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[mgrilec2]

Nice style you got! I never liked Adobe's development tools, but looks like Click Fusion helps you alot with the interface. I love it!

[Jay Tholen]

I got search working! As simple as it may sound, wrangling the program to return subdirectory data from searches is a pain in the butt.

Nice style you got! I never liked Adobe's development tools, but looks like Click Fusion helps you alot with the interface. I love it!

Thanks! I'm not sure Fusion helps much though; half of my time is spent re-writing how the interface works because the program's logic and my own are often at odds. I am getting the hang of it though. I'm also very loyal to Clickteam products just because I like them as a company.

[ActualDog]

Super digging this! Concept and style are great. Subscribing so that no future updates will escape my gaze.

[Jay Tholen]

Thanks!

So I got search working. Going to use it for some like Her Story-ish worldbuilding I think:




Also got the in-game email running! Still need to add email attachments and links and stuff. This is how you'll be given assignments:



And finally, renamed the OS to HypnOS at the recommendation of someone on Twitter because that just sounds better dadgummit:

[Mr. Yes]

This is really really cool and I like that this thing of making games with desktop gui interfaces is happening more for whatever reason. This looks particularly impressive so far.

[Jay Tholen]

Thanks. I'm loving it too. It is a bit easy to get carried away with unnecessary elements. I'm tempted to add way more functionality than would be good for the game. The core experience is actually the bit with the cars.

Today I replaced the number randomizer in the generative music engine with a better one. Fusion's default randomization isn't random enough, so you'd have duplicate musical phrases that'd just sound awkward. Much nicer sounding now.

Also fixed up the email more and added notifications:


Here's a video preview:

[Jay Tholen]

This has been done since last week but I forgot to gif it up. It's the zone warper, which is essentially the worldmap for this game. You use it to access the Hypnospace Highway after doing your investigative work in the OS and follow/bust bad dudes.




Also added a barebones Garage for your cruiser upgrades. No special graphics yet because we still need to test the weapons and abilities and see what works best:

[Jay Tholen]

Howdy folks. Worked on a few big things this last week.

First up is the Investigation Tool. Use this to scan any web content (chat room, webpage, etc) you see as potentially law-breaking and report it to Hypnospace HQ. If a law violation is detected, the user's data will be added to the "Scumbag Tracker" - which I haven't fully implemented yet. That will list your monetary reward for apprehending them, and information on what law(s) the citizen has broken.

The tool itself:


The tool in action, scanning data on a webpage:




The second big thing I've been working on is the in-game chat. Chat is only accessible on the Hypnospace Highway itself. It currently loads user data, their car appearance, and creates dialogue that is partially scripted and partially randomized. I haven't programmed the AI yet, but the citizens in chat will eventually react to what you do on the highway (bust an outlaw, run people off the road, etc etc) as well as discuss current events in the gameworld and provide hints regarding some of the bigger fish outlaws. If they misbehave, you can use the Investigation Tool in the chat as well.

The car colors are suuuper temporary, just for testing. And the names, of course.

[PetterBergmar]

This is, in all its lo-fi-ness, is starting to look very rich and cool!

[RealityShifter]

This is the most Cyberpunk thing I've seen in a long long time.

[jctwood]

The whole concept of users being represented by cars is perfectly cyber punk. Now I want this to be a real OS because it looks so good!

[Jay Tholen]

Thanks y'all! I'm definitely veering into a Dystopian/Utopian near-future with the world for this. It's set in a more corporatized take on America where things are still kind-of-okay but people are overworked and the system is possibly on the verge of some kind of collapse. I want the people to be the focus though, so anything learned about the setting will be relegated to details you'll pick up as you investigate the people in Hypnospace.

I've just slapped up a quick webpage here: http://www.hypnospace.net/
PLEASE sign up for the newsletter. I won't send too many emails. Promise.



Also, I did some logo stuff:

This original logo was whipped up in about 30 minutes and is pretty bad design-wise. I like the colors, but there are too many of them. It looks especially bad over a light background. It also has an ill defined shape, and there's little compositional balance. The symbol at the bottom is present throughout the game,with this version being ripped from directly from the game's splash screen.



Spent a little time reading up on logos and whipped up the following design:



Dark version with the same palette, though the colors are shifted a step lighter to accommodate a dark background:



The HYPNOSPACE font remained (though it was ensmallened a bit here) because it was used in the first Hypnospace game (here), and the OUTLAW was changed to feel more wild. The spacing was adjusted so that the shape sort-of evokes a Superman 'S' diamond vibe. The symbol at the bottom was reduced to its basic elements and no longer dominates the logo.

The palette now consists only of colors that are repeated in the game itself. Gold, fuchsia, and powder blue appear consistently throughout. The shape is also easily recognizable with detail removed:



A vectorized version of the logo would work just as well as the pixelly one. It could still change, but I think this one is gonna stick. I'll be animating it in a future post.

[rj]

this is a beautiful thing

[Jay Tholen]

Thanks!

Here's a more polished version of the chat.


Clicking a car Highlights their posts in the chat, signified by that trippy dippy eyeball.


You may now change zones from the chat screen, as exiting to change zones was a chore:


If you investigate a post for a violation, moving the cursor around fast makes it load more quickly. I like the idea of playing with weird theories people come up with about computers:


I'll be working on a few of the actual websites next. Looking into options for getting some really bad 3D pre-rendered animated gifs made. I'm going to color reduce them to the game's palette, so they fit aesthetically. I'll also make 2D clipart.

[jctwood]

Excited to begin seeing the 2D clipart. The exploration of cyber-myth that is coming about in Hypnospace is very intriguing. I would love to see some terrible catastrophe if you delete the desktop or 'internet'.

[Oats]

this looks really interesting, following!

[Jay Tholen]

Thanks guys. Here's a new gif. Renamed GothFaerie because I want to shy away from references to real subscultures. People disagree on the specifics of what 'goth' or 'emo' or '____-wave' entails and it'd be a big distraction.

[bacon]

A E S T H E T I C

I think it would be fun if you had a live board of people currently playing that acted like a listserv for the currently "playing" Enforcers that where they can discuss potential threats. Also the ability to have a "live" version where people can build their own pages as well as be potential enforcers. Feature creep, but just dreaming over here...

[rj]

just realized this kinda reminds me of Cueclub, which had a weird pseudonet vibe too

[xil]

Looks awesome mate! Signing up to the email list now!