Technomagie

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Everything posted by Technomagie

  1. Currently working on: Mapping and blocking out story events for the first section of the game, which is tricky because I'm never good at staggering out world information in a way that feels more like a mystery a player wants to solve and less like an annoyance. I've also decided to build combat out of the prefabs RPG Maker provides, which means it might be kind of bland at first, but if I can get enough of the other things I want to do done and working, I'll try to go back in and make something a bit more unique. We'll see. Finally, RPG Maker doesn't actually have the best selection of tiles for use, but because I can't do art, and finding tilesets in the wild that all fit together aesthetically is not easy, but I have found good art sprites for monsters that I'm planning on using, which can be found here. Much better than the grotesque battle sprites provided with the software.
  2. Sad words, and yet they don't go away. You've been drifting for far too long. Sooner or later, a choice has to be made. Will you be the one to make it? Speaking of making things, I'm doing that in RPG Maker. Which is what I said last time I tried to be in Wizard Jam, but now that I've made it through the holidays without a family emergency or much else going on, I think I'm all set to try and do something for this. More than anything else except for maybe Monster Hunter, I've been playing a lot A LOT of Shin Megami Tensei recently, so I wanted to try my hand at a similarly surreal and cerebral RPG, using (of course) RPG Maker MV. Now as you may know if you remember Hamburger Mode from... gosh, like a year and a half ago now.......... oof. But if you do remember it, you'll know that it was ridiculous, and while I stand by that decision, I hope to make this a slightly more cohesive and total experience. Of course, RPG Maker can look very generic, and I'm hoping to at least find some good music online to help form atmosphere. I'll update this tomorrow with some more information, as well as a to-do list of things I need to do. Until then!
  3. Oh heck yeah! I'm going to say straight up that I'm not actually that versed in the series outside of Persona and the 3DS games, but I'm super into them so I hope this will come together into something almost as cool as they are.
  4. The Thumbs Project [Devlog?]

    Peoples! I have an announcement! Yep, you guessed it, I'm moving the upload date to Friday. Originally I had wanted to do Thursdays, because that's when Idle Thumbs episodes go up, but in making that decision I forgot that I had a lot of stuff to do on Thursday. So, instead, we're doing Fridays. Also my new game is up or something, check it out here https://technomagie.itch.io/field-of-dreams
  5. The Thumbs Project [Devlog?]

    Hello everyone! After having to drop out of last Wizard Jam due to unforeseen circumstances, I've been running without a goal for the last month or so. That's why I'm excited to detail a new project, which I'm tentatively calling "The Thumbs Project." Essentially, I'm going to be writing one short interactive story a week, each one based off of a title from Idle Thumbs. There are a couple of reasons I'm doing this: I need practice writing on a deadline, and what better deadline to practice than weekly installments? I need more practice with alternative forms of interactive fiction besides the traditional choose-your-own adventure format, and while there's definitely going to be plenty of those, I'm looking to try and broaden my horizons. Like I hinted at earlier, I felt bad about not being able to complete anything for Wizard Jam, even though I really like the idea of basing games off of Thumbs titles (There's so many good ones!) Right now, the most I can commit to is the first fifty episodes. Even then, that's a whole year of making fun-sized IF, assuming I manage to get it together to put one out every week. If I can do it, and I'm enjoying doing it, we might see about doing more, but right now that's too far in the future to get excited about. What do you guys think? Any questions or advice? Criticism is always appreciated. If you're interested, the first game Let the Games Begin will be going up on my itch.io page tomorrow afternoon (EST) here https://technomagie.itch.io
  6. The Thumbs Project [Devlog?]

    Ha, I bet you thought I forgot about this! ... well, I did. But in my defense I was sick and out of commission all day Wednesday, and spent most of yesterday trying to get all my schoolwork in order and the like, and in the rush I totally forgot to publish this. But it's here now! Unfortunately, due to being sick and then trying to rush, I can safely say that this is by no means my best work. It's messy and frankly doesn't make much sense. But then, I guess it wouldn't be something I made if it did. Feel free to check it out here: https://technomagie.itch.io/the-fanboys-lament
  7. The Thumbs Project [Devlog?]

    Let the Games Begin is now live! You can find it here: https://technomagie.itch.io/let-the-games-begin If anyone has some advice on any better ways to upload Twine to itch, I will definitely take it. I'm not sure what I did to make the background grey, it was white when I tested it. As always, comments and criticism are always appreciated.
  8. The Thumbs Project [Devlog?]

    With a few exceptions, the stories will not be set in the same universe; however, there is an underlying metaplot of sorts.
  9. The Other Eggplant

    Well, the results are in... two days early! Weird how that works. But I can successfully say, with an almost overwhelming majority, that the winner of our poll is the title "The Other Eggplant," so, I hope you like eggplants. Without any further ado: The Other Eggplant Another game by the makers of Hamburger Mode. TO BE CLEAR: This is going to be slightly less ridiculous and over the top. That game was a total and unrequited, yet somehow hilariously charming mess. This is not that. This game has a STORY. And PLOT. And maybe even some sort of strange meaning to be found inside of it. Maybe, though. It's not like this is Citizen Kaine or anything. SO: This game takes place in a small tavern at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere. You, the player, are a traveller who was just passing through when a sudden psionic thunderstorm came out of nowhere and was extremely threatening. Fortunately, most buildings nowadays are warded against this sort of thing, so you fled to the safety of this tavern, along with basically anyone else who was around at the moment. The Game: Is a story based game, where you, the player, can take a different action every hour, for 9 hours (from noon to 9 PM) inside the tavern. Actions include talking to the different people who are also staying at the tavern, plotting your course, helping out around the tavern, and of course, napping. That’s just like… That’s a thing you can do. Anyways, there is no specific goal of the game, aside from learning more about the characters and trying to figure out what they are doing. However, at some point during this (probably halfway) some sort of big event will trigger that then means you have to solve a mystery, or maybe go looking for someone who's gone missing. I still haven't quite figured that out, but it would probably be pretty boring to just talk to people with no direction. “Now, Technomagie,” you might be thinking, “That doesn’t really have anything to do with your title and prompt for this here game jam!” Well, you’re right. Anyways, this game will be built in the RPG Maker MV engine, which, if you don’t know, is a game engine designed for primarily making old school Final Fantasy clones. I won’t be doing that. In fact, I don’t think this game will have any combat or dungeon crawling in it whatsoever. I would prefer to have a more visual perspective on this, as opposed to a Twine game. However, it will be important to note that it will be built using primarily images from the base engine, which in all honesty look pretty crappy. Characters: In the next couple of days, I will be beginning to post information about the main characters that you will encounter in this story. However, and I want to put this up here right now for this reason, I'm going to be adding extras into the game as essentially other people you can meet who are just hanging around the tavern. I want people who read this to reply below with an idea for one of these extras, and one or two lines of dialogue that you get when they're interacted with. These can be anything from shameless self-inserts, to dumb one-liner jokes, or anything in between. Think of this as your chance to be wild.
  10. The Other Eggplant

    I'm still trying to decide just how optimized you'll need to be in order to get a "good" ending. While I am a big big fan of story games like 80 Days or Long Live the Queen, where you have to hold yourself to a schedule and make difficult choices of what the best use of your time is in order to succeed, I had originally envisioned this as being more of a relaxed sort of game, where you're just meant to be in the world and learn as much about the people there in the limited time you have. I'm a little worried that this might end up being a bit too boring, which is where the idea of a mystery of some sort came from. I do think that no matter what sort of tragic event that needs solving ends up happening, the game as a whole will be of a much lighter tone than most traditional mysteries are. I just don't feel like writing something exceptionally grimdark right now....
  11. WJ6 Team Seeking

    What I'm doing: Hey everybody, I'm here for all your writing needs, because boy howdy do I need the practice. I'll be happy to write up anything you need, from diary entries to "Where did you go, Fisher???" and anything in between. Contact Info: PM me, and we can go from there. Time Zone: Eastern, although my schedule is usually a mess, so expect me at weird awkward times. Portfolio: I don't exactly have a ton of things out there in the world for people to just, look at? But here's a link to my Itch page, with all of its two-game glory: https://technomagie.itch.io
  12. GOTY of the Year

    My true true Game of the Year would probably be Hollow Knight, a beautiful indie title developed by Team Cherry. Hollow Knight is a ridiculously hard metroidvania game, but with the world building and respawn system of a SoulsBorne game. Essentially, you, the titular "Hollow Knight" are dropped into this strange and massive underground kingdom that once was ruled by insects, but has mysteriously fallen, and is now haunted by the husks of its former inhabitants. The game itself is exactly what you want from a metroidvania. Sprawling rooms and passages, backtracking several times over whenever you find a new movement power, plenty of collectibles and optional upgrades and bosses... Just thinking about it makes me wish I hadn't 100%ed it so I could go through and experience the feeling of discovery again for the first time. To be perfectly fair, though, this game isn't for anyone. If you hate having to comb over every inch to find the one thing that you're missing, or if you don't like having to retry bosses over and over again because they're so dang hard, then you might not be as big a fan of this game as I was, and that's cool. But I would strongly recommend checking it out if you haven't already. My second GOTY, and the reason this wasn't my proper GOTY (besides Hollow Knight's existence) is because it technically came out last year, would be Persona 5. Hot. Damn. I was waiting for that game for at least three years before it finally came out, and boy did it deliver. There's not a whole lot more to say about it, and this post is already wicked long, but DAMN that game is good. Honorables: Tooth and Tail Horizon Zero Dawn Mass Effect: Andromeda The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  13. WIZARD JAM 6 // Welcome Thread

    I am excite
  14. So, I'm making a Twine game, because I'm not very good at any other programming language or art or anything, and I feel most comfortable writing. I'm not sure how I ended up with this? Because it's bad. Also, this is my first game jam. So we'll see how it'll end up. My goal is to create a weird, wacky, multiple choice experience, all focused around whether or not Hamburger Mode is on or off. We'll see how it ends up, but right now it'll likely have elements of both Hoisted and Frug Fructions. There's not a whole lot of logging to do for it right now? But if there's anything I end up doing that seems entertaining I might put it up here.
  15. [Dev Log] Hamburger Mode (Now live!!!!!)

    One final update for my almost completed(!) Twine game, Hamburger Mode. All I really have to do now is make sure all of the variables are connected to each other one last time, and I'll be all good to go. I'm hoping to put it up this evening, because I'm gonna be hella busy tomorrow, so look forward to that! I'll be back!
  16. [Dev Log] Hamburger Mode (Now live!!!!!)

    "But, Technomagie!" You might say, "Why would you waste so much time on a branch very few people are likely to see?" I hear your questions, and answer you this: "Because I could."
  17. [Dev Log] Hamburger Mode (Now live!!!!!)

    Hello! I'm not dead! I've just been much busier than I thought I would be. Don't worry, though, there's still plenty of hamburgers for you guys to toggle. I've got a nice little preview for you guys. As you can see, I've gotten some more work in on the two branches I said I would be doing. I've also got some fun secrets planned, but we'll have to see how much time I get in the next three days or so.
  18. [Dev Log] Hamburger Mode (Now live!!!!!)

    Yeah, I have a lot of free time during the day, so when I get into something I get into it very hard. But I'm glad that you're looking forward to it! It's gonna be awful :/ Also, since I'm mostly done way earlier than I thought I'd be, if anyone has any suggestions for additional branches to add in, I'd be more than happy to do my best to work them in somehow. I've already decided that I'm not holding anything back based on how dumb it might be, so literally anything goes. For example, one of the major branches I have is you, the player, investigating what exactly Hamburger Mode is. So, I'm open for suggestions!
  19. [Dev Log] Hamburger Mode (Now live!!!!!)

    Here's a nice picture of where I'm at so far. This is already much more than I ever intended to do for this stupid joke of a Twine game, but I still have to finish at least two other major branches. At this rate, though, it shouldn't take me any more than a day to get it finished. After that I might try my hand with what little I know of Unity to make a 'real game'. We'll see how I feel.