[How we ended up with the voice of The Witcher in our indie game trailer]

Our blog post about how we created the first Sacred Fire trailer and how we got the voice of the WItcher in it was a featured blog earlier this week on Gamasutra:

How we ended up with the voice of The Witcher in our indie game trailer
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MartinKolesar/20161214/287005/How_we_ended_up_with_the_voice_of_The_Witcher_in_our_indie_game_trailer.php

It's a fun story, actually. And we documented our whole process of trailer creation, so it could be useful for other people.

By the way, Doug Cockle won a Golden Joystick Award for best gaming performance few weeks ago (for his role in The Witcher ;-)

Thank you! We will be running a Kickstarter campaign in March 2017 and release the first playable version soon after the campaign.

[Choice Making]

I feel like the lists of design decision above need to be explained better.

Choice Making

You have to earn the right to make a tough call

If a story choice you want to make is out-of-character or simply tough for the personality you’ve developed, you need to pass a probability check. To boost your chances you can use willpower points.
As a reward, making a tough choice develops your personality and helps you level up.

Ideas shape your character as much as actions

Inner monologue give the player’s character the ability to interpret and comment on what’s happening in the story. What are your thoughts on failure, injustice, or brutality in a scene? What is the motive behind your choice to help someone?
It’s your interpretation and motives that affect your character’s empathy, create guilt or strengthen your ideals.



You always know the consequences of a choice

We never mislead the player into a wrong choice. Our goal is to create an experience where the player always has a smart option out of a tough spot. Notice a trap, sense an ambush, spot a hidden blade, make a leap of faith. You just need to have the will to make the extra effort to actually use it.

You have to earn the right to change the story

You do not start out as a leader; you have to compete for influence within the group of potential rivals or allies. NPCs don’t just get angry if they don’t agree with your choices. They have their own agendas and will try to undermine your choices.

Combat



You have to control your emotions to perform optimally in combat

Fear weakens your attacks. Anger makes you ignore your defense. Save your willpower points; you will need them to help you keep your cool. This way you can intimidate, provoke, and wear out your opponent.

Equipment doesn’t win a fight. It only sets the stage

Collecting and crafting beautiful items is important, but not only for the protection they provide. Items such as armor also affect how comfortable and confident you feel, and how memorable, attractive, and menacing you appear to NPCs.
But what wins a fight is using your willpower to overcome fear. Use these willpower points to boost your chances of keeping your cool, to ignore pain, and to regain self-control when you go beyond your physical ability.

Letting the opponent attack you from behind is a valid tactic

We’ve all seen the scene. The hero stands still, the opponents circle him, and the hero dodges in the last moment. It’s good storytelling, but horrible tactics.
What makes this a valid tactic in Sacred Fire is that IF you pull it off, a display of confidence and skill like that intimidates your opponents and affects their performance. Furthermore, showing control and courage like that will earn you the respect of NPCs.

You can win the game without killing



All fights have context within the story, and a winning condition other than defeating the opponent. In some, if you can gain enough respect through displays of skill, your opponent will give up, or you can intimidate them into fleeing. In others all you have to do is survive until help arrives. Combat in Sacred Fire is all about the tactical choices that you make.

The game AI recognizes if you choose not to land a decisive hit, or if you do not use lethal-force in combat at all. All NPCs you fight have complex agendas and their own survival is high on their list. They will rarely fight till their last breath.
The writing also gives options how to avoid, prevent or end a fight before it gets out of control.

If you like what we are doing, up-vote us on Steam Greenlight Concepts: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=800757379

I thought it would be good to explain why we do a lot of things differently than other RPGs, or any narrative games for that matter. We are basically rethinking the Choice & Consequence mechanic in the genre. The whole point of using numeric personality models and have a rule set governing your characters psychology is to blend narrative and action seamlessly and enable a new level of role-playing.

We use the personality model to make the player's interaction with the story tactical. Choices, and their consequences, are the core elements of Sacred Fire:

•    You have to earn the right to make a tough call.
•    Ideas shape your character as much as actions.
•    You always know the consequences of a choice.
•    You have to earn the right to change the story.

The combat in Sacred Fire blends powerful storytelling moments, personality tests, and turn-based tactical moves into one flow. Each turn the player chooses one of four goals of your attack or defense: survive, provoke, intimidate and gain renown. However, a wide variety of different actions result from these four goals based on by how much you overshoot the probability check. If the goal is to survive, you will defend and attack in the most efficient manner, affecting hit points only. To provoke, you can taunt the opponent, parry like you were sparring with a child, or play nasty and hit a sensitive place.

To intimidate, you can split objects in half, shoot an warning arrow, or take a hit without nudging. To gain renown, you will intentionally dodge in the last possible moment, block arrows without dodging, or pull off a devastating attack.

•    You have to control your emotions to perform optimally in combat.
•    Equipment doesn’t win a fight. It only sets the stage.
•    Letting the opponent attack you from behind is a valid tactic.
•    You can win the game without killing.

You can read more about the straegy/politics/relationship aspects of the game on our Steam Greenlight Concept page:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=800757379

It’s been about 3 months since we’ve published the teaser. We’ve done a modest Facebook campaign to reach RPG fans in the US, UK and Canada and here are the results:

    2,600 newsletter subscribers
    1,600 Twitter followers
    1,100 Facebook fans
    96,000 video views on Facebook
    2,300 video views on Youtube


We thought the lessons learned might be useful to other devs so we wrote a post-mortem:
https://www.sacredfiregame.com/2016/12/06/the-witcher-geralt-teaser/

It covers our process, from setting goals, storyboards, first visual and voice-over drafts, trough copy-writing, production, and promotion. Based on feedback we’re now working on our Kickstarter trailer which will feature about 2 minutes of gameplay, including a full UI, NPC agency, politics, and of course more combat.

The new trailer will also be starring Doug Cockle, who has meanwhile won the Golden Joystick award for Best Gaming Performance for the role of Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher 3.

Hello, everyone, it's been a while!



Check out the newest screenshots at our Steam Greenlight Concepts page: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=800757379
If you like what you see, up-vote us! Every vote counts! We are already #1 Most Popular This Week, your up-vote can help us to get the coveted 5-star rating. Thank you!

Check out our new website: http://www.SacredFireGame.com
Subscribe and be the first in line to get Early Bird discounts when we launch a Kickstarter campaign in March 2017!

Thank you!

[Sacred Fire is a psychological RPG about a resistance warrior who fights to survive, rise to power and hold on to hope.]

Hello everyone, I'm posting an update on an RPG that I've been working on over last couple of years. It's called Sacred Fire and I'm developing it in Unity. I've just created a cool new gameplay teaser with the voiceover from Doug Cockle, the voice of Geralt of Rivia from the Witcher.

What are you missing in the RPG genre at the moment? How are you able to overcome the challenges of a lone developer working on a video game?

Thanks for checking out my game.






Sacred Fire is a psychological RPG about a resistance warrior who fights to survive, rise to power and hold on to hope. To survive, you need to master your emotions and rise in influence. Forging alliances and building renown is the only way how to resist an overwhelming force.

Sacred Fire offers nuanced personality creation, emotions-based cinematic combat, NPCs competing for power, and a story full of twists, depth and risk-based choices.

The game will be available on Steam (PC, MAC & Linux).

GAMEPLAY

At its core, Sacred Fire is a choice & consequence role-playing game focused on character development, tactical combat and relationships.

In order to truly shape the story, you need to rise in Influence above all the other story characters. To get it, you will need a lot of Willpower, to fight for renown, win allies, etc.

We want the player to have a lot of fun winning deadly duels, performing feats of courage and making smart choices. But we also want them to think about questions like: How does this choice shape my personality? Should I boost my chances to say something smart, or rather save the willpower for later to deal with my traumatic memories? How can I turn this rival character into an ally? How do I save this relationship that is falling apart?

Most of the game will be spent making smart choices in a fast flowing storyline, but we want the player to constantly wonder “How can I maximize my character’s influence?”

Games that inspired me:

• The Pen & Paper role-playing experience: playing in-character, worrying about whom you can trust, thinking your way out of a tough spot
  
• Banner Saga: its dialogue camera and attention to visual detail
  
• Shadowrun: Dragonfall: its cast of broken party members
  
• Civilization: its sense of progress when competing with other civilizations
  
• Fallout: its character development special traits (Perks)
  
• The Last of Us: mature storytelling themes
  
• Dragon Age: Origins: its rollercoaster experience with the party members
  

People also describe Sacred Fire as a thing of its own with flavors of King of Dragon Pass and Fallen London.

I rewrote the original post as I realized it was missing the developers perspective.

[The problem with C&C in games:]

Hi everyone!

I am a one man indie from Slovakia working on Sacred Fire, a turn-based narrative RPG for PC and tablets, rethinking choice and consequence in RPGs.

The problem with C&C in games:
The status quo with C&C in games is that a choice is good when:
- it's morally gray (choose between two equally good/evil/valuable options)
- high stakes: it impacts the game world in a significant way
- uncertainty: the consequence is unclear

The result is a playing experience when you feel manipulated into 'impossible' choices or are forced to make choices where you have no idea how they turn out. In my experience, this breaks the storytelling immersion, as people protect themselves from being manipulated and from being exposed to risk and uncertainty by distancing ourselves from the protagonist.

Rethinking C&C in RPGs:
A choice is good:
- if it allows nuanced self-expression
- if the nuance is tracked and changes who you are as a person
- if you as the player have a way of finding out exactly what the consequence is

This way you feel immersed into the storytelling and can be rewarded for playing smart.

Sacred Fire design focus:
The focus as you might have guessed is not to simulate the outer world and explore endless dungeons, but to simulate the inner world of a human psyche and explore opponent characters who are completely unknown to you.

Integrating story and gameplay
The benefit of using characters with complex personality and relations models is it integrates story and gameplay, dialogue and combat.

The story choices shape your personality that dictates your emotional reactions and emotion control in combat and affects your performance.

Next Step - Kickstarter
I am currently preparing a Kickstarter campaign, please subscribe on http://sacredfirerpg.com to get notified when it launches or to get involved with the KS preparation. Thank you, every voice counts!

Teaser


Screenshots


Dialogue Gameplay Example


More info: http://sacredfirerpg.com

EDIT: I added the choice & consequence design explanation

As I said before, I liked the article, it does good job of breaking the non-gamers stereotype often found in mainstream magazines, that games = GTA = evil. I think it makes a service to all indie games, even those that weren't mention and people feel should have been mentioned.

I would like to get back to my original point about how I think it's a mistake to dump narrative from games. Look at Dragon Age - Origins a AAA mainstream console game days old (I hope it's not blasphemy to mention it here ), look at how it connects and touches people. E.g. this thread on their forums, 115 pages long, discussing ONE single NPC in the game. http://daforums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=703863&forum=145&sp=0
It's not discussing crowd battle cut-scenes, expansiveness of the game, and other AAA stuff money can buy. One single non-playable character. This is something any game can be proud of. This is something any indie can afford. Of course it sucks that you have to play for 75 hours to get that emotional experience

To get back to my point on art games: I think games with good stories well integrated into the game are more emotionally rich and meaningful then games where meaning is coming solely from game rules. Hence my analogy of Passage-type of art games being like mute movies. If a mainstream game making all the compromises to appeal to a mainstream audience is so emotionally effective, imagine what an indie game could achieve, combining both meaning coming from rules and meaning coming from a narrative.

Of course, there is space to explore for art games too, don't get me wrong.

I like how the original article actually has it's fact straight. I also like the discussion here, shows that people actually care about meaning in games.

My personal take on it is: a game trying to express meaning without narrative (conveyed in text/speech) is like a mute movie (not talking about games where meaning/narrative is not the focus). It works, but it's a limited form of the medium. It's over a year that Jonathan Blow spoke about inherent conflict in story based games. He pondered on how to grow simple art games (gameplay rules with symbolic meaning) into something that tells a story like Metal Gear Solid 3. His conclusion was, he can't imagine how to do it. Well, you can't make 'Twelve Angry Men' as a mute movie. Even the artistic film Hunger 2008 has a single central dialogue to give more depth to the work. I had the impression from Blow's blog posts, he is exploring the potential of interactive dialogue, so I hope, at least he is not trying to go the 'mute' road with his next game Witness.

So if someone enjoys being a minimalist in creating games, and advocate how that helps the meaning to shine, he is welcomed, but minimalism is just one approach/school of art.

I personally did enjoyed Passage. For a few moments. It's just like the one sentence poem Paul mentioned. It's nice, delivers a simplistic message. I felt disappointed in the end, as the potential of this medium has more to offer. Well, like waiting for a dialogue in a mute movie.

PayNova

Sorry for the delay, thank you for taking the feedback positively.

I look forward to ArcMagi!

Too hi-res, the TIGsource pixelfags will break your back...

Ok . Is Unity the best choice to make a game like Aquaria?

What is your opinion on using Unity to making something like Odin Sphere?

In other words: a 2D side-scroller, with parallax scrolling, hi-res characters with tons of animation, full screen particle systems.
+ lots of AI and game play tuning required. No physics or 3D required.

I know image based 2D is possible in Unity. Would the hassle of implementing 2D in 3D be worth for Unity's productivity boost in the AI and gameplay tuning phase?

I greatly appreciate any comments.

What other tool with comparable productivity would you recommend? I'm looking for cross-platform and ready to add game-play logic and art tools. TGB is not an option for me.

Hey this is quite cool, thank you!

I wonder why nobody reacted to this, is BlitzMax not really used anymore in 2009?

I played Magi several months ago unaware of ArcMagi being in development.

I liked the concept, but was frustrated with the implementation: I remember losing a lot, because nobody explained to me in the game what tactical options I had. More specifically:
- the game was to fast to make tactic choices and react to the development
- I had no idea if it was worth to 'power' the basic spells with more 'channels' then required (I don't remember the terminology exactly). This is what I instinctively did, as it was mentioned as an tactic option in the tutorial, but I kept on loosing, so I learned the hard way it's not the way to go. At least I guess so.
- The summoned allies add to the confusion as they seriously alter the dynamics of who takes the damage and who is shielded and who is not.

Eventually I figured it out by myself, but it was too late for me to enjoy the game.

I really would like to enjoy a well balanced real time combat game with tactics.

I wish you good progress with ArcMagi!

Thank you!

Considering Unity: some people from the Unity community discouraged me to use it for a image based 2D project with thousands of character frames, as it is primary a 3D engine.

What do you think about using Unity for this particular kind of project, Alec?

Considering Monocle: I don't want to discuss specific about my project publicly, but feel free to contact me on the e-mail listed in my profile. I know you are busy before GDC, just let me know, where you stand. Would be awesome if we could actually make this work.

In terms of "the champion", I'd like it to be something from a friend I've worked with before, something really new and exciting or something from someone who has proven they can finish a project and do a great job of it. I think at least one of those three things would make it cool enough for me to consider.

The reason for that is cause I've worked on a lot of projects that fall apart due to inexperience / good intentions outweighing actual experience / critical thinking. I wouldn't want to get  stuck working on a project that I didn't think was going to be amazing!

I understand your position perfectly.

In fact that's also my position. We are both making the same decision here. We both have to decide if we give the other a shot on something big we invested a lot into and risk being relatively dependent on each other.

I have the advantage of knowing you can deliver.
You have the advantage of being less dependent than me. In your worst scenario = I fail to deliver, you will still have the engine done. You don't lose work, just exposure. If you fail to deliver, I lose a lot of work.

Then there is the question how much time you can dedicated to Monocle, if you have other projects running with Infinite Ammo.

I already invested years of work into my project. The idea behind it is simple, but powerful. Unlocking a different level of what games can be / express / make you experience. This may sound like exactly that kind of projects that never gets done. That's why I carefully flashed out everything before going into production.

I also don't want to bring in any unnecessary risk to my project. It's just, the timing is good enough, the feature set is a match, you have proven you can deliver, I've been looking for a cross-platform solution and I have a project that can help Monocle shine.

To sum up your criteria: I can deliver on having something new and exciting, and on being someone who finished a 2 years project. I do this full time, full passion. This is a game I always wanted to make and I'm still very excited about it even after years of "boring" preparation work.

Furthermore the project's strength is based on an idea and it's implementation, not an extensive feature set the engine must support.
Plus it's a match with PC / OS X / Linux / XBLA / PSN players. Wii Ware players seem too casual form my project to me, but I could be wrong.

What also mitigates the risk, is that I designed the project in a way I can finish it alone with my skill set, so there is no one else who could add to the risk.

We have time to discuss this to make the right choice. I'm going to start the project implementation after GDC, as Unity 2.5 and Playground SDK 5.0 will be probably announced there. I plan to use one of them.

I can flexibly rearrange my schedule, so if it takes some months to develop Monocle into a state I can use it, it's fine. I have a lot of art to make + I can test it in-game in a different environment.

[5.25% + 1.3$]

Just a few info I collected:

- Kagi: the listed pricing here is wrong: 2.5%+1$ is only the Kagi fee + on top of that is the credit card fee: e.g. Visa US: 2.75% +0.3$ = 5.25% + 1.3$
See: http://www.kagi.com/kagisolutions/pricing.php
- merchant accounts: I don't know about US, but in EU you get merchant accounts with really bad starting fees: 5% + 0.3, plus rules about a 10% reserve, etc. You can get lower once you build trust etc. You are just so much better of with PayPal if you want low fees.
- FastSpring: seems to have really good customer service (for you AND for your customers). Rate: 8.9% or 5.9% + 0.95$. I heard a lot of folks from the microISV community use them and are very happy.
- eSellrate: DRM, in-application checkout, used in MAC world
- BMTmicro: heard a lot of good about them, no personal experience
- PayPal can do a lot for you once you take the time to set it up