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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsDreaming Sarah
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andreyin
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« on: August 20, 2013, 11:11:53 AM »



Dreaming Sarah is a 2d adventure platformer. It's based after Yume Nikki, so you go around collecting abilities that change the gameplay. Unlike Yume Nikki though, Dreaming Sarah is more of an adventure; you also go around talking to people and using objects.

It has been in development for 4 months, but I worked on a prototype before that, which I used to try crowd-funding it. A publisher (Atrativa Game House) saw the game on the crowd-funding page and decided to publish it, so the release date is set to Jan 1 2014 for PC.

It's also being made using Construct 2, which I love.

Screenshots -





Teaser -





Music -
The music was made by a good friend, Anthony Septim. You can listen to the whole soundtrack in this youtube playlist:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkhJNM0L_GJiWrJ5z7vlJDc9kquDKDA5P

I intend to post updates here at least twice a week. Also should've made a devlog here months ago, no idea what took me so long.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2013, 01:27:37 AM by andreyin » Logged

AD1337
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« Reply #1 on: August 20, 2013, 11:16:13 AM »

Awesome, you're beefing up the game very well. Good job persisting. Huahue!
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andreyin
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« Reply #2 on: August 20, 2013, 11:18:04 AM »

Awesome, you're beefing up the game very well. Good job persisting. Huahue!

BR never quit HUEHUE
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andreyin
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« Reply #3 on: August 20, 2013, 11:32:57 AM »

Might as well start devlogging I guess

Yesterday I made a little launcher tool in C2 to set custom controls and resolution options.



It exports to a .json file so I can use it in the game. Unfortunately I use Node-Webkit to wrap the game to a Win32 executable, so no matter what I have in the game, the wrapper itself is 48mb. I decided to scrap the stand-alone launcher and implement it in the game itself, which worked out nicely.

Also here's the code for it if anyone ever wants to do something like that in C2

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2383513/linkedOUT/dslauncher.capx

Today I'm ready to fix a bunch of stuff and add a bunch of stuff
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Dawmino
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« Reply #4 on: August 20, 2013, 12:38:39 PM »

Errybody on TIG now. Honestly, that other place is getting on my nerves.

Lookin' good.
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andreyin
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« Reply #5 on: August 20, 2013, 12:44:22 PM »

Errybody on TIG now. Honestly, that other place is getting on my nerves.

Lookin' good.

I still like it, but I'm less inclined to post updates there, honestly. Most of the times it just gets lost amidst a bunch of unrelated discussions..

I thought it was time to get a little more serious so I came here. Still gonna post there from time to time though.
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andreyin
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« Reply #6 on: August 22, 2013, 05:17:04 PM »

Update time! I like to write a lot, hope that's not a problem.

So, as I've mentioned before, my game is a 2D platformer but is also an adventure game. What I mean is that you go around, talk to people, collect items and use them.

The main character (Sarah) also collects items that give her abilities, like an umbrella that maker her glide and a magnifying glass that makes her small.

Currently in the game you can equip said items by pressing and holding the equip button (space by default):



You can select an item then release the equip key to equip it. It's pretty simple and quick to change items, and you can even combine them.

As to "key" items that you can use in the world, you can press start and they'll be in this menu:



After selecting "Items" in the menu, you can pick an item and have a short description about it:



So, so far so good. However I'm facing a problem right now; in adventure games usually you have a bunch of items and have to figure out which item to use where. Currently in my game, if you have said item and talk to someone who needs/wants it, you don't have to pick it, the event already happens. For instance, if you talk to a boy who lost his hat when you already have the hat, as soon as you talk to him he'll see that you have the hat and take it back.

At first I thought this would be a good way to simplify the game, I mean, if you have an obvious item that you know where to use, you shouldn't go to the trouble to select it right?

Well, now I'm not so sure anymore. It works well if you talk to someone, notice that they need something, find that object and bring it back, but if have never talked to said person it feels too automatic.

Now I have a bunch of choices; I could make another equip menu to use key items, make an option to use an item from the pause menu, or maybe even not allowing the player to use key items before he investigates the person/place who needs/wants them. But for some reason none of these seem good enough.

Also today I've worked on an old area, the first area I've made for the game. I used it to prototype the game.

Here's a video of what it looked like-




And here's what it looks like now-


And that's all for today.
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« Reply #7 on: August 22, 2013, 07:39:11 PM »

Do ability enhancing items need to be equipped also? I hope that doesn't mean that in some areas we will have to take a step, stop, equip an item, use it to pass a particular hazard, take another step, stop, equip another item, use it to pass another hazard, and so on. Otherwise it might be better for core abilities like glide to become permanently added to the character, similar to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night which allowed all necessary for traversal moves to be activated at any time with certain buttons or combinations (down, up + jump gave the super jump, double jump was also possible as expected, changing form to mist and bat was done with a button press, the ability to breathe underwater was passive, etc, they all required items or boss kills to be added and you could manually disable them in a settings screen but had absolutely no reason to so that's not even necessary, while on top of that you could equip all sorts of weapons and armor that gave stat boosts and different attack moves but otherwise weren't 100% necessary to pass certain challenges in theory).

Anyway, the game's looking lovely and I love this sort of thing.
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andreyin
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« Reply #8 on: August 22, 2013, 08:08:28 PM »

Do ability enhancing items need to be equipped also? I hope that doesn't mean that in some areas we will have to take a step, stop, equip an item, use it to pass a particular hazard, take another step, stop, equip another item, use it to pass another hazard, and so on. Otherwise it might be better for core abilities like glide to become permanently added to the character, similar to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night which allowed all necessary for traversal moves to be activated at any time with certain buttons or combinations (down, up + jump gave the super jump, double jump was also possible as expected, changing form to mist and bat was done with a button press, the ability to breathe underwater was passive, etc, they all required items or boss kills to be added and you could manually disable them in a settings screen but had absolutely no reason to so that's not even necessary, while on top of that you could equip all sorts of weapons and armor that gave stat boosts and different attack moves but otherwise weren't 100% necessary to pass certain challenges in theory).

Anyway, the game's looking lovely and I love this sort of thing.

I see what you mean! Yeah, the idea is having to stop and pick an abilty but it's much much faster than what you're thinking since the equip menu is just left/right and releasing the button equips it. Like this:



But you do have a point. Also this is mainly an puzzle/adventure game and there aren't any real enemies or bosses. You can die, but you only go back to the last save/checkpoint.
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« Reply #9 on: August 23, 2013, 04:09:29 AM »

Looks great, is this your first foray into game dev? Or have you got industry experience. I want to hear more about your path to getting a publisher, and what it's like
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andreyin
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« Reply #10 on: August 23, 2013, 08:02:03 AM »

Looks great, is this your first foray into game dev? Or have you got industry experience. I want to hear more about your path to getting a publisher, and what it's like

Thanks! Yes, this is my first big project. I've been making games since I was 13 using tools like Klik 'n Play and Multimedia Fusion, but it's the first time I'm making something serious.

I've been trying to make this game since 2009 but I couldn't get the right ideas for it, I wrote a blog post about that here: http://asteristic.com/post/30915012245/intro

Then after I had a rough time last year I ended up being unemployed so I decided to start the game from scratch, make a prototype and give crowd-funding a try. Since I live in Brazil I couldn't use Kickstarter so I used this site: http://catarse.me/dreamingsarah

After that I sent emails to brazillian gaming websites asking if they could take a look at my game, and the response was great. I was featured on Kotaku's brazillian site and a few other blogs, and this caught the attention of the publisher. They contacted me and we signed a contract, so I had to close the crowd-funding before it finished.

Working with this publisher in particular has been a smooth ride, actually. I can't say which was the exact deal because of the signed contract though. I do send reports about how the game is doing every month, sometimes with a compiled version so they can check it out.
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andreyin
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« Reply #11 on: September 05, 2013, 04:30:11 PM »

This week I've been working on the volcano area;



Since the volcano area was the first area ever I did for this game (mid 2012 IIRC), it has a lot of old stuff lying around so I've been busy cleaning it all up.

I've been also thinking of a way to implement a teleporter of sorts, so you can choose an area/savepoint to teleport to. In Yume Nikki you press a button that wakes her up, so when you sleep again you can choose a door and go to a different place; since my game is also not very linear, it would be nice if you could teleport to a specific save point.

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andreyin
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« Reply #12 on: September 11, 2013, 01:27:23 AM »

I'll have a demo ready in a couple of weeks, so I'm adding small areas instead of large ones (even though I really wanted to work on a haunted mansion area):




Also I've made a new ability, it's a compass that points to collectible items if you're in the same area as one.



I basically just have to add some more areas, link them together, add some new character/items and the demo is done. Most of the art for that is ready too so it shouldn't be too hard.
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karlozalb
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« Reply #13 on: September 11, 2013, 01:34:22 AM »

Looks very nice! What are you using to do this? Custom framework? Unity?
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andreyin
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« Reply #14 on: September 11, 2013, 01:50:04 AM »

Looks very nice! What are you using to do this? Custom framework? Unity?

Thanks! I'm using Construct 2.
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« Reply #15 on: September 11, 2013, 06:38:52 AM »

Awesome!
I definitely want to see Construct 2's potential.
It's looking very good so far.
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« Reply #16 on: September 11, 2013, 07:16:48 AM »

niiice. half a year ago I had a similiar game idea, also wanted to do it in construct. never started tho. But this looks way cooler than what i imagined.
keep it up!
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andreyin
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« Reply #17 on: September 11, 2013, 08:36:19 AM »

Awesome!
I definitely want to see Construct 2's potential.
It's looking very good so far.

Thanks AGDBro! Your game is looking pretty good too, so much progress since I last played it.

niiice. half a year ago I had a similiar game idea, also wanted to do it in construct. never started tho. But this looks way cooler than what i imagined.
keep it up!

Thanks! I actually started doing it in CC too, then decided to use C2 when the performance on it got a little better (by the end of 2012).

The early CC prototype from 2009 looked like this:



You can download it here but there's not much, just basic movement and an early interaction thing -
https://sites.google.com/site/projectsarah0/home/Sarah.rar?attredirects=0&d=1
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« Reply #18 on: September 11, 2013, 11:34:26 AM »

Nice art style, looks cute.  Is there going to be any dialogue?  I think it would be better if there weren't any ..
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andreyin
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« Reply #19 on: September 11, 2013, 12:23:48 PM »

Nice art style, looks cute.  Is there going to be any dialogue?  I think it would be better if there weren't any ..

Thanks! Yeah, I thought really hard about that but I ended up having short dialogues since I'm trying to make it more adventure-ish. They don't have names or anything though and are pretty straight-forward like any character in a dream.

Also some may give you something or not, and sometimes having a certain item can trigger something when talking to them (for instance if a kid lost his hat and you found it, you can give it to him, etc).
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