ince this newsletter has been delayed somewhat, I decided to go ahead and put both remaining parts of the PC article in this installment.   The past couple of months have been pretty hectic here at Elysian as we work hard towards getting the alpha version of the game running.   In addition to finishing up the Player Character series, Bhel Khazul has decided to wrap up his experience at GDC and relate to you in a Developer Diary how the sessions he attended influence the development and deployment of Ages of Athiria.

he message boards are in full swing internally.   We have been using them for a few weeks at this time and are working through the few remaining usability issues.   A release date has not been set because it coincides with a new my.agesofathiria.com portal release.   We expect to be ready with this at some point in the close future.

- Kressilac

aving just returned from the 2003 Game Developer’s Conference (GDC: www.gdconf.com), I’d like to step back from the details of Ages of Athiria to relate how your in- and out-of-game experience will be affected based on our attendance at this conference.   First, let me state that I have been both surprised and impressed by the almost overpowering sense of passion I see within this industry.   From our beginnings in the stereotypical “garage shops”, the gaming industry really hasn’t yet received the professional and artistic recognition it deserves.   While this is beginning to change, it’s still not where it should be.   Regardless, I am very excited about the future of the gaming industry, for precisely the reason I mentioned above – passion.   While I said I was surprised at the degree of passion I see in the industry, I’m really not too surprised.   I can say this because I know that I am passionate about it, not only as a gamer but also as a designer, producer, and developer.   Any additional surprise on my part is seeing that same emotional outpouring in the faces and actions of my fellow gamers and industry professionals.   It’s impressive to see the goodwill shown toward other gaming industry professionals, even if they are competitors.   Any big entertainment hit, even if from a competitor, helps the rest of us, because the size of our consumer market is continually expanding.   And, to make an extremely long and boring business discussion become short, the larger the market, the more likely it is that investors/publishers will fund additional projects in hopes of sharing in that ever-growing stream of revenue.

he rest of Matt Koch's (Bhel Khazul) Developer Diary March '03 can be found on myAoA.

he second part of this series covers the skill system and its design.   When we first set out to build Athiria, we knew that one of the crucial elements of the game would be how the skill system worked.   A consistent, logical and relatively simple design was required in order to keep the complexities of things designed on top of the skill system from getting out of hand.   Our first design decision was to make sure that every skill test and resistance test was based upon the same process.   This gave rise to our resisted skill testing system.   A resisted skill testing system is one in which your character rolls a skill and counts successes against some target number to determine a degree of success.   Whatever your character is trying to do determines how that success is resisted and a similar skill roll is made to offset your character's degree of success.   The resisting skill roll can come from another character, the environment, or even the ethereal plane.   The only other rule is that situational/conditional modifiers can alter the target numbers used in generating the degree of success or the success of the resistance roll.

or example, Dak is a shady thief and happens to like the item in the window of one of Kressilac's shops.   Late one night he sneaks under the cover of darkness to the backdoor of the shop.   This results in a sneak skill test to determine how well he is sneaking.   Removing his lockpicks from his pocket he begins to try and pick the lock on the back door.   This is a lockpicking skill test that is resisted by the craftsmanship of the lock.   He fails the test the first time, noting that the lock is of exceptional quality.   About that time, he hears a noise coming from around the corner causing him to hide in the shadows near the door.   That action uses the hide skill and the wandering guard uses his perception skill to see if he can overcome the degree of success in Dak's hiding attempt.   When the guard passes by without noticing Dak, he realizes that he was successful, or perhaps the guard was blind.   As soon as the guard is gone, Dak begins to work at the lock again.   This time he is successful and the door creaks open.   The nearby guard gets a listening test with a bonus due to the relative silence at nighttime to see if he hears anything.   (Note this does not mean he will react, that's for the AI to determine or for the player if the guard was a player.)  Slipping inside, Dak quickly retrieves the item, exits the building, closes the door (another listening check for the nearby guard) and disappears into the night.

he above example is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what can be modeled using a resisted skill check system.   Had Dak been injured or tired, each of those actions would have been done using target modifiers that increased the difficulty of the task.   If the guard was carrying a light and aimed it at the hiding Dak, the perception skill test would have been significantly easier due to the modifiers of light shining down the alleyway.   If it were windy out then the listening tests would have been more difficult.

ur second design goal that we needed to achieve with our skill system concerns its relative scale.   We needed to provide a difference between veteran player characters and new player characters.   At the same time, we needed to provide a way that new player characters could interact with veteran player characters in a meaningful manner.   We did not want to stop the world because you were X skill level and I was Y and the game says they're not compatible.   This is where the resisted skill test begins to show some of its elegance.   As a player character increases in skill, they are capable of completing more complex tasks simply by the fact that they have a greater number of potential successes.   Each point in skill represents one chance to roll a success against some target number.   The more skill points one has, the more likely they are going to roll more successes though there is no guarantee on the degree of success against any given target number.   Someone that is low skilled could take advantage of environmental modifiers and situational modifiers to tip the test in their favor.   Using our example above, if Dak has the cover of darkness and takes the time to see to it that the street lamps are not lit that night, his relatively low sneaking skill has a good chance of fooling even the most alert guard.