I’m pretty certain the concept already exists in the world of game design theory, probably under a different name; all I found on a (not too thorough) search was this (https://www.possibilityspace.org/tutorial-generative-possibility-space/), which comes close, but doesn’t quite fit. Especially not since I wish to address that topic from the specific perspective of a CRPG designer.  [ Read More ]

So I’ve begun setting up my new game, and one of the first matters I took a look at, as it’s usually the one you also encounter first as a player, is the character generation. Given that I want the player to create a whole party instead of just the main character (as has been  [ Read More ]

The recent GoG re-release of the old WarCraft games reminded me of the fun I had with the WarCraft II editor – and my frustration about the limited AI settings. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that there were actually tools out there to edit the AI! So despite not really having the time for  [ Read More ]

Legends of Amberland is a very traditional indie CRPG that was released on Steam last year and has now found its way to GOG (which is how I noticed it). TL;DR: If the screenshots in this posting trigger any kind of positive memory in you, buy the game; it may not be perfect, but will  [ Read More ]

Hello everyone! I’ve been sent some request to host DD1 as well, and after I finally got it to run in a self-contained DxWnd package, here it is. Since it does technically have an editor, but there is simply no reason not to use the far superior DD2 editor instead, I’ve created the new “Games”  [ Read More ]

For a long time, skills in CRPGs followed their pen&paper counterparts, serving the function of defining a character in more detail than the broad statistics like Strength and Intelligence would do. The game that changed this, to the best of my knowledge, was Diablo II; it is possible that Blizzard only adapted systems already present  [ Read More ]

It has been a long time in the making, but I finally completed “On Economy”, the third in my examinations of CRPG design fundamentals. It is a rather complex topic and required a healthy amount of research, but I think the result is my best work yet. Take a look and tell me what you  [ Read More ]

Finally! I updated the Dark Disciples II downloads – they are now embedded in the DxWnd shell, so they will run on Windows 10 as well. The downloads are preconfigured, so you should be able to simply download, extract and start with the DD2.exe. As changing of the directory names can screw up DxWnd, I  [ Read More ]

This posting is about a special kind of puzzles, namely conversation puzzles. For all the environment interaction puzzles you’d normally find in a dungeon, look here: Puzzles (I) Morrowind was one of the last major RPGs with a keyword-based dialogue system (A) Background (Skip to (B) if you don’t care.) Conversations with NPCs serve many  [ Read More ]

Designing puzzles is one of the hardest parts of RPG creation. We want them to be creative and unique, but not beyond all common sense; interesting and challenging, but not frustrating. And for the icing on the cake, they should fit into the game world as well as possible (nothing like having to navigate a  [ Read More ]