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[pikemon]

Cool project! I've been toying with an idea of a more RPG/sim type of depression simulator for a few years without doing anything concrete.

It's amazing to see someone tackle the subject in game form! Art style looks good. 

[Alex Higgins]

Cool project! I've been toying with an idea of a more RPG/sim type of depression simulator for a few years without doing anything concrete.

It's amazing to see someone tackle the subject in game form! Art style looks good. 

A few other people have done it before, although not in such a stylized way. The more perspectives we have on depression, though, the better! I'd rather have another game about depression than another game about wizards or space marines (holy shit we have enough of those).
http://www.actualsunlight.com/
http://www.depressionquest.com/

[TonyNowak]

Tweaked the bus stop a tad more.

Cool project! I've been toying with an idea of a more RPG/sim type of depression simulator for a few years without doing anything concrete.

It's amazing to see someone tackle the subject in game form! Art style looks good.  

A few other people have done it before, although not in such a stylized way. The more perspectives we have on depression, though, the better! I'd rather have another game about depression than another game about wizards or space marines (holy shit we have enough of those).
http://www.actualsunlight.com/
http://www.depressionquest.com/

I feel the subject matter should be explored more in games, not just in games that revolve around primarily it like TIE does, but in other genres. Mood, color palette, and aesthetic all influence how the player will perceive and feel about the experience and world you have created for them. I'd rather spend 30 minutes to an hour or two in a carefully crafted world and experience that than in a generic world with generic game-play for hours on end.

[TonyNowak]

Been kinda neglecting this. So here's the new(is) blog post.

http://agameaboutdepression.blogspot.com/2014/06/where-we-are.html

Ignore the screenshots in that post and look at this instead:

[TonyNowak]

[TonyNowak]

Office long-shot. Still a work in progress. Feedback appreciated.

[Bombini]

The graphics are awesome...the use of color just beautiful.
Transports the feeling of the whole game very well!

I think its outstanding!

[Voltz.Supreme]

Completely random idea...
I've thought about this a few times when looking at this game. Depression has a lot to do with perspective. I actually look at the game and hear the soundtrack and feel great. So....
The character could have a false perspective on reality. You could have two physical layers on the screen to work with. The top layer is the character's perspective and underneath is reality (your current art).
I think it would look really cool... there could be a small "sphere" around the character that shows a section of the top layer (his perspective).
It could be as simple as being greyscale, void of people, alternative art styles etc... You could get pretty creative.

I think this could add a bit more of a gameplay element to it. The player will want to explore every part of the screen to see how the character sees it.

[TonyNowak]

Hey guy's, so my computer died, I don't know when I'll have another and when I can work on TIE again, but I'll certainly be trying for one soon.

Completely random idea...
I've thought about this a few times when looking at this game. Depression has a lot to do with perspective. I actually look at the game and hear the soundtrack and feel great. So....
The character could have a false perspective on reality. You could have two physical layers on the screen to work with. The top layer is the character's perspective and underneath is reality (your current art).
I think it would look really cool... there could be a small "sphere" around the character that shows a section of the top layer (his perspective).
It could be as simple as being greyscale, void of people, alternative art styles etc... You could get pretty creative.

I think this could add a bit more of a gameplay element to it. The player will want to explore every part of the screen to see how the character sees it.

This is kinda of the concept of something we are implementing called negative presence. A sphere appears around the character, inside the sphere everything is muted and a static plays against it, things almost glitch. This presence occurs when the main character is around somebody they do not like.

Thanks for the comments and crit's guys!

[Indie4Fun]

I tried the game. I've totally loved the feeling. The colours are awesome.

I can talk with the boss with the mouse but not with the 'e' button. Is that normal?

[TonyNowak]

Did you click on him (the only things that still use E are interactions to enter/exit levels)? That build isn't technically supposed to be available as the office isn't populating with NPC's and things to do as of yet.

When my computer did crash I lost the most recent version (a bit ahead of the build). I'd had a few NPC's from the bus in the office working, as well as room transitions, and a few bug fixes including working collision. While I can't work on the game for awhile, Jeremy is coming through with some new sound effects for things like the bus, vending machine in the office, etc.

[Indie4Fun]

Yes, I clicked on him.

I totally sorry about your data loss!

We tried the prototype in my home together with some friends and we all agreed that the graphics looked great (the colors are awesome).

I hope to listen more news soon from you

[TonyNowak]

Hey guys! Miss us? Finally got a PC (much nicer than the last) situated through the kindness of the Unity dev community and we're here to finish up TIE. Upon starting the project I hadn't looked at in nearly a year I was initially intimidated, especially since I hadn't been doing any game dev of any type, I didn't recognize a whole lot off the top of my head and it was definitely back to seeing what make the project tick, not to mention updated tools and the like, but we are finally ready to announce our game plan!

In a way we are restarting the project, but not from scratch. We are salvaging our art and most of the code, but we found it might be easier to continue development if the game worked start to finish before injecting all of our art assets and interactions. We plan on a functional build that would allow the player to go from the first day of the week too the last, completing the game, then going back, adding our interactions, new writing, and last but not least our art, which will also be receiving a face-lift as well as some minor tweaking to things like animations (and in addition more of them) audio, and lighting.  

We are thrilled to be working on this again and we would love to have you follow our progress, there will be much more soon...

For now, I've been writing something that has been needed and more or less left incomplete throughout the course of development and that is the 'day manager'. This manager will keep track of the scenes mashed into a day(s), and will hold variables that change over the course of a day(s) to open up options for more game-play related changes as you progress through the week, and I'm happy to report that it is working just fine. We've also been revamping and editing the audio a tad as well, and fixing (again) many of the bugs that plagued the original project. We can't wait to share our progress with you.

[Voltz.Supreme]

Should be You're on time...
Looking forward to seeing more of this!

[oldblood]

Interesting topic and devlog. Will be following. Best of luck on the refactor.

[TonyNowak]

So we've been busy porting scripts to Unity's 2D systems and recreating the animations used in the game as well as creating a few new ones, but I figured I would share a few thing's we've done to polish the games look a bit.

First of all, I've re-created the lighting system I used. Since this is a 2D game, we have no need for actual realtime light sources, so instead I used additive sprite images of lights, soft cones to sharp flares. I've since made these sprites at a higher resolution for a smoother lit look:



The new sprites animate as well, from opacity changes to subtle scale changes as the light shines. You'll also notice that the edges of the screen are blurred out as well, this is another new effect we've added (as per pro screen effects being available). It compliments the scenes nicely and draw's the player's attention to the center of the screen:



New animations have been added too the player controller, including new idle animations (standing too long with the suit on will prompt the TIE man to adjust his tie, standing too long in your undies will prompt him to scratch his side). I'll have new animation's implemented for NPC's as well. That's all I have to share with you for now that's tangible, but we're working hard on pushing out a fully functional build sometime soon here, where you can see all of these effects and more in action.

[tinyDino]

I love how you achieve such openness with your outdoor backgrounds while also creating small claustrophobic/contained areas indoors. I think it works perfectly for the theme your going for. I'll definitely be keeping up with this one!

[TonyNowak]

Well, I've dabbled with Unity2D, and I'm not particularly thrilled with it. In my personal opinion it lacks the functionality and ease of use that traditional 2D software has, it just didn't click with me for some reason. Instead, I've gotten my hands on a written solution that is working beautifully so far.



A little gif of the game so far with some animations implemented, the new project is working a lot better than the old one and is also more stable from a performance standpoint. Another decision I've decided to make is to port the games code from JS to C# (which is completely foreign to me) but so far things are going pretty well, I've had a pretty good amount of help making the transition, so a big shout out to the Unity Bar & Grill chat group. One thing that's been clear to us is that the game lacks the basic functionality of a narrative centered game. You can't zoom the camera, and you can't move the camera around. We want too take a more narrative based approach with the controls, you can now zoom the camera in and out, and we also want to make it so you can scroll left/right with the mouse if it has left an edge of the screen. Middle mouse button snaps the camera settings back to their defaults. Script is basic at the moment but here's another gif:



Sun shafts are a tad weird due to them not having a caster in that gif for some odd reason. However, this is what we have tos share for the time being, more soon!

[Bombini]

Looks fantastic!

[blekdar]

I've been loosely following this project for quite a while. Gotta say, the minimal art direction is fantastic. Shares a similar elegance that Superbrothers have, and it's just so damn pleasant to look at. It's a very good compliment to the subject matter.

Looking forward to playing it.