DIVINE RIGHT is not the only board-and-counters game we are currently developing. Once we have the counters done and refined for VASSAL, we will start looking for playtesters interested in playtesting WAR LEADER, which can be thought of as an advanced tactical combat game that is to fantasy combat what ASL is to WWII infantry combat. We're looking at it as a system that will initially be constructed for the world of Selenoth, but will allow modules of different fantasy worlds to be developed, so the same system can be applied to scenarios involving everything from the Uruk-Hai to the Cauldron Born, the White Walkers, and the goblins of Zorn.

This article appeared in the February 2008 issue of Develop magazine.

Last month, Electronic Arts took the unusual, although not unprecedented, step of permitting the release of the source code of Maxis's landmark simulation game SimCity to the public under the Gnu Public License version 3.  This is not the first time that game code has been released into the wild, but it is one of the first times that source code from a hit game that was not developed by the notorious maverick John Carmack has escaped the confines of the development house.

Now, it's far too soon to say if anyone will actually do anything interesting with the code, which is named Micropolis due to the need to protect EA's trademarks.  But even if a programmer or two manage to come up with something brilliant, it is unlikely that even a creative spin based on a genuinely great game is going to generate much attention due to that which is now the great bane of the game development industry.

To put it in a nutshell, the problem is art.  Game art, to be specific, the amount and the expense of it required in games today. 

Although my game-playing dates back to the Apple II, Akalabeth, Swashbuckler and the original Castle Wolfenstein, I didn't actually start designing my own games until the MCGA days.  There were two options then, 320x200, 256-color resolution or  640x480 with 16 colors.  Like most would-be developers, my friend and I began by copying a game that we quite liked that we thought we could do a little better, in our case, Warlords from SSG.  Our game was going to be called MythWars, wherein the player was a god from one of the various pantheons, which determined the various army types available.

With such low resolution and a 2D environment, the tiles were so small that two non-artists were perfectly capable of creating what were, at the time, very professional looking graphics.  The rolling hills gave way to majestic, snow-covered mountains and the various monstrous infantries and cavalries really looked quite good against the backgrounds.  For those who can remember those primitive days, it actually looked prettier than Warlords or QQP games like Conquered Kingdoms.  Nowadays, of course, looks crude beyond belief, something a child would be embarrassed to put on Facebook.  

We never finished MythWars, as completing college and then leaping right into the exciting new horizon of 2.5D technology turned out to be a permanent distraction.  We tried a few different approaches, especially with video capture, but we quickly learned that our art skills had reached their limits and 2.5D required hiring real artists from the local art school.  The budget for our first game was only $125,000, which paid for the two full-time artists who worked on it.  These days, that wouldn't cover the cost of the graphics used on a single game level.

The problem is that while games are visually incredible these days, they often aren't actually any more fun to play.  Consider Guitar Hero, for example.  While it's got very realistic graphics, they're really not very important to the game; the player primarily derives his enjoyment from rocking out with something that feels like a real guitar in his hands.  It's the interface that's key, not the visuals, and if you think about it, all games really are, at root, is amusement interfaces.

And art isn't only less fundamentally relevant to games than one might think, but its cost actually creates genuine design problems that are completely unrelated to the art itself.  Because budgets are so massive these days, more people have to sign off on every project and there's greater financial pressure on games to appeal to the widest possible market.  This is not the way to stimulate creativity and design brilliance, but rather imitation and design mediocrity.  This isn't anyone's fault, it's just the natural evolution of the industry.  If it weren't for the fact that a few of the industry's most innovative minds also happen to be some of its most vastly successful ones, we might all be reduced to developing clones of the latest clones of the previous clones.

Is there a way out of this artistic bottleneck?  It seems hard to imagine, since no one wants worse graphics and I don't know very many talented artists who are inclined to work for nothing.  Perhaps EA's release of “Micropolis” may hint at the way, after all, an awful lot of game art is pretty similar to the art used in other games.  What if instead of releasing game code, developers were to release their old textures and models into an online pool from which everyone could draw as needed, thus reducing the need to draw yet another space laser or oak tree?  Obviously, there would still be a need for new art, but at least everyone woudn't be constantly paying to reinvent the dying monster animation.

No doubt there are a million and one reasons why an Internet Art Pool could never come to pass, but in the unlikely event it does, I have some nice 32x32 mountains in case anyone needs them.

We wanted to pay homage to the original design, but allow the talented artist freedom to interpret the piece in his style. Respecting the work of the original while making appropriate enhancements is foundational to the Divine Right Classic Collector's Edition. The Classic Collector's Edition will be a limited edition of 500 copies of the boxed game utilizing the rules from the second TSR edition of November 1979 which incorporates the first edition errata published in Dragon magazine. After the Classic Collector's Edition is released, a crowdfunding campaign will be conducted in support of the new edition of Divine Right wargame as well as an associated RPG, novels set in Minaria, and lorebooks.

Now that we've worked out the draft ratings for the various infantry unit counters, which will of course be subject to modification in playtesting, it's time to design the artwork. Below are the draft images for the four types of orc infantry, which are not drawn to scale. The purpose is to visually convey the higher Attack Factor and Defense Factor of the higher-level units, as the values will range from 9-3-4-70 for a Fit Elite unit to 5-0-4-35 for a Fit Conscript unit.

In game terms, orcs have higher attack factors and lower defense factors, with average movement factors and lower morale than the norm. For the goblins, we're fortunate in being able to draw from the examples provided by the forthcoming A THRONE OF BONES comics. And yes, there will be goblin wolfriders. Of course there will be goblin wolfriders!

 Unfortunately, it's not possible to utilize the original painting that appears on the original Divine Right 1979 edition because TSR never returned it to the Rahmans. So, we have to recreate it. Below is the variant of the draft that Glenn Rahman has selected for the classic collector's limited edition.

The next tile proof has arrived. Santiago mellowed out the water and lighted the jungle, forest, and organ swamp tiles. The glass desert is now purplish, so it stands out from the water. I ordered the new tiles without UV coating so they wouldn't glare.

This first photo shows the new land tiles with the old water tiles, producing a larger map.



This next photo shows the contrast between the old water and the new water. There is some reduction of detail in this photo as a result of merging them into one image.



As it turns out the tiles produce glare even with the UV coating, but are now vulnerable to water spillage and fingerprints. They also have residual soot marks from the laser cutting process. The mellowed out water photographs better, but appears grayish and dreary to the naked eye. I may ask Santiago to produce a more lively ocean color - so it feels more joyful. The boundary between land and sea is certainly more clear with the mellower water, so there's a tradeoff to consider.

Here's one more with the new water so you can see it with more detail. Again, props to Santiago for the great work.

Santiago has completed the map tile art and I'm waiting for the proofs to come from the print-on-demand service. If they print well, we're good to go! In the meantime, I've uploaded the tileset into Hexographer and created a map. Santiago's art is too detailed for Hexographer, which of course is fine because that's not what they were designed for. When the proofs arrive (2-3 weeks) I'll take some photographs so everyone can see the Santiago's art in blazing glory.

In the meantime I think we're starting to see a world that beckons exploration.

Edit: Just for fun, here's another map:

Here's a map that's a little wider:

And what's an endeavor like this without an island map?

Santiago did such an amazing job on Elveteka I asked him if he could do some work for my RPG. Since my game features exotic terrain and ecology, visual aids are important to setting the tone. Santiago has been really knocking it out of the park, and though it's still in progress, I wanted to share some of what he's doing. He's making these tiles look like places you'd want to explore.

Divine Right has a very creative mechanic called Personality Cards that help provide real variety to the player-controlled allies by assigning a personality to the various monarchs. However, we had to make a call on the artwork, which is simple black-and-white sketch art. Given that our mandate is to recreate the original boardgame as closely as possible, we decided to use the card art as concept art, then produce them in the style of the title and event screens.

Here is the first Personality Card rough. Obviously, it is not done yet, but it allows us to confirm that taking this stylistic approach will prove effective.



It's always important to have a coherent look that connects the various art elements. We've chosen to do that here by adhering closely to the original boardgame elements. This may seem an obvious choice, but in many, perhaps most cases, the producer and the art director can't resist the urge to update the art look, thereby negating the charm of the original game, which somewhat defeats the entire purpose of the transition to the newer medium.

We have game counters for Divine Right. All of them, in high resolution, as it happens. Onward and upward! The artists are really doing a great job and making real progress on this project.

The art continues to come along well. The map is done, the counters are done too, and now it's time to start on the UI and other game elements such as information screens and effects.


The title screen portrays an army, presumably one belonging to Immer or Hothior, riding towards the Temple of Kings.

The first complete draft of the map of Minaria is complete. If you notice any mistakes, this would be an excellent time to mention them.

No matter how hard we try, important details are often lost in translation from one dev team member to another. This is why it is often important to go back and confirm that what we think we told the other person is exactly what they not only heard, but understood.

Case in point: I told the lead artist, whose first task is recreating the 1979 Divine Right map, that we were going to be using the standard 4k resolution of 3840x2160. This will, to a certain extent, future-proof the game, and allow for a very nice wargaming experience for those with big, high-resolution screens. What I meant is that 3840x2160 would be the base resolution for the game art; anytime a game is being developed, everyone has to know what the base graphic standard is, whether it is MCGA (320x200, 256 colors) to 4k (3840x2160, 16.7 million colors).

However, what the artist heard is that the map should be 3840x2160. In order to fit those parameters, he had to horizontally squash the hexagons, which produced the compressed effect that can be seen to the right.

That's not his fault, as I knew that he is a DevGame attendee and therefore should have remembered that he does not yet speak the same dev language that a more experienced game developer does. We were talking about a map, a map is defined by a specific resolution, and a specific resolution was selected. It was perfectly sensible for him to create the map at the resolution specified, and he did a very nice job of it. The fault, the responsibility for the error, was all mine.

Fortunately, one of the things we also teach in DevGame is the concept that one should never be afraid of making mistakes or correcting them, but rather address them as quickly as possible. Even more important is to prepare for the eventuality that a mistake will need to be corrected, so always work in a way that allows for maximum future flexibility. The artist did that by choosing to create the basic map in vector graphics, which meant that it could be easily resized; it was literally a matter of minutes before he sent over the revised map below, the hexagons no longer compressed.

The number of hexes is still the same, the height is still equal to the vertical resolution,, but the width no longer fills the horizontal resolution, which will leave space for monarch personality cards and other UI elements. The text needs to be redone, but that is a relatively minor task; the important thing is that nothing needed to be redrawn. This is a good example of a problem caused by a communication error that is promptly fixed by smart development processes combined with continuous communications.

Frequent and open communication is the key to quickly identifying and correcting problems. Don't ever allow yourself to avoid communicating or go dark for fear that you're doing, or have done, something wrong; that is the best way to ensure that whatever issues you've got are going to get worse and become serious problems. If you're not sure something is right, if you're starting to suspect something might be wrong, don't hesitate to look into it and talk about it.

DevGame can now confirm that DevGame Project #6 will be the Basic Rules Divine Right computer wargame, as Alpenwolf has acquired the rights to produce Divine Right-related games, including the original wargame, from the rightsholder. The plan is to complete and release the Basic Rules version first, then add Advanced Rules and 3rd Edition Rules in the future.

Single-player mode versus AI opponents and multiplayer  modes with and without AI opponents will be included.

Castalia House also acquired the right to produce novels and RPG materials set in the world of Minaria and utilizing the Divine Right name.

The map is already well underway and is being prepared for 4k screens. The 78 custom map icons still need to be created and the XY ratio needs to be adjusted, but it is otherwise nearing completion.

I need to animate dwarves and orcs shooting in multiple directions.

Let's start with south. First, I draw the crossbow loaded and ready to fire.
Next I draw it post-firing:
Next I draw it raised as we load a new arrow.
Problem is, this animation is terrible!
Technically good enough for the target, site, but the purpose of this internship is to impress industry insiders, thus make contacts, thus make money, thus fund my own game dev projects.

Problem: I don't have enough time to animate all the inbetween frames.

Solution: Smears to the rescue!

First, we draw the bow firing:
Next, we draw the bow being raised from the empty position to the raised position.


Next, we draw the bow being lowered to threaten foes once more:

None of those pictures look good. They don't have to. They aren't going to be visible for more than a tiny fraction of a second. Their goal is to convince the viewer that the animation is way smoother than it actually is.

I think they succeeded, don't you?
One direction down, four more to go.

Today's going to be a marathon of dwarf animation.



Just to get warmed up, I (mostly) finished my cave tile set.

Here's a half-size edition, with a superimposed grid so you can see where the tiles are:


This should account for every combination of wall and floor. The final tiles are 160x160. The art I made was 1600x1600. The spec is that the art should be made three times the final size, to enable future HD editions of the game. By making the initial art ten times the final size, I ensure that even the HD art is shrunk.

As the good book says, shrinking your art covers over a multitude of sins. The downside is my geriatric computer starts to choke whenever I load the original files.

I've made tile sets before, but only pixel art, so I had to devise the process for hand-drawn art on the fly.

One of the things I try to teach in the DEVGAME class is to learn from your past mistakes. While I am a very good game designer, it has been said, rightly, that as a producer, I am mediocre.

The primary problem in this regard, I have gradually come to believe, is that I am too easy on the artists. I have a tendency to decide things are "good enough", which is usually justifiable on a piece-by-piece basis, but taken in the collective on the screen, tends to result in overall mediocrity.

I noticed this when putting together screenshots for one of the DEVGAME sessions. Simply by looking at a single screenshot, whether it was from DOOM, Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem 3D, Unreal, or Rebel Moon Rising, a complete neophyte could have correctly identified the hit versus the mediocrity.

Consider the following image from the forthcoming game Art of Sword. It is a perfectly suitable image by a very good artist who specializes in 3D work.

There is nothing wrong with this image. In fact, the only reason I decided to bring in another artist to improve the art was due to the fact that the 3D artist is not an animator and some of the animation frames were a little too jerky to ignore. It was a borderline case, and in the past I would have decided that it was good enough, but applying my DEVGAME principle of not repeating past errors, I decided to throw another artist, a skilled 2D illustrator, at the game with an eye to improving it. Here is the result:


In all the substantive details, the art is exactly the same. What you can't see here are the additional animation frames that are now significantly smoother. But the sand texture, the brighter colors, the shadow, and the additional detail on the swordsman all add up to create a much more positive impression when taken in at the same time than the changes would otherwise be expected to make. (And yes, we will be doing something about the fonts, those are just programmer placeholders anyhow.)

The point is that as a producer or an art director, you must be more demanding of your artists than you probably think you need to be. And as an artist, you must be open to reworking and improving your art, even when you think it is good enough, because fairly small changes can make a big difference when taken as a whole.

After seeing your splahs screen, I'm thinking of stealing that parallax use for Elveteka, no programming for me though, just WYSIWYG in Flash.

It's funny how we ended with the same structure: sky, mountain, foreground. I even had a sketch with flanking trees at first!

Quick note: the title is not a slam on you 'stealing' 'my' parallax.  It's a description of how I made my title.

I thought I'd go over some of the process real quick.

Spriter won't actually make the animation easier in Vargenstone's case, due to the perspective, but it may make the interaction between animation and game easier, especially now that my painting program of choice now has an experimental Spriter Exporter. Tomorrow's my day off, and I intend to spend a couple of hours tinkering with said tools to see if a) they make things more efficient and b) if the efficiency gain is sufficient to justify altering my workflow.

Meanwhile, since our Flash expert explained how he did the title for Elvetika, here's a bit on how I made the title Screen for Vargenstone: