Xeneth

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by Xeneth

  2. Posted

    Blown away by how experimental/original this concept is, reads more like something we'd run into in a Maker Faire booth than a jam game, super interested to see where this goes...

     

    I assume you have an SO/Child/Roommate on call for play testing?

  5. Posted

    [Day Five]

    This is a big step! Currently jamming from The MADE in Oakland, (Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment) which is a neat video game museum and community space. Being around other people that love games and are also doing creative work really is worth the additional layer of social anxiety. I should return on Tuesday of next week too, deeper into the jam.

     

    Writing of actual copy is still going to be the meat of this project, and today was bogged down by some misunderstandings about how Twine handles if statements. Lessons were learned though, "is" works better than "=" and nested conditionals need to be supported by a little "else" magic, but everything appears to be functional and playable from start to finish now.

     

    This technically marks the "design lock" point in the project, though it feels weird to be using such an agile/team oriented term on a solo project. Given that it technically has a schedule though, perhaps it's not so strange after all; I now know exactly how much needs to be written before it's done, and there's little chance of scope creep.

     

    Work Done:

    • Nature of all endings finalized
    • Final score calculations hooked up
    • First full debug playthroughs complete

  6. Posted

    The little "excuse me", "so sorry" text popups give what's happening in that .gif a really surprising amount of personality, and are already grounding the whole thing for me.

     

    If it wasn't for those little contrite messages I dunno that I would really be able to tell what's going on, but instead it already feels like a game!

     

    This is my way of encouraging you to double down on that, like the more little dialog variations the better, consider triggering different pools of barks when colliding with different types of nobles, or writing a little manager that keeps track of the "bark pool" and ensures a nice even distribution, I dunno.

  7. Posted

    [Day Four]

    Today was mostly an anxiety-ridden test of the whole "working outside the apartment" thing. The atmosphere and wifi of my target coffee shop worked out, but I did still have trouble focusing. Next time I go I might try to drown out the default jazz of the place with my own more upbeat tunes and see if it gets my hands flying a bit more.

     

    Somewhat lame progress on the game itself, but the documentation now reflects the actual design of the game, which is nice. Designers more so than other disciplines really should keep good documentation to help justify the "softness" of the discipline. I've always kind of valued Producer-esque and Engineer-like qualities in the Designers I've worked with more than Artistry... Which says a lot about my having a QA and Art background.

     

    Part of "the great confidence collapse of 2016" might be that I need to become a better Producer and Engineer to feel good about my role and potential in the industry. Food for thought.

     

    In winding down for the night I had a development epiphany when trying to solve a problem that sort of... cascaded.

    I'll avoid spoiling the structure of the game to talk about it for now, (and hopefully my thoughts on the subject will crystallize to Remo-like clarity in the meantime) but it felt like a tiny and seemingly reasonable type of design decision that's currently a microcosm of larger issues plaguing AAA development, threatening to drive up the price of making games.

     

    I took some notes and will definitely be returning to the topic once I've shipped something here... And I haven't forgotten about where I told myself I'd go to get writing done tomorrow. Oh god.

     

    Next time on Nasty/Good/Badass: Oakland

     

    Work Done:

    • Design documentation now reflects what the game is and needs to become
    • Chapter tree cleaned up in editor to fit and scroll nicely

    post-8533-0-67863700-1462859475_thumb.png

  8. Posted

    Very interesting! I hadn't heard of the PICO-8, assuming since it's a "fantasy console" no one's actually physically manufactured any hardware for it?

     

    As for simple Brand War game ideas, perhaps something about protecting shipments of product and/or blasting the shipments of competitors before they reach target warehouses or consumer homes?

  9. Posted

    Nice! More Roguelikes need sci-fi themeing for sure, fantasy is so much more prevalent.

     

    I don't have that particular problem with posting WIP pics, but I DO have one...

    I'm making a text-based thing in twine for my first Wizard Jam, so there just isn't much to post at all!

     

    I'll consider putting some little story spoilers up at some point, but it's structurally such a small experience, I dunno.

  10. Posted

    You should copy one of your test animation gifs from the slack into here for the records.

    Looking forward to seeing more phone scribbleverse style assets implemented!

     

    As for prop ideas...

    You're probably already all over the predictable in-universe stuff like:

    • Stacks and Stacks of Coins
    • Empty Question Mark Blocks
    • Broken Brick Block Debris

    Some potentially more interesting ideas:

    • Starman Engagement Ring (was Mario going to pop the question?)
    • Sports Equipment (Referencing tennis, baseball, etc.)
    • Hidden/Furtive Pics of Daisy/Pauline (is he fooling around on Peach?)
    • Creepy Phanto Mask (The dark power of this mask could threaten Luigi when he gets his mitts on the key, OR it could just whisper into his mind about how he should be the ONLY brother or something disturbing)
    • Shrine/Rosary Depicting Rosalina (she's technically the goddess of that universe! I've always liked the idea that there's some sort of religion dedicated to her, and part of the reason Peach is considered so attractive to everyone is her resemblance to the star mother)

  14. Posted

    [Day Three]

    Holy shit I forgot how bad my brain is at parsing and retaining boolean logic states!

    This is why I tried to become a designer instead of a programmer; Even when reading my own code I feel like grokking a new flow of functions pushes my understanding of some other workings out of my head temporarily.

     

    Still zero progress on writing actual copy. Everything in the game itself is just identifying statements and test text.

    I think the plan is going to be to do the majority of the writing while I'm out of the apartment at coffee shops or other wifi enabled spaces once the work week proper start up tomorrow... I also have another potential workspace lined up that I'm too nervous and excited about to even write about right now! More on that next update.

     

    Work Done:

    • Explanatory comments added to function-like passages because DEVELOPMENT BEST PRACTICES
    • Logic for serving different questions based on previous answers is limited but functional
    • Full question and answer tree logic filled out in editor (still need to design ending determination though)

  15. Posted

    [Day Two]

    So this DevLog isn't going to be super interesting or pretty to look at given the nature of the project.

    Nothing wrong with that, I'm still going to try to update it every day; It's a tool for self discipline that emulates the kind of meeting overhead I would experience if I needed to communicate with a team.

     

    No real writing progress today outside of a good discussion featuring hypotheticals with my girlfriend... that said, the gist of the narrative is mostly decided upon. Documentation doesn't fully reflect this yet and prior to the work week proper I need to get the design doc into a state fit to hold copy... But it remains to be seen if it's worth composing text in a separate editor before slamming it into Twine proper.

     

    Twine itself is proving to be a bit of a workflow nightmare! It doesn't lend itself to any sort of source control or versioning out of the box, and the lack of apparent undo states mean you have to be really careful during editing. I even managed to mess up some text by fiddling with the volume buttons on my keyboard, so there's some weird hotkey stuff going on as well.

    If I attempt another text-centric game in the future, I'll definitely be switching over to Unity; I've heard there's actually solid tools for IF style workflow now.

     

    Work Done:

    • Display order of Nasty, Good, and Badass answers randomized
    • Question testing skeleton converted to easily callable "function passages"

    NastyGoodBadassDay2.png

  20. Posted

    [Now playable at https://xeneth.itch.io/nastygoodbadass]

     

    Basic Premise:

    "The player is subjected to a series of questions. These questions are framed as a series of hypotheticals, much like in an online personality test. Each question has exactly three possible answers that correspond to the theme of Nasty, Good, and Badass."

     

    [Day One]

    It's my first real jam, so I'm aiming low and trying to keep this doable by myself with little to no programming or art experience.

    The episode title Nasty/Good/Badass jumped out at me as a simple trinary game dialog selection that I could do in Twine!

     

    Being a reclusive and traditionally unproductive procrastinator, I definitely want to get out of the house as much as I can during the jam, so being able to work on a laptop will be key. Turns out Twine is a bit persnickity about where and how it saves your work, so for now I'm going to manually sync up with archive files on OneDrive.

     

    Given time zones and having company over, goals for day one were pretty light. The project file was ceremonially named and things generally got laid out, that's about it.

     

    Work Done:

    • Solve workspace syncing between laptop and desktop

    • Start design doc with rough structural ideas

    • Test storing and printing of variables

     

    NastyGoodBadassCreation.png

  23. Posted

    Since I'm between jobs at the moment, I should really hang onto get off my butt and participate this year... I have a lot of self doubt and conflict about my career/role in the industry however, so I might have to make it a solo effort so as not to expose this rad community that I appreciate to my baggage.

     

    None of the episode titles are leaping out at me just yet, but we'll see what develops...

  24. Posted

    *listens to episode*

    ...

    Wow, ha ha ha!

    For context on that very old MeUndies email, this was back then the ads felt somewhat new to the cast, and my goal was actually to let Chris know that it worked. Like, "underwear may seem like an odd fit for a gaming cast but hey, wanted to let you know it worked!"

    *keeps listening*

    ...

    TWO emails?! Huzzah!

    Some of my favorite match puzzlers: Dr. Mario, Lumines, Panel DE Pon aka Pokemon/Planet Puzzle League, and Yoshi's Cookie.

  25. Posted

    Haven't played this yet but I'm super excited. Heading to a small party I think will contain a fair percentage of game industry type folks this weekend and thought I'd share my slightly overzealous prep...

    • Loaded the game onto my Surface Pro with bluetooth controller/mouse so it's easy for someone to be "with the bomb" somewhere in the room where people can't see.
      • (Oculus Rift would be optimal/amazing but I simply don't have the money/hardware to make that portable.)
    • Printed defusal manual into a 3 ring binder because I feel like multiple people poring over a physical object is the intended atmosphere as opposed to people flipping through it on their phones and tablets.
      • (Did you know the actual .pdf has that bad photocopy effect you get when you make copies of copies BUILT IN? This detail excites me far more than is reasonable...)
    • Pages are inside slick plastic sleeves with some heft/thickness so you can scrawl temporary notes right on the manual in dry erase marker.
      • (Some modules appear to benefit greatly from a bit of visual elimination or note taking.)
    • I've included some colored clippy tabs in case the group wants to mark particular modules for rapid review.

    Wish me luck guys! I'm planning on mostly teaching and observing how different people tackle the challenges. I'll try to remember to report back about how it went over and what aspects of the design wound up generating the most interesting moments.

     

    BombManual1.jpg

     

    BombManual2.jpg

     

    BombManual3.jpg