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[Panurge]

Not seeing a visual dialog tree feels very natural and in-the-moment.

That is exactly the effect I was hoping it would have! I don't want the player to be able to stop and consider what they should do, but rather to converse as instinctively as possible. That's the ideal, anyway.

Thanks for the useful info about browsers - I'll have to look into that carefully - and the excellent suggestion for using space. I've been wondering a lot about how to handle that and I think your idea is spot on. A couple of key levels really lend themselves to that approach - I even have one location with a balcony all ready to go, but it never occurred to me to make practical use of it!

[Panurge]

Er, yeah, I did shout a warning...

[jO]

Haha that is hilarious!
What kind of music do you want to use?
The sideway-walking animation looks a bit goofy. I think you should try crossing the legs, right now they move parallel to each other which looks weird imho. Upper body, where he is leaning forward with the pistol upwards to the side looks really good 

[iammonshushu]

You can make the butler moonwalk. Not sure if that's intentionally or just accidentally awesome.

[Panurge]

Haha that is hilarious!
What kind of music do you want to use?
The sideway-walking animation looks a bit goofy. I think you should try crossing the legs, right now they move parallel to each other which looks weird imho. Upper body, where he is leaning forward with the pistol upwards to the side looks really good  

My ideal music for the game would have this sort of vibe: THE MONKS

That's probably a bit beyond my abilities, though...

Also, I picked up one of these bad boys from Amazon the other day:



I think it would be a world first, if a hugely pointless one, to score a videogame with a stylophone. It could also, however, be pretty hard on the listener... I'll probably just use it for some little B-movie flourishes now and then.

The sidling animation is pretty awful, isn't it? I'm not happy with it myself and I'm going to play around with it some more when I get the chance. I've got a growing list of things which need to be changed, mostly animations and colours.

You can make the butler moonwalk. Not sure if that's intentionally or just accidentally awesome.

That is an accidental awesomeness due to a quirk in the way I set up the controls. I would have changed it but I like it too much. In fact, whenever I get stuck on something, this is pretty much all I do:

[jO]

That Monks track is very fitting to how I imagine the tone of the game.
Good choice! 

[Panurge]

Thanks! I've been listening to 'Black Monk Time' a lot while working on it, hoping that some of the atmosphere will soak through into the game.

[Panurge]

Haven't had much time for this lately but I'm still quietly persisting with it whenever I get the chance. I pretty much started again from scratch and I'm much happier with the way it's going now.

Almost all the mechanics of the game are in place and the sprites and animations are done. I just have to tinker with the storyline and then do a load of background 'art' (a glance through this thread will explain the inverted commas). There are seven different locations to visit and five times of day/night at which they can be visited so I'll need thirty-five backdrops, although most will be variations on a theme.

Once that's done I might start nervously posting some playable builds...

[Panurge]

Clues?

[dukope]

Clues?

YES!

Suggestion to make me really hate that guy: "your" -> "you're"

[deddhogg]

I love that. The humor of this is going to be fantastic.

[Panurge]

YES!

Suggestion to make me really hate that guy: "your" -> "you're"

Perfect! That's going in for sure.

I love that. The humor of this is going to be fantastic.

Thanks! I really hope so because I'm increasingly finding myself leaning towards a comic approach. I think comedy is very underused in games. I mean there are loads of games which are 'wacky' or 'zany' but very few which have real character or situation-based humour. Of course such humour is notoriously hard to write in any medium, and I'm not saying that I'll be able to pull it off, but I'm keen to give it a try.

[deddhogg]

If the butler game is anything to go by, you're doing it really well. Comedy in games is underused indeed, which is a shame because it can obviously work wonders.

[Panurge]

Cheers! Here's what I've been up to this afternoon:





I would like it noted that I take no responsibility for anyone who impersonates an FBI agent with the use of these documents.

[dukope]

PIXEL DOCS

Tell me that making pixel-art documents isn't fun as hell. You can't because it is.

[Panurge]

You're right, I can't. In fact, I think I may have a problem. I've started adjusting the whole story to accommodate things like dog licenses and flyers for hairdressing salons (oh man, I'm stupidly proud of my hairdressing flyer - I'll post it soon).

You may need to stage an intervention...

[dukope]

You may need to stage an intervention...

You're asking the wrong guy. I'm making an entire game of pixel docs. If you find help, let me know.

[Panurge]

Haven't had time for much this week but I did work a bit more on the secret agent character (possibly playable):

 

Also, more docs...

[Panurge]

Working on backdrops now. This is a special location which I estimate only a small percentage of players will get to see in the course of a game:



The nudity is of the National Geographic sort which makes it okay, right?

[Rat Casket]

yes. more dongs is never a bad thing.