I’ve been working on mission design this week, starting with the simplest of mission types: Goto, Fetch and Kill. If you listened to the critics bashing these simple missions in RPGs and MMOs you would think that players hate them with a passion and yet they provide the basis for generation after generation of game. There is certainly a strong critical emphasis on boring, pointless and repetitious quests that are necessary to advance. But what would these games be like without mirco-quests to encourage the player to roam, fight and explore? Well, probably a grind-fest on random encounters between boss battles. But the situation is not much improved if questing itself becomes a grind activity.

However as the care taken over these quests increases, when they become integrated into the larger gameworld, more complex in length and twists, and most importantly of all if they offer choices of how to achieve or even rebel against the quest goals – then they they can become an enriching part of the game rather than a cynical length booster.

Another alternative is to clearly mark the micro-quests as optional activities, and let the player choose to use them as an opportunity to advance. For example in role-play Sim games you often have to choose what activity your avatar takes each day, and the choice will result in a fairly predictable outcome of money or stats improvements. The choices are the same each day, and it becomes more of a meta-strategic game choosing a good mix of activities than a test of how well you perform each task.

In Spice Road, there are three kinds of mission. The first is a veiled hints system – so if you are bewilldered by the scale and opportunities available in the sandbox, the hint mission will find you a suitable trade route, or exploration area – nothing you couldn’t have done on your own, but adding structure for those who need it. The second covers reactive and progressive missions to protect and advance your companies towns and trade routes. For example, if a bandit camp is reducing the safety of one of your caravan routes a mission is generated after a caravan is lost urging you to seek and destroy the bandits. Or if your building requires a skilled workman to progress a mission might spawn to help you find one. Lastly there are tactical missions to progress the causes of the nations and guilds. These are more complex nested missions trees that offer useful rewards in the way of new units, skills and access to new parts of the map – however you must pick your allegences carefully as many missions are at the expense of other factions.

Fortunately as a true sandbox, you are not tied to any set of missions and can achieve the same results through your own cunning, persistence and might. The missions are there to compliment the gameplay.

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Noir Crimefighting Duo	Choose your own Adventure
Seamless Minigames	Non-linear Storyline

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The story is always surprising, and I felt that I was consistently making real choices that significantly effected the outcome of my adventure – this was proved by all kinds of new scenes I saw only on my second playthrough.

As well as the cool art, the fun and mysterious story, and the interesting choices – you also can solve puzzles in the form of minigames to get more clues for your investigation. My initial reaction was *sigh-minigames…* but I was amazed how appropriate the games were to their context in the situation. For example in one game Vera is trying to work out what someone is thinking – and the minigame translates this into a letter guessing game to complete a phrase – so you really do have to think about what might be on their mind to win the minigame.

Overall I would recommend this to everyone who want to lose themselves in an exciting detective mystery for a few days. I can’t wait for the next installment in the Vera Blanc series!

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Take a visit to R&D to discover the latest technology, then build a network of blaster turrets, rocket launchers and laser cannon, explosives, barricades and shield generators, refineries and reactors, and send forth your own droid army to battle the invading alien forces!

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Now the invasion has landed!	Defeat the returning Titan horde
Epic ground battles	Command the counterstrike

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Don’t be fooled by the super slick retro graphics, this is a deep RTS with an amazing amount of gameplay and strategy carefully built up over several generations in the same series. I’m also impressed by the difficulty curve – steep and challenging but also accomodating to slower players through a built in auto-adjustment system. It always feels challenging but beatable on you next go – the perfect addictive balance.

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Massive Battles	Customise Fleets
Upgrade to Perfection	Conquer the Galaxy

Gratuitous Space Battles aims to bring the over-the-top explodiness back into space strategy games. The game is for everyone who has watched big space armadas battle it out on TV and thought to themselves ‘I could have done a much better job as admiral’. This is not a game of real-time arcade twitch reflexes. GSB is about what ships you design, and what you tell them to do. Your individual ship commanders have total autonomy during the chaotic battle that unfolds. This is not a tactical game, it is a strategic one. These gratuitous space battles are not won by plucky heroes with perfect teeth, but by the geeky starship builders who know exactly what ratio of plasma-cannons to engines each ship in the fleet will need.

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Dialog in Adventure Game	Investigate Pirate Towns
Exploring Desert Islands

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Story
It be the golden age of pirates! Dogs of the sea! Quite literally.

Our swashbuckling sausage-dog star is Gaius James Rover, son of the famous clown Jolly Rover, who died from a blow to the groin from an improperly loaded joke cannon.

Following the tragically comedic death of his father, young Gaius, who insists on using his middle name James, goes to live with his uncle, a wealthy plantation owner on a small Caribbean island. While practising a particularly tricky juggling move, he accidentally taints a barrel of rum with tobacco, creating a potent and addictive brew which he coins ‘Jolly Rover’, one of the most prized substances in the Caribbean.

Alas, the wealth of Jolly Rover sales only manages to fill the pockets of his uncle, and Gaius longs for action and adventure and, more importantly, the opportunity to start his own circus and follow in the footsteps of his father.

It is not long before the fumbled juggling ball of opportunity raps Gaius smartly on the head yet again. While his uncle is away, a large contract for Jolly Rover arrives from Guy DeSilver, Governor of the notorious Groggy Island, with payment upfront!

In a blinding flurry of optimism, Gaius pools his meagre savings with this advance and charters a ship and crew to take him to Groggy Island. Along the way he meets a colourful band of seafaring cutthroats, scallywags and rogues otherwise known as pirates.

It is here we begin to follow the short and stubby tail of Gaius across three wild and untamed tropical islands, as he attempts to fulfil his dream of starting a circus, hampered only by pirates, villains, voodoo, love and considerable lack of loot.

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Features

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As well as goods like silk and spice, you can also take people into your caravan – pilgrims, travellers and slaves all can make goods returns for safe passage.

Once you have picked a profitable item to trade you should examine your route carefully. If the destination is a long way away it is a good idea to find a oasis or tradepost along the way to restock on water and supplies. Your party design depends on your route – a long desert travel will benefit from hardy camels, while  a run through northern foothills would need some soldiers in your caravan to ward off bandits. The further you have to travel, and the more support people are in the caravan the more supplies you will need to take – reducing your capacity for profitable goods.

Finally you can stock up on the goods themselves – and hopefully a few months later… Profit! Unfortunately there are many dangers on your way so you better look sharp and think fast to adapt to whatever circumstances are thrown at you.

Once you have become a skilled trader you can train others to run caravans between Trade Houses you build in different towns. This also has the effect of improving your relationships with the towns and expanding your network of information. Complete networks of trade routes from production to the final consumer are a fine accomplishment that earn you respect and great wealth.

On the shady side of trading – some goods are frowned upon by respectable authorities. If you want to sneak opium or weapons through a controlled land you will have to be fast and inconspicuous. A small mounted party is fastest, but avoiding guard posts will lead you into hostile bandit lands.

Trading in desert lands with bandits and caravans has never been so much fun.

I read a paper on GUIs and usability for games. It said to expect to remake the GUI 4 times with a 50% improvement per revision on usability.

Luckily a on-paper design counts as a revision, and can be analyzed for usability factors and UI rules of thumb. So I am up to v2 on paper and v3 will be a playable mockup in my game engine. I expect v4 to be made after I have some user-feedback.

Now I suspect the same revisions will apply to my gameplay ideas – I have some great stuff on paper, but I know it will feel a lot different when translated into my game engine and actually played. If I can get a 50% improvement on gameplay on each revision it makes sense to have as many revisions as I can afford before shipping the game. Of course this could take the form of game sequels instead of a 7 year development cycle!

The two major dangers are the environment and other people. Mountains and Deserts have fairly obvious environmental health risks both to men and to their animals, while Forests and distant wildernesses are favourite spots for ambushes by your human opponents. Another factor to consider is the travel speed across different terrain – the longer you have to spend travelling through a region to more risks you are exposed to.

So, to work out the best route we need to compare times and dangers from alternate routes and pick the best comprimise. The usual way to calculate paths in games is the A* (A-Star) algorithm. This is a good method of finding a shortest path – and can be modified to work out the quickest path by modulating the cost of travel between a pair of cells. To work out the safest path the cost between cells can be made more for danger zones – in proportion to the level of risk multiplied by the time spent travelling through.

For the player the task extends to party design too. If you want to travel fast you will need horses to ride over the hills and wilderness, but on occasion a small on-foot troop could make better speed with a shortcut over the mountains. For desert trade routes camels are essential where horses and wagons would simply run to a halt and die.

This all makes for quite a complicated pathfinding process – but to simplify it Spice Road has a simple route optimiser that will get a suitable path for long journeys depending on your party’s design, strength and alliances – as well as avoiding well patrolled areas if you are on a smuggling run. If you want more control you can either make your own route exactly, or set route preferences to tell the pathfinder your priorities over different land types and risks. You can even upgrade your pathfinding with perks to your caravan leader and scout classes.

Mongul Raiders - Click for Larger Image

Today I was sculpting the first of the Bandit Tribes, a Mongol themed raiding party. They have excellent horsemanship and combat skills, but are weaker in trade and diplomacy skills. As the player works for an open-minded corporation you have the chance to hire a Mongul clansman and a troop of his warriors – but will you trust them not to double-cross you and strangle you in your sleep? Party morale plays a big part in the game, winning battles is only one of many ways to prove your leadership.

If you travel deeper into the Mongul lands you can uncover valuable Furs, Timber and Slaves so it is worth persevering against the border raids and developing a relationship with the clan leaders – a relationship based on Gold, Might, or even Friendship – you decide.

Most ambitious games go through a phase of design sprawl and ambitious planning only to be cut short by schedules and shipped as half-games with noticeable holes around each unfulfilled feature. So to save the desperate tradelands of Spice Road from this disappointing fate I have decided to cut back to some carefully chosen core mechanics, simplify the additional gameplay elements to serve the core, and then add depth to the core areas rather than sprawl out with ever shallower sub-game activities.

I gather together a lot of ideas and sort them into a balanced structure using note paper or filing cards.

Linear systems like text documents and spreadsheets don’t suit game design refactoring where you have to work in many dimensions at once, and see interconnections between a wide group of game elements at once. On the other hand a simple pile of papers with a couple of headline words on each lets me spot new groupings while working out how much of the gameplay should be spent on each area.

The image above shows the early stages of this process, there are a few core gameplay elements and important sub-elements below each, and they are all closely linked so each improves and develops the others. Now I can fit my larger collection of gameplay ideas and mechanics into context of the core and ruthlessly remove or tame anything that does not fit in.

So what have I kept as my Core?

Leadership – of Party and Settlement

Travel – Trade and Adventuring over a World Map

Conflict – Troop battles and Town defence

and to glue these elements further together and provide an interesting context for leading, travelling and fighting…

Plot – Story missions and Faction mission trees

Progress – Building personal Renoun and party member Skills

Activities – Sandbox play along the Spice Road

Of course this simplification brings cutbacks and losses to the wide complexity of the game concept – but at the same time I think it will make the game more accessible to a wider range of gamers and also will let me deepen the variety and longetivity of the core.