Category Archives: general

posts about general topics, even not related to computer games

Friday catblogging – Excessive branching is not good

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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 🙂

Friday (Saturday) catblogging – Planet Stronghold and Heileen spin-off

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OOps, I forgot my friday cat-post yesterday! So I’m going to post it now. In the picture on the left, you see Batman on the stairs of my old house, taking advantage of a rare sunny winter day 🙂

I’ve been working non-stop on Planet Stronghold race quests. I don’t want to say too much because is a spoiler, but later in the game (after chapter4) you’ll have to pick a side, and either submit or unify all the other alien races. Each race will occupy a sector of the map, so each race quest will take several special locations to complete. Considering the races are 6, this part is quite long, probably the longest chapter of the game.

After this, there’s the “final battle”, and the romance subplots. Is fun because even if in this game the dialogues are very reduced compared to a normal visual novel, it’s still VERY LONG, because the story itself is long. I think players should appreciate it, and I hope nobody will say “the game was too short”! 😀

Today I also got some sketches from Rebecca for Heileen spin-off. They’re the pirate clothing for some important characters: Lora, Ebele and Robert. They’re great as always – you can’t go wrong working with her, a pity now she’s making a career in comics fulltime 🙁

Maybe will post the sketches on twitter. As I wrote, this game won’t be a visual novel but something ver different. I have yet to decide myself how the gameplay will be but I have an idea in mind. Will be a mix of several genres. There will still be the a main plot and dialogues, but not in form of a VN only.

Probably this will disappoint a bit the VN fans but I want to try something different, and broaden my audience. It’s tough times for indie devs! 🙂 As for the other games in progress, no news about them this week. So Love & Order, Remember Me, and Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook are still going on- expect them coming out somewhere in the next months, just follow my blog or twitter (or subscribe to the newsletter) to be the first to know when they’re out!

New CRPG vs old CRPG

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I can’t believe what I’m about to write but… I recently bought Temple Of Elemental Evil from GoG, and… I didn’t like it anymore! Yes, the game that back in 2003 was considered by my brother and I (at those times we used to play CRPG together, sharing thoughts and impressions) as “the ultimate RPG”, right now, 7 years later… sucks.

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.

Friday catblogging too

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One of the first shareware games author, Thomas Warfield, had the habit to post pics of his cats every friday on his blog. I think is cool, so I’ll declare Friday the cats day for me as well! I’ll also post a status of all my active projects at same time so even non-cats lover can find something useful 🙂

In the picture above, taken in my old home, you see from left to right: Fiore (which sadly left us before we could move), Grillo and Batman (yes, the black cat name is Batman for real!).

Status Update

Planet Stronghold – currently writing the various romance subplots, and I also finished coding all the locations of the various races. Depending on which side you pick inside the game, you’ll have either to submit all the races, or reunite all of them under one alliance.

Remember Me – not much done code-wise, but arranged a deal to have a real song inside the game, which should feature the great actress/singer Cristina Vee. Also, lots of new chibi are being produced for the game, which will substitute text buttons for the choices you’ll be able to do in the game. You can easily describe this game with just one word: CUTE 😀

Love & Order – Christine Love is working on this one, and rumours says it should be ready before Christmas! I haven’t seen much of it myself, but what I saw is really good. The gameplay style will bring fresh air into the classic Dating Sims system.

Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook – is coming along nicely, even if we had some troubles with the BG artist (but we already found a new one). It could be ready around Christmas too but I don’t want to hurry things, so is more likely to be finished like the first episode around end of January 😉

Topsecret game about Heileen – I haven’t decided yet if to go on with this one. As I said, it wouldn’t be a VN though. Hint: Let’s just said that recently I replayed a lot some old Sid Meier’s games…

Topsecret 3d game – This could be a remake of an old game I did. It would be a full 3d game made in Unity3d (not by me of course, I can’t code 3d stuff!). If this becomes reality, probably will be my first game to end on Steam.

Which kind of games sell more?

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That’s a question that many game developer ask or just wonder about. I just realized that through the course of years I made games of very different genres, so I checked some stats and came up with the following “ranking” which I hope will be useful to someone:

  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! :D)

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.