Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

 
Advanced search

1411283 Posts in 69325 Topics- by 58380 Members - Latest Member: bob1029

March 29, 2024, 01:53:13 AM

Need hosting? Check out Digital Ocean
(more details in this thread)
TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsA Case of Distrust
Pages: 1 ... 3 4 [5] 6 7 8
Print
Author Topic: A Case of Distrust  (Read 29941 times)
TheWanderingBen
Level 1
*


Making Games Around the Globe


View Profile WWW
« Reply #80 on: January 19, 2017, 01:38:26 PM »

Hey I just checked out the demo, very cool! Here's my feedback, I hope hidden within it is a gem.  Wizard

* Very beginning black screened before the title screen for a long time, I was about to close it thinking it was broken, maybe add a small animation throbber there or static text that says "Loading...".
* I found the text continuation a little jarring as instead of going to the next word it looks like you show the beginning of the sentence of the last word you used. Maybe just always end a page on the same sentence.
* I wish the text when hovering over spatial objects in the apartment appeared somewhat relative to the objects position. This would keep my eye close to the object I'm inspecting and keep me 'in' the world a bit. The text statically in the top left corner made me feel like I was reading more than finding clues.
* Grammar & spelling problem? I read this in the demo. "What has you convinced sombody gave him the big one"
* I was confused a bit about the HOME category in the notes/evidence. I thought for a bit maybe it was the home of the butler or Stable, I eventually got it. I just needed a little more clarity, one way would be if I had discovered these clues myself at home before going to Stables house, but this might be overkill. Maybe just change the text from "HOME" to "MY HOME".

I was unsettled for a bit not knowing the mechanic of the game early. Once I realized the 'game' was to contradict the butlers statement with evidence it became fun, before I just started clicking and reading things and my interest started to wane. HOWEVER, it was super satisfying once I organically figured that out. Also, it might be nice to not always know exactly what the mechanic is per level, as you could decide to design levels to be solved multiple ways. So what I'm trying to say is the difficulty of this level may be to high for a first play session, or it may be just right. It will be important to test the game out and see if people get too frustrated or just frustrated enough to not quit and figure it out. Once they figure out the first level I imagine there confidence will be high enough to take on the next.

Thanks for the demo! Good luck have fun!  Beer!

Thanks for playing and for the feedback! I'm in the process of moving homes, so I'm sorry I didn't reply to this sooner!

The text animation system was especially problematic for me, as well. So I've changed completely for the current game Smiley Your suggestion for the text hovering over every object is interesting! I might have to play around and see if there's a simple way to integrate that into my current system.

I agree with the spelling and "MY HOME" problems -- luckily, that story was only for the demo, so the final game has nothing to do with it at all.

Thanks again for the time you spent! I'm excited to show you more progress and the final release!
Logged

thomf00
Level 0
***



View Profile WWW
« Reply #81 on: January 20, 2017, 10:49:24 AM »

Awesome! You're welcome.
Logged

Twitter @thomasuster
TonyManfredonia
Level 6
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #82 on: January 20, 2017, 11:31:07 AM »

I hope your move is going okay!

Games can wait, especially when your home is at stake Smiley
Logged

Composer | Orchestrator
Website
Twitter

Soundtracks include:
Kharon's Crypt
Call of Saregnar
TheWanderingBen
Level 1
*


Making Games Around the Globe


View Profile WWW
« Reply #83 on: January 24, 2017, 08:40:08 AM »

I hope your move is going okay!

Games can wait, especially when your home is at stake Smiley

Ho boy, Comcast can go suck an egg! At least the move is mostly complete, but I'm working from coffee shops until tomorrow since they're not feeding that sweet sweet internet juice to my home until tomorrow afternoon.

Ah well, I worked from cafes all of last year, another couple days won't hurt either. Thanks for the love!
Logged

TheWanderingBen
Level 1
*


Making Games Around the Globe


View Profile WWW
« Reply #84 on: January 25, 2017, 09:43:00 AM »

MAKING AN ENTRANCE (PART 1: THE WRITING)

I enjoyed the Crafting the Map Screen feature because it gave a thorough look at making the game: a combination of art, design, and code required for even a simple feature. Similarly, my game’s intro sequence needs art, design, and code. But it also has one more element: writing. I’ll break down each of these aspects in their own posts.

For this first part, I want to share the core idea behind my intro scene, and thus its writing. I’ll outline the purpose of an introduction, tell you where I got my inspiration, and detail my own sequence. Fair warning: the third section of this post contains minor story spoilers! (but, it’s only for the first couple minutes of the game, so I think we’re okay!)

A Proper Introduction

Before writing an introduction, we need to know our aim. If we start any story with its climax, we haven’t yet created enough weight to justify any emotional attachment. But if the intro is slow-paced, players might quickly lose interest. The introduction must present themes and foreshadow the rest of the story, while hooking an audience to want to know more. It’s the boulder chase scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the the menacing dolly shot in A Clockwork Orange.

Many mysteries show the crime itself in the introduction (Columbo, Phoenix Wright, etc.) — this captivates their audience, foreshadows future conflict, and (usually) doesn’t involve the detectives themselves (so it follows that the detectives are still unaware of the crime).



It’s a great approach, but it doesn’t work for my game. I don’t want my player knowing the culprit before the detective does. It would create dissonance in the player's relationship with the detective, when instead I want my player to get lost in the world and think of the detective as an avatar for themselves. I need another type of introduction to achieve this goal.

Feline Inspired

I took a page from Robert Altman’s 1973 rendition of Raymond Chandler’s book The Long Goodbye. At the start of the film, we see Philip Marlowe argue with his cat. Marlowe complains about the cat aloud, to himself, and talks to it as though it were human. It’s a comic scene, displaying the eccentric side of Marlowe. But it also starts a theme that’s carried throughout the film: there are few people with such an intimate relationship to Marlowe as that cat. He can’t connect with anybody. It’s as if he’s completely out of his time — a hardboiled character, with car and suit to match, more at ease in a 1920s novel than in a sunny LA film.

Altman juxtaposes this light-hearted cat sequence by splicing shots of a mysterious figure. This second character has blood on his face and looks tense (with music to match) — implying perhaps a murder? Again, foreshadowing, and engaging the audience from the beginning.



Do It Yourself (Spoilers Ahead!)

My main character is a similar detective out of her element (a woman private eye in the 1920s), and few of her relationships have meaningful depth. I love the cat metaphor, so I’m stealing it whole cloth! I show a stray cat in her apartment, looking for food, with whom she talks aloud.

Unlike a film, however, I want my players to interact with the intro. Using drastic cuts would only complicate the scene for my players, who have to learn their interactions while still understanding the story. Instead, I decided to add tension to the cat conversation itself.

My players talk with the cat in the introduction, selecting conversation options like they will in the rest of the game. But I don't show the cat right away -- thus my players don't immediately know they're talking with a cat! The conversation is tense and dramatic — I even imply that a knife fight might break out! Until, the talk ends abruptly and I reveal the cat for what it is. The scene creates tension, adds comic relief, establishes themes for the rest of the game, and foreshadows later altercations.

Most importantly, it hooks my players for the longer journey ahead!



I hope you enjoyed this breakdown! As always, I feel I raced through these explanations — but I’m already at several hundred words, so I think I should stop. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!



First image from Murder by the Book (1971)
Second image from The Long Goodbye (1973)
« Last Edit: March 22, 2017, 07:49:40 AM by TheWanderingBen » Logged

nathy after dark
Level 8
***


Open Sourceress


View Profile WWW
« Reply #85 on: January 25, 2017, 10:24:13 AM »

That intro sounds phenomenal. Hand Money Left
Logged

TheWanderingBen
Level 1
*


Making Games Around the Globe


View Profile WWW
« Reply #86 on: March 22, 2017, 08:00:41 AM »

Woah, it's been a month two months since my last update here! I'm still lurking around, posting on only a few of the games that I'm tracking. And, of course, work's still progressing. I actually posted Part 2 - The Design in my Making an Entrance series a couple of weeks ago on my website, but its content was geared to non-developers, going over basics of tutorialization and the importance of flow.

For posterity, I'll post it now, and then I'll post Part 3 - The Visuals, which I just wrote.

This week's going to be big for my game's promotion. Expect more updates soon, and more frequent posting moving forward!



MAKING AN ENTRANCE (PART 2: THE DESIGN)

Creating an intro sequence needs writing, design, art, and code. A few weeks ago I outlined the importance of setting mood, foreshadowing themes, and hooking players with the writing. I brushed over the game design, but that’s equally vital to a good player experience.

Teach Me!

There are similarities between introductions in books, plays, films, and games — but games have an additional hurdle: interaction. Other media requires simple, everyday skills: a level of reading literacy, or basic sight and sound senses. There are exceptions to this, of course, and many advances have been made in accessibility across the media spectrum, but for an independent playwright, thinking about audience cognizance isn’t her first priority.

I want players to get lost in my game — to think of actions and choices rather than controls. This eventually leads to players conflating the main character’s actions with their own — i.e.: “I need to jump here!”, rather than “I need to press A to have Mario jump here!” This mental shift is what makes games unique. It’s that responsibility placed on your own actions — timing a jump in Super Mario Bros., or choosing which character to save in The Walking Dead. It’s never a permanent state (no player walks away from the game thinking they’re actually Mario) but even that temporary projection can lead to heightened emotions, like anger or joy, and even emotional states impossible for other media, like guilt or remorse.

If I want my players in that state as soon as possible, I need to teach the controls quickly — in the introduction.

But Get Out of My Way!

Some games have complex interactions — evolving an empire across centuries, or creating and maintaining a city and its infrastructure. These games require more explanation of their controls, and usually those explanations are large pop-ups full of text. While I understand the necessity of this approach, I don’t like it. Taking players away from the experience breaks any sense of flow. It reminds them they’re playing a game. It pulls them further from the state we want them in.

There have been many analyses of the introduction to Super Mario Bros. — how it teaches players to jump, attack, collect coins, and use power-ups, without any direct communication from the designer to the player. Similarly, the original Halo is praised for actually changing its controls based on how players interact with its introduction. These games succeed because they start the immersion immediately and don’t break it. Players learn while in the world.

My game has fairly simple interactions. I bet I can do the same.

How Are You Doing It?

Players in my game read a passage of story, then click options to progress. These options have three types:

  • Continue, where players have no choice, but must click a button to see a new passage
  • Descriptive, which simply add detail but don’t continue the story
  • Choice, where players need to make a decision that might branch the story

Players quickly understand the Continue option, but the difference between Descriptive and Choice options has been more difficult to communicate. Players had always recognized the visual distinction, but they remained unsure of the gameplay difference (“Oh I didn’t pick [the Descriptive Option] because I thought it would advance the story”). I was worried I might need a pop-up to explain the difference, but, with testing, a more elegant solution emerged: if players first encounter options in a certain order, they understand the difference for the remainder of the game.

I needed to tweak the script for my introduction, but not by much. Now, the first three passages of my game progress like so:

  • A passage with only a Continue option
  • A passage with two Descriptive options and a Continue option
  • A passage with two Choice options

The first passage is simple. It has only a Continue option that players find and click without difficulty.

On the second passage, players recognize the Continue button, but are intrigued by the Descriptive options. They select one of them, which shows them a bit more text. But then they see that the second Descriptive option is still available, and they select that as well. They understand that choosing the first option still allowed them to select the second option. Then they click the Continue option to progress the story.

Upon seeing the third passage, they don’t see a Continue option, but two new options that look different and are at odds with one another (“Do Action” or “Don’t Do Action”). They select one option and the other option disappears. Players understand that they’ve just made a choice.

Though the lesson was subtle, it sticks around for the rest of the game: Descriptive options have no consequence, but Choice options are permanent decisions. It perfectly captures my interactions without explicit communication through pop-ups. It took some iteration, but it works well now, teaching the players while immersing them inside the world.


« Last Edit: March 22, 2017, 08:21:56 AM by TheWanderingBen » Logged

TheWanderingBen
Level 1
*


Making Games Around the Globe


View Profile WWW
« Reply #87 on: March 22, 2017, 08:07:09 AM »

MAKING AN ENTRANCE (PART 3: THE VISUALS)

Much like the other elements of the introduction, the visual style has to grab players. Sure, they’re coming to the game after being exposed to screenshots or trailers, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stick around if they don’t get hooked. The art needs to have a spark that previews the best parts of rest of the game.

Inspiration

For The Ben Wander Murder Collection, that starts with Saul Bass. When researching my introduction, his Art of the Title page is a fantastic resource, giving me insights to the kinematics of his work. But I’m drawing as much from his static pieces as I am from his credit sequences — posters, logos, etc. And I think its important to get inside his head — what was he thinking, and can I recreate that in my own work?


Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design is an invaluable asset — a special gift from two generous and supportive people. The book not only collects his well-known work, but also dissects his process, showing in-progress pieces — how he thought of them, and why he eventually chose another direction. It even has rejected concepts — perhaps marketers or directors couldn’t see value, but he did. Poring over his life’s story has been a worthwhile exercise, and has undoubtedly improved the art in the whole game.

Bass is a huge inspiration for my style, but not the only one. Olly Moss’ silhouettes are also important, as are Paul Rand’s colours. I’d love all three to make an appearance in the introduction.

Requirements

All of this has to be tied back to the story and the design. I don’t want to change my script, and the gameplay is finally understandable without an obvious tutorial. I have to play within the constraints those bring: the sequence must be interactive; it needs to build suspense and mystery before alleviating those feelings; and it must end with a cat.

The best way to surprise my players is to start abstract. If I only draw a simple shape, players can’t understand its meaning until I explain it. The story can imply one representation, only to change its stance and pull the rug from under the player.

Thankfully, Saul Bass loved mischievous, abstract animations. They fit perfectly with my overall art style, and with the writing and the design of the introduction.

Implementation

A lot of the transitions in my game are actually rendered polygonally in Blender. I’m certain I could achieve similar goals using a purely 2D solution, but I’m familiar with the animation workflow in 3D programs (thanks to messing with bootleg versions of Maya in my teenage years — who knew that would pay off now?!). This implementation also allows for easy changes to basic animation elements (length, frame rate, etc).

As an example, take the Roll Down Dots animation that starts my intro. Keeping with the abstract theme, I wanted the dots to graciously slide into place. I make them “roll down” by attaching a simple subdivided rectangular model to a spiral curve, carefully texturing the model with small dots, key-framing an animation of the model rolling over the spiral, rendering that animation as a series of images, and then adding those images on my GUI layer in Unity. That was a jargon-heavy sentence, so please ask if you have any detailed implementation questions, but here are some key steps of the process to help you understand:


I just drew simple circles for the cat’s eyes — still in the Bass style — which keeps them mysterious: they could be human eyes, you won’t know. A knife also makes an appearance, and showing just the knife makes the situation more tense while giving room to wiggle a playful ending to the exchange.

And, of course, the final shot is the cat silhouette fading in.

When Can I See It?

There are still a few edits I want to make to the visuals in the introduction, so I’d rather not show it to you right now. Instead, I’ll let you play it upon release, and you can refer back to this post and see if it hits all of my goals!
« Last Edit: March 22, 2017, 08:14:09 AM by TheWanderingBen » Logged

TonyManfredonia
Level 6
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #88 on: March 24, 2017, 05:03:39 AM »

Ben, I am utterly impressed!

You're putting so much thought into this, and it's really showing.

There's plenty of success ahead for you Smiley
Logged

Composer | Orchestrator
Website
Twitter

Soundtracks include:
Kharon's Crypt
Call of Saregnar
TheWanderingBen
Level 1
*


Making Games Around the Globe


View Profile WWW
« Reply #89 on: April 05, 2017, 02:36:13 PM »

MAKING AN ENTRANCE (PART 4: THE IMPLEMENTATION)

Unlike other elements of my introduction, the implementation doesn’t care about hooking players into the game, or layering future themes, or even being pretty. It just needs to work. When I say “implementation”, I’m referring to what drives how players interact with the game — what runs the game in the background? I could use the word “code” instead of “implementation”, but that would be over-simplifying. Writing the story in Twine has as much to do with how everything comes together as my C# code does.

As much as this post is part of my Making an Entrance series, its content isn’t specific to the introduction. Instead what I’m about to detail is entirely how my game works, from start to finish. Be warned, this gets a bit technical. But feel free to ask any lingering questions you may have after reading this!

A Tale in Twine

Twine is a computer program used to write branching narratives. It uses chunks of text (“Passages”) linked together by player choices. For example, if I have one Passage that asks the player “Do you want to kill him?”, I can give the player a “Yes” choice and a “No” choice. The “Yes” choice leads to a new Passage, and the “No” choice leads to another, completely different, new Passage. It’s a visual, graph-based system, so it might be easier to understand if you look at the first image below.


I’ve written the whole of my game’s story in Twine. That means you can play the game, in its entirety, with Twine’s “Test Play” feature. (For you engineers out there, this amounts to Twine being the Model in Model-View-Controller lingo.) I then export that Twine story to an easy-to-read format (called “Twee”) and use a plugin called UnityTwine to finally get it into Unity — which is where my C# code controls all the images, animations, and music that add to the overall experience.

Since Twine is just a graph of Passage nodes, my C# code simply looks at which Passage of the graph the player should be seeing, then displays its associated text. I use Twine’s Tags feature to determine what images (characters, locations, etc) my game should be showing. For example, if we’re in a Passage that is marked with the “Butler” Tag, my code will show the butler image. If we’re in a Passage that’s marked with the “Malone’s Apartment” Tag, my code will show Malone’s apartment. Collecting evidence, opening the notebook, and contradicting suspects are a bit more complicated — but essentially they use the same idea: everything is controlled in Twine, and my code in Unity just decides what to display.

Lovely Things

This comes with implicit rewards. As with any properly-divided MVC system, it means my story is entirely independent of my visuals and my interface. I can change the art style, the type of interaction (touch screen?), or even change from Unity to Unreal to any other engine, and the story still works — I wouldn’t have to alter a thing in Twine.

It also means I can test the story while writing it in Twine. I can iterate much more quickly since I don’t need to export everything into Unity and run the game. Does this passage sound awkward when coming from this other passage? I don’t know, let’s try it! This makes any Save/Load system easier to write, as I can just save what passages my player has seen, and run through them one-by-one when they load a game.

It also means I can write tests that look only at the Twine output. I don’t have to rely on Unity, just run though the Twine story and let me know if there are errors. Wonderful!

Terrifying Messes

Of course there are downsides. And in this case, unfortunately many. They’re all related to the fact that Twine was created for web-based choose-your-own-adventure narratives.

Thus, Twine knows nothing about important game state — i.e.: where is the player? which character is talking? etc. Essentially, I’ve had to create my own scripting language inside Twine — (ab)using its Tags, Links, and Display systems — for my code to understand what screen to show or what music should be playing. But this is bad, because Twine then can’t check for errors — if I misspell a Tag, or try to Display a Passage that doesn’t exist, Twine has no idea that I’m doing anything wrong. I have to write a lot of unit tests to cover these cases or else find many bugs inside the story.


Twine also doesn’t understand complex concepts like “always show the notebook button when the player is engaged in conversation”. In order to get the benefits of playing the entire game in Twine, I need to manually check that there is a “notebook” link inside every Passage where the player is conversing. Of course, this is dangerous for the same reason mentioned above: if I miss one notebook link inside a conversation passage, Twine gives me no warning — the game is just quietly broken.

And while Twine does offer support for returning to passages multiple times (including conditional statements and times-visited counters), it’s really not meant for a game where a player searches for evidence in a room. Or, even worse, where a player tries to contradict a suspect with the evidence she’s collected in that room. This all leads to an insane amount of graph spaghetti, as demonstrated above. Again, annoying, and easy to make mistakes with.

A Review

With these downsides (and more) would I use Twine again for this type of story? First I’d take a closer look at renpy and see if I could port that into Unity. And inkle has made ink, their internal writing tool, completely open source — so I’d give that a go too. But, in the end, my game is fairly specific. With the amount of evidence, the number of contradictions, the variety of locations and characters, it quickly gets complicated for any system to handle. Twine isn’t ideal, but I’m sure I’d find challenges with every piece of software. While Twine can be dangerous, it’s also flexible enough for me to implement this entire game, so I’m still happy with it!



This marks the end of my Making an Entrance series. I’ve compiled all the posts onto this page. It’s been fun for me to write the series and I’m sure it will be useful in a post-mortem capacity. I hope you’ve enjoyed it too! If you have any questions, about this post or any of the others, please don’t hesitate to ask.

The game is coming together quickly now. I’m excited to share much more with you in the coming weeks!
Logged

TheWanderingBen
Level 1
*


Making Games Around the Globe


View Profile WWW
« Reply #90 on: April 05, 2017, 02:38:12 PM »

Ben, I am utterly impressed!

You're putting so much thought into this, and it's really showing.

There's plenty of success ahead for you Smiley

Hey I missed this earlier! Thanks for reading, Tony Smiley

Big updates soon™!
Logged

nathy after dark
Level 8
***


Open Sourceress


View Profile WWW
« Reply #91 on: April 06, 2017, 07:43:01 PM »

I love the technical info!  Kiss Anything you can share about the Twine/Unity integration and MVC stuff is great. I'm interested in being able to quickly write and release more little visual novels at this point, so I should probably be exploring all the options aside from sticking with my custom engine from the last one.
Logged

wizered67
Level 1
*


View Profile
« Reply #92 on: April 07, 2017, 09:48:09 AM »

I also really appreciate the technical information! You do a great job highlighting the pros and cons of using Twine. In my spare time I've been working on making some sort of visual novel engine, mostly just for personal use, and hearing about what Twine does well and what it struggles with definitely helps!

Actually reading your post made me realize a difference between how I'm doing it and how you're using Twine. With Twine, it seems to some sort of state based approach. Each state encodes the text to show, what images to show, what music to play, etc. Then you just jump from one state to anothe when necessary. In contrast, I've been using an approach where commands are executed sequentially and previous commands apply until explicitly undone. For example, you have a Butler tag on every state that shows a butler, but I would just use a command to show a Butler once and then remove the Butler when he shouldn't be shown any more. I think RenPy does a similar approach if I'm not mistaken.

The approach you're using seems a little more tedious because you have to repeat tags every state that has them, but it also makes it much easier to reason about the state of the game! With my way, it can be hard to reason at any given point if the Butler is being shown, because it depends on which commands were executed before, which could be any if the game jumps from one part to another!

I would love to hear if you have any thoughts on which way is better! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the development and I would love to read more about your implementation!
« Last Edit: April 07, 2017, 10:19:17 AM by wizered67 » Logged
TheWanderingBen
Level 1
*


Making Games Around the Globe


View Profile WWW
« Reply #93 on: April 07, 2017, 01:35:32 PM »

I love the technical info!  Kiss Anything you can share about the Twine/Unity integration and MVC stuff is great. I'm interested in being able to quickly write and release more little visual novels at this point, so I should probably be exploring all the options aside from sticking with my custom engine from the last one.

Cool! What did you use for writing your script (was it imported from something, or syntax completely written from scratch)? I'd love to know more solutions -- as I said, mine isn't perfect, but works for what I'm doing now.

I've been using an approach where commands are executed sequentially and previous commands apply until explicitly undone... I would love to hear if you have any thoughts on which way is better! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the development and I would love to read more about your implementation!

Great job summarizing the approach I described! I actually simplified it a little bit in the post. In reality, I use multiple tags per passage in certain scenarios. For example, I'll have the first tag be "Conversation" so Unity knows to load the Conversation screen, and the second tag be "Butler" so Unity knows to load the Butler images/sounds.

You nailed the problem with it -- it's tedious and can be prone to error. The good news is that I can catch those errors with tests in Unity -- for any node with a Conversation tag, check that it also has a second tag, and that the second tag matches the name of a character in the game.

Although I've created a specific syntax, it's still useful in Twine itself. Twine assigns a random colour to a passage for each tag combination (e.g.: all my "Conversation Butler" passages look green and all my "Conversation Mobster" passages tags look red). So I can easily see where conversations start, change to a new character (interruptions), or transition to something completely different. I can also see if I've misspelled any tags, or if I accidentally missed tagging a passage (though I do run a check to see that all my passages have a valid tag, which takes care of most problems).

EDIT: Note that I'm using Twine 1.4. When I started this project, Twine 1.4 still had many features not yet present in Twine 2. I haven't looked into Twine 2 since, so maybe it's caught up. For sure the new UI is much nicer!
« Last Edit: April 07, 2017, 01:45:41 PM by TheWanderingBen » Logged

nathy after dark
Level 8
***


Open Sourceress


View Profile WWW
« Reply #94 on: April 07, 2017, 05:18:48 PM »

Quote from: TheWanderingBen
Cool! What did you use for writing your script (was it imported from something, or syntax completely written from scratch)? I'd love to know more solutions -- as I said, mine isn't perfect, but works for what I'm doing now.

My response got too big so I posted it in my own log so as not to confuse people.  Coffee

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=49046.msg1328034#msg1328034
Logged

TheWanderingBen
Level 1
*


Making Games Around the Globe


View Profile WWW
« Reply #95 on: April 11, 2017, 11:02:00 AM »

My response got too big so I posted it in my own log so as not to confuse people.  Coffee

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=49046.msg1328034#msg1328034

Nice man! Great details. I reread some of your older posts and realized you'd outlined the key-to-language system earlier as well. A good separation of writing, script, and code.

Your set up is fairly ideal for visual novelas, like The Whisperer in Darkness. If you stick with that style of game, you're probably best served by continuing to use the engine you have now. I'd only change if you wanted to do something with more obtuse logic, like decisions in the game that percolate (Twine is great at this!), or inventories of items with various uses (Twine is terrible at this!).
Logged

TheWanderingBen
Level 1
*


Making Games Around the Globe


View Profile WWW
« Reply #96 on: April 19, 2017, 10:33:50 AM »

Big updates! Sorry if this post gets too many exclamation points, but in all my years making games, I’ve never been this excited to announce one!

The game is now called A Case of Distrust. It has its own website. And, in order for it to be successful, I need to get it onto Steam, so please, if you have a valid Steam account, GO VOTE FOR IT! (here if you want it in browser, or here if you want to open the Steam client)

What’s changed since I last updated you? Quite a lot! I’ll get to most of that in future posts. But the biggest change: you’re no longer solving multiple mysteries — it is A (single) Case of Distrust. That sounds like content has been cut, but that’s not true. The game is still the same length, and very similar, but with various characters and plot points shifted around. I just realized the story itself was lacking any significant punch because no characters took long enough to develop — you’d solve a case, then mostly move on. Instead, all the characters and writing have been woven into the same mystery, giving more time for intrigue, a heightened climax, and greater satisfaction. The story is more tightly tied to my main character and the themes surrounding her. I can’t wait for you to play it!

I’ll post future, more lengthy updates soon. But for now, please vote on Greenlight if you’d like to see this game!



Also, some new media:

Trailer:




Promo:


Screenshots:




PLEASE VOTE ON GREENLIGHT!

« Last Edit: April 19, 2017, 06:43:33 PM by TheWanderingBen » Logged

wizered67
Level 1
*


View Profile
« Reply #97 on: April 19, 2017, 10:54:36 AM »

The trailer looks great and I'm definitely a fan of making it one big mystery! Voted yes on greenlight! Good luck and keep us posted!
Logged
foofter
Level 4
****


MAKE THAT GARDEN GROW


View Profile WWW
« Reply #98 on: April 19, 2017, 11:29:17 AM »

Nice style - I just voted yes. Good luck!  Gomez
Logged


@_monstergarden (game) and @williamzwood (me)
See Monster Garden progress here: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=56012.0
nathy after dark
Level 8
***


Open Sourceress


View Profile WWW
« Reply #99 on: April 19, 2017, 12:03:52 PM »

All aboard the hype train! Coffee
Logged

Pages: 1 ... 3 4 [5] 6 7 8
Print
Jump to:  

Theme orange-lt created by panic