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[WIP] Ships and Scurvy RPG: Feedback appreciated!

Good morning salty sea dogs, here's the latest official dev diary for the game ( as posted from my own blog page ) - there's not *too much here* that hasn't been mentioned above, but if you're interested in how the game is progressing, read on!

------------------------

Long days pass sailing across the endless blue of my pixellated ocean, and soon I find five whole weeks have passed since my last blog update.





That's the the thing about solo indie development; it's massively time consuming, exhausting, tedious and sometimes immensely rewarding. When you're coding every system in the game, from the way the clouds move in the sky, to the way sailors react when a crewmate dies, time gets away from you. This leaves precious little time to actually 'talk' about developing your game.

Some people are naturally apt at marketing and promoting their game at every stage of development. Others toil away in secrecy, hiding it away from the world until it's complete and then quietly uploading it to an app store or game portal. I tend to fall somewhere in between the two categories. I like to talk about the game and share screenshots as often as I can , but I don't really have the gift for self promotion. You'll rarely (if ever) find me at a game conference or casual developer meetup. I've started posting in forums like TIGSource and IndieGamer but momentum builds slowly. My main form of communication is through Twitter (you can follow me here), talking with other game developers, artists and interested fans of my work. Twitter is great for getting fast and useful feedback on in-game screenshots, helping to gauge the popularity of certain features you might want to put in the game and so on.

Anyway, the point of all this is firstly I need to seriously start thinking about going with a publisher at some point. Once the game has reached a point where I can release a playable prototype and perhaps a nice gameplay trailer, I'm going to start approaching a few publishers and see if there's much interest. Ships and Scurvy does not have the graphical eye-candy or slick polish of many other games on the market, but what it does have is what I believe a very addictive game loop.

Having had a large degree of success building the browser RPG Swords and Sandals series for 3rd Sense back in the day, I know what makes a good game loop. For Swords and Sandals, it was simple: Build character > Fight enemy > Level Up > Visit Shop , and repeat. For Ships and Scurvy, the process is as below:

  • Build ship / hire crew
  • Sail round ocean singing sea shanties
  • Explore islands and harass natives
  • Level up
  • Die from wonderful tropical diseases
And repeat! Your character is essentially immortal, washing up on the same deserted tropical island after each death - but with slightly more skills (and miraculously all the gold you had when you died) . It's a game loop not too dissimilar to the one Rogue Legacy used to great effect - the art of exploring the same overall world map again and again, all the while dying and gradually unlocking more power in your character.

So what's new since our last update?

You may remember I wrote a detailed blog post on a real-time combat model I'd built for island-based combat. Well..... scratch that. I spent a few days building it only to find that whilst it was lovely to watch all these little soldiers running at each other and fighting autonomously, the player's input felt very minimal. You could influence the outcome of the battle with commands issued to troops, but the effect was so subtle it was lost on players I tested the game with.

The new battle system is turn based. Characters line up in neat little rows and are issued commands each turn. They rush into the middle of the battle and duke it out, then return to the line. It's not realistic at all but from a gameplay perspective it works so much better. The ability to plan which troops to send in next and their level of agression/caution is quite enjoyable. Battles last a minute or two depending on the size of the two crews. In addition, I was able to include the player character as a hero unit to the game. Players are hugely powered heroes, with large health bars able and the ability to attack multiple opponents in a round or even heal their own crew.

There was actually a second, more subtle reason for including the player character in battles. In a game where the majority of time is spent looking at a ship, it's important for the player to see the hero they have created is actually involved in the action whenever possible. Hence they will appear in land battles, be seen on the scenes where there is fishing, diving, mining and so on. The more you feel part of the game, the more invested you are when your character dies.

Having adjusted the land based combat to turn based, I went back and did the same with the sea combat. On the advice of the great game designers and nautical experts at PiratesAhoy.Net, I added a few features to ship to ship battles, such as the ability to advance/retreat with your boat or even board the enemy ship for battle.



Notice above also, the boats now have customised sails on them. Your character's crest and colours are reflected here on the ship and also in the uniforms of your sailors. It's a little touch that personalises the game for you with the limited art assets that I've been able to draw. That's another thing - it's extremely time consuming to do your own artwork and also program your game. I'm hoping to enlist the help of two artists for backgrounds and miscellaneous assets, but the character art is all mine. I'd call myself a fair artist , not a great one, but mine is a unique, funny and colourful style which I think people enjoy.

The last month or so I've spent building character creation screens and the game's intro , which I'll reveal in a video at a later point. It's short and sweet but I think does a good job of setting the scene for your adventure. Finally, I've nearly got all the systems in place for the game - I'm building the all important island exploration scenes over the next few week; this is where the player can try 'choose-your-own-adventure' interactive stories, visit taverns and shops, go diving and fishing and experience many other interesting activities that may result in rewards or death.

Progress moves fast on the game - I hope to have an early playable build of the game available in about 5-6 weeks. If you're interested in being a tester or maybe doing a preview for your games review site, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me here at info@whiskeybarrelstudios.com and I'll send you everything you might need.

Cheers and happy journeys!

Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios
 
I'm sad to hear the land original combat build was scrapped. With a bit of work, you could have increased player input and made it a joy to watch and play. When you have a preview of the new land combat system, I'll see if there's any helpful suggestions I can work out.

Map and ship combat looks good, I like touches like the clouds and water reflections, and I like the custom sails. I'm looking forward to seeing more.
 
Oliver, have you considered trying for Steam Greenlight?

Also, concerning graphics, to me the way a game looks is secondary. I think your games art style works quite well, but I am far more interested in how a game plays than how it looks.
 
Good point Thagarr .... good gameplay trumps fancy graphics in almost every case. Some of the most popular indie games in recent years have had simple graphics ( Faster Than Light, Terraria, Minecraft! ) . Definitely going to try for Steam Greenlight for sure - once I have the game to a point where I can do a decent teaser trailer. Thinking it's about 5-6 weeks away from that. I'll be sure to link you guys a playable early prototype too if you're keen.
 
Many thanks as always for your kind support and enthusiasm for my humble game - it's so great to have the support of others with the same interest ( and especially those who are building a nautical themed game with such depth and realism as Hearts of Oak ) . I'll definitely get a prototype over to you guys as soon as its ready.

Meantime, finally got a decent logo for the game - still a WIP (there's a few little comic touches I want to add, like a sailor throwing up over the 'S' in Scurvy) but its starting to come together!

CA0yhFIUYAAprnQ.png
 
Ah , damn... it looks kinda similar to the Hearts of Oak logo doesn't it. Strangely enough I came up with the original logo a while back ( the mind always goes straight to an anchor or a ship's wheel , predictably!)

Rest assured this isn't the final form - as I mentioned it'll have waves, a sailor throwing up over the wheel and a bunch of other cartoon sailors posturing on it - definitely will be enough that it can't be mistaken for the (awesome and dignified) Hearts of Oak logo!

Spent all week creating resources for the myriad of islands in the game. About 120 so far, very time consuming. Everything from meats to minerals, all with typical whimsy and lack of historical accuracy :D
 
No worries about your logo mate, it looks quite good! I am looking forward to having an actual logo for the next front page news article on Ships and Scurvy! :onya
 
Ahoy again, my fellow seafarers!

Once again, it’s been a while – though I put that down to communication on the high seas not being particularly swift!

Since the last game dev diary, I’ve been hard at work focusing on building the many islands in the game. At its very heart, Ships and Scurvy is a game of exploration and adventure. The beauty of making an ocean based RPG is you can quite quickly build a huge world. The ocean covers 95% of it, but you populate it with islands and you can create a seemingly huge world without having to spend months and months detailing it.

That’s not to say there will be long boring stretches of empty ocean – nobody likes that. I’ve started to add a stack of sea monsters and swarms of fish that swim around – you can try to fight them if you dare. I’m going to implement large transparent floating ‘X’ marks on the ocean – stop here and you might catch a rare fish or find some sunken treasure. Bits of flotsam containing wood, wreckage of ships and mysterious bottles will float around the currents. Combine this with the hundreds of ships in the game and special text events and every day will be full of interesting happenings.

The ocean itself varies between 100,000 pixels and 250,000 pixels in width/height at the moment. I haven’t locked down a final number, I have to play with the game a fair bit more to try and achieve that balance between voyages feeling like they’re not super fast and also not feeling like a chore. I’d ideally like for it to take 30 seconds to a minute to sail from one island to another – any longer and it starts to get boring.

Time for a quick bit of maths: If you consider the average screen width of a device playing the game is roughly 1024 pixels, and a fast ship travels about 200 pixels a second, it would take 5 seconds to navigate it. If the entire ocean is 100,000 pixels wide, it’d take 500 seconds, or about 8 minutes to sail the length of it. In terms of a little casual RPG, that’s a fair distance. It creates a sense of wonder and exploration, but not so much that the game feels insurmountably big.

Diving2.jpg


Island Generation

So, no ocean is complete without islands! Back in the second dev diary, I actually detailed how I created and placed islands in the game. They were nothing but images in a grid back then. The ship would reach them, then have to turn around because they did nothing. Several months later, I’ve finally reached a point where I could populate and detail them. It’s a seemingly easy process on the surface, but like most things in game development, is more complicated than that.

Let’s go through the process how I create an island in the game. Each island needs:

A name. This name usually comes from one of the events in the island’s adventure scenario. For example, an adventure scenario where your crew run into a herd of stray blue cats naturally leads me to calling the island something like “Azura Felis’ . I tend to lean towards bastardised Spanish/Latin sounding names like “Isla” or “Volcanum” because it kind of lends itself to the theme of the game – the Spanish and Portuguese journeys of great exploration were a huge inspiration in developing this game.
A location. This is an X and Y point on a map, somewhere between 0 and 100,000 ( or whatever the final map size is). I have designed the game so the starting island our hero washes up on is at the very center of the map, and I wrote a little bit of code that spawned islands at increasing distances from that point, further and further out at a random angle. So it almost looks like a spiral galaxy. From there I then move these islands around a bit to randomize it, check to make sure no islands are touching, and then I assign a number to each island.
A difficulty level. This is a subtle one. Why would an island have a difficulty level? The reason for this is actually to create a world that feels dangerous and has a sense of danger. Games like Skyrim scale their difficulty as the player’s level improves, but I don’t think that suits a game of exploration like this. You need to feel trepidation when landing on a mysterious island – will you face a tribe of pygmies? Or perhaps a 50 foot gorilla? The difficulty level is assigned for each island , and any battles that might be fought on this island will be scaled to that level.
An adventure scenario. Each adventure contains a ‘choose your own adventure’ style scenario in which the captain and the crew explore the island, encountering mysterious situations, hostile tribes, fantastic beasts and so on. An adventure can be attempted at any time on an island, except it can only be completed once per island. If you decide to run from the herd of giant fluffy kittens, you don’t get a second chance to go back and try again until you start a new game.
Resources. There’s currently about 150 resources that can be collected in Ships and Scurvy, everything from rice and bananas to whiskey, jewels and rare gems. Each island contains a number of these resources that can be mined/harvested in activities. I haven’t yet decided whether these resources will ever become exhausted or not – this will probably be a design decision further through the build. I’ll detail each resource a bit further below.
Activities. Each resources has an associated activity. Gold can be mined, wheat can be harvested and so on. Depending on the resources allocated to each island, little icons will appear on the island to show that an island can be mined, its waters fished or its animals hunted. There’s currently up to 10 activities that can be completed on any island, but most islands will have 3-4 activities depending on its resources.
So, as you can see, there’s a lot to do for each island! Here’s a screenshot of an island showing a few activities that can be attempted.

IslandActivities.jpg


I’ve written some code that automatically allocates resources to each island so I didn’t have to do it manually. The pseudocode for this is pretty simple. For each island I wish to create:

Generate a random number between 1 and 100
Pick a random resource. See if its hidden rarity value is less than the number rolled. If so, add this resource to the island. This way, common items like fresh water, grain and wood will appear on most islands. Rarer items like silver or exotic fruits will appear much less.
Repeat this scenario up to X number of times per island, guaranteeing each island will definitely have at least a few items to find.
Resources

Each resource has a number of properties, as hinted at above, and is grouped into either a consumable (such as beer) or a non-consumable (such as cobalt). Let’s take a quick look at two such items. Both items contain common properties such as those found in the non-consumable item cobalt.

// non consumable

case Resources.COBALT:
rObj.itemDesc= "One of your sailors remarks that he has killed plenty of cobalts and goblins in his day. You suspect he means 'kobold' but don't have the heart to tell him."
rObj.resourceType=ResourceTypes.MINERAL
rObj.itemWeight = 10
rObj.valueModifier=3
rObj.consumable = false
rObj.rarity=30
break

//consumable

case Resources.BEER:

rObj.itemDesc="Beer: The number one reason dugongs get mistaken for mermaids.";
rObj.resourceType=ResourceTypes.MATERIAL;
rObj.itemWeight=4;
rObj.shelfLife= 30;
rObj.nutritionValue = 0;
rObj.diseasePrevention=0;
rObj.moraleValue=10;
rObj.itemWeight=8;
rObj.consumable = true;
rObj.rarity=25;
break;


When you perform an activity on an island, there’s a random chance you’ll find one of these items, and you’ll see a popup such as the one below:

foraging3.jpg


Anyway, that’s it for this week. Next up, we will be concentrating on the ship herself – feeding the crew, repairing and maintaining your vessel, and dealing with the ever-present threats of mutiny and scurvy.

It is a long and often difficult process to build a large game as a solo developer, but I’m as always grateful for the interest from the community – thanks for reading and being a part of it. We shall get there, and what an adventure we will have!

Cheers and happy journeys!
Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios
 
Don't forget the breadfruit, you cant have mutiny's without breadfruit! xD

Seriously, I really like the random resource generation, cool stuff mate! That will also help to make each play through of the game a unique experience, as you wont have the exact same resources on the islands. I also like the pseudoscientific naming scheme, good stuff mate!:onya
 
Ahoy , Pirates! Been a while since my last forum update, but here 'tis. As always, your feedback has been awesome. Anyway, without further ado:

Another month passes at sea. In fact, it's been nearly 6 months since I started work on Ships and Scurvy. That's pretty scary.

I originally came up with the idea for the game in December of last year as chronicled in the first dev diary, and six months later I would estimate the game's probably about 50% built. Progress has been at times slow, and at other times really rapid, but every day I've been adding something to the game to get it to this point.

So what's the latest? Since we last talked, I've fully sorted out the island resource gathering and adventures. They're actually pretty cool - some of them see you fleeing from exploding volcanos, while in another you might be trying to diplomatically excuse yourself from a boring tribal dance. Check it out:

toughDecisions.jpg


Aside from the island adventures, I spent the last few weeks building the cargo hold / shop system. This took several iterations but I'm pretty happy with where it's at, considering how much information needs to be displayed. You can buy, sell, drop items all from the one screen and get information about each resource at a glance. UI is hard, man. So time consuming - I estimate it's about 50% of game dev.

cargoHold2.png


So, it's time to take a look at how far we've come this last 6 months.

FULLY WORKING IN THE GAME SO FAR:

A large ocean, fully sailable. It takes about 5 minutes to sail from one corner to the other ( and then it loops , like a round earth should.)
Over 100 ships and 2 sea monsters that sail around the ocean. This number is going to increase later.
A weather system , with storms, wind directions, waves. The sun rises and sets, our ship has a spotlight for the dark.
A game introduction animation
A character creation system where the player can customise their avatar and ship's flag/crest.
25 of the game's 50+ islands fully built, with resources to gather and adventures to be had.
A'Choose Your Own Adventure' style adventure for each island, with 4 possible outcomes - there's nearly 10,000 words of stories so far and counting.
Each island also has up to 10 activites to do, from harvesting and foraging to hunting, diving and mining.
There's over 200 resources to be gathered, from the very common items such as wood and cloth to very rare treasures. Each one has a description, weight, nutritional value and so on.
A fully scrollable world map that uncovers islands as they are discovered.
An army to army combat system for land based battles between up to 80 troops.
A ship to ship turn based battle system , with fully firing cannons and ship movement.
A fully working shop system and cargo hold , buy sell and trade items.[/li][/list]

So , in a nutshell, there's been a stack achieved. When I tally it all up like that, I'm pretty happy with what I've done so far as a one man band. There's so much to do when you're building an RPG. It sounds funny but I'm only just coming to the point where the game is playable. Each individual system works, but only now am I tying them together. You can visit an island, mine a resource, sell it to a merchant or drop it in the ocean. You can lose troops in battle and so on, but you can't buy more crew members because I haven't built the tavern yet, and so on. There are no enemy pirate captains to face.

Speaking of which, here's broadly what's left to build.

THINGS ON MY TO DO LIST:

25 more islands to craft ( the stories are written on paper but it's time consuming to add them to the game )
25+ 'ocean based' adventures which randomly happen at sea
The tavern ( hire crew , get rumours of adventure and so on, have a good meal )
Captain vs Captain single combat -this will be a simple turn based system
Flotsam , drowning sailors and other objects in the sea to find
Crew page ( feeding the crew, dealing with disease and morale , singing sea shanties etc )
Trophies - keeping track of all your achievements in the game )
Journal - a page to keep track of how many pirate captains you've defeated, how many islands visited, how many seamonsters defeated etc
I have to draw about 20 sea monsters , from the giant squid to the White Whale. These will be fought in combat exactly like ship to ship combat
I have to draw about 20 'island guardian' monsters, from King Kong to a giant bronze statue. These are fought just like army vs army combats, except it's army vs monster!
I have to create outfits for 20 or so pirate captains for you to face. Mainly just a hat , a crest and a weapon - as well as a simple back story for each.
Character skill / level up page - you get XP in the game, I want characters to be able to improve their skills, everything from cooking to fighting to mining. Your choice.
Crew officers - basically 'special units' that don't appear in combat, but rather grant bonuses to things in the game. One officer might allow for +2 combat while at night etc.
Disease screen - when you get diseases, there's a sarcastic celebratory screen ....' Congratulations, You've Got Scurvy!' and so on.
Ship upgrade screen - get more cannons, improve the ship's hull, faster sails etc.

Woah... that's a pretty big list. We're definitely on track though. I'm fully committed to the game thus far. That's the good news.

And now the bad news.

So...I just landed a contract job building a Unity game with a game development company here in Sydney. It's a really cool project will be a massive learning experience for me - in order to stay relevant in the game industry, I have to improve my skillset in languages other than ActionScript / Adobe AIR ( which is what Ships and Scurvy is built in ) . I'm self funding the development of this game, and I have to support that with client work. This gig is going to be fulltime until November, so unfortunely development on Ships will slow down a fair bit , mainly nights and weekends, until that contract is over.

After that, however, I should be sufficiently funded enough to be able to dedicate enough time to finish the game by early next year and get it launched. It's tough, but indie developers gotta make money any way they can, and I'm very fortunate to have landed a contract job building games, rather than having to flip burgers ( not that that isn't a noble, delicious profession.)

Oh, one more thing before I sign off - I've built a fully functioning game map , divided into four seas; the Uveric, Pilthian, T'Kash and Cycladian oceans. It's a lot of fun sailing out into the vast ocean and seeing little islands pop up on your map as you visit them. The islands in the image below don't have proper names yet but that's coming soon ( 25 of 50+ islands built already ).

worldMap.png



Anyway, that's it for this month - sorry the updates have been so slow but rest assured I'm working hard to get a game trailer out this month for everyone to see. In a few months I'm hoping to have a playable alpha for people to try out. You can email me at info@whiskeybarelstudios.com if you want to be notified when it's available. Any game reviewers who want an early copy to check out, that would be brilliant - I've hardly done any promotion thus far but I'll be looking for a game publisher pretty soon - please do get in touch if you want to talk biz, I'm pretty confident this game is going to be great but I'd love your help.

Happy journeys in your game development!

Cheers, Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios
 
I feel you on UI. If someone made a really good UI maker with compatibility with the various engine, they'd make a fortune and save developed millions of hours (collectively).

Glad to hear you've landed a good, interesting job! Nothing to worry about with leaving the game for a while, it'll let you come back to it fresh when you have more time (providing you've left good notes, otherwise you'll come back bewildered).

Also, that's an excellent list of features. The game is probably already in a playable stage, and now just needs polish (which is the other 50%, of the 150% of making a game).
 
Cheers Mask, you're totally right - every game developer I speak to says the same thing, UI is massively time consuming and you feel like you fight with it - the hardest thing is every time you iterate your game design and change it, you have to fiddle with the UI etc.

Thanks for the kind words! Yeah I'm going to try and spend a few nights a week on Ships where I can, keep momentum going - can be a real battle to come back to something you haven't touched for 5 months.

At any rate I'll post an early gameplay trailer video here soonish! All the best with Hearts of Oak's continued awesomess too - really getting the most out of the Unity framework! I love how the water looks.
 
I'm excited for that game trailer! The attitude you're taking towards this is a good one. If you manage to work on the project a little every so often, you'll keep your momentum, and eventually it'll be done.

I might ask James from Extra Credits about UI programs, at the next Q&A. It really is surprising that no one has made a good one. Maybe it's because companies that are good at that sort of thing don't want to give up their edge to the competition? Or maybe general game industry short sightedness where everyone is too busy making cool things to make better UI systems? I've seen a couple of good extensions for game engines that simplified UI design, so some do exist (not sure of any for your program, sorry).

Thank you for your well-wishes with HoO. I hope we both have luck with our (various) projects.
 
Hey pirates!

Sorry it's been far too long since my last update. I've totally neglected my development blog - something I mean to remedy soon. The game is coming along in leaps and bounds - I just wanted to share with you the first teaser trailer from the game!


Cheers!
 
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