[MAKING AN ENTRANCE (PART 1: THE WRITING)]

MAKING AN ENTRANCE (PART 1: THE WRITING)

I enjoyed the Crafting the Map Screen feature because it gave a thorough look at making the game: a combination of art, design, and code required for even a simple feature. Similarly, my game’s intro sequence needs art, design, and code. But it also has one more element: writing. I’ll break down each of these aspects in their own posts.

For this first part, I want to share the core idea behind my intro scene, and thus its writing. I’ll outline the purpose of an introduction, tell you where I got my inspiration, and detail my own sequence. Fair warning: the third section of this post contains minor story spoilers! (but, it’s only for the first couple minutes of the game, so I think we’re okay!)

A Proper Introduction

Before writing an introduction, we need to know our aim. If we start any story with its climax, we haven’t yet created enough weight to justify any emotional attachment. But if the intro is slow-paced, players might quickly lose interest. The introduction must present themes and foreshadow the rest of the story, while hooking an audience to want to know more. It’s the boulder chase scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the the menacing dolly shot in A Clockwork Orange.

Many mysteries show the crime itself in the introduction (Columbo, Phoenix Wright, etc.) — this captivates their audience, foreshadows future conflict, and (usually) doesn’t involve the detectives themselves (so it follows that the detectives are still unaware of the crime).



It’s a great approach, but it doesn’t work for my game. I don’t want my player knowing the culprit before the detective does. It would create dissonance in the player's relationship with the detective, when instead I want my player to get lost in the world and think of the detective as an avatar for themselves. I need another type of introduction to achieve this goal.

Feline Inspired

I took a page from Robert Altman’s 1973 rendition of Raymond Chandler’s book The Long Goodbye. At the start of the film, we see Philip Marlowe argue with his cat. Marlowe complains about the cat aloud, to himself, and talks to it as though it were human. It’s a comic scene, displaying the eccentric side of Marlowe. But it also starts a theme that’s carried throughout the film: there are few people with such an intimate relationship to Marlowe as that cat. He can’t connect with anybody. It’s as if he’s completely out of his time — a hardboiled character, with car and suit to match, more at ease in a 1920s novel than in a sunny LA film.

Altman juxtaposes this light-hearted cat sequence by splicing shots of a mysterious figure. This second character has blood on his face and looks tense (with music to match) — implying perhaps a murder? Again, foreshadowing, and engaging the audience from the beginning.



Do It Yourself (Spoilers Ahead!)

My main character is a similar detective out of her element (a woman private eye in the 1920s), and few of her relationships have meaningful depth. I love the cat metaphor, so I’m stealing it whole cloth! I show a stray cat in her apartment, looking for food, with whom she talks aloud.

Unlike a film, however, I want my players to interact with the intro. Using drastic cuts would only complicate the scene for my players, who have to learn their interactions while still understanding the story. Instead, I decided to add tension to the cat conversation itself.

My players talk with the cat in the introduction, selecting conversation options like they will in the rest of the game. But I don't show the cat right away -- thus my players don't immediately know they're talking with a cat! The conversation is tense and dramatic — I even imply that a knife fight might break out! Until, the talk ends abruptly and I reveal the cat for what it is. The scene creates tension, adds comic relief, establishes themes for the rest of the game, and foreshadows later altercations.

Most importantly, it hooks my players for the longer journey ahead!


I hope you enjoyed this breakdown! As always, I feel I raced through these explanations — but I’m already at several hundred words, so I think I should stop. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!


First image from Murder by the Book (1971)
Second image from The Long Goodbye (1973)

I hope your move is going okay!

Games can wait, especially when your home is at stake

Ho boy, Comcast can go suck an egg! At least the move is mostly complete, but I'm working from coffee shops until tomorrow since they're not feeding that sweet sweet internet juice to my home until tomorrow afternoon.

Ah well, I worked from cafes all of last year, another couple days won't hurt either. Thanks for the love!

Hey I just checked out the demo, very cool! Here's my feedback, I hope hidden within it is a gem. 

* Very beginning black screened before the title screen for a long time, I was about to close it thinking it was broken, maybe add a small animation throbber there or static text that says "Loading...".
* I found the text continuation a little jarring as instead of going to the next word it looks like you show the beginning of the sentence of the last word you used. Maybe just always end a page on the same sentence.
* I wish the text when hovering over spatial objects in the apartment appeared somewhat relative to the objects position. This would keep my eye close to the object I'm inspecting and keep me 'in' the world a bit. The text statically in the top left corner made me feel like I was reading more than finding clues.
* Grammar & spelling problem? I read this in the demo. "What has you convinced sombody gave him the big one"
* I was confused a bit about the HOME category in the notes/evidence. I thought for a bit maybe it was the home of the butler or Stable, I eventually got it. I just needed a little more clarity, one way would be if I had discovered these clues myself at home before going to Stables house, but this might be overkill. Maybe just change the text from "HOME" to "MY HOME".

I was unsettled for a bit not knowing the mechanic of the game early. Once I realized the 'game' was to contradict the butlers statement with evidence it became fun, before I just started clicking and reading things and my interest started to wane. HOWEVER, it was super satisfying once I organically figured that out. Also, it might be nice to not always know exactly what the mechanic is per level, as you could decide to design levels to be solved multiple ways. So what I'm trying to say is the difficulty of this level may be to high for a first play session, or it may be just right. It will be important to test the game out and see if people get too frustrated or just frustrated enough to not quit and figure it out. Once they figure out the first level I imagine there confidence will be high enough to take on the next.

Thanks for the demo! Good luck have fun! 

Thanks for playing and for the feedback! I'm in the process of moving homes, so I'm sorry I didn't reply to this sooner!

The text animation system was especially problematic for me, as well. So I've changed completely for the current game Your suggestion for the text hovering over every object is interesting! I might have to play around and see if there's a simple way to integrate that into my current system.

I agree with the spelling and "MY HOME" problems -- luckily, that story was only for the demo, so the final game has nothing to do with it at all.

Thanks again for the time you spent! I'm excited to show you more progress and the final release!

Will the player be able to visit one of Warren G. Harding's ragers in the White House?

Hahaha! Well, the game's in the Coolidge years, but there are plenty of ragers to go around

I wrote a blog post on Gamasutra on why using history in games could create thoughtful experiences.

It's not a game update, so I didn't think posting the full text here was worth it. But it does describe a lot of the reasons I chose to create a historical fiction. So if you're interested, enjoy!

The illustrations and animations look amazing!

I used Construct 2 for the Molydeux game jam, just to see what it was like. As an experienced programmer, it seemed both easier to use and harder to use than I thought it'd be. But I'm curious to see how it'll do with a full game.

Posting to follow. Good luck!

I think you made the right call with the map screen. Thanks for writing about the decision.

I like the taxi screen. Conversations with cab drivers and the animation of the car bouncing up and down remind me of 80 Days--is that an inspiration?

Thanks man! 80 Days is a fantastic game and unquestionably an inspiration! I can see what you mean about the travel screen similarities, but actually my original travel solution was more inspired by 80 Days -- that game's world map is a good connective tissue that I feel games like Phoenix Wright lack, which got me to try creating the San Francisco map. I'm glad I could still keep some of their flavour in the game, though! Thanks for the love!

I haven't been keeping up with the devlog for some time but I was wondering if you're just prototyping in Twine or will you use it as a backbone later on? I spent a few nights once writing my own Twine adventure and it quickly became unwieldy, as you yourself seem to experience. Will you change tool later or do you have some master plan to combat the spaghetti?

Twine, especially Twine 1.4 that I'm using, can get to be a mess. But when I started building my conversation system (October 2015?) it seemed like the most robust, customizable, and Unity-friendly solution. And, if you're careful about keeping your logic consistent and separating your files reasonably (via a barely documented Twine 1.4 feature called story includes), it can be manageable. I've written most of the first story, and so far the spaghetti hasn't gotten too bad (which maybe I can attribute to years of Blueprint experience?).

However, were I to start again, I'd take a long look at a new solution: ink. The folks at inkle (the guys who made that 80 Days game Nathy mentioned) have released their internal tool for free, and made it open-source. It has many features that I could only dream of in Twine (local variables, logic, functions (with reference and value parameters!), tunnels, threads, etc). And Twine's visual tree-view isn't quite as useful as I'd maybe thought initially. ink also integrates with Unity, so it'd be a no-brainer to at least test for whatever I make next.

Not real speed of course, struggling to beat GifCam

Have you tried licecap already? I feel like is the best tool for creating fast gifs. Good quality, low size.

+1 LICEcap. Works on Macs and easy to use, too.

You rolled your own engine? Wow, that's intense! I'd love to hear post-mortem thoughts on doing that -- was it worth it; would you do it again?

Fantastic insights! It sounds like you did most things the right way on Crest, and I hope it succeeds!

I would love to read a post-mortem after launch, whether it's financially profitable or not. Much of the time we only read about the games that triumph, especially if they succeed quickly. It's sobering to see the reality of running a multi-person game studio. Thanks for your honesty!

Good luck

You can do

Code:

[ img width=875 ]

which is about the width of a forum post:



Looking great btw!

Just found this and it looks really good! The research you did into 1920s San Francisco is really impressive. Keep up the good work!

I actually spent a lot of time researching -- in libraries, taking online courses, reading fiction from the era, reading newspapers from the era, etc. It was a lot of work, but it's great to have the ideas in my head, and I can go back to the reference to make sure I get things correct.

I'm glad it shows! Thanks for the love

[CRAFTING KILLING THE MAP SCREEN (PART 4)]

CRAFTING KILLING THE MAP SCREEN (PART 4)

I'd designed, implemented, and blogged about creating the map screen and its directory panel. But, the more I played with it, the more I realized: it needed the axe.

WHY IT DIDN'T FIT
Look I'd spent significant time on this thing already. And part of me liked it too! But I knew it had issues. I laid out my pros and cons:

PROS	CONS
Gives a sense of place and travel Allows the player to visually explore the city	Makes the entire game feel empty Doesn't allow the player to interact with the city, its people, or its issues Directory look-up not as "fun" as I'd previously thought Requires much more work to finish, optimize, and maintain

For ages I'd tried to fix its problems -- including adding random animations on the map, and random buildings for the player to click. But I started to realize that the feature was beginning to shape the game, rather than the game shaping the feature, and I didn't like where either was going.

I needed a better travel solution. It was time to chop!

A BETTER TRAVEL SOLUTION
I grabbed scrap paper and hurriedly sketched a solution that would fix my problems:

After some rework, I realized the new system needed two screens:

• A "city overview", to keep the sense of place
• A taxicab screen, to keep the sense of travel

The new travel mechanic solved my issues with the map, while keeping its positive qualities. Further, it gave me another place to bring up the themes I want to address: taxicab drivers are talkative, and they'll give you their opinion on social issues if you ask it.

ALL OF IT TOGETHER

THE FUTURE
Now that I'm done the travel mechanic, the first half of the first mystery (what I hope to demo at shows and to press) is almost complete. I still have some polish before I can call it complete -- including a new title card, an actual name, and some more animations -- but I'm ready for small amounts playtesting and story feedback while I do that. The next couple months are gonna be big!

Wish me luck!


EDIT: I kinda rushed through a very hard decision to redo an entire feature. If anyone has questions (or hell, wants to make me feel better by sharing their own experiences from the chopping block!) please do so

Still looking great! I am, as I'm sure many others are, following silently, but enjoying the posts.

Now I'm checking if there's a way for me to make the animations look better. Which one looks better, old one (left), or new one (right)?

I think the timing of both animations feels off -- the tree feels like it shakes just a frame or two too late. It's as if the axe had hit the tree, then the tree forgot its line for a few frames, then thought 'oh yeah, i need to hit react!' and started to shake.

It's hard to tell if this timing issue would be obvious in the game, or I'm only noticing because I'm scrutinizing this particular animation.

Anyhow, looking great! Good luck! 

One of my new travel screens. More to come soon!

Here's an in-progress version of one of the new travel screens:

That whole map view? Gone I'll write more about why next week.

Unique art style lads! And it's nice to see an exploration game where you're just exploring conversations! Very excited to see more progress! Good luck 

The animations, projectile sprites, and enemy hit reactions all make the game look fast, meaty, and a ton of fun to play. Are you considering local co-op? This is exactly the (geeky) party game my friends and I would enjoy!

As others have mentioned: unique mechanic and lovely art! Subscribing for updates!

The more I see of this game, the more interested I become. Good luck gents!