Hi guys, I'm Hunter X. The folks over at Playlab London have asked me to bring you a weekly report on how the game is moving along, so they can focus on making the game. Naturally, I accepted - who wouldn't jump at the chance to get regular opportunities to try out the game and have a one-to-one chat with the developers? A couple of weeks later and I found myself in a Skype chat with Simon Fox and Toby Green, ready to see the game.

We began by testing the latest build of the game. Being an alpha there are a few bugs, but the core system is definitely in a usable state. After logging in through Facebook (currently the only way of logging in, but a couple of unused links suggest it won't always be that way) you are presented with the option of creating a new story or hero, or jumping into a random or specified story. If you choose to create a new story you are presented with this screen:

You can choose up to three themes for the story, followed by the characters (you can enter a name and description for each character, as well as their role - ally, victim, traitor etc. - in the story) and finally the chapters - each chapter has an objective as well as an extended description, and you can fill each chapter with a number of events (more on those later), with a name and description of their own.



Once you create your story you are taken to a different page - each story has a unique URL that you can give to other players to let them join your story. The interface is mostly the same for 'God' (the user who created the story) and the 'Hero' (the user who joins second), even if the roles are different. On the left side of the screen you have tabs for the chapter description and objective, as well as the characters in the story and your progress in the chapter (based on the number of events you have completed.

The main body of the page is where the story itself takes place. New chapter descriptions, events and user inputs all appear here. Gameplay consists of a back-and-forth exchange between God and the hero - while the hero is limited to telling the story through their character, God can speak as the narrator or any of the cast, as well as triggering events through a God-only tab - events appear differently to regular text on the page, and often consist of obstacles the hero must surpass or objectives they need to achieve. As God triggers objectives the chapter progress increases - though 100% most likely means the chapter is complete, God can move on to the next chapter at any time.

The other remaining system is the force and props dynamic. Since props is easier to explain I'll start with that - if either of the players or anybody watching the story (stories will allow for spectators both during and after the game) likes a particular like from either God or the hero, they can give them 'props' which will be permanently recorded next to that line. This was included to counterbalance the negative themes of the force dynamic - if either player disagrees with the direction the story is taking they can hover over a line and click the force button that appears next to it. They can then drag outwards from that button to specify a number of Force Points they wish to apply to that force. The person who wrote that line is then challenged to apply a greater number of force points (in which case the first player is then presented with the same challenge) or accept the force, which results in the line being removed. It's a very interesting system and I'm quite excited to see how it will function in proper stories.



All in all the game is progressing very nicely. The developers tell me they're getting very close to an open alpha release, so keep an eye out for that soon. Meanwhile, you can sign up on the testing applications thread if you haven't done so already for a chance to play the game earlier.

Once we were done with that Simon explained some of the early concepts of the game to me - originally the world map had been a two-level, zooming map, with a 'continent view' displaying several different islands and an 'island view', in which various landmasses, cities and settlements would be displayed, which could host locations and events in player stories. This turned out to be not as compelling or effective a way of representing the stories as the developers hoped, so they began to look for another solution.

Another system tried was a 'tower defence' style map in the story creation form. When creating a story the user would be presented with a map with various spots for events or chapters, with different areas becoming available depending on the story genres selected. As the story progressed the player would move from locations on the left side of the screen to the right. This proved to be too awkward in displaying the stories - there was no way to represent distance between locations, or for two stories to begin and end at the same location. Additionally, the system did not include any relationship between the story map and the world map, meaning the locations in the story could not be presented in relation to locations from other stories.

So the developers started looking at existing systems. They wanted a system that would draw people in and make them want to explore the game world - Simon told me that one of his main inspirations was treasure island, looking at a map and coming up with stories based on that map. However, as the detail of the map improves, there is less room for imagination and creation. The developers needed a balance between an iconic map and an absolute map, since they needed locations to be iconic while still truly representing the game world. They also needed to allow for realism - they needed to be able to represent scale as well as to re-use existing locations.

The next big inspiration for the system was a nuber of old platform game maps - the levels would progress from left to right (like a passage of text) and would be visual but iconically so. The website vgmaps.com was a big inspiration in this phase, along with this image that you may have seen on the blog recently:



In the end the developers combined elements from each of the systems to produce a grid on which a story would be displayed, with the left-to-right axis representing time and the top-to-bottom axis representing drama. Users will be able to create their locations by adding them to the grid using a tile editor with locations and events being placed in squares on the grid and separated by land and oceans that can also be configured in the editor. These story maps would then form a visual 'overworld' of the game universe. The developers are all quite excited about this system, and I'm looking forward to seeing the finished result.

So there you go. If any of you have any questions for the developers, post them here and I'll pass them on in our next meeting (assuming they don't get to them first).