On Scenario Editors and a NEW GAME (Exile).
Jeffrey Vogel
playing game, Exile, is just entering beta-testing. I just decided to take
a moment before the major havoc of debugging begins to let people know what
was coming and to comment on the ongoing Editor or Not Editor discussion.
(A little info on the game is at the end of the article.)
When I started Exile, I wanted it to be BIG. I wanted seeing
everything to be an accomplishment, and for there to be many quests, many
places that one didn't need to go to to finish the game, and, in general,
lots of neat stuff.
As a result, design of the world took over 3 months of pain-staking,
detailed work. Just creating the towns and dungeons, writing people's dialogue,
and creating puzzles took more time than everything else put together. And,
considering the huge amount of time that went into creating the game engine,
that's saying a lot.
Now, I believe there are people out there willing to put in that
level of effort to create scenarios for games, perhaps even my game. However,
I will not be creating a scenario editor for two reasons:
1. Complexity - Sometimes, I'm not sure people appreciate the level of
difficulty involved in creating a good scenario editor. Editors for dungeons,
for monsters and items, and for dialogue are easy. That's not the problem.
The problem is in the one thing that makes a game interesting or not: special
encounters. My puzzles, sneaky encounters, missions, etc. are wired into
the code. I have not the foggiest idea how to create an editor for puzzles,
I'm afraid, and am nervous about the work it would take to create one.
2. Quality Control - The story of Exile takes place in a self-contained,
carefully developed, internally consistant world. It has a history, an
ecology, and a whole bunch of interconnected factions. Exile is not a system -
it's a story. It's my way of gamemastering for people all over the world,
not just at my kitchen table, and I hope to tell this story not just in the
game, but in games to follow.
While I would welcome other parties creating and expanding this world,
I would first have to be convinced that they can make a detailed, comprehensive
product up to the caliber of the previous works. While the idea of having
25 downloadable scenarios for my game has an appeal, it's just not the
direction I want to take it.
So, be careful about considering scenario editors necessary complements
to new games. An FRP is not Doom or Marathon. There are completely different
issues and difficulties.
ABOUT EXILE:
Exile is a new shareware frp game for the Mac, due in early February.
It has been designed with an eye on ease of use, elegance of design, lack
of bugs, and (especially) speed of play. It will be $25, and the first half
of the game (which is quite huge) will be open to you at full functionality.
The game takes place in the huge, subterranean, war-torn world of
Exile. For many years, the Empire of the surface world has disposed of its
misfits, its rabble-rousers, and its petty criminals by dumping them into this
hole, with no hope of escape.
The game begins with your arrival in this pit. Where you go from there
is up to you. There are several ways to win the game, some harder than
others, all requiring completely different actions and quests.
Exile has a skill-based character system, a huge outdoors, almost
80 towns and dungeon levels, many, many NPCs, friendly and bizarre, and the
promise of many hours of fun, havoc, and confusion.
If you have any questions, please reply to this article. I would love
to hear what you wonder and what you want.
- Jeff Vogel
Keeper of Exile