Life at an underground game company.
Posts tagged Sprites
Welcome to the new staff.
07 months ago
Double Cluepon has added again to its numbers. We have added three new folks to the fold. Each of them brings their own unique stamp to what we are doing, and where we are going. So, let’s get down to it!
* Caelum: Caelum is our new Swiss army knife. Since coming aboard, he and Uriel have streamlined our prop production. But he also has proficiency when it comes to sound production. His primary project is well on its way: building the sound effects library for Emerald Kingdom. Between doing iso renders in Maya, and creating our catalog of sound he’s a busy little bee. You can find him on twitter too! (@CaelumDC)
* Zeruel: Our new creature designer. Zeruel has been creating a complete bestiary for Emerald Kingdom, from the ground up. When it comes to creating monsters and creatures, she has shown a zeal and aptitude not often seen. She has also been working to simplify some of the existing creatures, so as to make Sandalphon’s job easier.
* Castiel: Castiel is our new writing director. She has taken over all of the writing duties for Emerald Kingdom, and is plowing through current stuff while preparing to carry the ball over the goal line. Castiel comes to us highly recommended, and we look forward to not only the the final rewrite of the main piece of story…where it goes from there.
So, you know. Let’s give them all a big welcome.They have all received their orientation, and their complimentary straightjacket. =)
Win some swag. Have some info!
01 year ago
Okay boys and girls!
We want to start talking more about Emerald Kingdom. One of the best ways to do that will be with forums. To that end, we are announcing the opening of the Emerald Kingdom Forums.
And, because we like making things here, we want to hear from you. We also want to hear from your friends. Emerald Kingdom is starting to hurtle towards alpha, and we want to see what some of you folks think and want. So, to start the dialog and get you guys into the forums…we are offering you the chance to win some swag from us.
For the person who refers the most friends to the Forums, who sign up and post…we will send you a Double Cluepon T-Shirt. We will even sign it if you want. The person who refers the second highest number of people will also get a T Shirt, but…we hate signing clothing…so, no hand signed shirt for the runner up.
Both winners will also receive a color character signed by Uriel. How will you know which character you want? Easy…by the end of January, you will know.
But, you may ask…how will we know who referred who? In the box under TimeZone…have them put your forum name, or your DeviantArt, Twitter, Facebook…etc. We will tally up the referrals on Jan 31st. Winners will be the ones with the most, and second most number of people who used you as the referral. See below:
Double Cluepon staff, and their immediate families are ineligible. Referrals from the blog, and our other channels such as FB, dA are also ineligible. So, get signed up, and get your friends to sign up! The more the merrier. The small print is: we will know if you try to stack the referrals. You will be disqualified if you try. =)
In the coming week, we will be talking about Emerald Kingdom’s story, its features, character bios, and the coming Comic…Twin Perennial.So, if you want to know more…the forums are the place.
A tale of attributes and marks
21 year ago
by Azrael
in Emerald Kingdom
The problem with a lot of MMORPG’s is that within a month or six, there are recipes for how to build this type, or that type. Where is the fun in that? We here consider the discovery of this or that in relation to character development to be a challenge, and part of the game itself. There is absolutely no benefit to being able to simply follow a recipe for building your character. There is another big thing at play here: experimentation. One of the things I actually like about testing abilities is doing so with others. Experimentation with skills, attributes and abilities with friends is always fun.
So, what are we doing with the character system in Emerald Kingdom? A number of fun things. Let me break out a few things here:
- No numeric stats: This one is easy. Public facing numerics are, in our opinion, bad. They lead to recipes, but more than that, they lead to stat whoring. We don’t like stat whoring. It annoys us. In place of client facing numerics, we will simply move the numbers to the back end, and used named attributes. There are other games which do this, so we are not exactly breaking a mold here.
- Your attributes and stats are not static: they can go up, they can go down. Same with skills. There will be no class locking in Emerald Kingdom. Mainly because, we don’t feel you should have to start over if you are unhappy. This, along with static and numeric stats that can’t be changed amounts to punching the player.
- Plug in attributes: we are working on a system where you can combine the usual and basic six attributes (STR, DEX, INT, VIT, CHA, LUK) into different permutations. Originally, we started with a table like this:
| STR
DEX |
DEX
STR |
CHA
STR |
LUK
STR |
INT
STR |
VIT
STR |
| STR
CHA |
DEX
CHA |
CHA
DEX |
LUK
CHA |
INT
CHA |
VIT
CHA |
| STR
LUK |
DEX
LUK |
CHA
LUK |
LUK
DEX |
INT
LUK |
VIT
LUK |
| STR
INT |
DEX
INT |
CHA
INT |
LUK
INT |
INT
DEX |
VIT
INT |
| STR
VIT |
DEX
VIT |
CHA
VIT |
LUK
VIT |
INT
VIT |
VIT
DEX |
But then, someone (Amesha) pointed out something crucial…
“Unless you plan to weight one stat in each pair more than the other (which I didn’t think you were) those would be a duplicate combination. To put it another way, is 1 + 2 is the same as 2 + 1?”
Great point. We let that sit for awhile, to think about it. We came up with another wonderful table at that point, (this time with some ideas for the names of the stats):
| STR | DEX | CHA | LUK | INT | VIT | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STR | NULL | Power | Magnetism | Appearance | Resoluteness | Vigor |
| DEX | NULL | NULL | Artistry | Aptitude | Cleverness | Quickness |
| CHA | NULL | — | NULL | Glamor | Charm | Serendipity |
| LUK | NULL | — | — | NULL | Guile | Presence |
| INT | NULL | — | — | — | NULL | Verve |
| VIT | NULL | — | — | — | — | NULL |
But then, as we were getting StoryTeller to connect to the main server, I made mention of the whole 1+2 = or != to 2+1 argument. To which someone pointed out: using a system where STR+DEX does something different than DEX+STR would make for an awesome discovery moment for a player. Especially because there are no numerics visible to the player. It provides for an “oh wow” moment. Another made a comment that, until this is play tested we have no real way of knowing.
I think, however…this is how I am going to lean in terms of Attributes. So, we will probably wind up with a table that looks like:
| STR | DEX | CHA | LUK | INT | VIT | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STR | NULL | Power | Magnetism | Appearance | Resoluteness | Vigor |
| DEX | Named | NULL | Artistry | Aptitude | Cleverness | Quickness |
| CHA | Named | Named | NULL | Glamor | Charm | Serendipity |
| LUK | Named | Named | Named | NULL | Guile | Presence |
| INT | Named | Named | Named | Named | NULL | Verve |
| VIT | Named | Named | Named | Named | Named | NULL |
Of course, we will need to come up with some more names for attribute permutations. Another thing we will have to think about is, which stat wins in a permutation? Backend wise, if STR has a weighted average score higher than DEX, how does that work not only for STR+DEX, but how does that affect DEX+STR? Something we need to carefully think about. But in the end this will give us a great spread for the Mark system.
For every major NPC (In the world of Emerald Kingdom, these are called “Sprites”, not to be confused with the term “sprite” or gamesprite”), there is a mark that can be attained. Confusia can mark a player with “The mark of curiousity”, Beatrice has the “Mark of Beatrice”, etc. These will act as attainable buffs for attributes and skills. This is important, because it allows for a great deal of flexibility. Marks will have other subtle effects as well, in terms of how people or other NPC’s view you in the world. People will percieve you differently based on whether you have been marked by say, Colleda as opposed to Taranis.
The Attribute and Skill system is still in the design phase, to be sure. But we have some pretty nifty ideas we want to play with here. Balancing it will be a big thing on the to-do list. But, overall…we believe it’s going to allow for maximum customization, without the need for a really complex interface to do so.
Now to come up with some more names for that table…
C2E2 REPRESENT!
01 year ago
Joan Varitek will be at C2E2, which starts today and goes on through the weekend. While there, she will be promoting Double Cluepon, and specifically Emerald Kingdom. She has an entire run of custom made character cards from Emerald Kingdom. We did a set of 6. They are quite nice, we are proud of them. They also include one character we have not yet released to the public.
The back contains the Sprite name, a byline and some information about Emerald Kingdom.
Joan will be in the Artists Alley, at table G8. While there, you should make it a point to look at, and buy buy buy some of her most awesome artwork.
The under-representation of women and girls in games.
01 year ago
The difference between indie houses and the big corporate machine: indie houses innovate, corporate machines generate.
You already knew this, right? One area where this smacks hardest is the role of the women in games. Recently, I saw a retweet Brooke did from cuppy of Metaplace fame.
You can find the direct link here. But the main gist of it…
- *whine* Women are HARD.
- *whine* Women are EXPENSIVE.
- *whine* We cant break stuff if we put women in games.
- *whine* Games would be so much more profound if we didnt have to think about gender. (They actually used Ms. Pac-Man as an example. LOLWUT?)
We here at Double Cluepon have something to say about that…
- What a load of crap. Seriously. What a complete load of utter crap. (It’s 2010, and you’re using the same excuses people use to keep women from advancing in other areas. Thanks for injecting it in game design, an area these attitudes have no place in.)
- What an excuse to not innovate.
- Women should not be excluded because of the outcome of a biological circumstance.
- Women are awesome characters, and should be used more, not less often.
This is where indie houses come in. When you want to generate money, you use the tried and true formula. When you want to innovate, you get all experimenty. =) This is where love of game design comes into play. There is room for both camps, to be sure. That being said, I will repeat here, my response to Brooke:
We know about this problem, and we plan to do something about it.
Emerald Kingdom has the average male representation. However, it has an above average female representation. The background, the story, the content…we wanted something different. Not for the sake of being different, but because doing it made sense. Sprites (our Major NPC Class) in Emerald Kingdom? There are 26 main Sprites handling skill Marks. Out of those 26: 16 are female, 10 are male. Is the story and content totally centered around the feminine aspect of things? Certainly not. I can tell you straight up: there is definitely something for everybody. But do males need to dominate? Do they need to be there to “drive the game” or “push the story?”
Nope. They sure do not. Women can be just as evil as the men. They can be just as conniving. They can also be just as kind, and spirited. Beatrice, Avatea, Para and Confusia…Pearly…Thrynity. Notice a theme here? We are not making a female centric game, but we are paying attention, not only to our market…
We are paying attention to a far more important opportunity: the opportunity to innovate.
As the Sprites are the major NPC’s of the game, and interaction with them will be a Big Thing, it’s important to get story and character design right. I am sure there are those out there that believe doing something more male centric is a slam dunk. I am sure you could find elevendy billion focus groups to agree with that. But, honestly? Where is the fun in that? What’s more, if you are NOT having fun in this business, and wont eat your own dog food…
You have no business designing games in the first place. At the very least, you need to do some serious soul searching.
So, wrapping up: we know about this issue. We think we can represent women, and men…in a strong manner, and in such a way that does not relegate women to the role of decorated fluff.
