Month: April 2024

Game Development Nightmare! The Story Behind Betrayed Alliance

Ryan J Slattery2 Comments

“I will never work on this again!” I said to myself.

Have you ever worked on something for so long it evolved into something else? I have! And that thing is “Betrayed Alliance”

Why am I writing something critiquing my own game series a mere 7 days before a release? Mainly I just wanted the information out there, so that people who were confused by the mess of the series, can understand why and how it got that way. And just why has “Book 1” been “released” three times?!

The Lost Demo for Betrayed Alliance

Betrayed Alliance “Book 1” starts in medias res having apparently just escaped from jail. Seems an odd place to start a game, especially since you could just as easily start the game “on the run” from the authorities. The reason for this oddity, which could have been a part of the game itself, is that once upon a time there was a demo for Betrayed Alliance called “Knight’s Quest,” where you play the character from Betrayed Alliance and you do mount a daring escape. That demo, while surely still exists somewhere, now has other plot elements that are not part of Betrayed Alliance.

Now you see what a mess I’ve really made of this whole thing!

There was never intended to be “Books” in this trilogy! It wasn’t supposed to be a trilogy at all! It was just supposed to be one big game. But, due to the fact that by 2013, I had worked on the project for almost seven years – of very sporadic and unfocused time – and completed only the first 1/3 of the game, I thought I would just finish that 1/3, call it “Book 1,” and never touch the damned thing again. After all, in that time, three large life-changes had happened:

  • I got a full-time job
  • I got married
  • I had just had my first child

Silly things like working truly countless hours on a game that probably no one would ever even play, and likely wouldn’t even be good, seemed like a thing of the past. Lot’s of negative self-talk in my old mindset!

Book 1 being released apart from the rest of the game limited its features, especially combat, which would play a bigger role in the entire game, but only plays a small role in the first part. Because of this, combat in Book 1 feels tacked-on and unimportant. I decided to make combat completely optional because it seemed just so unnecessary.

The release of Betrayed Alliance Book 1

Kidney stones, running 5ks, and being a dad for the first time. There was plenty on my plate already in 2013, but just before fall I made an announcement, that I would wrap development on Book 1 of Betrayed Alliance and release it to the small SCICommunity. Six months of crunching and a mad dash of bug fixes and I release on Christmas of 2013, just as a really early trailer had announced.

That was that. I released a free game to the world, but almost no one knew about it, and even less people cared! But I was proud of my little accomplishment, and there were a few people who enjoyed the game and let me know. After a while, I put together a walkthrough at the request of a few people who had gotten stuck, and after a couple of years I patched the game to fix some of the biggest bugs – one of which made the game nearly incompletable!

Six Years of Distance

Every once in a while someone would ask how Book 2 was coming for Betrayed Alliance. And I’d always reply with the same response: “Sorry, I’m not working on it anymore.”

From 2013 to 2019 I had found a new hobby, writing fiction. After I self-published a couple of young adult/middle grade stories, I set out to write something bigger and something a bit deeper. I had an idea for a pirate story featuring mystical islands with a lot more depth than a typical swashbuckling adventure. I set out to write this book year after year, each time ending in shipwreck. In the meantime, every time someone would ask about Betrayed Alliance, a new spark of excitement would ignite within me.

I also caught sight of a little indie project called The Crimson Diamond, by Julia Minamata and was blown away by the beautiful artwork she had created with the same colors and resolution I had been working with. I was greatly inspired by Julia to level up my artwork, which would lead to the creation of new backgrounds for Betrayed Alliance Book 2. In 2019, I had decided I was back on board the ol’ project.

The Attack Plan

At the outset, brimming with new project enthusiasm and stupidity, I thought I would complete both Books 2 and 3 together. After all, I completed Book 1, so I have the experience and know-how to sidestep many of the issues. This idea was short-lived, however, as the reality of the work set in.

So I formulated a new plan, one that would justify the Book division of the game. Each Book would have it’s own unique gameplay focus. Book 2 would feature a two-playable character system and Book 3 would feature a time-based day/night cycle and the ability to revisit the areas of Book 1 with new quests and things to find (in addition to a fully explorable new area of comparable size).

One major concern about the game was its lack of sound support. It was a DOS game, but used a Windows program to play music and sound. This needed to be fixed, but I wasn’t competent enough to solve it. Luckily, I knew someone who was. That’s where Brandon Blume comes into the mix. His knowledge of the hardware and sound drivers are making it possible for Betrayed Alliance to be truly DOS and truly retro in all aspects.

In addition to Brandon Blume, a second talented Canadian also found his way to help on the project. A fellow named Karl Dupéré-Richer. At first, he was eager to create some creatures and goblins for the game, many of which are featured in Book 2. But when the Kickstarter stretch goal of overhauling Book 1’s artwork and music was hit, he offered to help with the recreation of those backgrounds as well. A good 2/3 of the background artwork in Book 1 are now creations by the hand of Karl, who even learned to use SCI Companion, the program used to create the vector-based artwork necessary for these style of games.

Needless to say there is no comparison between the old artwork and Karl’s updates. It’s like when an artist takes a child’s drawing and makes something intricate and beautiful out of the basic design.

The Third Release?

Yes, it’s true, albeit unfortunate! In 2023, I had released a demo for Betrayed Alliance Book 2 eager to share with the Kickstarter backers and legendary folks who support me on Patreon the fruits of their generosity and the outcome of my work for the last few years.

Then the obvious happened. People downloaded not the demo for Book 2, but rather Book 1, naturally! And while Book 1 has a certain charm to it, at this point I was embarrassed by the artwork, most of which was done over a decade ago at that point. And the fact that there was a game-ending bug that effected a non-zero percentage of runs irked at me. It needed addressing and fast!

I had released Book 1 in 2013, did a major update in 2019, but the Kickstarter stretch goal to update the artwork and music had not been completed. I became afraid to promote the demo for Book 2 as it would lead people back to Book 1, so I decided to shift focus from Book 2 to completing the Book 1 update, which has been a lot more work than simply switching out backgrounds and music tracks!

Where Things Now Stand

Book 1 now stands ready to launch in May of 2024. The first “launch” was in 2013, and went hidden and unpublicized. It was made for a small community and it didn’t reach far beyond it. I spent a year fixing bugs and adding quality of life features and re-released it in 2020, now with a bit more reach. I say “a bit” in that I didn’t really ask any personalities/reviewers to talk about it. But there were a few people who streamed it on Twitch and a handful of YouTube videos of people playing the game.

The third release, however, feels like a whole different animal. The game is now quite beautiful and much more polished, and best of all, doesn’t have a “heap space” error that crashes the game on at least 10% of playthroughs! Yes, the game is still free and always will be. The whole thing started because when I was 20 I found a program that could make games like I loved when I was a kid. It all comes down to that creative impulse. I just wanted to do it!

So What Now?

Get the game! It’s free! Play it, share it, do whatever with it. Have some old-school fun!

If you want to support me in finishing the series, know this, I am slow! I have a fulltime job and three dependent children! But I work on the project little by little, every day. You can support me via Patreon if this is the kind of stuff you love and you are in a position to.

You can also support the project and get really cool stuff, like the Player’s Guide!

Finally, there are beautiful shirts and hoodies you can get from Fourth Wall:

ON SALE – 25% off Betrayed Alliance Player’s Guide until May 2 Game Release

Ryan J SlatteryLeave a comment

In the two weeks running up to the release of Betrayed Alliance Book 1, we’re running a sale for the Player’s Guide. Get it now to ship to you in time for the release. This offer ends May 2nd.

Contents of the Manual

Short Introduction Story

This little book includes a short story introduction to the events of the game.

Illustrated Map

It also features the an illustrated map of the game area courtesy of Karl Dupéré-Richer:

Combined Hint Guide and Walkthrough

Perhaps most importantly, taking up the majority of the book is the player’s guide with a combined hint-guide and walkthrough:

With this, the player can choose to look at extra hints to solve a particular puzzle. Each background that has puzzle elements is pictured with a number of hints that escalate from general hints to more specific.

If the player chooses, they can simply flip the manual over for the walkthrough that is provided in upside-down text. This way the reader will not easily spoiler themselves on accident, but will also have all the information in an easy to find place.

Get the Game for Free

The game itself is free, but I wanted to offer something cool for those who like the physical aspect of retro games in addition to the software itself. If that’s you, we’d love your support and hope you take advantage of the limited time special sale price!

A Short Defense of Type-Parsers

Ryan J Slattery12 Comments

Adventure gamers love point-and-click, but I do not.

I know it’s a minority opinion, but when command-typing was phased out of the adventure game genre, I fell off with them. With the type-parser, I felt like I had infinite possibilities always at my fingertips, whereas point-and-click felt more streamlined and controlled, like I was on rails. If point-and-click was a fun amusement park ride, the type-parser felt like I was let loose in the whole park itself.

Type: “Listen”
Type: “Smell”

Handed-down versus Discovered

I admit the truth, however, type-parsers are not infinite, not even close. Oftentimes, they don’t even allow as many options as point-and-click! Point-and-click allows you to touch, talk to, look at, and use any item on any hotspot! And yet, it still feels like it was something handed to you, not something you discovered.

Nothing illustrates this lack of discovery as well as character-to-character dialogue. In point-and-click games, dialogue is almost always clicking down the branches of a dialogue tree. Everything is predetermined, packaged up nicely and neatly for you. Here’s all your hints, story, and exposition gift-wrapped for you, you’re very welcome!

The type parser, on the other hand, puts the player in an active role. They must determine which rabbit holes in the dialog to chase down. They get to play a bit of a detective game just discovering which topics to ask about. Speaking for myself, this small game-within-a-game keeps my attention so much more than clicking down the topics. This also allows the developer to drop extra little nuggets for intrepid players to discover that would otherwise bog down a dialogue tree with needless extras. The parser allows it, because the only ones who will find it, are those who are looking for it.

The Problem with Text-Parsers

That’s all well and good, you might say, but what about the big problem with type parsers that you’re clearly tiptoeing around?

Yes, I know, it is frustrating to type four or five different renditions of the same command only to get, “You can’t do that.” With point-and-click, you just grab the item and click it on the hotspot and, boom, puzzle solved! With the parser you type, “use item,” only to get, “how would you like to use that,” and a litany of reasonable commands that for no good reason don’t work at all.

We’ve all been there, myself no exception, and yes, it is frustrating to have to track down that exact right verb and noun combination. I grant that that is a proper problem with the type parser system. But I do not grant that it is inherent to the type parser and that playtesting and correct design can do a lot to fix that issue.

Oops, I Solved It!

I would also argue that point-and-click’s take item and press it on hotspot can also really streamline a puzzle in a way that removes the player’s delight in discovering a solution. How many times have you clicked an item on a hotspot only for the ensuing animation to solve the puzzle in a way you hadn’t even imagined yet. There is no “how would you like to use that” prompt possible. Clearly, there is no perfect system.

Superiority of Point-and-Click

At this point you’re likely to find yourself disagreeing with me and mounting multiple potential arguments in favor of the point-and-click formula. Don’t worry, you are almost certainly in the right, or at least in the majority. I am only describing why I personally lost a lot of interest in adventure games in the leap from the type-parser to the point-and-click era, and era that persists to this very day! There clearly must be a good reason for it, I sadly can only say, that it just doesn’t resonate with me.

In my final analysis it comes down to the feeling of discovery, which I feel the type parser achieves better than point-and-click.

I’d love to know your thoughts on this issue. Let me know what you think below!

Confession – I’m Bad at Adventure Games…

Ryan J Slattery4 Comments

…And I kind of don’t even like them!

Or at least, there’s a part of them I love and a part of them I’m really bad at and gets in the way sometimes.

The part I love is the exploration. Adventure games do exploration really well. Whether it’s the immediately open world of Quest for Glory 1 or the more confined but very interesting places you find in Space Quest 3, I really like milling about and interacting with things.

The part I don’t like? Mostly, the puzzles, honestly. I’m very bad at adventure games and I get stuck ALL THE TIME. I was recently playing Thimbleweed Park and I have to say I really had fun with the first two chapters. I loved exploring Thimbleweed and talking to the locals and the mystery. It had magic to it. I even got stuck on a few puzzles, but it wasn’t too bad. In fact, I loved the game and was excited for the next chapter.

Chapter 3, however, blew up with playable characters, complexity, and locales so much that I started to feel a bit bewildered. At the same time, the puzzles start to feel a bit…forced.

  • With one character, a page unrealistically flies away and out a window for no better reason than “gotta have puzzles.”
  • I have to do some truly convoluted stuff to get printer ink, and I really don’t want to or care to.
  • For some reason I have to feed popcorn to some animal, but I can’t use the *empty* swear jar as a vessel to hold the popcorn?

I get it; I’m bad at adventure game puzzles. But they frustrate me when they seem like unnecessary roadblocks just for the sake of having roadblocks. Maybe these puzzles are very intricately woven into the story that’s being told, but when I’m tackling them, I don’t feel like they add anything of value. Of course, I’m still stuck at Chapter 3…so, I could be just an ignorant dumb-dumb head, not knowing the final outcomes.

But it has gotten me wondering:

  1. Will I finish Thimbleweed Park? My enthusiasm substantially dipped after Chapter 2.
  2. Which is more important in adventure games: exploration or puzzles?

For people who love Thimbleweed, don’t worry, you are correct. The game is basically universally praised and highly rated anywhere there are reviews. I’m the odd man out with the bad opinion! Or, more likely, I am just the type of player who values exploration more than puzzles and got frustrated when the exploration ended and the puzzles ramped up.

That’s probably why when designing Betrayed Alliance, I wanted to have a more open feeling, similar to Quest for Glory 1 or the King’s Quest games. Here’s a puzzle box world, now go explore and have fun! Are there puzzles? Of course! Are some of them convoluted and contrived? Probably, but I’ll leave that to you to decide this May, when Book 1 is released as DOS freeware for the world to enjoy.

What’s most important to you in adventure games? Let me know!