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History, part 4

Aug 24, 21:28

Fast forward two years to year 2005. Learned JAVA, decided it is hot and decided to code. Something. For first time I finally didn’t bother with ruleset :), but bothered with creating “vision document”.

Result is here: Meh, lame. But hey, you can play it online (sorta, not actuall multiplayer included). Also has three types of loot.

Shameless envy to mr. Tomas Biskup for being able to get similar thing moving ensues.

Somewhere along the road I got interested in indie games which manage to become popular and build community. Sad truth is that you need exceptional offline indie game to gather some following, while you don’t need such excellence while you make game which supports multiplayer. It still needs to be fun thou. Games like The Neutral Zone or Outer Space for example.

Amd experience with MMO games altered view on how Online persistend games should NOT be built or played.

What follow is idea that RPG, moveover MMO type one, should not attempt to bribe player to continue playing with shiney toys.

Holy grail lies in game where players have lots of thing to do, to try, to tinker with while no content becomes obsolete and where rewards and goals in no way cause other gameplay elements to be pointless. This reads like preterndious bable actually.

Zwei

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History, part 3

Aug 24, 19:33

Continuing In early 2002, FoH was picked up again. With different approach: Backstory overload!

As typical Tolkienaist, it included everything: Bad poems. Highly unprobable maps. Characters whose IQ was in sub-two digit range. World creation myth. Like anything of that is even remotelly usefull in long run.

Lesson learned: Lore is cool. But you need capable writer and not dorkish teenager.

Also, quite passable (keep in mid that this is passable compared to previous stuff) version of rules appeared. With quite obvious flaws (Elves for example), but generally with some ideas worth preserving.

As was becoming traditional, piece of software was created to accompany rules. This time I gave up with creating game and instead made simple utility to help with inevitable number crunching. Now, thats something i can be proud of: It actually looks nice. And it somehow works. See for yourself.

Zwei

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History, part 2

Aug 24, 18:56

In our todays history lesson, we will examine next attempt that apeerend about one year later. Which is in fact pretty much attempt from part one, but elaborated. Which means that suckiness was increased. Rules became a bit more detailed, but details were quite useless pointless stuff (sub-races for example) that should appear when basics were solid.

So lesson is: Do not overengineer. Do not start with everything including kitchen sink. It is unmamageable. And result sucks.

In paralell, actually playable game was developed. If you ever played exile, you should get idea how it graphics looked like. What was finished was egine for terrain and interacting with it, item handling and turn based combat system (thats, turns minus combat). This was written in Visual Basic and followed sane coding convenction of BRPG, so it means that it is currently incomrehensible. Okay, you got me, it was not really playable unless you enjoy walking around aimlessly. Still was fun to code thou because GUI was pretty much all composed off custom controls.

Compare: playable BRPG in its awfull glory versus Foh, the lame versions i am not proud of at all. Eww.

Also, some kind of backstory started to appear. Only remedying fact is that it did not inclue ninjas and pirates.

Zwei

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History, part 1

Aug 23, 22:44

Oldest version i can find in backups is dated 3.9.1999. Wow, that’s so last century millenium.

This is painfull, but i have to say this straight: Wow, what a collection of dumb ideas! First i estabilished Standardized races and classes. Topped it with alignment system directly and statistics out of D&Dragons. THEN i went in Tolkien wanabee steps and actually made calendar with funny stuff like: “30th September -Dwarfs new year” (sic). Inevitable rewrite that came several days later started like this:

“Infiniteness – game ( in theory ) is to be played for years – there is always next level you can reach, new monster to defeat. “

The very thing I learned to despise after being educated in viles of MMOrpgs. All in all, this was painfully obviously inspired by Ad&D. (Guess what game i playerd at that time … You are right, it was Bauldur’s Gate). Dice rolls everywhere.

Well, at least I didn’t fail at ballance because rules were not coherent enough for even simple combat despite me claiming they were designed to be very simple. Sigh.

Funny side note:

In paralel to this I coded wanabee-AVATAR clone (lame one. You don’t what to know exteend of lameness), named BRPG. Simple combat system. Phat loot. Actually decent design idea thou: Abandoned player character were used as monsters since monster was basically player character driven by homicidal AI. Also, coded with best Visual basic practices in mind.

Zwei

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What is this all about?

Aug 23, 22:13

Okay, so what the hell is this about and why should you be interested in this?

FoH is my pet project that was in past few years in several different states of undeath. I guess that does not sound really good nor does it convince anyone to keep reading, huh? It will get better, I promise.

FoH is, basically, computer game concept. You would call it RPG. It has its roots there, i won’t deny it. Core rules can be used to back roleplayer session. What i really aim for is Character Strategy game. CS. If you call it RPG, you will be fine, i promise.

Okay, CS is quite vague, so let me explain a bit more. You are adventurer, in generic dungeon of crawlingness. You have backpack full of goodies, skills you learned. And you open next door and say “WTF”. Something unexpected was beyond them. Dangerous and deadly. You were not really prepared for this because you cant be prepared for every goodamn miniscule thing. Now is time for some serious improvisation. Abuse of your surroundings. And prayer. Or simply running away, screaming for help.

If you ever played ADOM or another roguelike, you will get what i mean. If you have no idea, go play some and really try to give it chance. Its where puzzle games meet chess and RPGs and say hi to Mac Gyver and adventure games.

So, FoH is like this. Game with RPG rules that wants to pretent that is is deep strategy. And hopes to contains so much cool stuff that it is almost unbearable

Zwei

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