jonbjohns

Hey there, For the last game jam, I figured I'd remix my last/first game. The first version of this game was made using Twine. This time I'll be using ren.py. I'm not planning to make this a simple conversion project as I hope to make a new scenario based on Nick's playthru on wizard jam 8.

Hey all, My piece for Wizard Jam will be in Twine made up with a bunch of Nick Breckon quotes. If you would like to help, just respond with your favorite Nick Breckon quote. I'll try to use however many that I can. Good luck to everyone in the Wizard Jam!

Welp... failed to update this over the course of the jam. LOL Some various notes about my approach and issues I ran into: Developed in Twine using Sugarcube 2.... syntax. It has a hidden initializer called "StoryInit". If you create a passage called this, it will load any media you setup in it and establish any global variables you need. unable to test music works in debug mode Randomness was handled by built-in random method in sugarcube. This handled how attack events occurred, what was said if you and nick effectively block (minus one case), and how half of the end scenarios are listed. Special end triggers are attached to each node in an if else loop current bugs Nick and the player can technically kill each other in the same turn. I don't have a resolution for that and I already had 14 endings so I skipped this (priority currently goes to the player). Lets be real, this is a feature. music doesn't play if you continue the game from a saved state. The current draft can be found on jonbjohns.itch.io/the-death-of-nick-breckon Features added: "back to battle" After finishing a game, you are able to jump right back to a new fight with a different battle theme created by @Atlantic could also use a similar cut to jump straight to the battle instead of the plot setup for this madness. Features skipped: Visuals Visuals are not my forte and everything was coming in way too hot To dos before the demo day: editing I know I kept floating between present and past tense in the dialogue need to incorporate CSS to make it look better update the credits

I kinda waiting a bit to explain this more so I'd get more quotes without influencing people on what quotes I wanted. So I'll start that now. My influences for this game are Suikoden and Radical Dreamers (a visual novel sequel to Chrono Trigger and kinda related to Chrono Cross). I'm inspired by the duel system in Suikoden and just the visual novel flow from Radical Dreamers. As someone that created a d6/d20 ruleset for Suikoden duels for a Suikoden RP back in the day, this isn't too far from my wheelhouse. So as of this weekend. I have a huge text document with quotes I've pulled from Twitch streams and a couple of episodes of IIT. I started mapping them to independent flows in Twine and started writing a plot justification to start the game (though there will be a straight forward link to the fight). I'd include screenshots, but I forgot to upload to git and I'm not on that comp atm. The plot is that you are at a fencing competition with an unknown organizer. You read in the disclaimer that if someone makes a Dark Souls reference, that the foam weapons will be replaced with real ones and death is permissible. Nick, being egged on by an audience member, accidentally invokes it. The game itself will be entirely in twine and I'll be invoking the spirit of the Suikoden duel system. The way that it worked in those games is that the opponent will say a phrase. Then the player has the choice to Attack, Devastating Attack, Defend. Once the player makes their choice, the action goes thru. Attack vs Attack: opponents do damage to each other Attack vs Defend: attacker does minor to zero damage to a defender Attack vs Devastating Attack: opponents do damage to each other, Devastating attacker does more damage Devastating Attack vs Defend: Defender blocks all damage and does normal to minor damage to an opponent. So for this game, each round will start with Nick saying something that corresponds to him either doing Attack, Desperate Attack, Defend (the actual action is hidden, but is consistent if you play enough times). e.g. "I am suspicious of myself." Then the player in response will choose to either Attack, Desperate Attack, or Defend (there will be flavor text to each option). Then the actions will resolve. The damage will be dealt and will reset back to a new Nick quote unless the player or Nick are out of hit points. Current things I'm playing around with: keep HP visual or descriptive Taking the Radical Dreamers influence, I would simply describe Nick and the player after every round. Taking the Suikoden reference, I'd have a health bar for each. randomized damage The duel system in Suikoden was actually based on stats of your character. (Which is why if you want to save Pahn, level the shit out of him and give good gear). I won't be doing stat building in this game, but I could give both sides the same modifiers for blocking and attacking. (Possibly even recovering my duel ruleset if I even remember where it is. Although I think it is all still here.) I don't know if damage was randomized in Radical Dreamers, but also you didn't have stats in front of you the entire game. Things I'm still working on: Text for inaction In terms of quotes and references from either influence, I don't know of a good way to describe situations where nothing happens. I could play around with the fact that this is a competition and have commentators chime in. I'm also double checking Suikoden 1, but I think it is almost nothing. Editing I went straight from my notes straight to twine without proof reading everything. Some quotes need to be doctored to make sense in the context of the competition (or maybe it is better that it isn't?) I'll probably rewrite the plot. I just made it in 10 mins. Stat tracking The twine documentation is pretty good at keeping track of stuff like this, I just haven't put all the variables I need yet. Special end triggers There are a couple of choice quotes I used that I want to trigger a special ending if the match ends there. I'm sure there is a way to do such, but I haven't looked deep enough in the twine documentation yet. Also 3 would be a pre-requisite for this part. Visuals To have a nod to Radical Dreamers, I should add ambient visuals, but I haven't started looking for resources to this yet. Also shout outs to @Atlantic who is making the battle music! This is gonna be fun.

twitch.tv/jonbjohns I should be available to stream at any time slot. I'm not watching sports ball.

my stream is https://www.twitch.tv/jonbjohns I'm only guaranteed to do Extra Life. I rarely stream otherwise, but there are a few games I'm supposed to stream due to requests for friends that I'll stream irregularly for. That list includes MGS4 and Dead Space.

Has that twitter account done that to other devs? I've seen a positive response it gave to Overwatch. At least I saw it as that.

I'm partially ashamed at quitting FFVIII. The only agency I had in that game was finding out who said what in the opening. Once I found out in the 3rd or 4th disc, I quit.

Yeah, I almost quit when the game became "Story time with Fei(?)" where he told a story rocking on a chair that lead to a random boss fight.

I just finished Hyper Light Drifter. I did half of the game before the "invincible" patch and the other half after. I liked the HP part of the update, I'm indifferent about the invincibility frames. I guess my indifference is because my play style didn't change before and after the update, so I wasn't really reaping the benefit from the invincibility frames. I love the game. I love the vibe. I love the combat. I didn't really like exploring in the game that much.

This weekend I beat Lifeline for the PS2 as part of my Extra Life stream. I had the expectation that this would be a bad game, and yes it was pretty frustrating to play almost entirely by voice. Nothing worked consistently and there were voice commands that she responded to that weren't listed in FAQs or instruction booklets I've found while playing it live. Essentially, the game is a point and click horror game that is operated by voice. However the story makes it an amalgamation of sci-fi,horror, survival. Parts of this game's story I actually enjoyed, but there were things that shattered my experience. Things from the very get go like I, an african american male, playing as "myself", a white guy. Also, taking over an hour to open a voice activated door because this game is actually terrible (Pro-tip: use a batman voice).