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[Alain]

Thanks CoolDown, I appreciate it! There will be a playtest version on Steam soon. I hope I can get to working on the finishing touches for it soon. As of now, loading NPCs is broken after some necessary changes

[Ramos]

May I ask why did you place the pressed key public? what if someone else takes it before the jury does?

[Alain]

May I ask why did you place the pressed key public? what if someone else takes it before the jury does?

Aw, man, don't get me started. It is not supposed to be like that and nothing I can do about it, because I did not make the page myself (at least not this final version). The problem was that you have to give the jury access to the game, usually by providing a download link. I could not enter the Steam key into the field for the download link, because it told me "that's not an URL". So I had to add the information (the key) to the description section which they then posted publicly without taking out the key. Luckily, this key ended up with the right person nobody stole it

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

Storytelling and Managing Dialogues

Hey everyone! Since I have been adding NPCs recently, I also had to write them, obviously. That's why I'd like to share a bit more of where my ideas for BattleJuice Alchemist come from. I'm a big pen and paper RPG geek and have been DMing since I was about 15 years old. Some of the friends from these days are still playing with me today. One particular campaign led into an 800 page book and eventually into the development of the story for BattleJuice Alchemist. If you can endure me indulging in reminiscences, you can watch the video on the bottom of this post.

In the video I also talk about a more techy aspect of writing: managing branching dialogues. I worked with plain text and spreadsheets, which worked okay until the story got more complicated and I added more NPCs. So I did some research and found a tool called Twine, that I now use for managing my dialogues.

It is free to use and I found it really easy to get into. If you are writing branching dialogues, too, I'd be interested to hear how you do it and keep things organized. Maybe there are even better options that I have not thought of.

Thank you for reading and have a great weekend!

Alain

click GIF to watch on YouTube ↑ (3:32 min)

[JobLeonard]

Holy shit dude, those home-made books and maps are pretty hard-core

(And this is coming from a guy who has over thirty D&D 3.0 and 3.5 books himself)

How do you like twine? I guess it's more for organizing than for preparing the in-game scripts. What are you using for that? Inkle?

https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/

[vivaladav]

After watching your video and seeing what you have done so far I feel ashamed of using only Trello and Google Docs... 

[Ramos]

That picture makes it all look so mysterious and adventurous, kinda like a "pirates of the Caribbean" vibe.

And again you amaze me with the fact that you also have time for videos and also be so active on these forums and make the game and make coffee and... Jesus, you are taking multitasking to the next level

[Alain]

Holy shit dude, those home-made books and maps are pretty hard-core :whome:

(And this is coming from a guy who has over thirty D&D 3.0 and 3.5 books himself)

How do you like twine? I guess it's more for organizing than for preparing the in-game scripts. What are you using for that? Inkle?

https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/

Nice to hear you are a kindred spirit :)

Twine works great for me and what I am doing. But I only have a handful of talking NPCs in my game so far and it won't be more than 10 in a town. I can let you know if it still works for me when things get complicated. But as I said, I really like it so far.

As for preparing in-game scripts, I don't use any tool for that. Before Twine, I copied text from the spreadsheet and now I copy it from Twine ;) But thank you for pointing me to Inkle! This seems to be a handy tool and I will keep it in mind and check it out in depth in the future to see if it works for me!

After watching your video and seeing what you have done so far I feel ashamed of using only Trello and Google Docs...  ::)

If it works for your project, that's great. I would have sticked to my spreadsheet if I could. I mean, you don't need to use another elaborate tool in your (writing) pipeline if google docs work for you!

That picture makes it all look so mysterious and adventurous, kinda like a "pirates of the Caribbean" vibe.

And again you amaze me with the fact that you also have time for videos and also be so active on these forums and make the game and make coffee and... Jesus, you are taking multitasking to the next level

Thanks man, I appreciate you're saying that! I'm trying really hard to do a good job. And it is great to have this place here to talk to people doing similar things about the ups and downs.

[JobLeonard]

Speaking of Twine, I'm kind of amazed how unknown it still is. I mean, Depression Quest and You Are Jeff Bezos were written in it - the first is at the very least historically significant and the second is unironically one of my favorite short games of the last decade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_Quest

https://direkris.itch.io/you-are-jeff-bezos

https://venturebeat.com/2018/11/10/you-are-jeff-bezos-postmortem/

(Don't want to derail the devlog too much but just saying)

[bram_dingelstad]

Super cool! Also def cool that your game idea stemmed from an idea that you've had for such a long time and including the stories you've had for such a long time!

Haven't gotten around to watching the video yet, but I thought I'd comment about the (similar) systems I use in my games. For Clarice Clairvoyage I'm just using big arrays with strings and stuff, basically a custom system. Only reason for this system is because of the inherent limitations of PICO8.

However, I've also been working on several other games with bigger needs. For that I found that YarnSpinner is a good fit for me. For people using Unity there's already a rich set of tools and integrations you can use. But for me using Godot usually, I had to write/modify my own, which I forked from someone else that ported the C# code to GDScript (Godot's scripting language).

It works alright! And it's nice to tap into an existing toolset with some usage by other bigger projects

[Alain]

(Don't want to derail the devlog too much but just saying)

Don't worry, this is some great info! I hadn't heard of these two games. I just clicked around a bit in You Are Jeff Bezos and was entertained

However, I've also been working on several other games with bigger needs. For that I found that YarnSpinner is a good fit for me. For people using Unity there's already a rich set of tools and integrations you can use. But for me using Godot usually, I had to write/modify my own, which I forked from someone else that ported the C# code to GDScript (Godot's scripting language).

Thanks for the recommendation of YarnSpinner! I took a look at its website and especially for Unity users this seems definitely worth checking out.

[Frece]

Damn, this game looks amazing =0. I didn't knew you were creating a game too Alain. Really nice one  and I LOVE the soundtrack  . Who is creating it?


If I may give a little feedback as an artist - Isn't the ground texture a bit too noise? I feel that it's hard to distinguis floor from obstacle. but maybe that's intentional  .

Anyways. I love to see that you are working on such an amazing title and I placed the game on my wishlist =JJ

[Alain]

Damn, this game looks amazing =0. I didn't knew you were creating a game too Alain. Really nice one  and I LOVE the soundtrack  . Who is creating it?

Thank you, I'm glad you like the look of the game so far. The soundtrack is by me, too.

If I may give a little feedback as an artist - Isn't the ground texture a bit too noise? I feel that it's hard to distinguis floor from obstacle. but maybe that's intentional  .

Such feedback is always appreciated! The details especially of the ground definitely are an issue. I adressed it recently and made an overhaul of the textures and details, you can check out my documentation on it in this post. Are you referring to the old or the new version? Because if you are referring to the new one, I guess I have to consider working on this issue a bit more.

Anyways. I love to see that you are working on such an amazing title and I placed the game on my wishlist =JJ

Awesome, thanks a lot

[Alain]

Hey everyone! I just wanted to share this quick little conicidence with you. I render my character portraits with a second camera attached to the player and NPCs. Because of the way this camera is attached, the player can duck under their own portrait. I think this is quite funny and I I'll keep it as a feature.

Have a nice Saturday!

[JobLeonard]

Nice! You could use that on purpose for comedy purposes (like another character screaming at the main character)

[Ramos]

Yes, that is a good decision. Small additions like this are what give extra personality to an indie game.
 

[vivaladav]

I render my character portraits with a second camera attached to the player and NPCs. Because of the way this camera is attached, the player can duck under their own portrait. I think this is quite funny and I I'll keep it as a feature.

A minor detail, but it's small things like this one that can make a game experience unique.
I believe you should definitely keep it!

[Alain]

Nice! You could use that on purpose for comedy purposes (like another character screaming at the main character)

That's a great idea, I'll keep it in mind!

Yes, that is a good decision. Small additions like this are what give extra personality to an indie game.

A minor detail, but it's small things like this one that can make a game experience unique.
I believe you should definitely keep it!

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoy it, too. It stays then

[logophil]

Really liking the concept and unique artstyle of this game, and thanks for all your devlogs, I hope I'll time to take a look soon!

Twine works great for me and what I am doing. But I only have a handful of talking NPCs in my game so far and it won't be more than 10 in a town. I can let you know if it still works for me when things get complicated. But as I said, I really like it so far.

As for preparing in-game scripts, I don't use any tool for that. Before Twine, I copied text from the spreadsheet and now I copy it from Twine But thank you for pointing me to Inkle! This seems to be a handy tool and I will keep it in mind and check it out in depth in the future to see if it works for me!

I considered and briefly tried Twine for my game, but then decided I didn't like the duplication (e.g. copying and pasting) - as a solodev as well my approach is generally to go for the quick and simple, since I don't need to make things super clear for other team members so provisionally I'm actually just writing the dialogue directly into the code. I know that may sound bad, but it is actually quite clear as I use dialogue constructor methods that allow me to create whole units of dialogue at once, and can be formatted on the page in a way that makes the structure clear. (Another reason this works for me is that I use  procedural generation in my dialogues so I don't think I could use something like inkle.) Once I've nailed down the structures a bit more, I plan to transition to importing the atomic dialogue elements from XML files.

[Alain]

Thanks for the kind works, logophil!

I considered and briefly tried Twine for my game, but then decided I didn't like the duplication (e.g. copying and pasting)

The copying and pasting bothers me, too. But for now, I decided that this is how it is for now

(Another reason this works for me is that I use  procedural generation in my dialogues so I don't think I could use something like inkle.) Once I've nailed down the structures a bit more, I plan to transition to importing the atomic dialogue elements from XML files.

With regards to procedural dialogues (which btw. I'm looking forward to maybe hear more about in your devlog), I agree that the tools mentioned here might not be perfect. But to me it sounds like your system seems to work well for you now and transitioning to XML sounds like a nice plan!