In the image above, some Ren’Py code (people familiar with python might recognize some keywords/syntax) from my current project Loren Amazon Princess in my preferred editor, SciTe.

Ren’Py was created by Tom Rothamel, as a tool to help everyone to create visual novel games, with very little or no coding knowledge required. I first learned and started using it around Summer 2008, and since that year it has evolved quite a lot. So it’s been 3 years and half since I started using it, and right now I can prototype many games rather quickly, even if works better for certain kind of games: heavily story based, with no real-time animations and of course 2d, since Ren’Py is a 2d game tool.

Currently Ren’Py is available for PC, Mac, Linux and is still experimental on Android, though it should be available sometimes in the future. There’s no iOS version planned at the moment of writing, even if the author seems to be thinking about it.

The language

Ren’Py, as the name suggest is based on Pygame and Python, which I consider the most advanced language available today. Simple, concise, but at same time powerful and easy to use.

It was love at first sight for me: I was used to type the Divine Comedy in C/C++ to load a .csv or do string operations, and when I realized how quick was to develop with python I immediately started to learn it, and it was very simple process (thanks also to the online documentation).

Ren’Py is NOT a visual tool. You don’t use the mouse to place UI. You use an IDE, currently available are SciTe or Jedit. This might discourage many people who first approach it, especially if they’re not coders but are used to play with Flash, Gamemaker, Stencyl or other visual creating tools. However, you soon realize that for certain kind of games there’s nothing better than Ren’Py and you don’t actually need a visual editor at all.

As I said the language was designed with visual novels in mind: though you can use it also for any story-based game like dating sim, RPG games, or adventures with some extra coding.

Recently a new Screen Language and ATL (Advanced Transform Language) were introduced, making the creation of interactive screens and special effects (zoom, rotation, movement, etc) even easier.

The Good

Very simple cross-platform capability. Since python is an interpreted language, this means that you can build the game for the three platforms (PC, Mac, Linux) with ONE CLICK. This is simply amazing! And you don’t have to worry for different behaviors: if the game works in one platform, it will behave the same in another. This was a big plus for me since I was used to have mysterious bugs on Mac when coding in C and Xcode, that weren’t present on PC.

With Ren’Py, I went as far as copying new .rpyc (Ren’Py compiled source scripts) directly into the zip (Mac version) or the tar.gz (Linux versions) from my Windows computer, without rebuilding the games and it worked, I didn’t encounter any problem. So for example you can develop for Pc, Mac and Linux without the need to buy a Mac or have a machine with Linux installed.

Powerful language and syntax. The language is really simple and intuitive. Remember that it’s a tool specialized for Visual Novels, but you can effectively write most 2d games with it. Probably the only ones that I wouldn’t reccommend coding are those who rely on real-time movement, like a RTS, shooter, or similar. Note that is still possible to make that kind of games, but I would pick another tool honestly.

Still for any other 2d game it’s really a great solution. Very strong GUI system, combined with the ease of use of python makes this a great tool.

Easy to debug. In most other languages, debugging is a pain. Not just finding the bug, but finding out which line of code cause it. With Ren’Py thanks to Python you get very detailed crash reports, telling you exactly where the problem is.

Magic reloading and rollback system. Those are without any doubts the BEST features I’ve seen in ANY 2d development engine. Not even Unity has something so powerful. What is that, you might ask? First, the reload: since python is a scripted language, you can ANYTIME (and I mean literally anytime) hit shift+R and see immediately the changes you’ve made to the current screen.

The rollback system instead is something inherited by the visual novel mechanics, but that works surprisingly well even to debug. In practice, the program stores the path you have choosen, and memorizes XX amount of “steps”. This was doen so that the player could “rollback” with the mousewheel or keys, to a previous situation in the game story. But it works even for coding!

Trying to explain better: if you start the game, then visit in order: screen 99, do action 32, screen 32, click button 2, screen 12, type your name, screen 42, click button 5. Can you remember that? the game can, and provides you with a way to go back, a sort of “Undo” but you can use it when directly playing the game in debug mode!

I know that even in Unity you can modify the game world with the 3d world editor and see the changes, but here I mean something different: you can see the changes without having to EXIT the game, and restart.

A few simple examples:

case A: you’ve been testing for 6h a complex RPG. You see a visual bug. You look in the code, find that a button was aligned badly, change the code and reload. You see the change immediately, and go on testing. “Flawless Victory”.

case B: you’ve been testing for 6h a complex RPG. You click “done” and the next screen crashes. Thanks to Python built-in descriptive crash you see where the problem was, in previous screen you assigned a impossible value. You do a rollback, in practice executing an Undo of all executed code, then fix the bug in the source with the game still running, reload, and go on with the testing. “Epic Win”.

And the documentation? it’s good, at least for the basic features.

The Bad

As I said, there’s no editor apart an IDE. There is no intellisense/code completion, and you cannot browse classes or labels (some people managed to use Eclipse or other tools for python to code with it, but it’s definitely a hack). This is definitely something that could be improved, since in particular in the first weeks of use you can’t remember all the commands by memory and you’ll be looking at the documentation extensively.

Bad documentation for the most advanced features. How does Sprites work? What is im.ConditionSwitch? and so on. The documentation explains everything, but sometimes seems written like if the author assumes the reader is a good coder/clever as him, but often that’s not the case I consider myself an average coder but surely not a beginner, and sometimes I have hard time to understand how some of this stuff works. But it’s not bad as it was in the early days when documentation was really scarce!

It’s an hobbyst project. Don’t get me wrong: the author is doing an awesome job trying to reply to all the support requests, mainly done through the specific Lemmasoft forum dedicated to Ren’Py. However it still is, at least for now, an hobbyst project. The author doesn’t make any money from it, and so obviously there’s no guarantee that you’ll get an answer to your question. I repeat, he is doing the best he can, and sometimes other people help answering the most common questions, but still you must not expect to get immediate responses to your problems.

Personally, I’d love to see Ren’Py become a professional tool, with full support of deployment for Android/iOS, and maybe future porting to HTML5 and more. I am sure many other gamedevelopers even outside of the “visual novel / dating sim circle” would pick it up because of its features.

In conclusion

Ren’Py is a tool with double face. If you want simply to use it for what was made for, it will do the job without problems and is simply the best visual novel/dating sim system around, at least for desktop computers.

If you’re a more advanced coder and want to build simulation games, strategy games, rpg games, or any 2d game that doesn’t need a lot of things moving on the screen (but even in that case, you could make it) you’ll be surprised by the ease of use and powerful features that Ren’Py has to offer, combining the power of Python with one of the best GUI / scripting systems I’ve seen in modern 2d libraries.

Yes, to use it in advanced mode it has a steep learning curve, but once you get the grasp of it, is really hard to get back to… anything else. I had to do some C coding last week, and wondered why the “rollback” wasn’t working, or why I couldn’t just hit Shift+R to see instantly the changes I’ve made!

At least this was my experience. If I was able to release 12 games in three years and half (almost one every 4 months) it’s only because I discovered this powerful tool. Thanks again to Tom Rothamel for the incredible piece of software he managed to create!

In the photo above my cat Grillo sleeping deeply with a stuffed toy near him

Now you might wonder why I picked that title for my post? As you know I’ve always worked on many games at once, as a way to keep up with the occasional disappearances of artists. However, while this method is working well for my visual novel, dating sim and life simulation games, for RPGs is a different story. I’ve noticed that is very hard to keep focused on doing more than one RPG at once (lol, not a surprise!) so I’ve decided that, to avoid releasing poor/mediocre games, I won’t be working on more than one RPG a year!

This doesn’t include expansions or even sequels like Planet Stronghold: Warzone. When/if I can re-use most of the gameplay and rules of a previous RPG, then I believe that is possible to make even two a year, but if I have to create a new RPG from scratch… that’s not possible!

I am not talking only about the coding. The coding is a tough part of RPGs, that’s for sure, but what makes really hard to release a good one is the amount of content needed. I dare to say (and I’m sure most game developers will agree with me) that a RPG is the kind of game that requires more work of all the game genres. You need a story. You need several quests, which are basically subplots, and they need to fit in the main story and not be just stupid “kill 10 rats” quests (having some of them are OK, but not all quests should be like that). There’s need of art, lots of art. Since I do mainly 2d games, every enemy is a sprite. How many enemies a RPG have? Planet Stronghold has 40, though some re-use the basic shape changing color/weapons. Loren RPG, my upcoming fantasy RPG will have 40-50 enemies as well, but they will be all different ones! So that’s already a lot of work just for the art.

And last but not least, testing. Unless the RPG you’re making is very linear and has “casual gameplay” (very simple rules), the testing will be a major pain ! You have to take into account every possible variable and combination, and often if you don’t ,you end up with very mysterious bugs and unhappy customers (though I have to say that my RPG buyers were much more supportive than those of other games genres!).

So, what does this means in practice? that while I’ll keep artists working on Undead Lily’s artwork, I will release Loren RPG first, and Undead Lily next year. This way, I’ll be able to release two quality products. Loren RPG is at good point – even if I keep adding “just one more enemy” since a month, the plot writing is going steadly and the battle system coding is almost finished. As I announced in my forums, once the RPG framework reaches a decent state I plan to release a small alpha to get user feedback and do some testing.

As for Planet Stronghold: Warzone, the artist said that after this last convention, she will work fulltime on it. There’s need of quite some art, new enemies, a new playable character to replace the old Bellamy, and more CGs scenes for the romances. I don’t have any planned release date, my idea is to keep this game going on parallel with the others and see when is finished. As I said, since I can reuse a good part of the previous Planet Stronghold code/rules/system, this game will be easier/quicker to produce than Loren RPG or Undead Lily.

So the plan is to try finishing Loren RPG by end of this year (no guarantees) and Undead Lily for summer next year, while Planet Stronghold: Warzone might really be finished anytime between the two. Obviously, I’ll keep releasing visual novel and dating/life sim in the meanwhile, like I did this year.

It’s hard to write interesting dialogues that aren’t banal (and for a non-english speaker like me, is even more difficult!). In the screenshot above, Rumi Kai poses a good question to the player: she struggles between her interest in medicine and healing, and her innate destructive powers. She asks herself what is more honorable: to harm, or to heal?

That is an example from the various romance subplot I’m currently writing right now for my sci-fi RPG game “Planet Stronghold” which should be out at end of this month (with another beta 0.9 release around mid-January).

Dialogues and story apart, another aspect why RPGs are so hard to come by is gameplay balancing. I tested this game more than any other game I’ve ever made. Partly because it’s fun (so that’s a good sign!) and partly because every update, I regularly unbalanced the game

How this can happen? Easily, I’ll make you an example. The Psionic Power “Harm” at high level can do a lot of damage. Like even 100hp of damage. This would mean that some monsters could be killed with one attempt! That was bad for gameplay balancing of course, so I raised the Psionic Points cost (think of it like if is Mana in fantasy RPGs). Problem is that a few weeks later, I realized that even with higher mana cost, if you had two Psionics you could still do 200hp of damage even to boss enemies! A boss that can be defeated so easily with just two hits would make the game a bit ridiculous

So, my idea was to introduce enemy evasion bonus. Some enemy have a very high evasion value, that doesn’t apply only to avoiding weapon shots but also Psionic Powers. So before the Harm would always hit the target. Instead now you could miss the enemy, and since every attempt costs high amount of PP, that would balance the game well. The problem was that I forgot to lower the PP cost, making the game insanely difficult to play!

This is just an example of how two small changes would affect the whole game! So, if you make a RPG, everytime you introduce a game/ruleset change, think about all possible secondary effects otherwise you’ll start hear (rightful) complains from people in your forums

In the picture above, Othello sitting in a flower vase with a blossoming cherry tree in the background. Took it in my previous home, during spring.

Sometimes when I have a little time I play other games. Recently I bought Alpha Protocol, and was completely fascinated by it (no wonder, Obsidian is one of the best AAA developers around). It interested me a lot because of the RPG/FPS mix, but mostly because of the dialogue system and the multiple paths/branching typical of VNs.

Here is the problem. The game promises lots of different paths, every decision influences the story, and so on. And it’s TRUE. The point is – is useful? Who is going to replay the game from beginning to see what he has missed (and no guarantees that he will really see everything) ? Very FEW people, believe me. Also, in a FPS/RPG you can’t just skip the dialogues forward like in my Renpy games, so you can’t just do a “quick replay” to see what you have missed.

So I thought if wouldn’t have been a wiser choice to have still some branching, but not so many. Or that would lead to a different subplot completely, like I did with Bionic Heart. Such games should either be quickly replayable to let the player see what he missed, or tell the player “Hey, save now because there’s a big branch of the plot now, so you can reload this savegame later and pick a different direction to see what you have missed”.

I watched on youtube many videos of Alpha Protocol just to see what I had missed, because I really couldn’t afford to replay the whole thing from the beginning. It felt like a “waste of time and resources” to me. The devs could have done a longer game (is already long, but could be even longer) instead of making it so “free-play”. After all, in a story-based game, is more important to KNOW that you can have 50 different endings but that you probably will never replay it to see them all (especially if you can’t play fast-forward), or that the story is much longer?

I’m sure most players would pick the second option. That’s why in my upcoming RPG Planet Stronghold I haven’t opted to have lots of different paths: it will have a common main plot, but with missions/quest that let you have some freedom (do them in any order you want) and several romance subplots that are optional, but can be done anytime after chapter4, without the need to restart from beginning (except if you want to see the romance from another gender). In practice, save the game at beginning of chapter 4 and you can then reload it and see all possible endings/branches for your gender.

Speaking of Planet Stronghold, the next version 0.8 will be out hopefully next week, I don’t know the exact day yet because I had some eyesight problem recently, and with the Christmas busy schedule you can never know. Anyway, as I wrote several times, with version 0.8 the pre-order price will increase permanently to $19.99 so if you are interested in the game, be sure to buy it now

Why? I think is because I aged up, am working full-time, and in general I’m used to a more “casual” gameplay (even if the right term would be “less hardcore”, not really casual). Just as example, I liked Torchlight MUCH more… and that’s an action RPG.

What does this means? I asked myself. Probably several things:

• as I said, I’m no longer a teenager or young adult (I’m only 36 but well, I can clearly see that my interests,tastes are different from when I was 28-29 years old). Before, I had lot of free time, so reading a 100 pages manual for me was FUN, not a pain And a game like ToEE was fine, even if had lots of texts to read, even if had a complex inventory and spell management, and so on. Right now, that scares me off!
• the gameplay of CRPGs evolved a lot. Now, you’re used to see several improvement/behaviour that if are missing really annoys you. Like moving the mouse over an item, and instantly see the difference with the one currently equipped in the appropriate slot (this was a feature requested from a user to my upcoming RPG Planet Stronghold and indeed, is very useful but also EXPECTED from nowadays players). So, there’s a long list of things, more or less important, that now players assume will be present by default in a game. And if they don’t find it, they feel frustrated/annoyed!
• Party based vs single character and real-time vs turn based. Most old CRPG were party and turn based. Most of new CRPG are real-time and single player based (you can still have a party, but the NPC AI usually is good enough to fight in your place). When I was playing Mass Effect 2 in particular, I almost never cared of what my other companion were doing. I was just fighting on my own, assuming they would do their part

Of course, not everyone will share the same thoughts as me. But I was a bit surprised to discover how much my gaming tastes have changed in just 7 years! And I can somehow understand why all the new titles are more action oriented, or have excellent GUI system that let you do most of the actions with very few clicks.

However, I think you can still have a good gameplay, rule system, and variety even using the good old turn-based or an hybrid approach like real-time with possibility of pause. A good example is Dragon Age, The Witcher and Drakensang. The last two in particular IMHO represent a very good example of “old-school approach” into a “new fashion” of CRPG. They have still many statistics, items, but the interface is not as clumsy as ToEE. They have lots of tactical challenges but still, you aren’t forced by a turn-based system.

Don’t get me wrong, ToEE is still a great title and I wish Troika Games would still be here today, I’m sure they would make a RPG that would kick Bioware’s ass For my upcoming titles though, I think will try a more real-time approach, both for RPGs and also strategy/management games like the Heileen spin-off that I should start prototyping very soon.

The red cat above is Miele (in italian Honey), our oldest cat (almost 9 years old!) relaxing on the bed.

Things are going pretty well with Planet Stronghold. Yesterday I made some big changes both in the Psionic Skills and in the level-up increase of HP/PP. This latest change was made because I used a cheat mode to raise my characters up to level 20 (which probably won’t even be possible to reach in the game, since I hope it does well enough so that I can do an add-on). Then I checked how they could be the characters at level 20, how many HP/PP they had, and I allocated all the Skill Points. The difference between the various classes wasn’t much noticeable! At level 20, playing at easy level, you get 20 x 5 skill points, so 100 skill points that increase each skill by 2. So in theory I could maximize any skill – a soldier could get to level 200 of Psionics for example!

While I like not to have too much restriction, I don’t want the class pick being totally useless. So I’m thinking to change the game so that some skills have a maximum cap based on your class. For example a Soldier could never get Psionics above a value of 50, and a Scout could never get Heavy Weapon skill above 50, and so on. I think it makes more sense to put some hard limits, so you can still create somehow “hybrid classes” but not change them completely!

The second big change I made is the Psionic Skills themselves. Right now, most were focused on two simple thing: Heal and Harm. Surely, doing damage, and healing HP are the basics for ANY RPG. However the gameplay would soon be repetitive, so I introduced new changes:

• PROTECT – “Increases friendly target’s armor value vs all kind of damage”. This way even if you don’t have the right armor, your psionics can protect you
• DISRUPT – “Decreases enemy target’s armor value vs all kind of damage”. This way even if you don’t have the right weapon, your psionics can disrupt enemy armors
• CURE – “Removes any negative condition (confused, shocked, etc) from friendly target.” Very useful when you encounter enemies that Shock, Fatigue or Confuse your heroes
• SHOCK – “Shocks enemy target stunning him for XX turns. Stunned enemies won’t attack.” This is also very important, preventing enemies from attacking completely. Of course, it’s not easy to be successful, especially at lower levels.
• FATIGUE – “Attempts to fatigue a single enemy target for XX turns, with a success rate of YY%%. Tired enemies won’t regenerate skill points.”. This is essential for some enemies that have very powerful Special Attacks. Note that you cannot prevent them from using it completely, but once they have used you can slow down their skill points regeneration.
• RESTORE – “Brings an hero back from his knockout state, restoring XX%% of total hp.” – You can use this even at lower level, and can make really the difference from winning/losing a fight

The changes above greatly improve the gameplay especially at HARD level. At easy level, doesn’t change much (I expect only those interested in the story to play at easy level!). But already at normal, and in particular hard level you can immediately see the difference. When before you could win a fight just by “raw force”, dealing damage and healing, now you can also win with cleverly used skills.

For example at hard level winning the training test if you are a psionic is really hard when you face Roboant-06 because of his Phasor Blast. Now with Fatigue you can slow down the amount of attack, or with Shock you can prevent him from attacking completely. The restore is also interesting because it works even at lower level (even if with high failure rate).

I also changed the concentration multiplier. Before the basic heal was 10 PP, the medium 20PP and the maximum 30PP. The problem is that already at low level you could heal for big amounts using 30PP. Now the concentration multiplier is: low 10PP, medium 30PP, high 50PP. This simple change makes possible to still use the first two at lower levels (below level 7-8) but to use the big healing you need to be able to spend 50PP (and this also prevents non Psionics classes from using strong Heal/Harm psionics).

Overall I’m quite satisfied. When before you would just use Psionics to Heal/Harm, now you can decide if to save their PP to use the new Psionic Skills that can really make hard battles easier if used correctly!

I’ve also implemented several minor changes suggested by “Iselwin” in my forums, like:

• the window color is now BLUE for your party attack/actions, and RED for enemy
• the message windows now is independent from the main action, reducing completely some delays during battles (I also added a nice fade in/out effect)
• you can easily compare two weapons/armors in the inventory, because I display in brackets the values of the currently equipped one

Overall was a pretty productive week! Next week will go on with the plot and try to have a version 0.8 live by end of the month with a lot of new stuff!

1. RPG (roleplaying) games (included my games Magic Stones, Spirited Heart and hopefully will include also my upcoming Planet Stronghold)
2. Dating Sims – (included my games Summer Session and Flower Shop)
3. Sports Simulations – (included my games The Goalkeeper, Universal Soccer Manager 2 and Universal Boxing Manager)
4. Visual Novels – (included my games Heileen 1 & 2 , College Romance and Bionic Heart)
5. Strategy/Simulations – (included my games TV Station Manager and Supernova 2: Spacewar)

those represents total sales though, and are somewhat misleading because there are other factors to consider. First, in the visual novel category there are 4 games but the sales difference vs the strategy/simulation isn’t so big, so each individual game on average sold less than the strategy/simulation ones. Second, I should also consider ROI for each game. How much time I spent vs the revenue obtained for each game? I never calculated it exactly but I can fairly accurately say that the first titles (sports simulation) were the best ROI for me (took me 3-4 months each). But it could be so only because they’re also the oldest titles

Anyway, that’s more a fun statistic than anything to be taken too much seriously, but even talking with other programmers, it seems clearly that RPGs are the best selling genre for indie games. Probably because there aren’t many around (if you exclude RPGMaker ones, otherwise there are a LOT! )

Dating sims share also many elements with RPG (statistics, dialogues, relationships, etc), while sports simulations are very hard to make, but can provide good revenues if they’re original enough. Visual novels can be profitable if made quickly and without spending too much on assets, and strategy/simulation last place is really to be taken with a grain of salt: after speaking with many devs who shared revenues with me privately, if you do a good 3d strategy game this genre can easily beat all others, on par with RPGs.

After venturing deep inside the crystal castle to discuss with the supreme wizard of gameplay design face to face (that’s me looking into a mirror), I’ve come to this conclusion: No.

Let me elaborate. With a visual novel or dating sim, or even life simulation like Spirited Heart, having a gallery of several different endings could make sense. Since it’s part of their gameplay: replaying the game choosing a different path, job, skill etc. But a decent RPG should have hours and hours of fun!

Story-based RPGs like Planet Stronghold can last quite a lot of time: I am now writing the part where you venture into the wastelands, and some battles can even lead to “game over”, but in general if you lose a battle you can retry in most cases. This means that you can spend 15-20 minutes in a battle and lose it, and retry with a different party configuration / approach. Even assuming that you will win all battles at first attempt, right now there are already 30 battles in the game. Multiply 30 battles for 4 minutes each (4 minutes is an insane low amount of time, totally unrealistic!) and that makes already 2h of gameplay just for the first 3 chapters (a really low estimate as I said, since doesn’t include dialogues either). The final game will have 10 chapters.

What does this means? It means that this game once finished can last 20-25 hours or even more, like commercial AAA games. I know that SOME people probably replayed Dragon Age or Mass Effect to see different endings, but how many really? I never did that, because I don’t have the time, but even if I had it, after playing the whole game from beginning, I don’t think I would like to replay it from start.

As indie, making CGs is expensive. The ones of Planet Stronghold will be absolutely beautiful, probably the best one ever seen in one of my games. If each ending corresponds to a single CG (like happens with my other games), most people aren’t going to see them all, and that’s a pity. I feel like wasting my money for content that only a minority will be able to see.

So, I’m thinking what to do. Those CG were intented for the romance endings, so each CG would be Joshua or Lisa with one of those characters (won’t say which ones but you can guess). I thought about two possible solutions:

1) I was thinking instead if to integrate them in the story, like The Witcher did (a CG in certain specific point of the plot, with voiceovers, I think that worked really well) or 2) at least make it possible to see them allfrom a certain point of the game.

For example, while each character relationship will influence how well he/she fights into the battle, at a certain point of the plot you will be able to save and from that point you can reach any possible romance ending, no matter what you’ve done before. That way at least player could have only to replay something like the last 2 chapters or so.

I think this solution might work well and that’s the one I’m probably going to adopt, since I want everyone to be able to see all the various endings without having to replay from start.

Obviously, since you pick the gender at beginning of game, if you want to see the ending of the opposite gender you WILL have to restart from scratch with that one

1. game concept / design – this is the most funny part for sure. You start writing down all the possible amazing/awesome features that your game is going to have. Is easy to get things out of hand during this stage. Already at next stage you can be sure that you’ll read some of those features and think “I was nuts? How I could really think to have a full 3d walkable world??”
2. implementation – this starts great, but as the time goes on, in 99% of cases become like any other “real job”. Bugs shows up, testers complains, you realize that what you thought would be a  great gameplay system actually sucks. Then, what you do? You necessarily have to rethink some parts completely, so you rewrite them and then start testing again, and so on. In this stage you also realize how “this quick 2 months project” will turn into a “long 9 months project” easily.
3. polishing/release – polishing is really an IMPORTANT stage but so many people (including myself) don’t take it into much consideration. How some small little insignificant features are going to change the game sales so much? is not possible! No, you’re wrong, it is very possible Then there’s release day and unless your game sells within a few hours you’ll start having some serious crisis.

Some people get so pissed during stage 2 or 3, that they put project on hiatus, or even abandon it completely. It might seem strange but this happened to me too in the past, with two games. One was a fantasy RPG which I was coding (I realized that was insane to do all the coding myself!) and another was a mission based shoot’em up (I realized that it was such a poor selling genre that I would have wasted my time).

There are some solutions though that can help indies to finish their project and avoid burning. Some are rather obvious, others less:

1. take breaks from PC. Seriously, go out, take a walk, take a break of a few days, go on holiday, anything – if you’re burned, and if you’re late but insist on working you’re most likely to be burned even more and lose days doing nothing but getting stressed. Even only a small break can let you regain motivation and reduce stress.
2. have a small side-project. This has really worked well for me. For example now I’m doing Planet Stronghold but at same time several other “minor” games. This helps me because if one day I’m too tired to code complex RPG mechanics, I can always “relax” by going on with some much simpler gameplay elements.
3. do other tasks. When making a game there are LOT of other task beside programming it. Things that are usually easy and don’t take much time/resources. You have done the website of the game? did you setup the product in your vendor control panel? did you wrote the PR (press release)? have you blogged about it? did you contact some journalists to ask for interview/previews of the game? the list is long…
4. outsource/find a partner. This is really useful if you’re like me, and even if you can code yourself you’re too tired to do it now. Beside, if you outsource to the right person, you’ll get a better overall result. In the beginning I was doing *everything* myself: coding, art (using poser), gamedesign… But now I have started outsourcing art already since 2 years, and next year I’m probably going to outsource coding as well, because what I do better is gamedesign. If you’re a coder, is stupid to save a few thousands and try to do yourself the art. And viceversa if you’re an artist, is stupid to waste lot of time trying to understand how to code (even with some easy tools) when you can outsource or partner with someone else.
5. better have a smaller game finished than a big game never finished. Some indies attempt making something too big. Cut features out , as long as the main gameplay stays intact. If the smaller game works out, you can always make a sequel with all the features you cut out and the game will sell more. Some examples of this are Positech Kudos 1-2 and Democracy 1-2. Each sequel adds much more to the original game and I’m sure they sold more. So, build a smaller game to “test the waters” and if works, work on something bigger.

So let’s start in order:

1. at beginning of the month I thought I made the game a bit too much “casual”. There was little strategy involved in the fights, so I decided to add Action Points, several different kind of attacks, and more
2. I then realized that, beside being a pain to code, it would have been too much “hardcore”. So I ended up with a middle solution that I believe works quite well. You have different attack types that can change a lot the course of the battle, and now each item can be used only once, then your turn ends (before you could just heal yourself completely provided you had enough healing kits in your pack)
3. Then I started implementing the quest and side quests. I made only one so far, as a test, and I am very pleased. Before uploading the new alpha though, I’ll wait until I have written a bit more quests / main plot story, so you can try different kind of quests. I like the fact that now you can use the heroes skills to solve certain situations instead of simply jumping straight into the battle (you can still do that, of course!)
4. like many RPGs, the game is mostly linear as far as the main plot is concerned, but the side quests are very open. You can complete them all, or you can ignore them all, as you wish. Some give very powerful reward items though, so I would advise trying to complete them all!
5. I am now at a good point: the game engine, including the battle system and the new quest/skills usage system is very stable. I believe I fixed all the bugs. I am also going to improve the barracks so that you can also choose the party formation: this way you can fight the battles with less party members and they’ll get more XP each one.

About this last point, I am still unsure if to use the Training Screen I’ve been coded though. In practice would work like this: the heroes left unselected can begin a training session so they slowly improve the skills automatically on their own. Though I am not sure would make much sense? Perhaps would be cooler to have lower level heroes to bring with you so they would then level fast when fighting higher level enemies? (it’s some sort of powerleveling  that you can do in the MMOs )

I have to think about this! Share your thoughts if you want.

In October, I’ll surely reach a point where I can think seriously which direction to take. I could start a beta pre-order of the game, since then the game would be already quite long and don’t want to keep it public, or perhaps do a closed beta. I have also to see if to integrate some optional online features in it. I think a pre-order would be a good move so could give me an idea of how much people like the game, so I know if I can spend lot of more time/resources on it, or not