Posted by WDesm on Apr 21, 2010
Post a Comment
XBLA Indie Preview: ASCII Quest
We’ve recently been chatting with Jade Vault Games, a one-man indie studio intent on bringing a fully-featured, no-holds barred Roguelike to XBLIG. Their project, ASCII Quest, is shaping up to be the biggest and most expansive roguelike on the system, so you can bet that many a’ nerds have their eyes and ears open. To bring you some details on this upcoming attention-getter, we cornered Jade Vault Games and threw a volley of questions their way. I especially like their take on the function of XBLIG, so sit back and enjoy some quality reading!
WD: How long have you been programming / developing games, and what got you started in indie gaming?
JV: I’ve been programming since I was a young teenager, and I’ve been designing games since I was even younger, but it’s only recently that I’ve actually gotten serious about game development. Games have always been a passion for me. It’s a truly unique form of entertainment; a single game can provide orders of magnitude more fun and value than a movie or a book. Couple that with the fact that I enjoy programming, and it seems only natural that I would get into game development.
In the past, most of my game projects were just little pet projects, none of which I took too seriously. It wasn’t until Microsoft announced Xbox LIVE Indie Games that I saw a great opportunity to get started as an indie game developer. It was then that Jade Vault Games was born.
WD: Given that Jade Vault Games is a new competitor in the XBLIG marketplace, what made you decide on a Roguelike as your first game?
JV: Role-playing games are my true passion, both in terms of playing and designing/developing. However, the trouble with an RPG is that they require such vast amounts of content. This is why you don’t see very many RPGs on XBLIG yet. They take a lot of work and time to create.
I decided that a roguelike would be a great “first game” for me. By making a purely text-based game, I didn’t have to worry about graphical assets. This let me concentrate purely on the programming and the game design, which are most interesting to me. Plus, a roguelike is a type of RPG, so I still get to make the kind of game that I like.
WD: Computer roguelikes have had a much longer dev cycle than you can reasonably hope to catch up to. Do you feel competition / pressure to live up to those iconic standards (size, scale, complexity, depth, replayability, etc) on XBLIG?
JV: Yeah, the pressure is definitely there. As the sole developer of Jade Vault Games, there’s no way I can compete with the likes of Nethack and ADOM. So instead, I had to decide up-front that I shouldn’t try to compete directly against them. Instead, I focused on creating a smooth, fun roguelike experience on Xbox 360. I want to allow anyone to pick it up and play it, even if they’ve never played roguelikes before.
At the same time, I didn’t want to create a shallow game experience, so the game does have depth and variety. There’s an overworld map, and you visit four towns and five dungeons throughout the game. Each dungeon has its own layout generation algorithm, to give each location its own flavor. Each dungeon also has its own host of monsters, as well as a boss fight at the bottom floor. It’s definitely not at the same scale as a game like Nethack, but it should be enough to interest newbies and roguelike veterans alike.
WD: ASCIIQuest has had a few small delays, and while the end is now in sight, it appears to have taken you longer to reach it than you originally anticipated. What sort of challenges face indie devs, and how have you overcome them?
JV: When you hear about indie devs in the games press, you usually hear about the big hitters. Castle Crashers, Dishwasher, Braid, and the like. The developers of these games are the kind of people who can quit their day jobs and do indie game dev full-time. Most of us are bottom-feeders, though, and we can’t make a living off of what we do just yet. So I have a day job, and that takes up most of my time. It doesn’t leave as much time as I’d like, so it requires a lot of time management. It’s something that all of us have to learn. I burned myself out pretty hard last year, and it took me a few months to get back on track. But I’m constantly learning. I continue to make progress on ASCII Quest, and I inexorably push closer to release.
Another problem I’ve had to overcome is knowing when to stop adding features and start refining the features I already have. It’s easy to allow feature creep to affect your work. You start thinking about all these cool features you could add to your game, but there’s only so much time, and you do want to ship your game eventually. So you have to decide on a good stopping point. This was something I only figured out a couple months ago. I sat down and wrote out a long list of features I wanted to implement, and I cut it in half. Then I cut it in half again. Now I have a concrete list of features that I can actually finish in a reasonable amount of time. My current to-do work list actually has more bugs than features, which is usually a good sign. The point is that I have a goal line. I know when I’ll be finished. Now it’s just a matter of getting there.
WD: The XBLIG games that have flourished the most have so far been those that are easy to understand, quick to get into, and highly casual, while the more complicated ones, although critically acclaimed, fail to penetrate the market and generate sales. Will ASCIIQuest be an epicgrindfest, or will casual gamers get hooked on roguelikes in a new way?
JV: The nature of XBLIG definitely seems to favor casual games; this has certainly proven to be true on other platforms as well. That said, my goal isn’t really to make a lot of money right now. My opinion is that if you want to make a lot of money, for the moment, XBLIG is the wrong platform for you. Some devs like to bemoan the fact that they haven’t been making money, but in my opinion, that’s not the point. Instead, XBLIG is a great platform for wannabe indie game devs to get their feet wet, get some valuable experience, build a portfolio of titles, and maybe make a few extra bucks on the side. Perhaps in the future, XBLIG will evolve into a more viable platform for serious indie game devs, but for now, I’m working on making Jade Vault Games into a more mature company. With that in mind, XBLIG is a great first step.
With regard to the design of ASCII Quest, I’m certainly trying to make my game as streamlined as possible. Roguelikes are known for having obscure interfaces that are intimidating to newbies. ASCII Quest will step away from this trend by providing an interface that is custom-designed for the Xbox 360 gamepad. I believe that all console games should have an approachable interface, so ASCII Quest will be no different.
WD: For the more intense and hardcore gamer, do you have any exclusive hooks, features, or abilities that will help ASCIIQuest stand apart from both its computer and console competitors?
JV: I’ve been doing a lot of talk about pandering to roguelike newbies, but I definitely haven’t forgotten about the hardcore gamer. One notable feature of ASCII Quest is that it will have multiple difficulty settings. The lower difficulties will be primarily for the casual gamer, or the newbie to roguelikes. On these easier difficulties, permadeath with be disabled, and many hazards will be toned down. For the roguelike veteran, there is a Hard difficulty setting that offers a more hardcore roguelike experience. Permadeath is enabled, health regeneration is less generous, and so on. By creating multiple difficulty levels, I can provide multiple experiences for multiple tiers of roguelike gamers.
Other than that, the game does feature a layer of depth beyond your basic rote dungeon grinding. During your quest, you won’t be mindlessly delving down a single monotonously linear dungeon; instead, there are multiple dungeons and multiple environments. For example, the Barracks has a standard room-and-corridor layout. The Caverns, on the other hand, features a more organic environment that mimics natural cavern walls. giving it a very different atmosphere. On top of that, each dungeon has its own musical theme. We’ve got a great composer that put together some awesome retro-style tunes for ASCII Quest. To finish everything off, there will be a unique boss fight at the bottom floor of each dungeon, as well as an epic final boss battle at the end of the game. All together, I think this makes for quite the epic adventure.
WD: Speaking of features, is there any available information on classes? How many do we get to play with? Will more complicated ones “unlock”, “specialize”, or “evolve” mid-game?
JV: ASCII Quest will have four classes: Warrior, Ranger, Monk, and Wizard. The Warrior is your standard melee fighter class, most appropriate for the roguelike newbie. The Ranger is a ranged fighter with some survival-based skills, such as slower hunger rate and improved resistance to poison and disease. The Monk is an unarmed martial artist, focusing on powerful unarmed attacks and lightning reflexes. The Wizard is the only spellcasting class in the game. He will be a relatively difficult class to play, but you will be rewarded with an arsenal of spells at your disposal.
I considered adding more classes, or perhaps allowing for advanced specialization classes later in the game. It’s a neat idea, but the more classes that are available in the game, the harder it is to balance everything. By providing only four classes, I can spend more time ensuring that each class is fun and balanced to play. I feel that this is better than, say, providing eleven classes, where eight of them suck and one of them is too overpowered.
WD: Can users expect any sort of online support, perhaps in a “Hall of Heroes,” “YASD Repository”, or high score leaderboard?
JV: ASCII Quest will have a distributed scoreboard system* called the Hall of Heroes. This will be implemented similar to other distributed scoreboards in other XBLIG games, since we don’t have access to official Xbox LIVE Leaderboards. Entry into the Hall of Heroes will require you to beat the game on Epic difficulty, which is the hardest difficulty setting. Bonuses will be added to your final score depending on various challenges you may choose to enforce. For example, the Luddite challenge requires you to beat the game without using magical items, while the Troglodyte challenge forbids the use of light sources. There are eight challenges in total, and while they can theoretically be completed all together in one game, I’d be curious to see if anyone can actually accomplish it.
WD: Will ASCIIQuest support either the Microsoft Chatpad or a USB Keyboard?
JV: I know it seems obvious that a roguelike should support keyboards, but ASCII Quest’s interface was specifically designed for the Xbox 360 gamepad. Most people won’t have chatpads or keyboards, so these gamers have to come first. I would have to design a completely different interface to take advantage of a full keyboard; otherwise, it wouldn’t be worth it. In fact, I’m hoping that even veteran roguelike gamers will prefer the standard gamepad over a keyboard.
That said, I understand that some people will still prefer to use a keyboard or chatpad. If there is enough demand for it after release, I’ll certainly consider updating the game with a patch to add chatpad/keyboard support.
WD: Has working with XNA/XBLIG been a favourable experience? Can we expect to hear about Jade Vault Games on the Xbox 360 in the future, or are you thinking about branching out into new platforms?
JV: XBLIG is a great platform for first-time indie game devs, and XNA Game Studio is an amazing set of tools to create games on Xbox 360. I would recommend it to anyone, and we will definitely be staying on this platform for the near future. Some day, we would like to extend to other platforms such as XBLA, Steam, or even Windows Phone 7, but we’ve got room to grow before we’re ready for that.What’s next for Jade Vault Games? We’re still a fledgling company, and we still need some practice before we’re ready to take on a larger title. Our next game will be a more casual title. This is primarily because it will be our first game using 3D graphics, so we don’t want to bite off more than we can chew at the moment. After that, we have a few more projects in mind. We’ll definitely be returning to the RPG genre before too long.
Thanks for your time, Jade Vault Games!
Keep paying attention to this site, as we will have an exclusive next month with an early build of ASCII Quest, and I’ll give you the run-down on everything I possibly can! (Or, if you just HAVE to know something specific, leave your comment here, and when I get my hands on the build, I’ll try to answer your questions!)
*A distributed scoreboard system is the current ‘backdoor hack’ that XBLIG devs are using to mimic an online leaderboard. Basically, when you are online and playing the game, it will share leaderboard data will all other online players, creating a network of shared data. The limitation is that it requires people to be online at the same time to share data, but as XBLIG games can’t get any network access (ie: high score server), it’ll have to do.
3 Responses to “XBLA Indie Preview: ASCII Quest”
Leave a Reply
-8MCGP-6THPG
Remember to download the Newton Vs The Horde Old Spice gamerpic to vote for them!
(For those wondering, the first 3 parts of the XBLIG redemption code were posted on my twitter account)
looks neat, but I like sprites.
[...] heavy kind of setup. It even manages to hack around lack of networked high scores, as documented in a recent interview, with a ‘distributed scoreboard [...]
[...] heavy kind of setup. It even manages to hack around lack of networked high scores, as documented in a recent interview, with a ‘distributed scoreboard [...]
[...] system link multiplayer, full online multiplayer, and even an online leaderboard, using the distributed scoreboard system we talked about in our ASCII Quest preview. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any online games [...]
[...] you want to stake a claim on the online leaderboard, which uses the distributed scoreboad system (first discussed on the site here) to spread high scores between online users - a brilliant indie workaround to a global XNA [...]