Today we have a guest blog from a highly creative Pirate101 community member. Virtuous Anne Radcliffe is an avid fan fiction writer and took some time today to discuss her thoughts about creativity through gaming.
I had never written fan-fiction before discovering Pirate101. As a scientist and teacher I had written scholarly works, but in Pirate101, I found the desire to immerse myself further in the thrilling storyline by creating elements of the story for myself. In so doing, I joined a large company of people, children and adults, who do likewise.
The setting first inspires. The game starts engagingly in a fantasy Age-of-Pirates setting, complete with tall ships, antique buildings, period-style puppet shows, and wonderfully historically-inspired clothes. Each world has its own colors of sky and land, its own peoples and intriguing histories, and its own stirring music to accompany your adventures. I am tickled by Professor Challenger’s quest in which you possibly discover a new animal phylum; delighted by Galen’s elixir to combat melancholy, deftly incorporating the ancient idea of the four humors of the body; thrilled to fight alongside Admiral Nelson – just to name a few examples.
This setting provides a splendid playground for the mind. Is your pirate disciplined and polite because she grew up in Mooshu rather than the wild streets of Skull Island? Does your character wear frockcoat and breeches fashionable in Marleybone and Skull Island, or does she like the jackets and trousers of Cool Ranch? How is your dinner different in Monquista than Aquila? Character development blossoms easily from these inherent prompts.
The story of Pirate101 is most captivating. It starts with high drama, rescued from a most sinister -yet fascinating- foe, mingled with playfulness in the form of your rescuers. Your adventures immerse you into echoes of history and many great stories. The Pirate101 story is richly textured and coherent, yet much is left open to imagination. Thus the story invites personal invention, whether art, poetry, or prose.
My invention came as I considered Anne Radcliffe, a ‘virtuous’ pirate, part d’Artagnan but more Elizabeth Bennet — with a sword! Who ever heard of a virtuous pirate? In Pirate101, you can be. There is ample opportunity within the storyline to imagine your pirate in many ways. You can be a scoundrel who does good deeds almost by accident; an innocent victim of circumstance; a Robin Hood of the skies, accepting your outlaw status to benefit the poor and oppressed. You can be a scruffy street urchin or a well-bred young lady (or gentleman).
Ultimately, however, it was the themes of Pirate101 that really brought me to write. Themes of justice and mercy, love and sacrifice, parents and children, loss and endurance, justice versus revenge, courage and hope, loyalty and honor, the conflict between what seems right and what is right – these all come from the plots of Blind Mew and his team. With such themes inspiring reflection, stories just popped into my mind, both playful and serious.
I wrote my stories, and that would have been the end of it, had my youngest daughter not pestered me to submit them as fan-fiction. I admit, I don’t have my Anne’s boldness — it took me months to get the nerve to do so. I’m glad I did, for this new creative venture has been so very exciting for me.
Still, writing fan-fiction has definitely been a learning process. I won’t pretend that my works were always accepted at first, and I don’t expect that they always will be. I have much to learn about the craft of writing. But it also has been great fun. One-Eyed Jack has been kind. Joining the outpouring of fan fiction has been a privilege and a testament to the inspiration of Pirate101.
Dr. Deborah Rochefort aka “Virtuous Anne Radcliffe”
If you’re interested in reading Virtuous Anne Radcliffe’s stories and the fan fiction works of other writers, check out our Pirate Fan Fiction pages at Pirate101!
We often feature highly creative people here on the KingsIsle Blog, and often get asked “where do you get your inspiration?” To get to the bottom of this open question, we asked some creative KingsIsle employees where they personally found inspiration for their projects at work. Here’s what they had to say!
I am pretty active in sports and living adventurously in the world. Ever since I was a kid playing baseball, I would see physics in motion in visual ways. The arc a baseball would travel, etc. That grew as I got older to snowboarding, wakeboarding, motorcross and many others. The way you fall when one crashes, dirt, water, fire and ice/snow. I suppose I have a thing for elements and the way it moves. The majority of my inspirations also come from helping the helpless. I know that sounds far off from a cinematics and FX artist, but my passion for other peoples stories and lives and helping give back to communities actually inspires me back. Well…that and old Disney films.
Russell Hughes – Principal Artist Cinematics/FX
As the lead writer on Wizard101, I get my inspiration from anywhere and everywhere I can. My foundation is based on all the books (fiction, history, mythology & folktales), comics, movies, cartoons, TV shows, music, and games (tabletop and video) I consumed as a kid, teenager, and college student. I’m also inspired by my two young children (ages 5 and 2) as I play with them and try to tell them stories. I will do specific research for whatever project I’m focused on (African myths for Zafaria; Aztec & Mayan legends and dinosaur stories for Azteca; etc.), but there are a few touchstones that I seem to regularly return to: the television series Babylon5 by J. Michael Straczynski; the Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny; Dune by Frank Herbert; The Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin; Sandman by Neil Gaiman; three Star Wars movies; two Aliens movies; and one Matrix movie.
Jesse Scoble (King Artorius) – Wizard101 Creative Design Lead
I was raised on cartoons: mostly 90’s nickelodeon shows such as Ren and Stimpy and Rocko’s Modern Life. “Golden Age” animators such as Bob Clampett and Tex Avery. Game developers with offbeat senses of humor such as Doug Tennapel and Tim Schafer help inspire me.
Robert Lovelett – Lead Artist and Animator on Pirate101 Puppet Shows
The easy answer is that I draw creative inspiration from all kinds of sources, the same as most everyone else. But that’s not really the whole picture. The best thing an influence can do is point me towards other sources of inspiration. When I encounter something that provokes my interest, I seek more about it, and even look at related subjects. This way, I am continually encountering the new and the unexpected, things I never expected to learn about. For example, while reading a magazine article about the spread of curry throughout the world, I found myself trying to learn more about history, geography, culture, and agriculture of the places mentioned. I even looked up articles about key people, and the restaurants, as well as some of the recipes mentioned. Together, all of those subjects help flesh out my understanding of our own world, which ultimately is the best source of inspiration there is.
Jason Durall – Creative Design Lead
One of the great things about working in the marketing department for a gaming studio is coming up with new ways to promote really awesome items that our creative teams have brought to life! Not a lot of people can say that they brainstorm sales centered on panther mounts, piggles, and swashbuckling companions in Pirate crews. While one may think it is all fun and games around here, there is actually a lot of time and effort spent to come up with marketing promotions for our players.
We take a few things into consideration when creating promotions including player feedback, sales data, and past performance.
Player feedback is one of the most important things we take into account when coming up with promotional ideas and reviewing past promotions. We read up on our forums, fan sites, and other locations to get a sense of what our players want, like, and dislike in game. Once we collect that feedback we brainstorm what types of promotions our players would enjoy most. This goes hand in hand with reviewing past performance of a promotion like one of our Paloozas. We see what players liked about it, what they didn’t like about it, and what they wished would have happened. We then take that feedback into account for future promotions.
Another important aspect that we consider is current sales for particular items. For example with Pet-a-Palooza in Wizard101, we look at what pets are most popular and least popular in sales volume and try to figure out why. Is it the price? Is it the look of the pet or its pedigree? Does this pet have a spell card or not? From there we assign different discounts based on our analysis which hopefully will get our players excited and want to collect more pets. We also like to include other items that help out pets and not just pets themselves!
Once we have decided on the promotion and discounts, we need to come up with a promotion name. Naming promotions are fun and can be silly at times, but we definitely try to make sure they are not cheesy! For example the Bag O’ Gold Sale in Pirate101 is a play on Pot O’ Gold during the St. Patrick’s holiday and is more fun than calling it a Gold Sale.
Along with a promotion name, we also need a page created to help promote the sale and give our players more information about what’s cool and new that is going on. We make sure that the screenshots or renders help support the sale and show off some of the great items that you can get. On the day of the sale, we make sure that the promotion is correct in the Crown Shop and everything is good to go!
After the promotion has ended, we look at player feedback to see what they liked, didn’t like, or if they were interested in it at all. Then we look at the sales performance to see if it’s worth running the promotion again or if we should come up with something new.
Hopefully this shed some light behind the scenes on how we come up with promotions here at KingsIsle! Keep posting and letting us know what you think of promotions we run and what else you would like to see going forward! We’ve always got our eye out looking for feedback.
Natalie Akilian
Associate Product Marketing Manager
Last week we introduced you to a few early versions of Pirate101 combat as KingsIsle Lead Software Engineer Josh Tigner explained the steps taken to create the Pirate101 combat system you love today. Today we conclude this look into the journey combat took to become our current version!
Frame the Action
We needed to figure out how to frame combat to the player in a way that was exciting and engaging. Giving them complete control to swing around the board only caused issues, and we had no way to predict which angle players would be viewing the action. It would be too unpredictable to build areas or create animations without a clear guide about how they would need to be framed. This became the primary goal for the next iteration of Pirate101 combat. The camera became entirely automatic, ensuring that all players would have the same experience, similar to Wizard101. However, we had to account for issues that weren’t required in our previous title. Combatants were not in static locations, they were allowed to move around and face any direction. Projectile timings were not consistent because attack duration would vary depending on the distance from attacker to target.
Once the camera position was locked, it became obvious that selecting units was going to become a problem. Some units would be off screen, while small ones were unable to be seen behind large ones. We knew that the only direction we could go was up, so we continued to rotate the camera overhead, hoping to find a “sweet spot” that solved all of our view problems. We finally found it when we were pointed straight down!
The Good: This was great! The attack sequence was enjoyable to watch and you were able to truly appreciate the care that went into creating the animations and particle effects for each action. We had strict adherence to “The Line,” an invisible axis that prevents viewers from becoming disoriented when the perspective changes too drastically.
The Bad: The combat framing was ideal for watching the action. However, looking directly down at the world caused disorientation and didn’t feel right. You couldn’t easily discern between units that had similar visuals, and there was no easy way to see detailed information about the combat.
Planning goes 2D
We needed a way to present a unified view of the combat, and all the important information that gives players a sense of strategy. The answer was to create the first version of the Combat UI that is in use today. This would allow us to present the most amount of information with a cohesive feel.
The Good: Selecting companions was no longer a problem. Strategy was much easier to set up and perform. It was very easy to have a high level overview of the entire combat. You were able to feel engaged in the action and enjoy watching your army storm onto enemy ships like real Pirates.
The Bad: It needed a lot of polish, but most of our problems had been solved. For the first time, the list of “Good” outnumbered “Bad”!
A Final Note
Once we had completed the Look & Feel of the experience, that’s when the real fun began! We began adding layers onto the system. We added ‘Area Of Effect’ spell types like Radial, Line, and Wall. Next, we added Reflex Talents (First Strike, Riposte, Double Tap) and Auras (Hold The Line, Cheap Shot, Repel Boarders). The addition of “Bullet Time” gave the critical hits a great flair. We are constantly working to generate new ideas for the next power, talent, or strategy. We have some great updates that we have been working on for a few months and we can’t want to show them to you. The community has been instrumental in providing us with information about what you want to do and the types of skills you like to see. So, now it’s your turn. What is your favorite part of combat?
Josh Tigner
Lead Software Engineer
One of the systems that reviewers feel stands out the most in Pirate101 is the combat. Combat in Pirate101 has been described as “deceptively simple” and “really fun”, but it took years of iteration and changes to finally arrive at the experience that players have today.
All of our games start out with a prototype, which is a bare bones concept of what will be the primary game play mechanic. In Pirate101, just like Wizard101, our prototype was the combat system. A majority of players will spend their time engaged in combat, so we need to get it right. We knew that Wizard101 did this with its turn-based mechanic. It allows the game to be played at a slower pace, but still incorporates strategy that can be quickly understood. That first acknowledgment led us to thinking of ways we could manipulate the concept of Wizard101 and make it our own.
The Prototype
The first incarnation of combat in Pirate101 was heavily inspired by various turn based strategy games. After a few short weeks of brainstorming, we began a furious attempt at completing a prototype. There were 5 actions available to choose from: Attack, Move, Wait, Defend, and Power. ‘Attack’ & ‘Move’ is still very much the same as it was during this phase. ‘Wait’ would defer the unit’s turn without skipping them. The ‘Defend’ option would allow you to increase your companion’s armor rating during the opponent’s turn. This would minimize the amount of damage they would take with the trade-off being that they were unable to perform any other action for that turn. The ‘Power’ action would summon a giant meteor onto the enemies dealing massive damage, but you could only cast it once per combat.
The Good: We knew we had the start of something great. Sure, it was rough around the edges but we had fun playing it. Casting Meteor was fun. We only had that one spell, but it was exciting to watch!
The Bad: Not many things are perfect on the first attempt, and the Pirate101 prototype was no exception. There were lots of issues to work out. Because each unit is given an initiative value to determine when they are allowed to perform their action, it was not uncommon for the turn order to switch back and forth between teams often. This resulted in turns taking much longer than we liked. A heavily alternating turn order would result in the player having to re-evaluate the board and begin the decision making process all over. The “Defend” mechanic just wasn’t fun, either. Why would I choose not to do any damage? This just resulted in longer, more drawn out combats.
Take Two
After several long meetings, and even longer emails, we had settled on revisions that should alleviate several of the problems we discovered in the Prototype. Teams would perform their actions all at once. This allowed the player to work out a complex strategy for their units without interruption. We also added player controlled camera rotation, improved the planning visualization, and added an official “Defend” stage.
The Good: Making all moves at once significantly sped up the experience. It also gave the player a better feeling of being “in charge” by dishing out a handful of orders at once. We began to discuss strategies around the office. How much should positioning matter? Should we gang up on the enemy or divide and conquer?
The Bad: It was difficult to see what was actually happening. It was not enjoyable to act as a crane operator so that you could watch the action. Selecting units in the 3D world wasn’t easy either. Small units would hide behind large ones. Enemy units would be completely surrounded and difficult to find. The “Defend” stage still didn’t work. Its days were numbered.
Stay tuned next week to see more iterations of the Pirate101 combat system and how it came to today’s gameplay!
Josh Tigner
Lead Software Engineer
KingsIsle Blog 