EDIT 03/27/2016: DOWNLOAD THE BETA HERE Edit 03/27/2016 21:58: Updated to Version 1.0.2 Edit 03/27/2016 23:02 Updated to Version 1.0.9 Edit 03/28/2016 12:42 Updated to Version 1.0.16 Edit 04/15/2016 19:40 Updated to Version 1.1 (please refer to Known Issues post on page 7) Edit 08/02/2017 23:35 Updated to Version 1.1.24 So I'm writing a computer game for a class this semester. The class in question is "Serious Video Games - Intersections of Image / Play / Virtuality". I... I'm pretty much bonkers for trying this, even if I'm trying to make the highly condensed version first and expanding later. This thread is sort of... A place for me to collect, to remind myself to finish this, to show off what I've already finished and what I'm working on, and for interested people (you!) to ask questions, and comment. => What's it about? It's about a person who is searching for their lost twin. It's about grief. It's about moving on. It's about making decisions. It's about growing up. It's about a child facing down creatures that greater and holier men have fallen against. (The Dryads do not look kindly on those who would make their worshippers stop worshipping them) It's me trying to make a story as dense as possible on at least three different levels. (And trying to finish something for once) => That's... vague. What's the base story? The base story is set in an Alternate History version of Earth, south-west Germany ("Wotanheim", or, more specifically, in spitting distance of the Loreley), near the end of the 19th century. There's a definite steampunk aesthetic, for a story that plays in a forest. So there's our dimension, and then there's the Night Forest. The Night Forest bleeds over into our dimension at night, and various creatures from it can cross over. This goes both ways, and humans can cross over, too. Getting back is the problem. Now Wotanheim is a highly magical place, by virtue of the barrier between the dimensions being even thinner than usual, and the locals have adapted. How to deal with various creatures from the Night Forest is a thing taught to children. Now, sometimes people pass through who come from comparatively safer places. Some don't listen when the locals tell them to have a charm or two with you at all times. Others are just really, really unlucky. And so we have this pair of twins, and one of them gets abducted into the Night Forest from the steam train, and is never found again. Many years later, their twin returns to: Find out what happened Find some trace of their twin Deal with the creature responsible How this ends depends on the path the player takes. => Path? The game itself is separated into chapters modeled after the five stages of grief (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Despair, Acceptance), each of which will have different gameplay mechanics to reflect the stage. Each stage will have a Constructive and a Destructive Solution, and the ending you get depends on which stages you solve in which way. Yes, that's 32 endings, although they aren't completely individual. I'm not quite that mad yet. And it's 34 endings, because the completely constructive path branched into 3 different endings. The ending you get is determined by which chapter you get the destructive solution in first, with nuance added depending on the solutions after that. Spoiler: Denial You get one of 15 similar-with-minor-variations Lost Woods endings, or the very special ending in which you accept you fucked up, and follow the Rabbit down the hole. Spoiler: Anger You get killed by one of the NPCs who want to stop your rampage/take revenge/???? Spoiler: Bargaining You strike a deal with the devil. Hint: This is a Bad Idea. Spoiler: Despair (tw: suicide mention) You commit suicide. Spoiler: Acceptance You kill your lost and found again twin, because you refuse to recognize them. Spoiler: Special Endings When you have solved everything correctly, you get access to the Good Ending! Or one of them, at least. They might not be that good. Go to the final area with no preparation: The Dryad isn't happy to see you, and kills you. Congratulations, this is the Bad Ending of the Good Endings. Go to the final area with a specific item: You bribe the Dryad to teach you about the Night Forest. Congratulations, this is the True Ending, and reveals that the Protagonist will grow up to become the Vagrant, a character of mine who travels around the Night Forest as if they belonged there. Go back, follow the rails: You move on. Congratulations, this is the Secret Ending. => Different game mechanics? Yeah. I gotta say I'm still not sure what exactly I'm gonna do in the Denial chapter, for now I'm writing the other chapters and hope I'm getting some insight while I'm doing that. That chapter will serve as introduction for the recurring characters, controls, and the world. In Anger, you hunt various critters and creatures for assorted body parts so you can make charms. The trick will be to not kill everything, and thus get consumed by your anger. The Bargaining chapter will involve a huge trading chain, and depending on the way you trade (give what they need / give an overkill, for example), you end up with the constructive or the destructive ending. Despair will have you navigating through a maze while you're trying to keep your light radius from disappearing. And breaking the circles you're walking in. Acceptance will have a thing in which you need to converse with mirror images of yourself, showing which solutions you've reached, and your friendly rabbit familiar plushie giving... advice. I'll write more up after I've caught some sleep.
(I get to help on this awesome project a bit btw it's really really cool!!! I'm super duper excited to actually play it at some point!)
=> Dramatis Personae: Every story needs its characters. Or at least, this one does. Every chapter has one character who only appears in this chapter (and, if you reach the constructive solution, the epilogue), and then there is some supporting cast of general NPCs who appear in all chapters, but technically mainly come from the need to have more people to interact with for the trading chain in Bargaining. There is an exception to this, the Rabbit. The Protagonist, as they appear in all chapters, is obviously a minor character. (Heh.) The Protagonist: Has options to be a snarky bastard. I'd love to make huge dialogue trees and consequence branches, but that's going to be a stretch goal. The Protagonist is the player character, and they're looking for their twin who disappeared many years ago. The adults around them told them their twin is lost forever, but that's not going to stop them just yet. The Rabbit: Was your and your twin's guardian plushie. Alps, who most often come through into the real world to sit on chests and feed off nightmares and distress, are afraid of plushies, because their eyes never close. It has gears for eyes. It gives advice and acts as a tutorial character for the first bit of the game, and later reminds you of stuff if you get stuck, but you gotta be careful - it's a children's creature, and as such, quite naive, and might not pick up on some nuances. Or completely misunderstand a situation. This will be central in the Acceptance chapter, because you've got to accept what happened to your twin, and that things can't be as they were before, and that you need to grow up and make your own choices, and become independent from the Rabbit's advice. The Changeling: Is the first creature from the Night Forest you come across ingame. They were once human, but are quite happy here. It's very fun! And you're gonna love the people around here. They're chatty, friendly, and slightly loopy. And they claim to know you. They are the central NPC in the Denial chapter. The Alp: Is an old bastard. When Alps grow old, they grow more limbs, and the more limbs an Alp has, the older, stronger, and cleverer it is. This one here is mostly angry, because the steam trains don't pass by any more, so the steady supply of nourishment has disappeared, and now the strong of the Night Forest prey on the weak, and young Alps are the bottom of the sapient totem pole. And now you come along and prance around and nothing can hurt you! This means you have charms. Disgusting things made from bones and hide and teeth and feather and sinew and beads. But the Alp is an old bastard, and will take what it can get. It's the central NPC in the Anger chapter. The Salesperson: Wears a mask, and sells masks. Or rather, they trade them for materials and charms, because you look like you blew most of your pocket money on getting here, and materials and charms are another thing they sell. But mostly they sell masks. They are the central NPC in the Bargaining chapter. The Travellers: Are a pair of twins (they do not look alike, they don't even look to be the same species, but they claim to be twins) using the Night Forest as a connection between their respective home worlds so they can visit each other, because neither of them is willing to give up the life they built up in their home worlds to permanently live with their twin. When you meet them, the white-haired one is very distraught because the black-haired one has disappeared. The black-haired one is somewhere in the labyrinth, and trails sand behind her. They are the central characters of the Despair chapter. The Dryad: The Dryad loves humans very much. She collects things they created, ever since they started leaving offerings at her oak tree. (What came first, the Dryad, leading to people sensing the tree held power? Or the worship, creating the Dryad?) This Dryad fashions her form after humans, and wears offered fabric and clothing, some newer, some old and tattered and threadbare, and she collects humans. Back when the steam trains still passed by, Alps would bring her stolen children in trade for living a little bit longer, but now the steam trains have disappeared, the offerings have become as sparse as the Holy Men who tried to turn her humans from her, and she is not happy at all about that. -- Side characters -- Gobano Eluvei: Lives in a snowy dimension, although the presence of northern lights there would suggest it's also farther to one of the poles than Wotanheim is. Her definition of "fun" includes attempting to maim someone who isn't keeping alert in her presence, but she doesn't say no to overt challenges either. And she really needs new snow goggles, her old ones broke. If this keeps up, she will pluck out her eyeballs and use them to chill her coffee. Aurora Manala: Is Gobano's neighbour, and loves all things that are either white or green, and dressing up as people and messing with ther people. She is more or less bening, but on the other hand she doesn't really care for any people except Gobano and herself, and maybe the Changeling, and Gobano actively tries to stay on Aurora's good side. Loreley: The Loreley is an old river spirit, a daughter of the Rhine river, who inhabits the treacherous currents and has her dwarf familiars loot the ships that sink. The locals described her as alluring, but treacherous and callous. A more apt description would be "territorial". Reed: Reed is a... creature inhabiting a clear spring. Or at least, it's a clear spring in the Night Forest. In the real world, it's a meander. The Shrublings: Little shrub spirits that have formed a tightly-knit group, so bigger creatures can't prey on them so easily. At odds with the Alplings, who follow around and harass them for no reason. The Alplings: A group of young Alps that stick together so bigger creatures can't prey on them so easily. At odds with the Shrublings, who plant themselves in the way wherever they go, just to annoy the Alplings. Each of the characters is associated with either the Constructive or the Destructive path, as well as one of the chapters, thus there's always a pair of characters serving as foils for each other. Some of those are more obvious than others. => Imagery Hoh boy, imagery. I hope to assign at least two layers of meaning t just about everything that will crop up, depending on context, creating a convoluted web of stuff. I have no idea if I can manage that, we'll see. Each chapter intro will have a background picture depending on the path you have taken so far, starting with Pandora's Pyxis (unless I find a German variant of that story), picking up the recurring motif of change (you changed, the real world changed, the changeling changed, and you change between the worlds). One recurring image will be movement from bottom to top, symbolizing moving on. You start at the bottom of the screen, and travel northwards. Although backtracking and going off the rails will lead to some areas that weren't accessible earlier. Masks and veils will feature prominently, as you have to look behind facades to find the truth. The true/false, or constructive/destructive dichtonomy will also get picked up by the fragments of the story you unveil/remember, which change in accordance to which solution you reached for this chapter. There are in total 10 fragments, which I somehow managed to get to fit together regardless of how they're mixed and matched (althought two have very minor tweaks depending on the solution that came before). Also, the solution of the previous chapter determines the poem you can find in the chapter you're playing at the moment. Centipedes are heavily associated with the Dryad, and will only appear as long as you have a perfect constructive track record. (The centipedes eat magic, and are symbiotic with the Dryads. The Dryads feed their centipedes, and the centipedes keep the tree free from parasites.) Every chapter will have a different, slight colour tint, to hint at the light wavelength-based passage between the worlds, and also that it's a video game, so I think I'm going with black & white, red, blue, green, and then no tint for the epilogue. Each chapter, in addition to its central character, also has a central item that plays a greater role in it: Denial: A lantern which "saves" the wavelength you're locked onto when you cross into a different dimension. The reason why you get a Lost Woods ending when you mess up Denial: The lantern breaks, and you can't return. Anger: The Grimoire, which contains notes, information about the various creatures inhabiting the Night Forest, and how certain charms are crafted. Bargaining: An Axe. Don't give it to the wrong person. Despair: A torch. Acceptance: [none yet] Epilogue: A book filled with poems, and poems in general. The Dryad loves them. The collected poems carry over in a New Game+, and you need to collect all 11 poems to complete the poem book. Yes, that means that you have to fuck up every chapter at least once before you can reach the True Ending. (Which should probably get renamed "Book End") Tying into that, and the reason why the protagonist has no stated name or gender, is that the protagonist is just one of many who take that journey. One of many who search, and they might succeed, or they might fail. => Are you gonna do music? I'm going to try. @IvyLB is a blessing who has agreed to helping me with it, because I'm near tone deaf and absolutely suck at composing. I just fuck around on Mario Paint Composer. => What are you gonna use for actually making the game? RPG Maker XP, which I got on steam via humble bundle deal.
... I may or may not be trying to implement that you can finish the game without picking any dialogue, just gestures. It started from the main dialogue in chapter 2, just to see if I could, and because VM!Protag kept throwing nonverbal options at me. And Gobano is talking in rhymes. It's a bitch to write. I blame the shitposting rave. And while I still have some mashed-together fragments spread across three files, and need to finish the AHE tune, I've got something for you: https://soundcloud.com/user-853559648/snowy-fields @IvyLB you're a blessing.
Stuff done: Concept art for the Protagonist, the Changeling, the Dryad, Reed, Aurora, Gobano, the Rabbit Complete text & events for Chapters 0, 2, 4 Partial text & events for Chapters 1, 3 One tune: https://soundcloud.com/user-853559648/reverberating-river 26 endings plotted Stuff to do until the end of January: Finish text for Chapters 1, 3, 5, 6 Concept art for the Shrublings, the Alplings, the Alp, the Loreley, The Serpent, The Torchbearer (Torchbearer & Serpent = The Travelers) Concept art for locations Location maps on graph paper List of tiles I need Tiles Sprites Finish the last 8 endings Finish the poems Finish the chapter pictures Write the grimoire texts Stuff I've forgotten?? More music?? After that: Code at least chapters 0 and 1 for the presentation, if at all possible finish coding 3. Chapter 4 will be a complete and utter uncooked shotglass of vinegar to code because of the sand mechanic Finish the game and hand it out to people Spoiler: Poems? Poems. They're... tangential to the story, and mostly give some further information about the characters. Collecting all the poems from all the different solutions unlocks the true ending. Spoiler: Vagrant's song Choo-choo, choo-choo A train goes by the Forest Sleep through, sleep through, Mother says, and she knows best Tick-tock, tick-tock The clock goes round and round and round Wake up, wake up A child is nowhere to be found Pitter-patter, pitter-pat (missing line) Came to this and came to that It seems that this one's guard has failed Spoiler: Denizens of the Night Forest Night falls on weary bones Red-baked clay and warm hewn stones Slumber, mortals, slumber deep This open world is yours to keep But no sun falls between our leaves And still you dare to call us thieves When all we ever did and do Was take some very few of you Spoiler: The Snowfang Morning falls, beware Even our sun's bright glare Stinging wind and burning snow Will not grant protection now Corpses rise with dawn's first ray And the cold silence leads astray You can fell only what you see Here is no good place to be White on white, she's hidden well Countless saw they couldn't tell Pristine as snow and bleached as bone She hunts within these lands alone Go on and hope, child, if you dare You will light up just like a flare She will find you, dogs in tow And nothing can protect you now Spoiler: Borealis Up in the sky, way far on high There where only the white swans fly White as snow but they care for no young They carry the souls of the fallen unsung Watch out for the light, burning so bright Humming curtains in the cold winter night Knot the sheets and carry on up Climb and climb and don't ever stop Fray at your dreams, unravel the seams Reality is not as it seems Then travel high and travel far Look to the sky, and follow my star Might add passages of Keleheu's Tower and The Fall of Kiliskalea, which have some connection to the Torchbearer.
Hooray for being a week behind with writing! That's the bad news. The good news is, everything except the chapter mechanic and the related story framework for Chapter 1, the Rabbit's naive commentary, assorted poems, and very few assorted tidbits IS WRITTEN AND DONE (my hand hurt so much wednesday and thursday. so. much.) Which means that tomorrow I'm going to start doing preparatory work for spriting and making the tiles and maps. The battle plan for that is as follows: look up how big the gamesprites, talksprites, tiles, and maps are draw the maps on graph paper make a list of all the different graphics I need to make start drawing I should be able to finish steps 1-3 tomorrow. speaking of drawings and tomorrow, I'll scan the concept art I've made so far!
So! Turns out that the concept art I've got in my sketchbook doesn't scan well, or rather, that the pictures on the following page shine through. So for now, only the stuff I've got on loose sheets that doesn't look too sketchy:
Maps mapped on graph paper (except the labyrinth, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it) Figured out what's happening in Chapter 1, but haven't written it yet Made a list of sprites and tiles and overlays I need to make Realized that with all the cross-connecting of the maps I gotta do, I need to draw the base maps and interconnect them, and work from there. Since I planned on spending today catching up on sleep anyways, I'm still sorta in time even though I didn't manage to finish the maps yesterday. To do until January 31st: draw tiles draw sprites draw chapter images draw story fragments draw face/talkysprites finish writing chapter 1 finish and insert the rabbit's lines insert arc words create overlays Doable? ...maybe? hopefully?
STATUS UPDATE DONE: maps tilesets part of the face sprites most walksprites script (45 typed pages) i want the talksprites done before i do the events / talky stuff (which is 90% of the game) so i dont have to edit the events after that. here, have some art:
=> TFW you need to work but don't wanna because the day was a shit day Also I need to figure out how to work in the thingie when you speak to a character the first time after you've been using nonverbal options all the time, preferably without hogging a million switches. probably not possible under 2 switches per character and another batch of common events to cut down on in-event clutter. i wish i'd have strings to work with, but for that i need to dig into scripts. blrghhh. anyways, here's wonderwall more facesprites
My computer keeps crashing. This is a know problem with an unknown source. Due to this, I have adopted the habit of 'save often, save early', which I implement via, one event page done, close event manager, CTRL+S. Since the crashes are random, sometimes they happen during saving or playtesting. This kills files. As in, RPG Maker can't read them any more and throws error messages. The first crash of that sort only killed the Common Events file, which I hadn't worked on yet. The second one killed everything but the Map Files. Good thing I started making a separate and complete savecopy every time before I start working ::) Because that second crash would've killed a good month of work, and I would've cried.
Saturday was a rollercoaster of bughunting, bugfixing, and not knowing what caused the bugs. But entering all the stuff from Axescar and Dryad's Tree maps went a LOT faster than anticipated. What's left to to now is entering the Alplings, the Shrublings, the entirety of Reed's Pond, the Labyrinth, and the missing sprites, and then the combat and crafting system. Which I should be able to start next week, actually! A whole week before I initially thought I would. This is pretty damn great, because it means I have more time to let people betatest! In the meantime, have some battlesprites.
Here, have some more art while I do some other stuff I can do while not at my tower which has the game files and the software installed on it (namely, create the labyrinth)
so it turned out my tablet hadnt finished downloading rpgmaker yet so i couldnt work on the project on the train. welp. well, i had my graphics tablet with me so i arted instead. amongst others this battle background, which looks about 1600% better than the one up there.
THERE IS NOW A PLAYABLE BETA It has all the content but there's probably still bugs If you encounter bugs please tell me so I can step on them fix them! Get it >> HERE << Edit 03/27/2016 21:58: Updated to version 1.0.2 Edit 03/27/2016 23:04: Updated to version 1.0.9 Edit 03/28/2016 12:42: Updated to version 1.0.16
Windows only, I'm afraid, a limitation of the RPGMaker engine. Currently fixing a game crash due to missing files that the game shouldn't need but still wants. (I don't want to include the whole RTP because it'll make the file huge, but I also don't want ask y'all to download the RTP, because that'd suck)
My Bro and me are the best bug searchers we find all them bugs! as i told my mom "Well the title screen works! And plays music!"
If the RTP continues doing bullshit, I have another workaround for that. Currently updating the dropbox file, considering getting a different place to store it that works faster.
