--- /dev/null
+The Seven Tasks
+===============
+
+A mini-campaign made with Wolfire's "Lugaru."
+
+My thanks to Wolfire for making a cool game like Lugaru. I also thank the
+Wolfire fan community; although I didn't post much in the forums, I relied
+heavily on the posts of others to help me make these maps.
+
+About this read me:
+
+I have always been a fan of finding out how games, books, paintings, movies,
+etc. were made; what went into the creative process. Since I enjoy it I thought
+others might enjoy it as well and have written up a "Making of the Seven Tasks."
+If you're interested in what I was thinking or where I was going with the maps I
+designed read on.
+If not, that's okay, I hope you enjoy the mini-campaign anyway.
+
+
+The Design of the Seven Tasks
+-----------------------------
+
+The Sleuthing
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Because I wasn't making a lot of fighting levels I felt I should add something
+else to engage the player to make up for the short length. I came up with the
+idea that the main character was something akin to a hired assassin. The
+secondary goal for the player would be to figure out who hired the assassin and
+why they hired him. Clues would be provided through conversations with Sage and
+the design of each map.
+
+This was the birth of the relationship between the mendicants and the order of
+the Seneschals. But because of the struggles I had with the map editor I ended
+up giving up on much of this simply out of frustration.
+
+I also had wanted to place a shapeshifting Secret Rabbit somewhere in each of
+the dialogue levels. If the player wanted they could hunt for and find this
+rabbit in its various forms (very tiny, very large, invisible, as a wolf) and
+then listen to it tell a joke or something. This idea was scratched completely
+because I just wanted to finish the campaign and I was tired of dealing with the
+bugginess of the map editor.
+
+For those still interested in sleuthing here are the areas where you can still
+solve the mystery. They are organized from easiest to hardest to solve (in my
+opinion, anyway):
+
+ Desert Village
+ Mountain City
+ Monastery
+ Theatre (maybe)
+ Desert sandstorm (probably not but maybe. hint: it's not the obvious answer)
+
+For those interesting in solving those mysteries, don't read what I've written
+about those individual levels because of spoilers.
+
+Elegance through simplicity
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Many modern games, in an attempt to be visually realistic or to make use of
+modern graphics capabilities, have excessive and hyper detailed visuals that
+just result in a cluttered visual space and game space.
+
+One of the things I liked about Lugaru was that the simplicity of the design
+created an uncluttered environment to play in. Looking at Turner's village, the
+raider base, or Jack's camp we see very simple blocks. This, in my mind, makes
+sense since we don't actually need a functioning village or camp to let us know
+that we are in those locations. The simple blocks, while not an actual village,
+represent a village; they are symbolic of a village; they form an abstract
+village. However, looking at the Wolfire blog entries "The ruins of Lugaru" and
+"Designing Cultures" it seems the intent of these simple blocks was different
+from my interpretation, nevertheless my interpretation is what shaped my
+creative process in the Seven Tasks.
+
+The general idea I had was that if there were many buildings, such as in a
+village or city, each individual structure was not very important and thus
+didn't need a lot of detail; it was the village or city as a general whole that
+needed detail by having many structures; it only needed to be a silhouette of a
+city. If, however, the level consisted of only one structure, such as a smithy
+or a monastery, then because of its individuality that building was that much
+more important and needed that much more detail.
+
+A Living World is an Interesting One
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+I have always felt that the most interesting games to play are ones that seem to
+take place in a real world, where characters move with some purpose and do
+things that make sense to some degree.
+
+There wasn't much room for that in a mod of Lugaru but this idea did shape what
+clothes rabbits wore or where they patrolled. It also shaped the placement of
+some of the structures in some of the maps.
+
+The Kinds of Levels
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+In the beginning I was having trouble brainstorming ideas for what the maps
+should be. I came up with a general process I used early on, of placing each map
+in some sphere of rabbit/human life. This helped me brainstorm a lot of the
+early map ideas. For example, the maps would take place in the sphere of family
+life (village), professional life (smithy), religious life (monastery), social
+life (city), artistic life (theatre), etc.
+
+I also considered that the reason the mendicants ask for aid in each tasks is
+because they lost something we all fear to lose in that sphere of life (e.g.: we
+fear losing our families in family life, we fear losing our business in
+professional life, we fear losing our status in artistic life). This idea was
+scrapped early on though and didn't really affect the plot.
+
+The Design of the Maps
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Bonus Zombie Level
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+This was originally going to be one of the seven tasks wherein Yew has to save
+the graveyard's groundskeeper from the undead who is hiding in his hut in the
+center of the graveyard. They were going to be ghosts at first but I didn't know
+how to get the ghostly tutorial level rabbit so I just changed it to zombies. As
+such, they had to be slow and so to counter this I made them strong and
+powerful.
+
+I made this a bonus level because it was one of the first levels I made but I
+couldn't think of a satisfactory "who" and "why". I thought of young rabbits
+meddling with necromancy to resurrect one of their fabled heroes, but I decided
+it just wasn't good enough.
+
+I really had fun with this level and I'm happy with the way it turned out. The
+first moments of the map, when the zombies swarm onto the box, really bring up
+imagery for me of zombie movie heroes trapped on top of a truck fending off the
+monsters. Also, when you get surrounded by eight rabbit zombies and are able to
+fend off all of them, that is a tremendously powerful feeling.
+
+The Last Castle
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+Originally this was going to be the monastery but I felt that it would be more
+appropriate if this map was the headquarters of the Seneschals. I deleted some
+of the platforms and the belfry, added the apprentice huts, the Seneschal homes,
+and the sparring rink.
+
+The original idea for this map came from looking at the lookout ruins in
+Turner's village in Lugaru, and trying to imagine what the original structure
+might have looked like. The wall closest to the sparring rink is still the
+original intact wall from the Turner's village map.
+
+The player spends little time in this map but I still felt I should flesh out
+the world of the Seneschals as best I could. I wanted to make sure the player
+would see the uniform of the Seneschals in training, since this was a clue for
+solving the mystery in the Mountain City, and I wanted to make sure the player
+knew that Sage was not the only master in the Last Castle.
+
+So, we see another master giving a lecture on sparring to some apprentices. We
+see several masters with Sage, discussing what to do about the murder of an
+apprentice. During sunset we see some apprentices resting among their huts,
+while a couple spar in the rink, and one wanders in the hills. We see some
+masters and apprentices meditating inside the Castle. All of this is meant to
+help give the player a sense of what kind of life is lived here, if the player
+cares to look. This is a place of training; a place of self improvement; but it
+is not a cruel place either.
+
+The Desert Village
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+I spent so much time on those chimneys. I spent an arduous time positioning
+fires in the air and then chimneys around them so that all you could see was the
+smoke. But, then on reloads the fires or chimneys had repositioned themselves.
+The reason I had done it in the first place was because it was a clue in the
+mystery. There are five huts but only four of them have active chimneys which
+means one of the families is missing. This, combined with the clue of the two
+sacrifices in front of three spikes, was meant to lead the player to realize
+that one of the families was sacrificed but one of the parents escaped and she
+or her was the mendicant, begging for revenge. The villagers who are out hunting
+are hunting this escaped victim, a plot point which allowed me to create a
+village larger than the eight rabbit limit, by splitting the village populace
+into two maps.
+
+But if this village believes in rabbit sacrifices, how have they done this for
+any length of time without killing off their population? To answer this I
+created, nearby, the ruins of another village, implying that this village's
+sacrificial rituals originally extended to their neighbors but now they have
+begun to turn on themselves.
+
+During the day we see something of village life. A mother walks among the huts,
+as her daughter trails after her. Some children play in the orchard as their
+friend watches. A mother tends to the cabbage (or something) patch. During the
+evening we see the rest of the adults shadow the behavior of the day. One rabbit
+patrols, spending a long time in the cabbage patch looking for signs of his wife
+who was working there. A couple searches the orchard for their child. Another
+rabbit searches the hut for his wife. One rabbit pauses as he wanders in a large
+aimless circle, numb from the shock.
+
+I changed the children rabbits' power and strength and armor and protection, so
+I don't know why they can take such punishment before dying.
+
+The Smithy
+^^^^^^^^^^
+
+I spent a good amount of time creating a chimney through which the player could
+jump down and surprise the smith. It doesn't work that well in practice. Oh
+well.
+
+Here again the patrol paths are representative of the behavior of the rabbits.
+One apprentice gathers wood for the fire (although I'm not sure wood fires can
+get hot enough for a smithy), one apprentice gathers water at the well and
+brings it to the smith's water bucket, and another gathers ore in the cave (not
+really how things are done, but I liked the idea). The smith, more thoughtful
+than his apprentices, pauses at each station. He goes to the fire to heat the
+metal, then to the anvil (box) to shape it, and then to the water bucket to cool
+the metal.
+
+The idea I had for the mystery in this level was that the smith worked far from
+the city in order to be near a magical cave which gave him ore for his superior
+weapons. The mendicant was going to be a spirit that lived in the cave, angry
+over the theft of its property. There was going to be a clue in the cave near
+the smithy, where Yew would hear the spirit speak, but I couldn't get the
+hotspot to work right, even with hex edit.
+
+Theatre
+^^^^^^^
+
+What does an artist fear most? There can be many answers to this, but the answer
+I was thinking of was, "Being forgotten." Thus, the mystery in this task was
+that the aging thespian Commedus never wants to be forgotten, and so he is the
+mendicant asking for his own death. For his last performance he wants to be
+mysteriously killed on stage so everyone will talk about it for years. But it
+can't look like he let someone kill him, because that would make him seem a
+hack, so he has to fight back to make the death look like a murder. His rival
+thespians, two prima donnas and a starving artist, don't know the specifics of
+his plan but don't want to be outstaged either. I added them not only to add
+extra fighting but also to provide the clue that the answer to the mystery of
+"who is the mendicant" wasn't one of Commedus' rivals.
+
+I wondered about the behavior of rabbits in Lugaru to run for help if injured
+and then run with their help back towards you. Should I make two maps, one for
+the rivals and one for the thespian? I decided to justify the behavior this way:
+after seeing he or she is being beaten, a rival races to kill Commedus, but upon
+arriving either Commedus terrifies them and chases them back (if he's behind),
+or he dodges them and runs to you to finish what he wants you to do (if he's in
+front).
+
+Artists strive for originality and uniqueness, as a general thing. So I made
+every character unique. Commedus is a tiny bit fatter due to his age and he
+wears somber colors in anticipation of his death. One prima donna is shorter
+than the others and wears darker colors to complement her dark fur. The male
+rival is taller and slightly thinner, and he wears drab pants, since he is a
+poor, starving artist. The Green and yellow prima donna I increased the size of
+her legs and lowered the size of her torso to give her a more curvy appearance,
+to represent her obsession with physical looks. I also made the dialogue boxes
+very bright and had the rivals speak in a theatrical manner.
+
+Originally I planned on having a large indoor theatre, modeled off of the Globe
+Theatre in which Shakespeare performed, with benches and balconies. But, I
+instead decided this would be too cluttered and went with the current, simpler
+design, based off of the ancient Greek amphitheatres.
+
+The placard at the start of the map was supposed to have a hotspot advertising
+the final performance but I just couldn't get a hotspot to place.
+
+Desert Sandstorm
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+This level was the fusion of two ideas. One was an idea of having a giant
+rabbit that grants wishes. The other one was of the player having to hunt down
+some bandits in the middle of a sandstorm. So, I just put them together and
+decided that the reason Yew is chasing this group of rabbits is because they
+want to sacrifice someone to the giant, but the giant is tired of being bothered
+so he asks the Seneshcals to take care of it for him.
+
+I had a lot of fun making this level. I had to keep trying to think of
+different things that could exist along this desert path: ruined villages,
+ancient statues, crumbling oasis, a canyon. I also had to pay attention to make
+sure that if the player followed a sign at a slightly wrong angle, they would
+still find what they were looking for. So, I'd have to go back and increase the
+circumference of ruins or increase the width of the front of the canyon, so the
+player could bump into something rather than running forever through the desert,
+having not noticed the next location. Originally, I wanted it to be that the
+player would find some area and then have to search in a circle for the next
+area, but I realized this was too sadistic and resorted to using mainly road
+signs. I also decided to use dead bodies, rabbits who questioned their leader's
+decision, to let the player know they were on the right track.
+
+I also wanted to give the sense of history in the desert, as though these
+things had been around for a while. Aside from the typical cubes that form ruins
+I also added roads buried in sand, walls and pillars being knocked over by
+growing trees, and the old statue was one of my favorite touches, giving the
+idea that something truly epic had once been built in this desert.
+
+The Mountain City
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+I wanted a city level where the player could wander through, either avoiding
+guards through stealth, fighting them in alleys, or urban running past the
+opposition. I had a lot of fun making both parts of the city inside the walls
+and out. The placement of buildings also came naturally, by following the
+natural shape of the terrain. Although if you really think about it, it doesn't
+really look like a city, I think it succeeds as the silhouette of a city; a
+symbolic city.
+
+But I also wanted to give a sense of the city having just been
+sacked by an opposing army. I thought of having buildings knocked over or
+lopsided but couldn't, at first, think of a good reason for this, so I settled
+on having fires interspersed among the buildings (from the pillaging). Once I
+worked on the city inside the walls I needed some way for the player to get back
+in if they fell over the wall. I decided to use a natural bit of scenery, a
+siege tower, and once that idea was in place, the idea of a catapult which
+launched stones to knock over buildings followed instantly.
+
+I also wanted to make a distinction between the inner city and the outer city.
+You can see that outside the walls the buildings are spaced further apart, while
+inside the walls they are packed closely together. Within the walls there is
+greater distinction between the poor houses (at the bottom of the hill) and the
+wealthier ones (top of the hill, nearer the royal house). The soldiers outside
+the walls are more poorly armed and some of them are even tired and resting.
+This is because they are the dregs of General Vine's army and were used to take
+on the brunt of the defense. The more elite soldiers are inside, being the most
+trusted by the General and the Major to search for the missing Queen Dowager.
+You can see the suspicions of the General as to where the Queen Dowager may be
+hiding by noticing that the majority of the elite soldiers are searching the
+wealthy houses, while only one is searching among the poor houses.
+
+I thought a lot about what the mystery could be in this one. I wondered perhaps
+whether the Queen could be the mendicant and whether the sewer exit from which
+she escaped (outside the walls) could play some role, but I decided this was too
+easy. I finally came up with the idea that the General/Warlord would be a former
+Seneschal who ran from his duties to gain glory. You can tell from Sage's
+"mission briefing" that there is no mendicant, necessarily. Sage normally says
+things like "you WILL do this" but this time he says "I WANT you to do this".
+Also you can see that the Warlord is wearing the uniform of a Seneschal in
+training. It is no accident that he is as strong as he is either.
+
+Alternate answers to "what's the difference between a general and a warlord": a
+scary hat; three flagons of ale; a superego.
+
+Forest of Anshan
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+Tree houses are cool. Tree house villages are even cooler.
+
+I am also a big fan of the Epic of Gilgamesh (wikipedia it if you don't know
+what it is) so when I decided I wanted to do a forest level I began to think of
+the Forest of Anshan where Gilgamesh and Enkidu have to face the monstrous
+Humbaba. At first Humbaba was going to be a clan of wolves but then I came up
+with a different idea. What if the wolves were hunting the monster Humbaba, and
+IT was the mendicant asking for help because it was cunning enough not to face
+the wolves by itself (because of this the wolves generally patrol the entrances
+to the tree houses hoping to see Humbaba emerge). Thus the reason for Sage's
+cryptic comment "What is scarier, a monster or a monster... the monster that
+survives." I was going to have a dialogue map, after victory, in which we see
+Yew being watched from the trees by a lizard, but I couldn't get the lizard
+texture to appear on every load, so I scrapped the idea.
+
+As for the tree houses, aside from my above reasons, it just seemed right to
+put them in. I made the trees very big to give a sense of grandeur to the
+forest, and once I saw what it looked like, I immediately thought I should
+attach platforms and boxes to the trunks. It was meant as a network of platforms
+and tunnels by which the player could follow the wolves and then leap down. In
+practice this doesn't work that well, at least for me, but I'm still fond of it.
+I thought of having a battle on one of the tree platforms, but I felt this would
+be a fiasco; the player and/or opponent would most likely end up falling down to
+the ground anyway.
+
+The wolves patrol paths often intersect or even go alongside each other. I did
+this to encourage the use of the tree houses as means of escape and espionage,
+as opposed to purely ground based tactics.
+
+The totem at the start was supposed to have a hotspot that warned of the
+monster Humbaba, but the hotspot wouldn't work.
+
+This was one of the levels that for some reason the enemies became super
+strong. All the wolves are as strong as the Alpha wolf from Lugaru, so I gave
+the wolves weapons. Although, if I had been really nice I would have just given
+the player a weapon.
+
+Monastery
+^^^^^^^^^
+
+The plot is that this Monastery is a rival order to that of the Seneschals and
+your mission is revenge for the murder of one of your own.
+
+When it came to designing the map I wanted to try something different. Rather
+than designing the monastery based on aesthetic appeal (like the forest), or
+based on plot (like the desert village), or to create a sense of bygone history
+(the sandstorm), I wanted to try symbolism.
+
+I decided that there would be rising levels, and as the player climbed higher
+he would encounter stronger and stronger opponents, representing their
+increasing rank.
+
+The ground, because it is snow, is white and therefore white represents the
+earthly. The sky is black and therefore represents the heavenly. So the main
+character is traveling from the earthly to the heavenly; it is symbolic of his
+rising skill and wisdom throughout his training. The sky light is tinted
+slightly red to represent the blood the character has spilt in order to rise
+from the earthly to the heavenly.
+
+The enemies also show this symbolic shift in enlightenment. The enemies at the
+lowest level wear white as the enemies that are located higher and higher wear
+increasingly dark clothes, symbolic of how close they have come to the heavenly.
+Along with this, enemies at the lowest ranks wear heavy armor and unbreakable
+weapons. As enemies get higher they rely on impermanent weapons and less and
+less armor and clothes. This was to be symbolic of their leaving the earthly;
+their decreasing reliance on earthly objects as they rely more on their inner
+strength which grows due to their increasing enlightenment. This symbolism also
+is meant to explain why Yew never carries a weapon from mission to mission and
+only uses what he finds.
+
+In the end this didn't work out that well because this was another level where
+the enemies were all equally super-strong. I was also having terrible problems
+with entire platforms and boxes shifting positions on loads. So, I gave up on
+the full scale symbolism of this map, but much of the initial intention can
+still be seen.
+
+I was also going to have a second map where the player fought the High Templar
+in a duplicate of the room Neo and Morpheus fought in the movie "the Matrix". By
+this time though I was exhausted from wrestling with the map editor and scrapped
+the idea.
+
+Some ideas that didn't make it
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+In between levels: I had thought of doing some levels where the player actually
+travels the distance from the Last Castle to his next mission, encountering
+story elements on the way. One idea was of bumping into the Queen Dowager and
+her guard, as she flees the city, who briefly reveal some of the plot. Another
+was that the woman who escaped the desert village was captured by bandits and
+you run into them and save her. Ultimately though I felt this was really
+unnecessary and simply increased the number of levels without necessarily
+increasing the amount of fighting. One good thing was that the desert sandstorm
+idea came out of brainstorming for these inbetween levels.
+
+The Vault of Voices: The Seneschals obviously get requests from mendicants
+across vast distances. My answer to how this was possible was the Vault of
+Voices. It was meant to be a series of rocks floating in a black expanse. As the
+player traveled forward he saw in the distance people on platforms, floating.
+These were to be the mendicants. One platform would have a lizard among some
+trees, another a woman, another would be empty (since the old thespian was
+dead), and so on. The final platform would be a new mendicant and there was to
+be a conversation between her and Yew, where he takes on a task personally,
+rather than through Sage, to show that Yew is no longer an apprentice. This idea
+didn't seem crucial however and so it didn't seem like it was worth the time.
+
+A miniature level: The first time I changed my size to 0.1 and ran around I
+burst into laughter. I thought of having a map where the world gets "shrunk."
+There would be one map where everything is normal sized, and then through magic
+or something Yew would get shrunken, and there would be a second map duplicated
+in a smaller size. Although cool, it isn't easy to fight when that small, and
+the objects don't shrink as much as the player can. The idea was then scrapped.
+
+Valley of the giants: The idea for a giant originally came when I thought of a
+stealth level where the player has to sneak through a valley of sleeping giants.
+If a giant wakes up he would kill Yew instantly with his immense power. I
+dropped this idea though because although it sounds cool, it seemed that in
+execution it would probably be really boring.
projects / lugaru.git / commitdiff