Mimesis Online from Polish Developer Tannhauser Gate, is a role-playing game that transports you to a far future world where the unexpected and mysterious waits around every corner. An unimaginable catastrophe on a cosmic scale transformed this world, playing havoc with the natural order of things, twisting everything, even time itself, wiping out civilisation as we know it. Universes died, billions upon billions of species vanished, and a new, fragile and barely stable world was born. The beings who survived the catastrophe have tried to rebuild their world, each in their own way, and now live side-by-side but not truely in peace with each other, not truely accepting each other. Nations have emerged, almost completely isolated from each other by nigh-on impenetrable barriers. This is the twisted world of Mimesis Online.

On a regular basis we will feature a developer's diary made by the Mimesis Online development team. In this diary, Derek Handley writes about writing and how a wiped file turned into something even better.

Part 12. ""I gotta tell ya.."

I wonder sometimes where the time between 9am and 7pm goes. The day ends, there's new files and folders, new maps or ideas on the wall, a few more beta testers queries answered (I hope to the satisfaction of said testers), and everything has gone as smoothly as can be expected. Of course, life looks a little different if you're a programmer, or one of the heads of the studio - their days tend to be a lot longer, for a start, and they can't exactly take work home with them. And the Beta Tests are far more work intensive for them than for me or any of the other concept-n-ideas people. During Beta, programmers have lists of 'DO THIS YESTERDAY!!!'-type tasks in front of them, and one burning wish - that the number of hours in the real day could be increased just by resetting some parameters, just like in the game world. Still, it's been good for some of them in terms of their health and longevity - there's no smoking allowed in either part of the studio, and they really don't want to waste time going for a smoke.

You know what? The biggest Beta Test job I've had to do was connected with doing the descriptions of the equipment and opponents a second time - not because there was a bug, but because someone (who shall remain nameless but not blameless) wiped the file where I had the original descriptions, which I had 'painstakingly' done three months previously…
Backup? Well, I had backup of everything else I had done. Somehow managed to miss that one file. Is that Murphy's Law at work or what? I backup everything I do. Just missed that one [darn] file.

Item descriptions...
Not that I'm complaining. It gave me a chance to rethink a few items, create some new ways of getting players 'involved' in the history of this world through 'throwaway' comments in items descriptions. I'm very curious to see how that works. The item descriptions work like this - the first part gets shown to every player, regardless of the skills and knowledge's the character has. For example, take the Rosomak Combat Glove'. Everyone can get the information that: 'This right-hand combat glove's knuckle spikes are extremely sharp, and catch the light as you turn it. It is a tight fit, despite being bioprogram-adjustable.' But you have to have some skill with or knowledge about combat gear to know that: 'It is slightly too heavy; you'll have to compensate for its weight when you swing a punch, so as not to overbalance.' If your character has done a bit of traveling, or knows some history or something about culture, then you might learn that: 'Originally a Callion police riot glove, the Rosomak was banned in the late fifty-third century in most lands - the injuries it inflicts are cruel and disfiguring.' And if your character has decided to specialize in metalwork or weaponeering, you could discover that: 'The bulk of the structure is plastisteel, while the lining is a poorly-insulating cloth material. It's seen better days - the whole thing has been repaired several times.'

The more your character develops, the more information you get about items - the same goes for information about flora and fauna, the other intelligent species, or any of the other things you can click on and examine. Thus, not only does it make sense for you to invest some experience in knowledge's - to get more out of the game and its (if I say so myself) rich background, but there are also lines of potential communication opened up between player characters, as information becomes a commodity. Who wouldn't like to be able to find out sooner, rather than later, that the weapon they are so proudly wielding was in fact stolen from a Voidseer dignitary who would like it back NOW, thank you very much…

...The good doctor...
Anyway, the first time round, I hadn't thought to include background colour in the in-game messages, and although Marcin Baryski had mentioned doing that, it never occurred to me to do more than write: 'This Rapier was made in Numosia.' Later, there wasn't time to go back and change things, until that fateful (and for the person who caused it, very nearly fatal :) file delete.
A moment of serendipity?
Serendipity. Now there's a word that oddly brings to mind memories of Welsh giant maggots and the lovely Ms. Katy Manning.
(For those of you who are now sitting at your screen thinking: 'What did he just write??', I'm referring to an old 70's 'Doctor Who' story. Wear your nostalgia with your heart, on your sleeve.)

Marcin Baryski is much better at noticing the need for atmospheric comments, one-liners and things like that than I am - he's an avid computer role-player. I should click that kind of thing myself - it's part and parcel of Dungeon Mastering to make your players 'feel' the world their characters are in - but I tend to reserve such flights of fancy and history lessons for the instructions and the description of the world, rather than seeing a place for it in-game. That's what teamwork is for - wow, what a discovery - does anyone else think I'm developing a huge talent for stating the obvious?

...and dialogues
Thank God for assistants and people who play a lot of computer games. There's a thing that I find very challenging, while Marcin, Artur and most of my and Marcin's teams could do it with their eyes closed and half of their imagination tied behind their backs, and that's writing the dialogue for the game. I consider myself to be good at dialogue. I write a lot, and dialogue comes quite naturally to me. But not here. See, I find it weird that to write some dialogue I have to think about a situation that hasn't happened yet, out of context, and guess all the possible ways that dialogue could go. Actually, I get a headache just thinking about that. So that's the area where I just proofread other people's work - credit where credit is due. I don't think you'll see a single line of script in the game within the first three months that was written by me. The dialogue for 'Mimesis - the Series' is a different matter. That I can handle.

Dialogue in computer games means the ability to foresee the future. If you really want it to work, you need to be able to predict human nature. Do you remember a game called 'Valhalla' for the 48K Spectrum and the Commodore 64? Little stick insect people, twelve or so screens, Norse gods, and God alone knows what the 'mission' was. Anyway, you could talk to characters in that game. If you cursed, this little dwarf named Mary (gee, I wonder which British guardian of our morals she was named after?) would walk up and stab you. That's an example of the kind of mind you have to have to make dialogue in computer role-playing games work. Predict that someone will ask this question or say that thing…

It wasn't perfect in 'Valhalla'. It would often say: 'I don't understand.' Nevertheless, it stuck in my mind then as something that must be tricky to get right. I think the protocols for dialogue are the things we've been alpha testing the longest out of all the aspects of the game.

Okay, I'm signing off. I took this piece of work home with me, and it's late. Take care all, and may your god go with you.
Derek Handley