
  • The architect’s beautiful and eccentric granddaughter, Ms. Emily Knossos, has called for the assistance of the player to find out what happened to her father. Did he die of natural causes? Was he abducted by demons? Is he still trapped in the funhouse somewhere?
  • Only by finding out what happened to Knossos can the demons of the funhouse be destroyed.

Technology

Prototype in Unreal 2 or Unreal 3 engine

Maya PLE or Blender for 3d models

Photoshop (GIMP temporarily) for concept art

Later, transfer to Torque or Torque X with a $150 dollar indie license (versus 350,000 dollar license per programmer of Unreal 3)

A combination of Torque X and Microsoft XNA would yield a game that could be played on both PC and Xbox Live Arcade

torquex 3d builder + torquex + microsoft xna 2.0 + visual c# + Microsoft XNA = 3D Xbox 360 game, distributable on Xbox Live Arcade

Comparable Titles

Undying (a FPS with spell-casting in a haunted mansion), but Arcana Manor is not a shooter and has more environmental puzzles.

Psychonauts (for surrealism and bizarre level design), but Arcana Manor is contained within a mansion and can be accommodated in a more standard, less resource-heavy engine.

Early graphical adventure games for stark, minimalistic surrealism (The Demon’s Forge, The Labyrinth of Time), but this has more exciting action than a point-and-click adventure game.

Team

Need concept artist(s)

3d modeler(s)

Programmer(s) (UnrealScript, C++, and/or C#)

Vocal talent

Budget

Almost none

Use freeware, middleware with indie or semi-commercial licenses

Distribution

Web for PC

Xbox Live Arcade

Questing in Hyboria

Uncategorized

As readers of Quests know, I am not the biggest fan of MMO’s for a variety of reasons, and yet they are the genre of games in which quests feature most prominently. Lately, I’ve enjoyed playing Lord of the Rings Online with Roger Travis, the director of the Video Games and Human Values Initiative, and Michael Abbott, one of the Initative’s senior fellows. These two players are great company, and LOTRO is also enjoyable because of the way in interweaves its epic quest line with Tolkien’s compelling narrative and imaginative world. However, as a loremaster (the game’s mage class, a hybrid of druid and standard magic user) I feel a little underpowered. As a previous post on magic systems indicates, I think this watering down of spellcasting probably has to do with Tolkien’s Catholicism: there is no magic in his world, only divine providence manifested through attunement to the natural world. This stance toward wizardry is philosophically subtle but does not result in the most exciting gameplay.

There is another currently operating MMO that I am deeply excited about playing (though not as excited as the rumored World of Darkness MMO planned to debut in 2011). Until 2011, there is Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.

Age of Conan Cover

Age of Conan Cover

This MMO fits into a larger franchise of transmedia Conan products, whereby one can be immersed in a world of novels and short stories, art, movies, and games. This world is based on Robert E. Howard’s wild and vivid pulp fiction, which was in turn inspired by the mountainous terrain outside of Fredericksburg, Texas.

Robert E. Howard is a fascinating figure unto himself—a hard-drinking, manic-depressive Texan who was also unexpectedly romantic, vulnerable, and intelligent.

Theatrical Poster of the Whole Wide World

Theatrical Poster of the Whole Wide World

His courtship of schoolteacher Novalyne Price was documented in Price’s memoir, One Who Walked Alone, and tenderly portrayed in the critically acclaimed and excellent The Whole Wide World, starring Vincent D’Onofrio and Renee Zellweger. Howard pioneered the genre of sword and sorcery in Weird Tales¸establishing a long-running correspondence and close friendship with H.P. Lovecraft (and penning tales within the Cthulhu mythos). He also built an imaginative world of Hyboria, tinged with Ancient Egyptian mythology and a pantheon of Lovecraftian demons in addition to the standard trappings of swords and sorcery (which R. Howard himself helped make standard).

I’m drawn to Age of Conan in part because it promises a rich and potent magic system, in which the character class of demonologist commands both powerful flame and shock spells as well as infernal pets. The character Conan distrusts magic because it is evil, and the designers of AoC have embraced this dark vision of sorcery to create a system in which simultaneously weaving too many spells results in a damaging and potentially fatal effect called soul corruption. The demonologist, as far as I can tell, is a fusion of WoW’s mage and warlock, without the generic backstory of the former and the slow-acting poison-based spells of the latter. This is not to mention the Herald of Xlatothl, who excels at both melee combat and magic, as well as the Priest of Set, who can cast powerful electrical spells.

In addition to powerful graphics that make me glad I have 512 megabytes of video ram, the game boasts an engaging combat system, which eschews the point-and-click repetition of WoW and Everquest for a more versatile setup in which number keys can unleash attacks in different directions. If one wants to play Age of Conan, it’s probably better to do so now, since many gamers have balked at the game’s early technical glitches, resulting in a consolidation of the European and North American servers. I hope this particular world lasts for a long time, but it’s best to seize the day, especially given the unfortunate demise of Hellgate: London.

If quests in MMO’s are to improve, then gamers will need to support designers who deviate creatively from the standard model, including the decision to build an elaborate single-player questline through the first twenty levels of AoC. So, if anyone is up for an occasional foray into Hyboria with me, I’d welcome the company. The previously described Funhouse design project is my “main quest” at the moment (actually, finding a job is my main quest, but the Funhouse is my main side quest). Still, let us not lose sight of the good things in life: to crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and hear the lamentation of their women. :)

Game Idea: The Funhouse

Game Ideas,

the funhouse, lost city

The Funhouse, Lost City

After the publication of Quests¸ I’ve been thinking for a while about a game project that would put into practice the various designs skillsets that I am trying to develop. The Aurora Toolset is one useful design tool, but it is only one of many options technologically. At the same time, acquiring skillsets without a project in which to showcase them is difficult and in some ways a little unproductive, since there is not much of a way to demonstrate one’s skills. Learning to program is fun and useful, and I’ll continue with it, but there ought to be a more tangible project to work towards in tandem with this. I’ve been slowly teaching myself C# and looking at various toolsets, starting today with the Unreal 2 Editor, and thinking about a mod group I could join or a project I could initiate myself.

I’ve always been fascinated with the virtual spaces of game design and their relationship to literary (and real) spaces, such as labyrinths and funhouses, so I was idly checking up on Austin’s most recent addition to its many haunted houses. The House of Torment is a run of the mill haunted house, distinguished only by its size and amount of gore, but it now has a sister haunted house: Illusion Manor. Ever since high school, I’ve often dreamed of an interactive funhouse that would hearken back to the adventure games and dungeon crawls of my youth.

Screenshot from The Demon's Forge, a surreal graphic adventure game

Screenshot from The Demon

(I wrote a short story about one a long time ago which had little plot but a lot of description, because it was the space that mattered, and not just as thin self-referential postmodern metaphor as in John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse. What mattered was the actual description of these dream-spaces, these architectural suspense novels that populated the amusement parks of the 1950’s but have all but vanished.) I’ve been disappointed that Richard Garriot’s famed interactive haunted house has been out of operation for years. But Illusion Manor is only in its second year, and what distinguishes it from the standard haunted house is that it requires participants to duck, crawl, jump, swing and otherwise navigate treacherous obstacles. Sounds a lot like a quest space, for those who have seen the last video that Kris Maxwell and I made.

So I was thinking about going to Illusion Manor for fun and inspiration. But, while making my first room in the Unreal 2 Editor, I noticed that the multi-colored grid on the wall could look just like a funhouse. And then I thought of an idea for a game in which players explore a surreal funhouse, built in the style of M.C. Escher and Giorgio de Chirico (the first featured near the end of our quest video and the second both my favorite painter and the direct visual inspiration for Ico, a game liberally featured in the same video).

The Melancholy and Mystery of a Street by De Chirico

The Melancholy and Mystery of a Street by De Chirico

This would be a virtual Illusion Manor, but not slavishly so. Rather, it would hearken back to the funhouses of the 1950’s, many of which are chronicled in loving detail on this site. The game would be at its core a 3-D platformer in which players had to stay alive while navigating perilous environments, like swaying bridges, tilting rooms, and rotating tunnels. In terms of narrative, the funhouse was built by a mad genius dying of cancer, evangelizing about the necessity of fun for the human spirit. But the key word here is mad genius, meaning that many of the challenges are deadly. The core mechanic still needs development. Because I’m fascinated with magic systems, I’m tempted to include one in this game (à la the spell-casting FPS action of Undying, itself built in a heavily modified Unreal 2 engine), but that may be another game. Puzzles fit more organically into a funhouse if one thinks of midway games, but shooting ducks or wacking moles isn’t quite what I have in mind. Standard adventure fare (collecting keys to hidden doors) is more along tonally appropriate lines, and the 3D element is essential for the labyrinthine feel that I’m envisioning. If the environmental challenges were sufficiently interesting, combat might not be essential, but it certainly would make the game more exciting. Killer clowns and maniacal magicians with the look of the recently remade 1970’s exploitation flick Wizard of Gore might be even better, especially if I decided to play up the haunted side of this funhouse. That might justify players having weapons and spells of some kind.

But the space I am absolutely sure of, so I’ll start with the level design and overall visual/conceptual look first.

I can do a lot of the design work myself in terms of putting together a design doc and the first level prototypes, as well as scripting events and working on a core mechanic. Help with concept art, 3-modelling, and eventually programming would be useful. I’ll eventually need to assemble a team for this one. That’s why I’d like to put this idea out in the open: because the risk of someone taking an idea is less significant than the benefit of working collaboratively.

So, to sum up here are the key points:

Game idea

  • Funhouse
  • Surreal
  • Escherian, De Chirico
  • Virtual Illusion Manor
  • Hearkens back to 1950’s funhouses
  • Built by mad genius dying of cancer, evangelizing about the necessity of fun for the human spirit
  • But b/c he is mad, a dangerous funhouse
  • Death is a possibility
  • A platformer
  • Swaying bridges, tilting rooms, staying alive while negotiating perilous environments

Magic Systems and Meaningful Scripting

Arcana Manor, Game Criticism, Game Ideas, magic systems, programming, , , ,
Runes in Eternal Darkness

Runes in the Magic System of Eternal Darkness

One of my next projects will be an article comparing the magic systems of various games, both conceptually and in terms of their underlying quantitative mechanics, as one example of how interactive symbolism can be programmed. As readers of Quests know, I regard programming as a form of procedural, interactive writing, which unfolds according to a set of rules that both constrain and facilitate player actions and interpretations. For example, the magic systems of role-playing games (tabletop, single-player, and MMO) comprise rigorous, quantitative rules for altering the physical and sometimes mental reality of a particular game world. Because these systems often involve glyphs, runes, and incantations, there are opportunities to encode meaning into a core game mechanic, as in the tabletop game Mage: The Awakening or the elaborate cosmology of Eternal Darkness.

Questions for research include:

  • How have different table-top RPG’s, CRPG’S, action-adventure games, and MMO’s implemented magic systems?
  • What are the origins of magic systems in fantasy novels? For example, the convention of having magic users memorize spells that are then erased from their memory after being cast derives from Fritz Leiber, but not from Tolkien (who eschewed direct references to the concept of magic in his work).
  • What is the relationship between game systems of magic and real occultist systems? (This treads on difficult ground, because of many gamers’ understandable discomfort with the association by fundamentalists of Dungeons and Dragons with black magic. However, Gary Gygax himself encouraged dungeon masters to consult encyclopedias of the occult as reference works, and Silicon Knights did thorough research into actual historical arcane systems in order to build the elaborate spell-casting system of Eternal Darkness. The table-top role-playing systems Nephilim and Mage: The Awakening both embrace mystical lore as metaphors explored through their game mechanics.)
  • Most importantly, as relates to programming practice:
  1. How did the World of Darkness mod (WoDMod) script the magic system of the Mage tabletop game into Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption?
  2. How do custom NWN scripters make their own spells?
  3. How could we as designers learn from past design of magic systems in order to make our own games’ magic systems both more fun and metaphorically resonant, so that we invest this aspect of fantasy with all its potential for symbolism rather than reducing it to the glitz and glamor of flashy visual effects without substance?

Castlevania, Legacy of Kain, and the Gothic in Gaming

Game Criticism, Uncategorized, ,

My mainstream Nintendo game franchise is Castlevania. Some people love The Legend of Zelda, others Metroid, but I’m a Castlevania fan. Which is not to say that I have played a lot of Castlevania: only half of Symphony of the Night and Curse of Darkness, although I have watched a friend play through most of Simon’s Quest.
One reason for my enthusiasm has to do with Castlevania’s haunting music and its classical influences, especially in the tracks “Vampire Killer” and “Bloody Tears,” which are touchstones of my musical tastes. (When I played in a rock band, I often gave “it sounds like Castlevania” as a reason for covering songs by a variety of bands, from Opeth to Iron Maiden. Yngwie Malmsteen’s neoclassical metal, characterized by its use of the melodic minor scale and techniques like pedal point, also strongly resembles Castlevania stylistically). This essay by a musicologist offers excellent, comprehensive analysis of Castlevania music.

Another reason for my love of Castlevania has to do with level design and the spaces of the Belmonts’ quests, which were based in part on actual castles.

The third and most important reason for my love of Castlevania is that it is a classic example of Gothic gaming. Laurie N. Taylor is the authority on survival horror games and their relationship to the Gothic, which was her dissertation topic. My understanding of the Gothic is much less rigorous and detailed than Laurie’s, but my definition does involve a set of criteria.

By a Gothic game, I mean one that is
• Darkly romantic
• Horror influenced
• Sometimes haunted by demonic overtones and/or undertones
• Inclusive of vampires, werewolves, angels, demons, and black magic
• Often set in a castle, dungeon, dark forest
• Brooded over by an atmosphere of mystery and the arcane which lends itself to symbolism.

Of Gothic games, I am currently most interested in the Legacy of Kain series, of which I have played all of Blood Omen: The Legacy of Kain as well as parts of Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance. In terms of the relationship between gaming and literature, I am drawn to the Legacy of Kain series and its Miltonic overtones, as alluded to in the epigraph to Andrew Plotkin (a.k.a. Zarf’s) chronology of this time-bending franchise. Plotkin heads his diagram with the quotation:

“We attempt to trace the history of Raziel, who was cast down, and that ancient device which is lately called the Soul Reaver.”

Plotkin’s eighteenth-century prose style is consciously Miltonic, especially in the phrase “who was cast down.” The parallel is between Raziel and Milton’s Lucifer: both rebels against a divine being whose motives and actions are sinister and suspect, perhaps conferring upon the fallen angels the status of romantic hero or anti-hero.


I’ll have more to say about the Gothic in gaming and its relationship to design as these blog entries continue.

Reviews and Mentions of Quests

Quests Book,

Below is a list of reviews and mentions of Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives. They were graciously collected and excerpted in this format by my publisher, AK Peters.

Reviews

Slashdot (External Link)

September 2008

Jeff Howard’s Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narrative is an exploration of … quests in both literary and gaming contexts, comparing and contrasting their appearances in each medium and striving to bring the two worlds closer together by imbuing game quests with more meaning. … I look forward to the dialog his book will inspire. He would have us re-examine the game quest in terms of the narrative quest, and apply those lessons to gaming. The book is well worth a read, both as a lesson plan for making the activity of questing more meaningful, as well as a first step towards giving games that rely heavily on quests—especially MMOS—more meaningful goals.

A reader at GoodReads.com:

“A must-have for every game designer or anyone who wants to understand questing in a more sophisticated way. This book has it all – mythology, Joseph Campbell, Carl Gustav Jung, some tutorials and a lot of wisdom :) Another shining piece in my bookshelf.”

Included on the amazon.com list “Must Read Books for Aspiring Game Designers” by Sean M. Baity, Senior Designer at Electronic Arts

Jill Walker Rettberg at jill/txt (External Link)

August 2008

If you’re doing work on role-playing games of any kind, or planning to teach a course [on RPGs] of your own, this is a great resource.

Clay Spinuzzi (External Link)

May 2008

“It’s an unusual book, but an illuminating one within these areas.”

Andrew Dobbs at Design(ish) (External Link)

May 2008

“According to Jeff Howard …, “a quest is a journey across a symbolic, fantastic landscape in which a protagonist or player collects objects and talks to characters in order to overcome challenges and achieve a meaningful goal.” The most important part of this definition comes at the end, as I believe the foundation of the quest journey is “to overcome challenges and achieve a meaningful goal.” Developing a successful quest means creating a meaningful interaction for the player.”

Michael Abbott at the Brainy Gamer (External Link)

April 2008

“Certain scholars like Jeff Howard … and Matt Barton … have written rich, analytical, and well-annotated books on the subject, and I will use both in my course.”

Games Across Media (External Link)

March 2008

“This unique take on quests, incorporating literary and digital theory, provides an excellent resource for game developers. Focused on both the theory and practice of the four main aspects of quests (spaces, objects, actors, and challenges) each theoretical section is followed by a practical section that contains exercises using the Neverwinter Nights Aurora Toolset.” (Barnes & Noble)

Gameology (External Link)

February 2008

“Quests is an excellent tool for teachers … for teaching games, media, writing, or other areas that include theory and application. Many other books exist that are excellent for game studies classes and for game creation classes …, but Quests fills the particular niche of classes that often have titles like ”introduction to media studies,“ ”writing for new media,“ ”first (or second, or later) semester writing across the curriculum.“ Quests would also be an excellent choice as a supplemental text for more advanced classes, helping graduate students or faculty connect their research areas to new ways to represent, research, and teach using games.”

grand TEXT auto (External Link)

February 2008

“Jeff Howard’s Quests is an incisive and highly accessible book that leads the reader on an exploration of literature, computer games, and a connection between them.”

Daniel Erickson, Principal Lead Writer, BioWare Austin

February 2008

“Howard impressively handles bridging the gap between interactive fiction and classical literature with a thoroughly researched and well-argued treatise that focuses itself squarely on the two mediums’ connections and similarities.”

Nick Montfort, Assistant Professor of Digital Media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

February 2008

“Jeff Howard’s Quests is an incisive and highly accessible book that leads the reader on an exploration of literature, computer games, and a connection between them. Howard includes valuable tutorials and exercises which draw on literary works, including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, while also dealing with the specifics of how to use tools to create computer RPG modules. The book offers useful discussion of the history of adventure games and detailed analysis of quest elements using concepts from narrative theory, poetics, game studies, and other fields. Quests equips students and scholars as they journey onward to read, play, and fashion games and narratives.”

Dr. Susana Tosca, Associate Professor, IT University of Copenhagen

February 2008

Howard is a true Renaissance man in these electronic times. He merges his knowledge and love of literature with his enthusiasm for computer games and the unexplored possibilities of the new medium. Human intellectual activity has a common base, be it expressed in the form of poems or computer games, and Howard shows us some of the most stunning connections between the old form of quest literature and the new challenges of games.“

Introduction

Quests Book,

Hi. I’m Jeff Howard, author of Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives. I received my Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007. My dissertation was about Gnosticism, postmodern fiction, and computer-assisted teaching. Then, I wrote Quests, a book about strategies for designing meaningful quests in games.