The Quixotic Engineer

Only ten months after promising that they were “coming soon”, the gentlemen of No Fun Games (Henk, Renaud and myself) have finally finished porting our one-button real-time strategy game Pax Britannica to OSX and Linux. You can check them out at our fancy new website, or download them directly here:

Mac Download / Linux Download

Unfortunately, the OSX version of the game is currently lacking gamepad support due to a platform-specific issue with GLFW. We’ll be sure to release an updated version of the game if that’s ever patched!

I’m tremendously grateful for all the positive feedback we’ve received about Pax Britannica. In particular, this video review by Joe Larson and his son Andrew reminded me why I started making video games in the first place:

Minecraft was my gateway drug. It seduced my imagination with grand ideas: setting foot in a dangerous new world, gathering provisions from the wilderness, erecting meagre shelter and surviving on your cunning and creativity. Regrettably, these concepts quickly wane once you learn a handful of commonsense safety rituals. Late-game Minecraft becomes a different game entirely, one largely centred on erecting impressive macrostructures or testing the limits of redstone torch circuits. This minor letdown gave me a taste for “harder stuff”, which led me to the seemingly impenetrable pioneer simulator Dwarf Fortress.

Dwarf Fortress has a peculiar dual inheritance: the permanent death and procedural generation of Roguelikes and the city-building strategy of games like SimCity. Its well-deserved reputation for inaccessibility is rooted in several factors, most notably the extreme austerity of its graphics. Simply learning to mentally translate a screenful of ASCII into a bustling dwarven settlement is a considerable endeavour (though a sprite pack certainly helps). Underneath this mess of characters lies a byzantine system of mechanics that drive the game’s detailed world simulation.

The scope of this simulation is almost inconceivable. For starters, every dwarf has a unique name, equipment, proficiencies in various professions, work orders, religion, moods (sometimes strange), relationships, and health status categorized per limb. The world generator models elevation, temperature, rainfall, drainage and erosion to generate several dozen biome types. These biomes are populated by thirty kinds of trees, a few dozen types of rock and ore, and several hundred creature species ranging from elephants to hydras. Despite its anachronistic low-fidelity graphics, the sheer quantity of information being processed and updated under the hood necessitates modern computing power.

Agency in this complex world is expressed through the dwarves, but they are not directly under your control. Instead the player outlines a high level task (dig here, store wood here, construct a workshop here) and the game chooses a dwarf to perform it based on certain criteria. As far as I can tell, this aspect of the control scheme is unique; strategy games usually require manual unit selection before issuing simple commands. Dwarves are highly autonomous once set up with the proper facilities, and will occupy themselves with eating, drinking, sleeping and working without the player’s input.

Regrettably, this remarkable system also has a massive flaw: the nontrivial task of managing who does what. Each dwarf has a list of “labours” that he or she is permitted to perform. These labours loosely correspond to professions: mining, wood cutting, farming, masonry, hauling etc. This system allows you to maximize the benefits of your specially trained dwarfs. After all, you don’t want your best farmer to be hauling barrels while your expedition starves. However, needlessly restricting labours can create a work bottleneck or leave an overspecialized dwarf idle. Managing labours manually becomes extremely tiresome once your dwarven population swells to thirty or more, necessitating third party spreadsheet applications such as Dwarf Therapist.

One aspect of Dwarf Fortress that particularly appeals to me as a programmer is that its systems are not inherently complex. Instead, the complexity arises from the interaction of many simple systems. Tarn Adams described this design philosophy as: “finding the key, basic elements, finding the rules that govern them, and then activating those things in the world.” For instance, one of the first challenges for a new dwarven settlement is securing a source of food, and the safest ways of doing this is subterranean farming. In order to plant crops underground, the soil must be muddied by temporarily covering it in water. Rather than having one preordained way of doing this, a number of interesting options emerge from Dwarf Fortress’s sophisticated fluid dynamics simulation. One method involves setting up a dwarven bucket brigade to carry in water from a distant source. Another option entails digging out the side of a murky pool so that the water flows into a larger chamber. Advanced players can even work out complex irrigation systems using floodgates and pumps. Hungry dwarves, thirsty plants and simulated water physics intersect to create an interesting problem.

The intersection of simple systems is also responsible for Dwarf Fortress’s peculiar difficulty scale. The level of challenge associated with any given playthrough is largely determined by the choice of embarkment site. Each biome offers a distinct set of flora and fauna, and is further classified on axes of savagery and alignment. Evil and untamed lands are teeming with dangerous creatures and are thus far more perilous to inhabit. Proximity to other civilizations is also a difficulty factor. Human and elven neighbours will send trade caravans; goblins neighbours will send raiding parties. The most pernicious threat to dwarven pioneers is the presence of aquifers: underground layers of water-saturated soil. They’re difficult to dig through, can cause accidental flooding, and halt excavation toward more valuable ores. Since all of these gameplay factors are presented on the embarkment screen, it’s up the player to choose how difficult their experience with Dwarf Fortress will be. For instance, Tim Denee was clearly playing on “hard mode” when he chose to embark the Oilfurnace expedition in a haunted land infested with undead and riddled with aquifers.

Dwarf Fortress is chock-full of fascinating design ideas and endless procedurally-generated adventure. Don’t let the steep learning curve scare you away: grab a guide, embrace the philosophy that losing is fun and strike the earth!

Back in late April, the No Fun Games gang (Renaud Bédard, Henk Boom and I) took the train down to Toronto to participate in TOJam. Over three days, we hacked together a silly game called Tea Time Quarrel. Since then we’ve had the opportunity to present the game publicly at TOJam Arcade and the Mount Royal Game Society. However, we never got around to officially releasing it… until now!

Download Tea Time Quarrel (Windows)

Though we’re quite proud of this little experimental game, our excitement for releasing it is tempered by the fact that the majority of players will not have the hardware peripherals necessary to play it. Tea Time Quarrel is a multiplayer game designed to be played with four game pads. There simply isn’t enough room on the keyboard to allow four players access to six keys each, and the limited scope of the game jam meant that we did not have time to implement a variable number of players.

Partly in light of this unfortunate restriction, I thought I’d write a little bit about how Tea Time Quarrel is played and what our design goals were in creating it.

The central idea behind Tea Time Quarrel occurred to me when I was reading an article about the fundamentals of game design (which I can no longer find, but may have been Jesper Juul’s “The Game, the Player, the World”). The article asserted that the rules of a game are agreed to by all players beforehand, and are fixed once the game begins. My inner contrarian balked at this statement; why couldn’t the rules of a game be defined dynamically¹? Could the strategic creation and election of new rules be a second-order game mechanic?

The goal of Tea Time Quarrel is to be the first player to reach 100 points. Players can perform a modest variety of actions: jump, run around, collect teacups, attack goats², attack other players, etc. However, none of these actions will inherently bring them any closer to a victory condition. Every twenty seconds one of the players is given the opportunity to propose a new rule. Rules follow a simple four-part syntax:

This may look complicated, but it’s quite simple in practice. For example, the rule “Each Teacup Adds Points” would give a player one point every time she collects a teacup. On the other hand, the rule “Least Jumps Removes Speed” would reduce the walking speed of the player who has jumped the fewest times overall at the end of each round. While the vocabulary seems rather limited, it can still produce 128 valid rule combinations³. Due to scoping and technical restrictions, it should be noted that the effects of rules do not currently trigger other rules.

Of course, proposing a rule is only half the story. A rule is only added to the game if a majority of players vote for it (“Democracy! Just as The Queen intended.”) This prevents players from designing rules that are blatantly in their favour. Instead, players must subtly seek the advantage while convincing other players to accept their new rule.

Whether you assemble enough peripherals to actually play the game or just have a good chuckle at the concept, we hope that you enjoy Tea Time Quarrel!

¹ Of course the rules about making rules are fixed and agreed to beforehand, so this is just a layer of abstraction.
² The “Goat on a Pole” is the TOJam mascot.
³ Rules with conditions of “Each Point” or “Each Health” can never be triggered, so they’re marked as invalid.

If you pay attention to video game news, you’ve probably heard a lot of buzz these last few weeks about an indie game called Minecraft. Ever since it caught the attention of gaming tastemakers Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Penny Arcade, my online social circle has been completely twitterpated. In fact, it has become so extraordinarily popular that the developers have made it temporarily free-to-play in order to prevent overloading their servers.

Minecraft is a peculiar game that’s difficult to classify. Its pedigree certainly includes the world-building of Dwarf Fortress, the procedural dungeon crawling of Rogue, and the undirected creativity of LEGO. While it’s marvellously simple and intuitive, Minecraft is not an easy game to learn. In its current alpha release, it has nothing in the way of guidance or tutorials. It’s nearly impossible to figure out what to do on your own, making it necessary to follow an external FAQ.

In an effort to help resolve this unfortunate situation, I’ve put together a small guide to surviving your first day and night in Minecraft. There are already a number of excellent walkthroughs for new players available on the game’s forum, and my advice certainly does not diverge strongly from them. However, if this guide manages to pique your interest then I strongly encourage you to purchase a copy and explore the world of Minecraft for yourself.

Welcome to your very own procedurally generated world! It’s very pretty and ripe for exploration. However, you shouldn’t start wandering just yet. When nighttime falls, the land will be crawling with all sorts of dangerous fiends. You need to start gathering the necessary materials to survive the night.

The first resource you need is lumber. Walk up the nearest tree trunk and begin harvesting it by holding down the left mouse button. The block will eventually break, dropping a log that you can pick up. Chop down a few more trees in this manner until you have collected close to a dozen logs.

To begin using these logs, they need to be crafted into lumber and sticks. Begin by pressing ‘i’ to open your inventory, then click and drag the logs into the crafting window. You will receive four units of lumber for each log you process. Next, drag the lumber into the crafting window in the shape illustrated above (one on top of the other) to create sticks. If necessary, you can split your lumber pile in half by right clicking it.

Crafting is one of the Minecraft‘s most fundamental mechanics, but in the alpha version it is very poorly documented. If you’d like to know more about the sort of things you can craft, I recommend consulting the Minecraft Wiki.

Coal is the second essential resource for your first night in Minecraft. As illustrated in the screenshot above, it looks like black splotches on a rock cube. It’s most commonly found embedded in sheer rock cliffs and natural cave formations. However, unlike wood, you cannot gather coal with your bare hands; you need to craft a proper tool.

To make a tool, you need a crafting table to access the 3×3 crafting grid. You can make one by arranging four pieces of lumber in a square. Move the crafting table to the bottom line of your inventory, use the scroll wheel to equip it, and place it in the world by right clicking. Don’t worry too much about the position, as you can pick the crafting table back up by left-click “gathering” it.

Right click the crafting table to access the larger grid, then place your lumber and sticks in the above formation. This will create a wooden pickaxe, a valuable mining tool that tears through rock and harvests certain ores. Equip it (the same way you did the crafting table) and hold the left mouse button to mine the coal. You should also gather some rock while you’re at it, though it’s plentiful everywhere.

While pickaxes are fundamental to progressing in Minecraft, it’s worth noting that you can also craft axes, shovels and hoes to speed up your work or swords and armour to protect yourself.

By the time you’ve finished gathering coal, it’s quite likely that the sun has begun to set. Zombies, spiders and skeletons will begin wandering the land shortly, and you’re in no shape to fight them with your current equipment. It’s therefore imperative that you construct some shelter to hide in. Fortunately, all the materials you’ve been gathering will help you to do exactly that. Use your pickaxe to carve a shallow cave in the side of a cliff. Any location will do, but I advise not wandering too far from your starting point (you’ll respawn there when you die). For extra safety, wall up the entrance with dirt when you’re finished.

Of course, noone wants to sit around in a dark cave all night. To get things done, you’ll need some light. Combine sticks and coal to craft some torches, then place them on the walls to light up the room. Monsters won’t spawn in lighted areas, so you should place a few outside your abode as well.

Since you’re stuck inside until the sun rises, you might as well get some crafting done. I recommend constructing two particularly useful pieces of furniture. A furnace is made out of rock and consumes fuel (wood or coal) to smelt ore, bake bricks and cook food. A wooden chest provides an abundance of extra storage space. It’s a great place to keep your more valuable items, as it will protect you from losing them when your character dies.

If it’s still dark outside, you should start digging a mine and exploring the underworld. You can find rare and valuable ores as you descend, but you’ll need a better tool to gather them. For now, crafting a pick out of rock will allow you to collect iron. Resist the temptation to dig straight down; you might get stuck or fall into lava. Instead, dig diagonally in a descending staircase shape. If you hit a natural underground cave or dungeon, be sure to explore it (cautiously!)

Similarly to coal, iron ore appears as tawny patches on rock. Smelting the ore into ingots with your furnace will allow you to craft iron armour, minecarts, buckets, etc. Iron is a very useful metal, but as you dig deeper you’ll find precious gold, diamond and redstone.

When dawn finally arrives, the morning sun will burn any monsters that are still roaming about (except for explosive Creepers, inexplicably). The land is once again safe to explore, so I recommend taking advantage of the daylight to gather more lumber, hunt wild animals or embellish your residence (here’s mine at the moment).

Once you’ve gotten the basic mechanics down, how you continue to play is really up to you. You could try spelunking the depths of the earth, building a treehouse or sailing to distant lands. There are no explicit goals or directives, just a wonderful sandbox of pure undirected play. I hope you have a grand adventure!

Indie Gaming Gallery is a semi-regular feature where I attempt to support independent game development by highlighting some outstanding titles that you should definitely check out.

Ancient Trader [XBLIG]

It requires a bit of searching, but you can occasionally find a real gem in the unfortunate ghetto of Xbox Live Indie Games. Ancient Trader is a simple turn-based strategy game that’s aesthetically inspired by old world cartography and cryptozoology. Players compete to be the first to track down three artifacts and defeat the powerful Ancient Guardian.

At its core, the game is mechanically similar to the old DOS game Drugwars; the goal is to buy goods (tea, spice and fruit) for a low price at one port and sell them for a profit at another. Players must explore and uncover the map to discover the most profitable transactions, but the prices never fluctuate. However, the journey is not without peril, as players can be assaulted by sea monsters and competing traders. Combat is similarly straightforward: a game of rock-paper-scissors augmented with numerical values to settle ties. Allowing a choice of weapons gives the illusion of chance, but playing rationally makes the battles almost entirely deterministic. Players can upgrade their vessels with stronger cannons, larger storage and faster hulls.

Whereas the gameplay is simple and sufficient, the presentation is lovingly crafted and absolutely joyous. The sepia-stained maps of fictional islands look as if they were hand-drawn by 16th century explorers. The various sea monsters are inspired by the scribbled horrors imagined in the “here be dragons” regions of ancient atlases. Minor features are animated with care: waves sway, flotsam bobs, breezes fill sails, clouds waft. The menu iconography is simple, clear and consistent with the period setting. Fourkidsgames has done a tremendous job of developing this uncommon aesthetic style, and the game is consistently delightful and polished as a result.

Whatever Ancient Trader lacks in strategic depth, it more than makes up for with its charming presentation. If you’re as fascinated by ancient cartography and the exploration of the New World as I am, I strongly recommend checking it out.

Hook Champ [iPhone]

There are a multitude of platformers available on the iPhone’s app store. The vast majority of them rely on some kludge to work their way around the device’s touch interface, often opting to clumsily emulate a traditional control pad. However, every once in a while a game comes along that embraces the iPhone’s idiosyncrasies. Hook Champ by RocketCat Games is one such game, and a personal favourite.

The goal of the game is to direct protagonist Jake T. Hooker as he escapes from a sepulchral heist. Jake’s primary mode of transportation is his trusty grappling hook, which players can deploy by touching the screen and retract by releasing it. As you become accustomed to flying through the air in this fashion, the sequence of touch and release becomes delightfully rhythmic. Should you miscalculate a maneuver and fall, you can slowly run across the ground in order to locate a convenient ledge. However, keeping up your speed is essential, as Jake is being chased by a rancorous apparition known as “The Curse”. Of course, the thrilling feeling of speed conveyed by successfully maintaining a fluid swinging motion is sufficient incentive in and of itself.

Jake can spend his misappropriated gold on a number of grappling hook enhancements, special equipment and fancy hats. This of course provides some incentive to replay and explore previous levels. Upgrading the grappling hook enables a much smoother swinging motion, which in turn makes the whole game more fun. This is a somewhat curious choice; why not make the controls this excellent from the start? The unlockable shotgun and rocket boots provide limited horizontal and vertical bursts of speed respectively, and are activated by two small buttons on the bottom of the screen. This equipment adds welcome variety, but mapping them to a meagre portion of the screen makes them difficult to deploy with precise timing.

My largest annoyance with an otherwise excellent game is a significant late-game difficulty spike. Only the most dedicated players will be able to make any progress through the unforgiving Bull Idol stages, where a floor of lava ensures that every mistake is deadly. Since there are already time trials and global leaderboards in place for the hardcore audience, I can’t imagine why the developers sought to exclude casual players from the later levels.

Plain Sight [PC]

When I’m trying to proselytize my friends to this game, I describe it as “quick-draw robot sword-fighting with Mario Galaxy physics.” That’s usually sufficiently intriguing to pique anyone’s interest, but Plain Sight is more peculiar and interesting than even that brief description lets on.

The game’s multiplayer deathmatch has an unusual set of rules: you spawn with one point, and must slay other players to steal their points. Points makes you bigger and stronger, but also make you a more visible and attractive target. Here’s the rub: your points only get banked and added to the scoreboard when you trigger self-destruction. Catching other players in your explosion multiplies that score. These mechanics give the game a strategic risk/reward dynamic: should you bank your points now, or take advantage of the extra strength to accumulate more? Should you target a lucrative point-laden player, or elude him to avoid increasing his multiplier?

The aerial combat in Plain Sight is a breathtaking experience. Swords kill in one hit, so the emphasis is placed on movement and reflexes. As I mentioned earlier, this game builds on the orbital gravity mechanics of Mario Galaxy. Each platform has its own gravitational field, so the meaning of up and down is entirely relative. Holding down the left mouse button charges a dash attack, which is used both to lock-on to other players and to quickly change direction while airborne. Combine jumping, charging and low gravity and you can soar through the sky indefinitely. Beatnik Games tuned a thousand subtle details just right to produce a wonderful sense of speed and flight.

If you’re looking for something new to play over the Labour Day weekend, I hope you’ll consider checking out these terrific independent games.