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[Sigz]

In Tyre the player controls a mysterious hunter of dangerous paranormal and supernatural entities. In the process of hunting down her targets, the player will investigate reports of paranormal killings, gather evidence of the perpetrator, and research into the game world’s extensive lore to understand the story the evidence tells – what sort of being the suspect is, how to find it, and – most importantly – how to destroy it.

While there will be action here and there, Tyre is at heart a mystery game - the primary focus will be on exploration/investigation. Along with this, Tyre will have a strong lore built around the world's supernatural elements, and the player's research into this lore throughout the game will be an important part of their success.

Currently the game is in pre-alpha, and the newly-formed devblog can be found here: http://hedgehoghugs.wordpress.com/

I'll continue to update this thread with full posts from now on of course, rather than just link to the blog ^^

[Sigz]

*looks at date* Oh dear, over two weeks since the last update. Well, this is a wonderful way to start off a blog. Anyways, in the last two weeks not much has been accomplished. First I got a new drumset, then a friend got me to try League of Legends (which could very easily ruin my life), and then Deus Ex 3 came out, so of course I had to play that. By the way, if you haven't already – play it. It's absolutely stunning.

However, the time has come to stop being a good-for-nothing noob and get down to business. I’m going to try to update this daily from now on with at least something I accomplished for the day, as well as my goal for the following day.  As for what's been done since the last post, several major features have been implemented, which, while pretty basic, are really important.

The first was ‘zone’ changing – basically different areas within the same level. In some games (take Zelda for instance), each area is the size of a single screen, and there's no actual scrolling. In Tyre, the areas are considerably larger, and the camera follows the player around until they hit the border of the area, at which point they’ll continue into the next zone. Woo.

Also checked off the todo list  is the inventory screen/system, which is basically done mechanics-wise, but needs a lot of front-end work. With this the player will be able to keep track of any evidence they might have collected, as well as any other tools which may assist them in their hunt.

I’ve been putting off coding the journal, and at this point I’m still unsure of how to go about it. At first I was just going to use an XML file to contain all the text and images, but the problem with that is that I feel like the journal would end up looking very homogeneous. To give you an idea of what I’m shooting for, look at the Holy Grail journal from Indiana Jones: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bonniegrrl/2469303990/ Old, packed with sketches and notes in the margin, lots of bookmarks and cool stuff like that. Right now I’m almost considering hand making each page and then just rendering the journal as a series of sprites. It’s a lot more work, but I think it’d look a lot better as well. We shall see.

Anyways, my goals for tomorrow are: 1) make the inventory screen presentable, 2) Work out some kinks in the area changing/loading code that could screw things up later, and (most relevant to you guys) 3) finish  putting together a post that will go more in-depth in describing the gameplay, as well as have something nice to look at.

[melisoftgames]

Dude, I love the concept of this game, and as I'm a sucker for games where the story is one of the main draws, I'll be keeping an eye on this. :D

[Sigz]

Stone and Souls

I got a little bit of ‘real’ work done, mainly fixing up the area loading code so it won’t implode any more. Huzzah for that. However, this post is mainly going to focus on the gameplay, and how you can expect a level in Tyre to play out (as always, remember that this is all just coder art and such, etc. etc.)

So first coming into a case, your first task will be to figure out exactly what the problem is.


You might have to walk around a bit too.


Explore around, find some interesting stuff, meet interesting people, etc:

"Help Help our town's an incomplete shithole!"


Once you find out that people are being brutally murdered by a giant snapping turtle (okay maybe not), or the town is being consumed by some Eldritch horror, or that time has frozen for everyone in the area, or any other manner of strange and horrific and exciting things, it’s time to figure out what to do about it.

First thing to do is explore around, and look for clues that can tell you what exactly is going on – weird unidentified objects, newspapers or diaries, clawprints, examining dead bodies – basically be a detective. Evidence that you can carry you’ll be able to store in your inventory to reference later. Other evidence that can’t be carried, like a footprint or a strange noise coming from that cave over there – you’ll be able to note down in your journal.

As you gather evidence, it’s time to piece it all together. Besides simply using all of the evidence together to figure things out, your biggest resource will be your detective’s journal. Besides allowing you to take notes, your journal is also a massive collection of evidence from your character’s past. It will be fully searchable, so, for example, say you found several people who’s hearts all simply stopped.  Search for “heart” and “stop”, and (amongst other entries perhaps), you might find this, a diary from a detective in the past (right click to view full size of course):

It'll be up to you to determine what best fits the evidence of course.


Once you’ve figured out what it is you’re looking for, research further with your journal to figure out what you need to do to destroy it. This will most likely involve exploring your surroundings for tools or materials that you will need for the process (i.e. if you’re looking for a vampire you might want to find a piece of wood).

Along with that, you will also have four tools of your own: three magical objects and an ordinary gun. The magical objects are your Setyr Stone, Menson Stone, and Sevant Soul. Each of the magical tools has it’s own abilities, and most importantly will be modified and enhanced when combined with other objects and substances from your environment.

The Setyr Stone is, ironically, an offensive tool without an attack of it’s own. Together with your gun, it allows you to enhance and change the properties of your bullets to match your target. On it’s own this will just shoot a ‘magic’ bullet- assuming your target is immune to regular bullets it might stun or wound them, but it’ll really only serve to allow you to get away. The Setyr Stone’s real power comes when other objects are placed in it. Say, for example, you’re hunting a soul sucking creature that can only be harmed by the blood of its victims. Rather than carry around a bucket of freshly drained blood and hoping you have the aim of a PETA protester, pour a vial of it into the Setyr stone and now your gun’s bullets will possess their power. Yay!

Correspondingly, the Menson stone is your defensive tool. Basically the same thing as the Setyr Stone, it normally casts a thing shield around you that can protect your from light damage, but putting the right items in will  modify the shield, making you a damned formidable opponent.

Finally, the Sevant Soul is simply a tool. On it’s own it essentially serves as a lantern, lighting the area around you (which will definitely be necessary at times). However it can also serve as a guiding light – if you can get your hands on a piece of the being you’re hunting (no small task of course), the Sevant Soul will lead you right to it. There are numerous other possibilities that can crop up with it, so be sure to experiment!


The Sevant Soul will light your way, but you won't be able to gain the benefits of the Setyr or Menson Stones with it equipped.

So, with all of this knowledge, it’s time to make a plan, gather what resources you need, hunt down your target, and take it down. I have no cool art for this, because I’m a noob. Just imagine something awesome for me.

Well, that about wraps up this post. My plan for tomorrow is to do what I should have done today on the inventory screen (this whole blog thing actually takes a lot of time, who would have thought!). That includes making some placeholder graphics for all the items and getting it arranged in the code so that it’s usable. If I have time, I’d like to start on the click menu for the inventory screen as well – click on an item, and it will give you options like combine, view, information, etc. So that’s it, see you tomorrow!

[Sigz]

Minor Daily Update #1: In Which Things are Drawn, Poorly

Hit a massive bout of depression/anxiety today, and barely got anything accomplished after work. I was about to just start drinking myself into a coma for the night when I figured I should at least do something, so I made up some ultra simple inventory art for the three stones and coded up the inventory display:



The desaturated brown and white was going for a kind of hand-drawn pencil type style, which I’d like most of the journal to maintain. As I write this however, I realize that a grid style system is terrible for what the inventory system is primarily used for – keep track of evidence. I think a book style where each item occupies a page in a pad would be a better idea.

However, I can barely concentrate, so onwards to the alcohols.


Also, up on the block for the rest of the week:

-Get Journal/reference system up and running
    -figure out organization, and how the book will browse
    -figure out searching system and UI
-maybe rework inventory into book style mentioned above
-get some coder art going so I can actually start working on making levels and actually playing the game

[Sigz]

Minor Daily Update #2

Got some basic journal functionality going: pages render and (very importantly) can be easily added from my side, and you can flip through the book by clicking the left or right page to turn in that direction.

Journal to-do:
*Allow player to change books – i.e. notebook, reference journal, other separate reference books. Shouldn’t be too hard, it’s pretty much just an added layer to the current code.

*Allow the player to enter notes into the notebook, and possibly add notes to the reference materials. (definitely more challenging, but very do-able)

*I think that’s it.

-Sigz

[Sigz]

Minor Daily Update #3: Books Are for Nerds

Implemented the book selection screen for the reference system. This will allow you to access the journal, which contains notes and evidence and such collected through the player character’s rather long career up to the present (this will definitely be used when solving current cases), the notepad, which contains notes the player him/herself has taken, and then other reference material, some of which will be very useful, some of which is more on the ‘fluff’ side of things.

Goals for tomorrow:

-code up the notepad, to allow the player to take/store notes
-code up the search function, to allow the player to do keyword searches across all of the reference material, or just a specific source.

 
On another, completely unrelated note, I am currently completely addicted to



, and may just die in an explosion of pure happiness, butterflies, and glowstick liquid.

-Sigz

[Sigz]

Minor Daily Post #5

Did more notetaking stuff today – turns out XNA is a real bitch when it comes to coding text entry. I still can’t get the backspace key to work properly, so type carefully. However, the notes can be saved/loaded, and the text wraps so it doesn’t run off the page. Progress is being made, slowly but surely.

-Sigz

[Sigz]

Minor Daily Update #6

Added in descriptions to the inventory screen, so all of the code for that is now done for the foreseeable future. Whoo.

-Sigz