Blades of Avernum Wrap Report

Best Decisions The first good decision was moving to a full scripting language. Every good thing about the project came from this. You simply can't beat scripting for getting good, interesting character and special encounter behavior.

Second, I put in extra time for little script features - things like custom-scripted character special abilities (which are designer-made and vary from scenario to scenario), the ability to show maps and graphics, and the ability to tint and widely vary the appearance of graphics in the game. I also provided a ton of extra creature and item graphics, to give the designers more pre-made assets to use.

Third, I started beta testing early and let in some experienced Blades of Exile scenario designers. It's very difficult to fully test a scenario design system, because there are so many features that can interact in weird and unexpected ways. But I was able to squeeze out a lot of the more obvious problems.

Fourth, and this is a decision I carried over from Blades of Exile, scenarios made by users have to be free. You can't make a shareware block and charge for your scenario. There are a number of reasons for this. The most important is that when a designer changes addresses and some kid mails a check to that designer and it disappears, I would be the person who gets the complaints. I don't want that.

Finally, I decided early on to leave out some of the more extreme features. You can't make an arcade game with my engine, or a whole system conversion, or custom spells or skills. It is very important for developers with limited time and resources to draw the line somewhere. I left out things that would have taken a lot of time and not given what I felt was enough in return.

After all, the most important thing, above everything else, is to ship.

Areas for Improvement As always, the biggest areas for improvement in our games are graphics and sound. Since we're an online-only company, we need to write games that can be downloaded using a 56k modem; to go to demos that can only be realistically downloaded using broadband would cause us to lose a lot of customers. So, while we could afford fancier graphics than we use, we can't really afford to put too much more flashy stuff in the game.

Fortunately, our customer base forgives us for the more "retro" appearance and sound. However, I wish it didn't have to be this way.

Second, we decided to use the Avernum engine. Realistically, economically, going with the old engine really worked for us. It shaved months off the development time. But it's an old engine, and clunky in a lot of small ways. This is its last game. Should we make an Avernum 4 (which is likely), the engine will be sparkly and new.

Lessons Learned First, if you're me, don't write scenario editors more than once every five or six years. The wear and tear isn't worth it.

Second, when the audience has complaints or problems with bugs, fix them sooner rather than later (this is more a lesson I used when writing the game).

Third, a lesson I learned from doing the whole Avernum series - doing a ground-up rewrite of an old, beloved series can work, if you are careful and respectful of what made the series great to begin with. I was really worried about how the Avernum games would be received, but they have sold extremely well and gotten us a lot of positive feedback. Overall, I'm very glad that I did it.

Audience Response Not much press, so far. We're a small company, and it often takes a lot of time for us to get reviewed, if we get reviewed at all.

Reaction from users has been much more positive. The game has sold much faster than expectations. It's looking to be a profitable title.

The scenario design community has also jumped in with both feet. It's a pretty complicated system, with its own scripting language, so it's not easy to learn. However, we already have three neat new scenarios, and more on the way.

All in all, I'm quite optimistic.

Personal Thoughts It's simple and dated, but it's fun. The game system, after years of polishing, just works. It plays fast and easy, and it's really addictive. And because the design system is so versatile, people will be able to do new, funky stuff with it for years.

Also, I am really happy with the way the engine allows for cunning character AI. If a guard runs away, better kill it quick. It's going for help.

Jeff Vogel Lead Designer and Programmer, Blades of Avernum Spiderweb Software

[Since introducing them in November of 2003 to offer post-release viewpoints from the respective teams, it has been our pleasure to publish Wrap Reports on a number of other titles. Lists of the previous ones on both RPG Vault and Action Vault may be found on the next page. - Ed.]