{"id":169,"date":"2014-08-28T16:35:46","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T20:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/defiancegamestudio.com\/?p=169"},"modified":"2014-09-13T16:39:02","modified_gmt":"2014-09-13T20:39:02","slug":"archmage-rises-managing-your-muse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/defiancegamestudio.com\/index.php\/archmage-rises-managing-your-muse\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in Archmage Rises: Managing your Muse"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a bizarre personal\/family situation that totally consumed me from May to the end of July.\u00a0 Nothing much happened with\u00a0Archmage<\/em>\u00a0during that time, which was like Chinese water torture for an indie dev.<\/p>\n

It turns out that I had to take over a little store \u2013 from personnel to IT. I couldn\u2019t choose not to do this. It was just something\u00a0I had to do\u00a0<\/em>for the good of my family.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is a fitting picture for an indie developer\u2019s life<\/em><\/p>\n

So I talked with my wife (she is pretty amazing) about how I could best get into the groove of things creatively speaking.\u00a0 We decided I would work from the cottage in isolation for the month of August \u2013 handling the store and jumpstarting my creative side at the same time.\u00a0 So that is what I’ve done.<\/p>\n

Often, creativity (the Muse in the title) doesn’t care about your schedule.\u00a0 This is something that musicians and other traditional artists are fully aware of: You can’t\u00a0make<\/em>\u00a0yourself be creative.\u00a0 It’s not an act of pure will.\u00a0 This is extremely stressful\/frustrating for someone on a deadline.\u00a0 What’s worse is the guilt.\u00a0 The feeling of \u2018I have perfect working conditions. Why won’t it come?\u00a0 Ugh! I’m blowing my best opportunity!\u2019\u00a0 So first I’m upset about the slow progress; then I’m upset about being upset about the slow progress.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

What do artists do?<\/em><\/p>\n

My brother-in-law is an author and English prof \u2013 and he introduced me to Anne Lamott’s book about creative writing,\u00a0Bird by Bird<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 The title comes from her childhood, when her procrastinating brother didn’t work on a school project about birds until the night before.\u00a0 Then overwhelmed, he threw up his hands not knowing how he was ever going to finish.\u00a0 The father patiently answered, “Bird by bird.”<\/p>\n

Lamott’s book is invaluable for any indie dev. That it isn’t about making games is what makes it so helpful.\u00a0 Seeing another artistic profession’s struggles and challenges makes the underlying principles at work so much clearer.<\/p>\n

I have two choices when the Muse isn’t singing.\u00a0 Do something else until it is, or push through (essentially tackle it to the ground and choke it until a few notes escape).\u00a0 I’ve done both.\u00a0 Both do and do not work.\u00a0 It depends on my situation at the time.<\/p>\n

One thing I did to get my Muse going was to participate in the\u00a0Ludum Dare<\/a>\u00a0game jam last weekend.\u00a0 This was my first experience in a game jam.\u00a0 I decided to make it easy on myself by making a Twine text adventure based in the\u00a0Archmage Rises<\/em>\u00a0world.\u00a0 It was very hard to pull a story with multiple branches and 20 possible endings into a 48-hour period.\u00a0 For a first game jam, I’m quite pleased with what I’ve made.\u00a0 If you are interested in playing a bit in the\u00a0Archmage Rises<\/em>\u00a0world of Vaelun, check out my little game\u00a0Mage Hunter<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

During one of my “choke the Muse into submission” moments, I was working on the NPC AI interaction.\u00a0 I was focused on modelling relationship communication.<\/p>\n

For instance, if you say something mean to my wife, I’ll hear about it.\u00a0 What you said to her affects her opinion of you by say -10.\u00a0 Then she tells me about it.\u00a0 Regardless of whether I have heard of you before, now my impression of you also drops.\u00a0 So how much should it drop? By -10, the same as the person it happened to? 10 percent impact? 50 percent impact?\u00a0 This got me thinking about the relationships we hold in our lives.\u00a0 The impact of\u00a0what happens<\/em>\u00a0to people<\/em>\u00a0in our social web<\/em>\u00a0is directly linked to our intrinsic value to each other (or closeness).\u00a0 The relationship with my wife is far more valuable and close than with one of my coworkers.\u00a0 Therefore, the “ripple effect” (what I call it) should vary by the closeness of the relationship.\u00a0 This all being true, it means every NPC relationship must be modelled as not just existing but existing with what degree of closeness.\u00a0 It is another factor to manage\/tune, but I knew this was the right way to go.\u00a0 It adds more depth to the relationships.\u00a0 For instance, a noble can have a mistress.\u00a0 To him, the relationship is 10 percent valuable \u2013 but to the mistress, it is 90 percent valuable.\u00a0 What happens to the mistress does not impact the noble much, but what happens to the noble can impact the mistress.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So here is the good news: I got it working!\u00a0 And it works really, really well. This approach has resulted in a \u201cmini-game\u201d of sorts based on how to explore and best utilize the relationships around someone.\u00a0 For instance, if a noble won’t see you but the wife will, befriend her.\u00a0 The nice things you do\/say for her will eventually turn the noble’s opinion of you, and now you can interact with him directly.\u00a0 I like this.\u00a0 I like it a lot.<\/p>\n

In other news, music is really important to helping me work.\u00a0 I have a hard time working without music in the background.\u00a0 For some strange reason this week has been a lot of Bach and Jars of Clay’s\u00a0Inland<\/em>.\u00a0 When I’m sick of one, I listen to the other \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

I try to play video games at the end of each day of coding as a way to unwind.\u00a0 This past week, I finishedWatch Dogs<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Assassin’s Creed 4<\/em>\u00a0on my PS4.<\/p>\n

I really liked\u00a0Watch Dogs<\/em>\u00a0as a more techie, less nasty\u00a0GTA V.<\/em>\u00a0 The gunplay, especially on \u201cconvoy intercept\u201d missions, was by far my favorite.\u00a0 What I couldn’t stand was all the stupid driving around from one mission start to another.\u00a0 I’m not one for random side missions \u2013 so to me, this is just tedious driving.\u00a0 Almost the same as driving through traffic in Toronto.\u00a0 This further confirmed for me thatArchmage Rises<\/em>\u00a0will\u00a0not<\/strong>\u00a0have an overland map where you run from A to B.\u00a0 If you know of a location on the map, you can fast travel there.\u00a0 Done.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And last, but not least: Tuesday night, I finished a video walkthrough of the current build of\u00a0Archmage Rises<\/em>. It ain’t pretty, but I wanted to address two issues:<\/p>\n

a) People who have said this is vapourware: It’s kind of funny to be working every day full-time on something people say doesn’t exist \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

b) Based on the questions I get on Twitter, Facebook, and email, I can tell that people are grasping what this game plays like.\u00a0 Nothing will answer this as well as a video.<\/p>\n

So a good friend of mine, Nic (who is also an indie game developer), joined me on Skype \u2013 and I walked him through the current build.\u00a0 He was familiar with\u00a0Archmage<\/em>, but not to this level of detail.\u00a0 He asked some really good questions, and I felt like I was able to fully explain what this game is all about.<\/p>\n

I will be sending out this private video to everyone on the\u00a0Archmage Rises<\/em>\u00a0email newsletter as an exclusive \u201cthank you\u201d for subscribing to the newsletter in the first place. Also, this is such an early prototype that I don’t want the whole world to see it just yet.\u00a0 Maybe I’ll release it publicly later\u2026 Stay tuned \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can signup for the newsletter here:\u00a0Archmage Rises<\/a>
\nCheck out Nic’s four-player physics spaceship party game,\u00a0Hard Lander<\/em><\/a>\u00a0for PC and Ouya.
\nPlay the game jam twine game\u00a0Mage Hunter<\/a><\/em>
\nI’m happy to answer questions on\u00a0Archmage Rises<\/em>\u00a0any time on the\u00a0Facebook page<\/a>.
\nTwitter:\u00a0@LordYabo<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a bizarre personal\/family situation that totally consumed me from May to the end of July.\u00a0 Nothing much happened with\u00a0Archmage\u00a0during that time, which was like Chinese water torture for an indie dev. It turns out that I had to take over a little store \u2013 from personnel to IT. I couldn\u2019t choose not to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14,19,8,49,22,48,37,47,54,16,6],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-archmage","tag-archmage-rises","tag-game","tag-game-design","tag-game-dev","tag-good-idea","tag-indie","tag-inspiration","tag-muse","tag-pc","tag-rpg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/defiancegamestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/defiancegamestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/defiancegamestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/defiancegamestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/defiancegamestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/defiancegamestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/defiancegamestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/defiancegamestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/defiancegamestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}