The Monk's Brew

Sweet, Sweet Posters

Rubes — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:12:01 +0000

Every once in a while you come across something that reminds you how awesome the intertubes can be. Zazzle is one of those things.

Sure, more people probably know about Cafepress, and this sort of thing has been around for a while already. Making a custom T-shirt or mug with your own artwork is no revelation, for sure. But over the years it has developed into a pretty slick process, and it’s pretty cool how easy and fast it is to whip up a prototype of something, order it, and have it delivered to your door. The process has basically become how people imagined it should be. Pick the item you want, upload your artwork, fiddle around with it until it’s just right, and order that sucker right up. And the fact that these places allow you to order even a single copy of your item, [More...]

Musings

Rubes — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:16:51 +0000

Question: Can high drama be produced from a wide-open simulation?

Creating a game that tells a story is one thing. Creating a game that tells a dramatic, moving story is quite another.

Can you really get a dramatic, moving experience from a game that is not tightly scripted or linear? Can high drama truly emerge from an open, unbounded simulation-style game?

Everyday life is a wide-open sandbox. Clearly, there is high drama in real life. But, as mentioned a while back on rec.arts.int-fiction, “Most people’s lives are not filled with high drama all the time. Some events will be dramatic, but creating a dramatic story from those requires editing out all the mundane parts.” (greg)

That editing, in game terms, is what I imagine is the scripting, restriction, or forcing of linearity onto the game narrative.

Isn’t high drama really the product of the manipulation of people’s emotions through selective [More...]

Reviving the Past

Rubes — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:42:37 +0000

For those of you who don’t know, I did write one other computer game in the past, The Missions of Starship Reliant (aka, Missions of the Reliant). I had always wanted to write and release a game throughout my childhood, but all I knew back in the 80s was BASIC, and that never got me very far. And so, at one point in my mid-twenties, and being a Mac fan and all, I decided to pick up some books and learn Pascal. In 1994, amid great imaginary fanfare and to much fictitious critical acclaim, the first version of Missions was released in all of its $20 shareware glory. (The sequel, Missions II, was released in 1996, but it was really just an expansion of the original and not truly a sequel. It just sounded cool.)

Missions was based on the (really) old ASCII Star Trek games that once graced [More...]

The Brew Turns Two

Rubes — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 05:01:34 +0000

Programming alert: The Monk’s Brew officially turns two tomorrow.

As far as blogs go, that’s hardly enough to impress anyone. My two initial reactions are (1) I’m startled that I’ve stuck to it even this long, and (2) sweet, another way to mark the passing of the years while Vespers still isn’t finished. So, for those of you keeping score at home: four years of development, two years of blogging, zero finished indie games. Closer, but not there yet.

This is not a high volume, high visibility blog by any stretch of the imagination, so I appreciate all (ten) of you who stop by here every once in a while to check up on things and see if the furniture has been moved around at all. It does help.

A year ago, I reflected on the occasion by noting how much admiration [More...]

Anticipation III

Rubes — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:06:31 +0000

I don’t play as many games as I’d like to anymore, but I do try to sneak in as many as I can. For the most part, I don’t spend much time with the big ticket AAA games, in part because I don’t have a console, and in part because my desktop is getting a bit long in the tooth (is 7 years too old?). So while I figure out if I’m ever going to rectify that one way or the other, I keep my focus largely on the indie scene. And so, every now and then, I catch wind of a new indie game under development that stirs my interest, and I follow along in anticipation of its eventual release.

Such was the case back in October last year with Amanita Design’s Machinarium, and prior to that about a year ago with Tale of Tales’ The [More...]

In Backups I (Should) Trust

Rubes — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:32:07 +0000

I never was much of a backup person until I started on the Vespers project. As things progressed, I realized how much content there was to manage, and how important it was going to be to protect it from loss. So somewhere along the way I became a backup fanatic. By my count, I believe I now have somewhere around six active backups of my data, some full backups, some partial. Let me see if I can remember them all.

My main backup is a clone of my desktop development machine. I use an awesome program called SuperDuper! for this. It basically just makes an exact clone of my computer’s internal drive onto a secondary internal drive. I have that running nightly, so at any point in time I have an exact clone ready to go, losing at most a day’s worth of work.

In addition to that, I [More...]

Shamus Does IF

Rubes — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:09:10 +0000

If you’re into RPGs (the tabletop or computer variety), or video games in general, you’re probably already familiar with Shamus Young and his blog, Twenty Sided. You’re probably also familiar with his excellent webcomic series, DM of the Rings. You certainly should be.

But, if you’re more of an interactive fiction person than an RPG or FPS person, maybe not.

Shamus does a great job with his blog, and I really enjoy his writing. There are only a handful of blogs I enjoy following because of the writing, and his is one of them. Whether it’s a skillful disemboweling of a popular AAA title, a recounting of his role-playing experiences, or his tireless raging against the evils of DRM, it’s always an enjoyable read with the right mixture of insight and humor.

I’ve always suspected he had a soft spot for text games. He’s spent some time [More...]

Riding The Wave

Rubes — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 04:44:59 +0000

Things have been relatively quiet here on the Brew lately, particularly with respect to Vespers. I don’t generally post very often, averaging about one blog per week, but even that is being stretched lately, and this is the first blog of the new year. Oftentimes silence reflects little to report from lack of progress, but in this case it’s actually a Pretty Good Thing.

Game development often goes in fits and spurts, especially if you’re a small (or solo) team. This has been especially true with Vespers, particularly on the animation front. N.R. has been steadily productive over time with all of the models and 2D art, which has helped us maintain at least some momentum over time. But, as I’ve blogged many times, it’s the animation work that has held us back for so long.

The two main reasons for this are (a) it takes time and effort to [More...]

Umberto or Geraldine?

Rubes — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:36:40 +0000

One of the interesting things about working on Vespers is that I’ve become so intimate with the original text and code that I probably know more about the game at this point than even the author, Jason Devlin. Often, I’ll come across an issue or question about the text game, and I’ll pop off an e-mail to Jason to see what he thinks we should do. The irony is that I’ve been so engrossed in every detail of the story for so long that I’m probably better able to address these things than Jason, who likely hasn’t even thought about the game in 3 or 4 years. (Mental note: really have to finish game soon.)

Throughout development, but particularly when Jason released the text game (and also when we started production), there have been many people drawing close comparisons between Vespers and Umberto Eco’s famous novel, The Name of [More...]

“Get Lamp” Discount Deadline Approaches

Rubes — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:55:21 +0000

A gentle reminder for those interested enough in text adventures to be eagerly awaiting the arrival of Jason Scott’s sure-to-be-singular documentary on the matter, GET LAMP: the pre-order discount ends on January 1st.

According to Scott, the documentary will be priced at $40 for a 2-DVD set that will reportedly include additonal “wrap-ins” in the package, although no word yet as to what those are. It’s set to be released in March 2010, around the same time as the PAX East convention, where the movie will be premiered alongside (hopefully) a host of other interactive fiction-related panels and presentations, which is pretty neat.

But if you know you’re going to buy the documentary, you can pre-order it now for 25% off, or $30 (plus shipping).

Ordering now is helpful for Scott because, as he says, it “helps build up the money to do a [More...]