Thanks t-recx!
Will you have random events where Apollinaire invites you to his home for your inauguration as a new face in the Parisian avant-garde scene? Joined the surrealists at one point but failed to meet the strict commands of Breton and now face expulsion? Move to Zurich to join the Dada scene as triggered by the onset of the war? In later stages have the option to be disillusioned by the conservative nature of the so-called avant-garde and move to America and invent conceptualism? Or just slowly die in poverty as the world moves on and the values of the new modernist aesthetic you held dear in your youth loose ground to more modern apporaches from america?
Can you publish manifestos? Is there a 'hip & now' slider which shows who you hang with, whether you side with the more avant-garde but poor and socially shunned Impressionists in the Salon of the Rejected or join the ranks of the new realists and mingle with the bourgeois and old aristocracy and paint portraits (you sellout you!). Or can you do the ties-to-russian-avant-garde pro-communist peredvizhnik thing in Paris? Can you choose to be an immigrant artist living in one of the bohemian colonies? Choose which hill you inhabit and do some silly petty hill vs hill thing?
Holy fuck the possibilities for awesome story beats are endless!
Son, this topic is waaay too cool to let suffer the shallow-indie-experiment syndrome, this needs to be HUGE. HUUUGE!
Thanks a lot for this huge post, your excitement is very inspiring and so are your ideas.
Your ideas describe my goals for the game very well. Important figures such as Apollinaire, Victor Hugo and Nadar will be in the game. Participating in movements such as Surrealism will be in the game as well. Travelling around Europe will be included, but I think I'll keep Paris as the main location of the game (you can go to other countries, but you return to Paris). America isn't currently in my plans, as the timespan of the game is intended to be 1863-1914 and the american scene wasn't majorly important yet. I guess I need some limits to be able to finish this game, and not including America is an important one. Perhaps in another game?
You can publish manifestos, it's how you create a new artistic movement. I have considered that "artistic taste" slider, and it could be included. Yes, the fight between conservative realists and revolutionary modernists will be a main theme. Again, the scope will be limited to Paris for now.
I am focusing very heavily on allowing the player to create his own cool narrative by playing the game. For example, a player's game experience could be described as: "I started as a starving artist, studied under Bouguereau, became rich, won the Salons of 1883 and 1887, then joined forces with Monet and the Impressionists, broke off with them and created my own revolutionary artistic movement, slowly destroyed academism with modernist expositions and manifestos, then went broke and committed suicide."
The game's scope will be big, but it has to be manageable for me. I could always leave things for other games, such as other countries and times. For now, it's Paris 1863-1914. I think that's what I can manage.
I love the idea of this! May I request game mechanics for models and muses, please. Oh, and absinthe!
Thanks and yes, models and inspiration will be included, as well as alcohol. I am still unsure how to include models, but the game couldn't be without them, considering their importance at the time. The other two elements I think will work as modifiers, think of "buffs" and "nerfs": they make some stats higher and others lower. In this game, stats aren't "strength", "intelligence" and so on, but the fundamentals of art: "form", "perspective", "color" and so on.
Jonathan Blow (Braid) actually made a prototype that involved drawing and painting on a digital canvas, it's in a talk you can find on youtube. Turns out it wasn't fun for the player because it took too much effort and time. I'll learn from that and make painting creation quick and effortless, but still with a big gameplay impact.
No, damn, you have to implement this. This is so cool feature, adds a lot. Thinking of this game, it feels like it would be the essence of the game. I understand however that it is impossible to paint in like Caspar David Friedrich, but it could work more in impressionism/expressionism/abstract axle of art.
Then you create algorithm that reads the painting and through whatever conditions the game then values it.
Anyway, it is lovely to see game project like this.
That's exactly what he tried to implement, and it was a failed prototype. His program could correctly judge the player's painting and it was completely functional, but it wasn't fun or engaging for the player. I agree it could work for a more modern approach, in which the player paints abstract paintings, but that's not what I want for Avant-Garde. Maybe in another game!
Actually, I'm wondering now if there's any way that I can help contribute to this? Even if it's something small, I'll do what I can.
I think I'm okay working alone for now, but thanks for the offer.
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