Neal Hallford on The Making of Betrayal at Krondor

[LESS T_T]

Neal Hallford recently "tumbled" into blooging and started posting about various things. Today he posted the first part of the series "Krondor Confidential" on the making of Betrayal at Krondor: http://nealhallford.com/post/139535193483/krondor-confidential-part-i

Krondor Confidential - Part I

“Are you into dogs?”

My boss, John Cutter, had asked the question in total innocence, looking as he always did, a young father with with twinkling eyes and a winning smile. He always had this wholesome vibe, like at any minute he’d jump up to run out into the parking lot to throw around a baseball with a kid…didn’t matter whose. Any kid. It just seemed like that’s who he was born to be, some fellow who would never, never grow up. Peter Pan come to life. Like me, he was a sentimental soul, with a love of Ray Bradbury and an idealized vision of the past. He liked to tinker, and even had a robot in his office. Seated across from him, I sniggered at his question because my brain almost always wanders to the dirtiest possible interpretation to anything anyone says, and this was no exception. In comparison, John always seemed like Ward Cleaver to my Zaphod Beeblebrox.

The question he’d asked had been sparked because we’d discovered that we were both fans of the novels of Dean Koontz, and we talking about how there was almost always a dog in his fiction because he was a dog-lover himself. As am I. I don’t know how John feels about it, but I’ve always thought that people who have and love their dogs are by far much more trustworthy than others. It can be an excellent barometer about character, and it told me a lot about John.

At the time, both John and I were employees at New World Computing in Woodland Hills, California, a far cry from the tiny mountain town of Eugene, Oregon where we’d begin production on Betrayal at Krondor six months later. Neither of us had a relocation on our radars (or at least I didn’t), and the contract with Raymond E. Feist was a long way away, but for me I’ve always regarded that conversation in John’s office that day as the point at which development on Betrayal at Krondor actually began. While the story and game rules would play a critical role in it’s popularity, the real secret of the success of that project lay in John and I’s absolute trust in each other’s judgements and skills.

Our mutual friend Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games once said that in selecting his employees, he was selecting DNA. You pick good DNA, you get good outcomes. And that’s the way that it was with John and I. We had a lot of overlap in what we could do, and we thought about games in the same way, but we had a lot of oppositional skills as well. John was by far the more technical of the two of us. He was great with rules and systems and had an instinctive feel for what would be fun. What I brought to the table was greater familiarity with traditional RPGs and the fantasy genre, and I could string a sentence or two together coherently, at least most of the time. On arriving at New World, he had become an instant fan of my work on Tunnels & Trolls, and Might & Magic III and Planet’s Edge, and declared to me that he considered me the best writer in the computer gaming industry. Considering who it was coming from, it was easy for me to get my young little skull swollen with pride. It should come as no surprise therefore that when he later left New World Computing, and asked if I’d be interested in joining him at Dynamix to work on licensed game for a New York Times Bestselling fantasy author, I told him almost instantly yes. But first, I had to quit my job.

My interview at Dynamix came not long after. I’d called in sick to New World because I honestly didn’t want to declare to them I was possibly going to take another job. In the instance that I didn’t get hired, the last thing I wanted was to get fired from the job I did have and then be jobless in Los Angeles. With the aid of my roommate, best friend, and co-worker at New World, Ron Bolinger, I hopped an early flight to Eugene. As the plane finally swept down into the pine forested outskirts, I began to realize how very different my world was about to come, and I felt instantly in love. A part of me has never left Eugene since that first day, and it never will.

Upon arrival at Dynamix’s office, it was very plain to see that this was a very different animal than the one I’d left in L.A.. Where there had been thirty of us crammed in a suite of corner offices at New World, Dynamix occupied almost the entire top floor of what had previously been a downtown mall. Entire wings were dedicated to single projects like The Adventures of Willie Beamish, Aces Over the Pacific, and others, each staffed with teams nearly as large the combined workforce of our offices in Woodland Hills. Unlike the college-dorm-gone-nerdy environment in which I’d first learned my craft, this was a well-oiled entertainment machine, a subdivision of Sierra Online blazing in full glory at its peak of popularity in the early 1990s. It was like walking into Oz, and I was on my way to see the great wizard.

For the majority of the day, it was mainly a walking tour of the offices, getting to meet some of the people I would be working with. The highlight of the morning was a visit to the Aces of the Pacific team where they had prepared a quick technology demo upon which we’d ultimately base the Betrayal at Krondor engine. Several programmers were crammed into the tiny room including Nels Bruckner, a long haired, guitar shredding, super chill programmer who had wolf-like ice chip blue eyes, and who was destined to become Krondor’s project’s programming lead. He fired up the the demo for the game, and my jaw hit the floor. Although with Might & Magic III we had been using a tile-based pseudo 3D environment, this was something altogether different. It was a true 3D engine. Before Castle Wolfenstein, before Doom, this was the most immersive simulation of world exploration I’d yet seen, and if I hadn’t already been sold on the game before, this sealed absolutely sealed the deal as far as I was concerned.

Back in John’s new office, we killed time. I had been scheduled to meet at 1:00 PM with the company’s CEO, Jeff Tunnell, the originator of the whole plan to license Raymond E. Feist’s Riftwarnovels in the first place. At 1:00 he ended up being tied up, so we rescheduled for 3:00, and John and I took off to explore more of the downtown. We grabbed fish and chips for lunch, and did some browsing in a book store that was only a block away. The symphony was only four blocks beyond. It was like they’d built this entire company just for me, and I was anxious to get started. 3:00 came and went. John called to reschedule again, and we got a 4:15 slot. It was starting to get dangerously close to the time I had to get on a plane back to Los Angeles, but I tried to keep my cool. At 4:15 he was still tied up. Jeff got on the phone himself, telling John “it’s okay, I’ll meet you both at the airport.”

John and I made a mad dash. There at the terminal, Jeff made his apologies about having missed me for the day, but asked how I’d liked what I’d seen. I remember trying not to gush or beg for the job, but I was also concentrating on the fact that in ten minutes I was supposed to be on the airplane. Jeff offered to walk us to the gate. In the world of pre 911, he could go with me all the way to the ramp. As we’re rushing through the terminal, Jeff asks me questions and I’m doing my best to answer them as coolly as I can, but I’m wondering if this is some kind of weird test. I was growing suspicious that juggling was going to be required as part of my grand finale. At last, at the gate, Jeff shook my hand before I ran up the gangplank. “If John’s good with you, then it’s all right by me,” Jeff said. The next thing I knew, I was in the air.

The next day back in L.A. I returned to New World Computing to deliver the news. I wasn’t looking forward to it because I was actually very fond of the company, and of its visionary CEO. Jon Van Caneghem had been a very good boss. The whole time I’d worked for him, he’d never once raised his voice to me, so I felt like a terrible traitor in leaving. On the other hand, I knew what the opportunity in Eugene would mean. Adapting the work of a New York Times best selling fantasy author meant an opportunity to learn from a writer at the top of his craft while also working closely with John Cutter who had taken me under his wing as his game design protege. The position also came with a significant raise in pay that would go nearly four times as far in Eugene than what I was making in L.A.. I’d also be living in a college town in the middle of the mountains which was about as close to heaven as I could imagine. Any way I looked at it, I would have been a fool to turn my back on what Dynamix was offering me.

The next few weeks blew by in a blur. In addition to saying goodbye to my company, it also meant saying goodbye to several people of whom I was very fond. I had originally got the offer to work at New World through my good friend Kenneth Mayfield who was a lead artist, and who I’d known since junior high. I’d been in his wedding just a few months before his move to California, and had also become very close friends with his wife Anji. They’d done a lot to help me survive the wilds of L.A., and I knew that I would miss them a great deal. Even harder to move away from was my best friend and roommate, Ron Bolinger, who I in turn had convinced to move to L.A. to take over the writing responsibilities on Might & Magic III while I developed Planet’s Edge. (Before I’d moved off L.A. in the first place, Ron’s mother had given me a beautiful parting gift in the form of a leather briefcase which she’d told me came with a condition. It was mine so long as I didn’t try to lure Ron away from Oklahoma to go live in California. She’s never told me whether or not she wants the briefcase back.) As hard as it was to go off and not be able to sit up all night bullshitting about philosophy and Kerouac and writing and cute girls with him, I knew he’d forgive me because like myself he was passionate about writing. Given the opportunity, I’m sure he would have done the same. As it was, he went on to create what are arguably three of the best Might & Magic installments of all time, namely Might & Magic III: Isles of Terra, as well as Might & Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen and Might & Magic V: Darkside of Xeen.

Even today, I still remember my last day at New World: Halloween, 1991. As I prepared to leave, all thirty of New World’s employees lined up in the lobby to tell me goodbye, and that display of kinship from my first game development buddies nearly broke my resolve. I’d learned a lot there, and so many of the lessons that I’d picked up would continue to help me as I waded into the epic task of bringingBetrayal at Krondor to life.

Later that evening, with all my remaining belongings crammed into my tiny blue Geo Metro, I pointed my car North to Oregon, and I hit the gas…

Also of note from his blog is that he's tinkering with new Lumberyard engine and considering making a new game with it: http://nealhallford.com/post/139290641998/betrayal-at-crytek-the-journey-begins

Over the next few weeks / months / years / centuries, I’m going to fiddle around with the Lumberyard engine and editor and see what I can do with it. Rather than sitting down and coming up with a whole new game design before I get going, I figure the easiest thing I can do for my engine test is to start with something I already know, and something that I know a lot of YOU are passionate about, i.e.Betrayal at Krondor.

Now before you go running off and trumpeting to the rest of the Interweb that I’m building a new version of BAK…hold your horses. SERIOUSLY. Don’t. This is, and will remain, a technical test of the Crytek engine. I have no plans to build anything more than maybe the first zone of BAK. I’m not going to market it, not launching a Kickstarter, not going to Ray Feist to try to use it as a means to talk a license out of him. I repeat THIS WILL BE A TEST, and only a test, to see how quickly and easily I can get to something which looks and feels Krondor-y. If that goes well, and I’m happy with the result, maybe I decide to do something new with all new original content from my OWN book… but that’s a long way down the road from here. First, let’s just get to “it’s working.” We can blue sky things later.

Well, I certainly don't get my hopes up for now, but would like to looking forward to his progress.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Rhuantavan Xorazm

 

[Rhuantavan]

I am stalking keeping a close eye on him.

 

[Infinitron]

Krondor Confidential - Part II
“Marvelous wonders don’t have to happen of a sudden, the way they do in the Arabian Nights. They can also take a long time, like crystals growing, or minds changing, or leaves turning. The trick is to keep an eye peeled, so they don’t slip by unappreciated.”
― Ken Kesey, Sailor Song

The move to Eugene, Oregon to start work on Betrayal at Krondor was a great deal more than just a shift in geography. It was also a change in tempo, in mindset, in time. In Los Angeles, I had only marginally adapted to the pace of mega-city living. Every day, sitting in rush hour traffic on the 405 for the hour long crawl between New World Computing and my apartment only 20 miles away, I’d blast classical music at full volume in order to block out the roaring zombie apocalypse around me. While there had been many things about living in the city of angels that I’d come to truly appreciate likeGriffith Observatory, Hour 25 on my radio, close proximity to the ocean, a plethora of cool bookstores (including Forbidden Planet, Dangerous Visions, A Change of Hobbit, now all sadly lost) – L.A. had never become my home in the two years that I’d lived there. Eugene would be an altogether different story.

Right from the beginning, Eugene felt familiar, like the place I was always meant to be. For a town of only 100,000 people, it sported several bookstores, it’s own symphony, and was home to the University of Oregon. Every Saturday a farmer’s market appeared in the center of town like some bohemian Brigadoon that was more like a weekly arts and music festival than anything else, complete with jugglers, buskers, and people selling Renn Faire-style garments and crafts. For those who liked a larger show, the county fair was an annual traditional that was one part Hogwarts and several parts Woodstock, complete with half naked people fragrant with Patchouli and weed, all hoping that the Grateful Dead would materialize for another one of their frequent, legendarily unannounced concerts. Eugene obstinately refused to conform to the expectations of the outside world, and in retrospect I think there could have been no better place than here to muse upon the fantasy world of Midkemia.

On my first day in my new hometown, I awoke to a world wreathed in fog. It shouldn’t have surprised me given that it was November, and I was living in a valley encircled by large mountains, but nonetheless it set a mystical, transformational tone for the day. The drive into the office was short, less than five minutes. I could easily have walked (and often did in the months and years ahead), but I didn’t want to be late getting into work. John Cutter and I needed to produce a first draft outline forKrondor’s main plot, and there was a lot to discuss about what form the final game would take. I still recall that time as one of the best weeks of my life.

Over the course of Betrayal at Krondor’s development, our team would migrate between three different locations as the project – and later the company – grew. To start, it was just John and I in a corner suite of the top floor of Dynamix’s Atrium building. John occupied a regular office, while I had one of the two cubicles just outside of it. A conference room, barely large enough for six, was off to the right of me, but for the majority of the early phases of the project, we did most of our talking and planning in John’s cozy little office.

The original idea, as pitched by Dynamix’s CEO Jeff Tunnell, had been to take the novel Silverthornfrom Raymond E. Feist and adapt it into a “playable” novel. I’d had serious reservations about this approach, not because of the novel, but mainly from the standpoint of a theoretical fan of the Riftwarseries. My view went something like this. The value of having a license was that it would attract existing fans of an intellectual property to a new medium. If players had already read Silverthorn, they’d already know where to go, who to talk to, and what the cure for Princess Anita’s condition would be. There would be no big dramatic surprises at all without making major alterations to the narrative. And if we were to make changes to the story large enough that the experience would no longer be predictable for our fans-turned-players, what would be the point in holding on to the main narrative of Silverthorn if it was completely different than the book – which would make fans hate us anwyay for our lack of “faithfulness” to Ray’s work.

As John Cutter will attest, this devotion of mine to looking out for Ray’s fans bordered on the pathological, and continued throughout our development of the game. At Dynamix, I was the gatekeeper for all things Riftwar, and I did all I could to ensure that we got as close as possible to replicating the feel of Feist’s world. There’s some small irony in this, however. Three weeks before my interview at Dynamix, I had no idea who Raymond E. Feist was. I’d never read any of his novels… well, that’s not entirely true. Time for a tiny digression.

I’m going to tell a secret now that I haven’t shared publically before, but I think everyone will forgive me now that so many years have passed. The truth is, when I was in junior high, I did buy a copy ofMagician at a B. Dalton’s bookstore in Tulsa. It was a large trade paperback, and for some reason it had a picture of a heron on the cover as I recall. The blurb on the back spoke of it in glowing terms as a great fantasy achievement, so naturally I had to buy it. I got it home, cracked the cover, began to read…and discovered with horror that the protagonist’s name was Pug. PUG! PUG?!?! I was outraged. I was supposed to cheer for someone named after a small annoying dog? I literally threw the book across the room, and I never picked it back up, other than to put it on my bookshelf to be reconsidered at another time. I would only remember my earlier encounter with it during a Christmas vacation from Dynamix, finding that first heron-bedecked copy of Magician still sitting on the bookshelf of my childhood bedroom.

Although I hadn’t grown up being a Feist fan, I had grown up being a fan of Star Trek. I’d read my way through the Blish novelizations of the original series and the animated series with glee. Once Pocket Books began it’s line of original, licensed novels, I tore through them nearly as fast as they came out…until they got to that book. Yes, that one. The one in which it was patently obvious that the author had never even SEEN Star Trek, let alone done anything more than learn the names of the main characters. In it, when threatened, Kirk is said to produce a ray gun…not a phaser…a ray gun. Not since the days of Buck Rogers had any self-respecting science fiction author called any weapon a ray gun. That was just one of a long litany of non-canon atrocities committed by the author before the end of the book. For a long time it put me off wanting to read any other Star Trek novels, period.

The point of this long digression is this. When it came time to start adapting Ray’s books, I was fiercely determined not to inflict upon the Feist-reading players of our game the kind of bitter resentment I’d experienced after reading that terrible Star Trek novel all those years earlier. Even though I was new to his universe, I wanted to ensure that everything looked and sounded exactly as it should. That meant I needed to undertake obsessive research into everything Feist. Before John and I’s first meetings on the plot, I’d read all of his available books – from Magician to Princes of the Blood– from cover to cover. I’d filled yellow legal pads with notes about characters, locations, and situations. I had loads of questions about lore, but getting the answers to them had to be put on the back burner. First we needed to know what story we were going to tell.

After selling both Jeff Tunnell, and then Ray in turn, on the idea that we would write a new story set in the Midkemian universe, the trick then boiled down to determining what this new story would actually be. Would the player be controlling characters from the novels or only visiting them as NPCs? How much of the known world of Ray’s books would it end up covering? To what degree would it potentially connect to the existing plot of the other novels?

There were a lot of issues with which we had to contend which were a mixture of narrative, legal, and technical concerns. I had originally wanted to have a portion of the game set on Kelewan, even using characters that appeared in Ray’s collaborative novels with fellow novelist Janny Wurts, but there were licensing issues beyond what we could tackle at the time (And I’d revisit this idea during our discussions on the never-produced sequel, The Thief of Dreams.) John and I were both big fans of the idea of controlling Jimmy the Hand during gampelay so it was a certainty he’d be in the party, but we also wanted players to be able to meet Gamina – which posed narrative problems with the officialRiftwar timeline.

All this went into the pot as John and I began our collaboration, but the one issue that we solved almost immediately was when we would set it. Between A Darkness At Sethanon and Prince of the Blood, Ray had left a twenty year gap in the narrative. It was almost as if he’d circled the space between them with a big red marker, and I was anxious to take advantage of the obviously open narrative territory to roam. John and I drove a stake into the ground, exactly between those two novels. There Be Dragons, we thought. It became our team motto. Our adventure would begin there, and that’s when things really got interesting…

 

[abnaxus]

Interesting tidbit about Dynamix in Eugene.

Cyan (Myst developers) started out in a basement in Spokane before they made millions.

 

[Infinitron]

Krondor Confidential - Part III
At the beginning, neither John Cutter nor I knew what we were in for. Not really. We had a lot of theories, of course, and a fairly solid case to make for the potential success of our new project. At the time, role-playing and adventure games were in a golden age. Titles like Wizardry, Might & Magic, and the Dungeons & Dragons Gold Box games dominated the shelves of every software store in America. Sierra Online, Dynamix’s parent company, was flush with cash they’d milked from the adventure game market, so they instantly got the appeal of mixing a popular narrative IP with immersive gameplay. Add in the fact that we’d be leveraging Dynamix’s already enormously successful game engine from Aces Over the Pacific, and it seemed like an absolute no-brainer on paper that we’d knock it out of the ballpark. From day one, at least as far I could tell, there was a great deal of enthusiasm for the Riftwar project.

From day one, expectations were high. Ray Feist had already negotiated for one of the largest licensing fees anyone had yet received from the computer gaming industry (or so I was told). We weren’t just expected to create a good game. We needed to drive this one over the fence, into the stratosphere, and take a couple of loops around Mars. Dynamix and Sierra Online had put a sizeable stack of chips on our number, and they were expecting a big return for the gamble.

At one level, knowing that our employers were fully committed and on board was comforting. It meant we were going to get access to some of the best people working in the computer gaming industry. At the time, Dynamix was like the Relic or Obsidian of its day, a legendary upstart with a history of solid work, and every wannabe game developer was looking for an in. Almost as soon as I’d accepted my position, I started getting phone calls from people who were suddenly my best friend. (There was even an indecent proposal in the mix if I got a certain person a job there, and I’ve never been entirely sure since whether the offer was a joke or not.)

John took the pressure swimmingly. If he ever felt it, he never showed it, which is why he’s always been my role-model not only as a great designer, but also as a superb team leader. For him, it always spurred him on to take greater risks and try new things. He was never shy about getting off into the weeds and experimenting. For me, however, the knowledge that the expectations were so high were both a boon and a bane, and something which would later have extreme consequences for me towards the end of the project.

Before Betrayal at Krondor, nobody had ever heard of me. Although I was writer, and I’d worked on three projects at New World Computing, I wasn’t a name. I didn’t have an extensive list of published short stories, and most of the writing I’d done prior to entering the computer gaming industry had been an aborted novel from my college years called This Realm Alone, along with a fistful of radio dramas from a Twilight Zone-like series called Uncharted Regions I’d co-produced with my good friend Ron Bolinger (of Might & Magic III fame).

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that accepting the writing job on Betrayal at Krondor had personally terrified me for the first few months. To have come from relative anonymity, and then be elevated to work on such a high-profile game was daunting enough, but to step convincingly and indetectably into the shoes of a New York Times Bestselling Author – regardless of who that author was – it smacked of hubris. Who the hell was I? I knew a lot of writers who had worked very long and very hard to accomplish less lofty positions, and I felt like a bit of an impostor. My only way of getting through was to earn it. I had to adjust my thinking that I could be – that I would be – the writer that everyone around me seemed to believe I was. I had to reinforce the faith that so many had placed in me, and more than anything else, I wanted not to disappoint John.

Our first big deliverable was a summary of the game’s central plot. This, even more than the game design document, was our highest priority because it would determine not only who the player would be controlling, but also the overall scale and scope of the project. There was also the fiddling little matter of getting something off to Ray for feedback. I had no delusions that I was catching everything going on in his books, and I was even more concerned that I might be stepping on the toes of other plots he might have been developing for future works. One dangling thread in particular – that Murmandamus’ death hadn’t been witnessed by his troops at the end of Darkness of Sethanon and further, that heavy guards that had been left to watch the Lifestone – seemed like exactly the sort of thing I’d have been leaving as a setup for a later novel. Since that was the central McGuffin around which I was planning to hang our plot, I needed to make sure we weren’t narratively venturing into territory for which he had conflicting plans.

At the outset, we had no idea how much access we were even going to have to Ray. He was busy writing The Kings’ Buccaneer, and we weren’t sure how much time he’d have to devote to marking up whatever we sent him, or even if he’d be interested in what we’d be doing in the digital version of his universe. Before I had been brought aboard the project, Dynamix’s CEO Jeff Tunnell had offered Ray the opportunity to write the game himself, but Ray had flatly informed him that the company couldn’t afford him, and what Jeff wanted to do instead was to license the novels. Fortunately for me, that meant I’d have a job, and a relatively high degree of creative freedom within the Midkemian universe.

In that first few weeks of development, John and I talked a lot about what a game based on a series of novels should be like. We wanted to replicate the feeling of playing through a “page-turner,” the book that you stayed up all night reading because you wanted to finish one more chapter, and then another, and then another. Immediately this suggested to us the idea of narrative cliffhangers and shifts in game chapters, a foundational concept that would influence the design of the entire world.

Unlike other games whose progression mechanic largely revolved around “clearing out” levels and always moving forward, we made a radical decision. Our game world would be persistent. It would exist – and change – whether or not the player showed up to see what was going on. In answer to the classic zen koan, our answer was yes, the tree would definitely make a sound when it fell in the forest, but it would be up to the player to decide whether or not they were going to be there to hear it fall. There were a few narrative “choke points”, of course, specific events that would tip the shift from one chapter to the next, but otherwise the player would be free to wander over the majority of the game map at will. Years before Grand Theft Auto would be lauded for “creating” the idea of open world design, we took the idea for it’s first successful road trip in 1993.

As popular as the “wander anywhere” philosophy would ultimately be with players, it was the source of one of the very few design disagreements I ever had with John. I was a fanatic for the idea, largely because it suggested a more complex, “living” world. Having come from a strong background of pen and paper role-playing games where the player was limited only by their imagination, I’d felt severely constrained by the necessary limits of playing and designing computer-moderated RPGs. In spirit John liked the idea as well, but he also had some very reasonable, practical reservations about how we’d realistically implement it.

Firstly, the “cattle chute” approach to game design was the reigning paradigm. Every other CRPG on the planet followed essentially the same model. John worried that after players got their quests, they’d all pretty much just follow what they were told to do in the first place, and they’d never wander off the garden path. That would add up to a waste of resources in the creation of all that extra material that no one ever saw. Even worse, he was concerned that if players did veer away from what they’d been directed to do, they might get lost or confused without constant guidance. My counter argument was that I’m a contrarian. If you tell me to go through door number one, I’m just as likely to do the opposite, just to see if you’ve accounted for what’s behind doors 2, 3, and 4. My gut told me that if the world was made sufficiently interesting, the innate curiosity of most players would drive them to explore as far as they were allowed.

The second reservation of John’s was even more serious. If the entire world was open for every chapter of the game, that meant that every time we changed chapters, we’d be responsible for repopulating the entire world with new quests, dialogues, items – essentially building out the the equivalent of nine RPGs worth of material but for the price (and schedule) of one. Even by restricting some zones as “off limits” or unreachable until specific chapters, it still suggested a staggering amount of content creation that would put us smack dab in the middle of the production problem of every MMO, i.e. the problem of handling “content churn.”

The last issue on John’s list about the open world approach had to do with testing. In a cattle chute model, it’s very easy to design and deploy a consistent testing plan. If players always must do X,Y, Z in a specific order, bugs can be much more readily identified, replicated, and eliminated, even allowing for reasonable variances in equipment or tactics. But when given the option to do X, B, O, Z, or Y, M, Q, Z or any other combinations of actions would vastly complicate both the scale and scope of our testing. We could create the world’s most complex environment ever devised, but the odds were poor that we’d be able to test them all before the game shipped to the public.

In the end, we steered a middle course. We limited the amount of change that could happen between chapters while also capping the number of zones that would be open at any given time. Even with those restrictions, we’d ultimately have on of the largest RPGs ever created in the early 1990s, and the amount of text in the game would outstrip any of Ray’s novels. Fans would later rave about the breadth and complexity of the world, but in the months and years ahead for our team, the choice to go big would have drastic effects on our schedule, our budget, and our prospects for making a sequel.

With the broadest strokes of the story worked out, and the scale and scope established, we next had to move on to answer the next most critical question for our project. We knew we were making a game, but what kind of game was it actually going to be?

 

[Haba]

This is actually super interesting.

 

[polo]

Fun read, i actually want to know more.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Dude got writing style and it shows.

 

[Mustawd]

I’ve always thought that people who have and love their dogs are by far much more trustworthy than others.

That's just dumb. You know how many people use this smilie and love it?

A ton. And u can't trust them worth shit.

 

[Darth Roxor]

As John Cutter will attest, this devotion of mine to looking out for Ray’s fans bordered on the pathological, and continued throughout our development of the game. At Dynamix, I was the gatekeeper for all things Riftwar, and I did all I could to ensure that we got as close as possible to replicating the feel of Feist’s world. There’s some small irony in this, however. Three weeks before my interview at Dynamix, I had no idea who Raymond E. Feist was. I’d never read any of his novels… well, that’s not entirely true. Time for a tiny digression.

I’m going to tell a secret now that I haven’t shared publically before, but I think everyone will forgive me now that so many years have passed. The truth is, when I was in junior high, I did buy a copy ofMagician at a B. Dalton’s bookstore in Tulsa. It was a large trade paperback, and for some reason it had a picture of a heron on the cover as I recall. The blurb on the back spoke of it in glowing terms as a great fantasy achievement, so naturally I had to buy it. I got it home, cracked the cover, began to read…and discovered with horror that the protagonist’s name was Pug. PUG! PUG?!?! I was outraged. I was supposed to cheer for someone named after a small annoying dog? I literally threw the book across the room, and I never picked it back up, other than to put it on my bookshelf to be reconsidered at another time. I would only remember my earlier encounter with it during a Christmas vacation from Dynamix, finding that first heron-bedecked copy of Magician still sitting on the bookshelf of my childhood bedroom.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Pugs are pretty cool tho.

 

[SerratedBiz]

This is one of those 'everytime someone talks about BaK, someone goes ahead and reinstalls it' moments.

 

[poetic codex]

Too bad he had a failed kickstarter for his novel. The guy is an excellent writer.

I like that he's actually passionate about games. It's also a shame that he doesn't get any of the royalties from BaK since Feist takes all the money for that game.

 

[Sceptic]

Dude got writing style and it shows.

I was thinking the same. The reminiscence is great fun to read as a result.

As popular as the “wander anywhere” philosophy would ultimately be with players, it was the source of one of the very few design disagreements I ever had with John. I was a fanatic for the idea, largely because it suggested a more complex, “living” world. Having come from a strong background of pen and paper role-playing games where the player was limited only by their imagination, I’d felt severely constrained by the necessary limits of playing and designing computer-moderated RPGs. In spirit John liked the idea as well, but he also had some very reasonable, practical reservations about how we’d realistically implement it.

This is one of those very, very rare cases where conflicting viewpoints and "meeting in the middle" actually works and resulted in the best of both worlds and a fantastic design. The story, and the design as a whole, has a great deal of focus and tightness thanks to John, but then Neal also got to implement the open world and the "ignore door 1 and go dick around doors 2 3 4" idea (I remember vividly my 2nd playthrough, when I did exactly what Neal describes and went the opposite route from what the game seemed to expect, only to find out that not only could I ignore the short route to Krondor and go the long way round, but the game acknowledged what I was doing and one of the party members (Locklear I think) even comments that we're less likely to be ambushed by doing the unexpected. Sure enough there's a lot less fighting along that route).

I hope things work out for Neal, he's a genuinely great guy.

 

[octavius]

The truth is, when I was in junior high, I did buy a copy ofMagician at a B. Dalton’s bookstore in Tulsa. It was a large trade paperback, and for some reason it had a picture of a heron on the cover as I recall. The blurb on the back spoke of it in glowing terms as a great fantasy achievement, so naturally I had to buy it. I got it home, cracked the cover, began to read…and discovered with horror that the protagonist’s name was Pug. PUG! PUG?!?! I was outraged. I was supposed to cheer for someone named after a small annoying dog? I literally threw the book across the room, and I never picked it back up, other than to put it on my bookshelf to be reconsidered at another time.

I'm glad I didn't know what a pug was (or rather what the English word means) before after both reading the book and playing the game.
Few animals look stupider than pugs.

 

[Rhuantavan]

It's kinda cool seeing Betrayal at Krondor with a new U.I..

https://www.facebook.com/nealiios/posts/10154709274208840

 

[ERYFKRAD]

indeed.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Terrific piece. Also a great example of 'good and professional writer who respects the fans of the original work on principle, rather than through being a fan himself' > 'fan trying to recreate the original'.

I.e. someone who is sufficiently far removed that he doesn't have the kind of tunnel vision that leads him to simply recreate the original work/style, without picking apart what worked and what didn't, while still respecting that he isn't there to just use the name as a marketing job.

 

[Azrael the cat]

The truth is, when I was in junior high, I did buy a copy ofMagician at a B. Dalton’s bookstore in Tulsa. It was a large trade paperback, and for some reason it had a picture of a heron on the cover as I recall. The blurb on the back spoke of it in glowing terms as a great fantasy achievement, so naturally I had to buy it. I got it home, cracked the cover, began to read…and discovered with horror that the protagonist’s name was Pug. PUG! PUG?!?! I was outraged. I was supposed to cheer for someone named after a small annoying dog? I literally threw the book across the room, and I never picked it back up, other than to put it on my bookshelf to be reconsidered at another time.

I'm glad I didn't know what a pug was (or rather what the English word means) before after both reading the book and playing the game.
Few animals look stupider than pugs.

That even works as a pun on 'look'. If they get over-excited, they run the risk of having their eye-balls literally pop out of their sockets

 

[Excommunicator]

I started reading Magician and had the same reaction but had completely forgotten about the name until I read his blog. What a completely ridiculous name

This is an interesting read and I'm looking forward to reading more but I do feel there's a distinct overlook there of the Ultima games in terms of their open world achievements

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I hope things work out for Neal, he's a genuinely great guy.

Any guy who makes a bro out of an elf(Gorath) can't be anything but great.

 

[DavidBVal]

Thanks for bringing some light in the endless darkness of decline. What a honest guy, I hope he finally makes the decision to do new games sometime.

 

[Neanderthal]

Kinda makes you fuckin sick when Tim Schafer an that Sarkissian bird is scamming millions outa folk while a real talent like Neal can't get funding, I suppose its a case o face fitting.

 

[LESS T_T]

More little Facebook updates on his test project: https://www.facebook.com/nealiios

Sigh. I'm missing something somewhere. My demo is working in the Lumberyard editor. Check. I export it to the engine. Console tells me it was successfully exported. Check. I go to check it outside of the editor and run the Samples Project Launcher. It opens up with a black screen, as I've been advised. Check. I press the tilde key as instructed....

...and nothing. No command line to enter the name of my project for it to run. Just nothing. And it sits there mocking me in it's I'm-Not-Doing-Anythingness.

LUMBERYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARD!!!!

‪#‎AmazonLumberyard‬ ‪#‎games‬

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Damjan Mozetič I am actually surprised you didn't pick Unity as it is widely adopted and documented AND as of v.5 graphically impressive.

Neal Hallford I'm going with Amazon because A) I worked with one of the chief people at Amazon Games B) it's the largest entertainment distributor on the planet, so going from project to promotion would be useful.

In reconstructing Krondor's keyword system for the Lumberyard test, remembering how really complex the system under the hood had to be. Thank you Nels Bruckner, Steve Cordon, and Timothy Strelchun for all the hard work you guys did to make the original so awesome.

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Timothy Strelchun I thought you did an outstanding job on the writing and design work too! Really a collaborative team effort for sure by many good people top to bottom (from design, writing, art, sound, software dev, and on up to QA and Beta testers)!

Edit: And I just realized I misspelled his surname in the thread title. Now fixed it.