Something To Do

I was surprised (and pleased) to hear this recent, spontaneous sunstone exchange:

Foster Finn thinks, "anyone around town? Just hanging around with nothing to do."
Eirian Caldwell thinks, "go on the newspaper quest"
Natas thinks, "newspaper quest!"
Xenos thinks, "try delivering a paper"

The Next Big Project

Now that I feel reasonably comfortable (and secure) with my upcoming silly quest, I have returned my attention to two larger projects that have been simmering on the back burner for some time (and by "some time" I really mean "several years").

One of the projects involves a moderately complicated structure, one that I had discussed in brief.  I was contemplating on including instance dungeons, but after a little lot of thought, I believe that I have settled upon an approach which emulates the uniqueness of an instance while circumnavigating the complication of managing instances.

The other project is a rather massive undertaking – massive for me that is, as none of the puzzle technologies exist.  All of the scripts to power this adventure need to be designed and implemented.  The design of this project is still being revised as I try to find that magic balance between fun and complexity whist reducing the tedium common to repeatable quests.

Then there are all of those smaller projects – several small, silly side quests – that still await attention.  I shall make an effort to squeeze those into updates as time provides, but my attention is now on the next big project.

Update Week

I have been coasting a bit with the rewriting of my quest script(s) – and by that I mean that I have been rewriting the script at a leisurely pace.  Last night I noted that I had a calendar reminder: this is an update week and content for V729 is due this Friday.

I spent several hours today revising the script in earnest, rearranging sections of code that were infuriating me.  I am pleased to report that I have made fine progress.  I am not done, but I am close to being done – or at least close to done with the first rewrite, at which point I shall run the script on the test server and begin bug hunting.

I really want this quest in for V729, and I am going to try my best to make it happen.  What I do not want to do is to rush the project into the live game and have it embarrass me.  I figure that is less embarrassing to be late on delivering a project – and have it rock solid – than it is to deliver a project on time and have it overflowing with bugs.

"Soon" is real close.

[Edit] In unrelated tech news, Amazon buys voice recognition startup Yap to counter Apple's Siri.

"Yap?"  The company's name is "Yap?"  I don't know how I feel about that.

Casual Poll: Quest Rewards

I am working on a new casual quest (the idea belongs to another GM, but I digress).  People who complete the quest would receive a reward – but what kind of award should be rewarded?

I have created an informal poll: what would you like to see as a quest reward in Clan Lord?

Cooperative Quests

I had an idea for a cooperative quest where players would trade quest components amongst each other, but there is a major flaw with this concept: suppose that the participants are unwilling/unable to cooperate?

Suppose, for example, that the quest is to collect playing cards, and the goal is to redeem a poker hand of five cards.  The catch is that every time that a player draws a card, they will always draw the same card.  When Gremlins draws a card, then he will always draw the Jack of Clubs.  When Moon Kitty draws a card, she will always draw the Queen of Hearts.  When Super Chicken draws a card, he will always draw a Joker.

The easiest way to complete the quest is to collect five cards of the same value, and then cash them in for five-of-a-kind.  Suppose that the quest reward payoff for five-of-a-kind was the experience equivalent to a dispatch, but something like a full house or a flush was worth the experience equivalent to a kill?  Suppose that a straight flush was worth the experience equivalent of a vanquish?

The structure of the quest is one that encourages trading cards with the community, and the reward for the quest increases by having a variety of cards.  Would you want to trade cards with others players to maximize the quest reward payoff?  What happens if a quest participant refuses to trade?

While this is a rather broad (and exaggeratedly extreme) example of the quest, it has me thinking: even though there are greater benefits to cooperation, I should never assume that everyone is willing to cooperate within a cooperative quest.

Coding with Crowbars

As the development of my silly quest draws near its conclusion, I now turn my attention to modifying some of the existing world scripts to support this upcoming quest.

Even though I have plenty of experience in modifying scripts, I still grow a little nervous when shoe-horning new functionality into existing code.  Many of the basic world scripts are over a decade in age (the script which I am currently modifying was created in December of 1998), and I am constantly concerned of outright breaking a script, or changing a script to a point where it inadvertently affects all of its dependent scripts.  And I know that I am more cautious about breaking scripts than I need to be: our ServerGM has built a rock-solid system over the years which includes many failsafe systems, and the likelihood of tragedy happening is almost negligible.


Almost.

I have my crowbar in hand, and I return to prying away some old lines of code to make room for new code.  Making room is the easy part – it's the "make sure that nothing there gets bent out of place" which is harder.

The Front Burner

Yesterday I spent some time running around in Puddleby, and bumped into a couple of GMs who happened to be online at the same time.  After exchanging our greetings (which were largely just a bunch of juvenile insults: "Hey, I see that you're still ugly!"), one of the GMs and I fell into discussion about one of the larger projects which had been placed on the back burner.

While the details of project are unimportant, the point of my mentioning this is that I have been thinking about the project since my chat with the GM.  In fact, I spent the better portion of this morning outlining the logic of the super quests.  I have not compared my new notes to my old notes on this project, but I already know that the new ideas are better than whatever I had previously put to paper.  This creativity excites me and drives my desire to redevelop this project.

I am in the process of competing my silly quest, and once that has been removed from the front burner, then I will have room to move this massive project forward from the back burner.

Another Update Completed

I have made a lot of progress on the scripts for my silly little quest.  While I was unable to complete everything in time for the V726 deadline, I must say that, overall, I am pleased with the progress that I have been making on this project.  Heck, I am pleased that I am making any progress on this project!

This evening was deadline evening, and I spent my evening assembling my content for V726.  The materials which I submitted were for a couple of projects in development, and both were produced entirely by one helper.  It will be a while before we see either of these new areas in game, but both of the new areas are shaping up to be ambitious projects.

Hitting the Books

I've been working away at a frivolous quest – one that I have been wanting to do for some while.  The primary quest item is a "smart" item, and by "smart" I really mean "Zo smart", in that it has special data that it needs to track, kind of like how a healer's shirt is smart enough to remember how it's been dyed.

The nuts and bolts of the quest are working well enough, and I am trying to polish it so that it will be ready for V726.  That means that I have only two days to complete debugging.

That Eureka Moment

After rooting around for some old notes relating to some current projects, I found a stack of notes concerning the design of a complex quest which I started over a year ago.  The rediscovery of these notes annoyed me, as I was reminded how I had started this project in earnest and allowed it to slip down The List.

The basic premise of the quest is a logic puzzle which needs to be different for each visiting player.  The overall design of this quest is really hard, and it is at times like this I find myself wishing that I was born intelligent instead of gorgeous.  My tiny brain struggles with the organization of the quest's concepts, which I analogize as playing 52 Pickup with all of the cards facing down and being instructed to only pick up the red cards (I guess that would make it 36 Pickup).  The red cards need to be in a different arrangement when I play, so that the previous player can't just tell me the positions of the red cards.

As I reread my project notes, I began to recall why I abandoned this quest: it was simply too complex for my ability as a designer.  But, on the other hand, the idea for the quest is such a cool idea.  It pained me to let this idea languish On The List.  I brought out some blank paper and, as the saying goes, went back to the drawing board and started afresh.  This was Tuesday night, and I spent the remainder of the week jotted down notes and ideas.

Today I had a flash of insight – a sudden, surprising idea which actually caused me to shriek "that's it!" aloud.  I believe that I found a way organize this quest in such a way that would enable me to script it.  I am very excited (and relieved!) to have experienced that eureka moment which propelled this project forward.

French Fries, Beer and Clan Lord

I was craving french fries earlier today.  I ignored the protests of my cuisine snobbery and went to a local "neighborhood grille" franchise.  I ordered my fries, a tall beer, and opened a legal pad of paper and worked on a Clan Lord quest.

Without revealing too much, the quest that I had in mind is similar to World of Warcraft's instance dungeons for a group of players.  I had envisioned one player holding a key to the dungeon, and – much like Puddleby Housing – the key holder would unlock the dungeon's entrance and the group would follow the key holder through the entrance.  A second group holding their own key would unlock their own copy of the dungeon.  But then I got to thinking (or maybe the tall beer was affecting me in a positive way): what would happen if two groups tried to enter the dungeon at the same time?  How would the dungeon differentiate between multiple groups?

While working on my second tall beer and a way to differentiate group access, another thought occurred to me: suppose a second group wishes to join the first group.  How would that work?  Would the key holder need to come out and unlock the dungeon door for the second group?  Suppose if the key holder was dead, or if the entire dungeon party was dead, and no one could come out to unlock their copy of the dungeon.  What then?  I feel that Clan Lord has taught us that some area access restrictions can impact rescues (like the Game Preserve or the Mushroom Hut).

By the time I had finished my second beer and my order of fries, I decided that perhaps instance dungeons were best avoided.  At least I think I thought that.  I can't remember.  I'm such a lightweight when it comes to drinking and designing.

The Teardown

I spent this evening reorganizing, redesigning, and basically rewriting the Helper Assistant NPC script.

As previously stated, the development of this script was unplanned.  It started as a couple of notes which morphed into a stream-of-conscious script, and now that I have reread it I see plainly that the design of the script was improvised.  For some inexplicable reason I created one small main routine and numerous supporting functions.  I guess that I had really enjoyed creating functions on the day that I wrote this script!  I have revised the script by eliminating these cluttered functions and incorporated a simplified version of them into the main body of the script.

Another problem that I see with the script is the scope of its purpose.  The script helps manage quest data, and initially I had tried to support multiple data fields for multiple quests.  I have revised the scope so that each NPC focuses on one data field of one quest.  This simplification was made primarily so that I may have the script ready for V669.  I can always expand upon this feature in the future.

The new version of the script is forming well.  It's a large effort to develop a script for a handful of people, but if those handful use it in turn to develop better quests for Clan Lord, then it is an effort well placed.

Perverse Incentives

This is my new favorite phrase: perverse incentives!

I never knew that this concept had a label, but now that I know it, I simply love it.  This falls under the umbrella of unintended consequences, another concept which I bear in mind while designing quests.  As I had mentioned in a previous entry, I tend to be cynical in my review of designs and look for ways which quests and items may be exploited.  Now these exploits have a name.  Perverse incentives!

One quest that I had really wanted to do was a variation of the "escort the NPC from point X to point Y."  The variation that I had in mind was that the path taken would be laced with ambush points, and customized monsters would attempt to attack the defenseless NPC.  Players would need to fight the monsters to protect the NPC.  If the NPC died, then the quest ended in failure.

My idea was that this quest would be difficult, and this difficulty would be reflected within the rewards.  While drafting the quest, I started to think "well, what's the incentive to complete the quest compared to the incentive to deliberately fail the quest?"  If the ambushing monsters gave particularly good experience, then it could be conceivable that a group of five players could escort the NPC through all but the last ambush points – vanquishing monsters along the way – and finally allowing the NPC die so that the quest may be repeated.  And repeated.  And repeated.

Perverse incentives.

One day I'll get this quest working without the perversions.

5/7 Efficiency

This evening started well enough.  It was my intention to spend tonight outlining the design for my Next Big Quest.  I had been thinking about it all day and had some ideas that I wished to develop.  Tonight was also the opening official game of the NFL season (American football).  Instead spending my evening yelling at my computer (something that I frequently do while scripting), I instead spent the evening yelling at my television.

I worry that my Clan Lord productivity is going to suffer on Thursdays and Sundays.

Random Inspiration

Have you ever experienced the sensation of an idea passing by you?  Have you ever been deep in thought on a subject, and you have a sudden, random flash of insight on something absolutely unrelated to the topic on which you focus – and the idea is gone just as quickly as it came?

I experienced this today.  I was thinking of something totally unrelated to Clan Lord when I suddenly had an idea for a Clan Lord quest.  The experience was rather surreal, like starting awake from a deep sleep and losing the memory of a dream.  As the idea faded from my mind, I went to my computer and hastily typed the idea.  Later this evening I refined this idea and have started drafting outlines for the supporting scripts.

I have been working on a large area for a while now, and although the project has been creeping along slowly, the overall project has been missing a cool central quest.  Today I found that central quest – in a rather sudden, random sort of way – and I am really excited about the idea.

I am very inspired and motivated right now, and that's all that I'll say.

Command-Z

As a designer, there is a certain quality that I strive to achieve.  While creativity and stick-to-it-tiveness are certainly valued, I think that one of the most challenging qualities to develop and exhibit is to recognize when a design is not working.

I recently spent a lot of my time into implementing a quest.  Although I did not author the quest, I still felt that it was a clever quest and I liked a lot of the elements within it.  It seemed like a great idea and I was excited about it.  I put the quest aside and continued to work on other projects.

When I came back to the quest with fresh eyes, it no longer glowed like the great idea that had shined earlier.  I now saw some potential problems with it, and my solutions to address the problems all seemed contrived.  The best solution was to abandon the quest.

It pained me to throw that quest away, as I still like the idea of the quest and I placed no trivial amount of time installing it into the game.  Throwing it away was a hard decision but it was the right decision.

On the bright side: I get to start over again and do something new!

Power Scripting

I scripted for ten hours today.

The good news is that I got a new quest script mostly working.  As I mentioned yesterday, there is a good amount of math involved with this script.  I got almost all of the algebra resolved, but somehow along the way I started adding numbers instead of subtracting them – or something equally as goofy as that – yielding predictably confusing results.  I still need to resolve that problem.

The bad news is that my tush is sore from ten hours of scripting.

Mental Blueprints

Have you ever been focus on one thought when suddenly an unrelated thought sweeps into your mind with such vivid clarity that you actually find yourself surprised?  I had such a moment today whilst debugging a script: I had a sudden moment of insight of how to construct a new quest script.

The idea itself isn't new – it is basically an item collector script – but the approach is novel in that the script may be attached to other existing scripts to act as a filter.  An example could be a trainer – an old war veteran – who is willing to teach fighters a new fighting technique in exchange for a long sword, a wooden shield and an iron helmet.  I also had the idea for supporting groups of items, so that if a player brought items A, B and C to an NPC then the player would be offered reward D, but if the same player had items E, F, G and H then the NPC would offer rewards I and J.

The idea is still vaporware –more like a mental blueprint – but I am really excited about the concept.

The Quest Is In The Mail

My content for V660 has been submitted.  I have mixed feelings about my content for this update.

While I am pleased that I resolved the issues surrounding housing mannequins, I had really wanted to get some quests in for this update.  As I was writing the quests I discovered that once again what I wanted done within the quest could not be done with the scripts I was using.  I had spent some time trying to update and modify the existing scripts to support the style of quest I had in mind, but I soon realized that it would be easier if I were to simply write my own quest script from scratch.  Unfortunately for me I simply did not have the time to do that in time for the V660 deadline.

I really want more quests in Clan Lord.  I just wish that the act of scripting a quest would not become a quest.

Mobilizing Quests

I invested a lot of time adding and testing functionality to an existing script: I've enabled quest NPCs to walk around.  "That's not new," you may think, and you are correct – there are several quest NPCs that have the ability to move around.

In truth, I did the reverse: I took the "walk around" script that powers NPCs' motion and enabled that to support quests.  I did not enable quest NPCs to walk: I enabled walking NPCs to quest.  The last generation of GMs wrote some pretty good modular scripts, and all that was required on my part was to (1) realize that I could pair the walk-around script with the quest script, and (2) plug the connecting wires between the two scripts.

I'm so happy right now.  This opens some new quest ideas, and I'm very excited to utilize this functionality.