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[Released] (I know you are having fun but) I'm still working Ep:121

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Simbiotik and I are working on a game based off of this title. Simbiotik is in charge of visual-art and I am implimenting the assets into TyranoBuilder (a drag&drop visual-novel engine). Here is the concept-prototype that we are currently working from.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/tyrano/2015-4-10-IKnowYouAreHavingFun/index.html
Note: should be playable on browser including tablet and phone browsers.

We definitely need a sound-person to be in charge of making (or arranging to be made) music and sound-effects. The specific sounds and musical-feel needed will need to be coordinated with the backgrounds Simbiotik puts in and any particular events we end up putting writing in. For instance, if Simbiotik puts an elephant in the game, then we will need elephant sounds. If we decide that someone pops bubble-wrap during the course of the game, we will need bubble-wrap popping sounds.
Also, if you feel that you have something to contribute to this project that isn't sound, please post here. It would be nice to involve people with little or no game-making experience.

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simbiotik sent me character art-assets the other day so now I can write the dialogue more easily. Before I know what the characters look like, I have a hard time imagining what they might say; I'm superficial like that.

I have some ideas for some jokes I want to include and a pretty good idea for how the game can end in a satisfying way. This morning I was doing some conceptualization work and realized that the narrative needs more than humor to do simbiotik's art justice. Luckily, there basic narrative deals with interesting and complex subjects such as sound-territory and cultural zoning of times and places for work and fun (which are not traditionally mixed).

Having simbiotik invest in the project makes me really want to make an interesting and compelling narrative for the game. I won't get overwhelmed though, I'm just going to write first drafts and then fix them multiple times. The structure is easy to understand and since I have an ending in mind and a theme I want to express, it'll be easier to pare the inessential stuff from a succinct, entertaining narrative.

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I'm thinking that the narrative-structure of the game will be similar to one of those jokes where something happens three or so times and then you get a punchline. I had two of the jokes, but needed a third. simbiotik came up with a good suggestion. Once I thought about the three jokes more, I saw how they could be connected for an amplifying effect.

Now I think that I have a pretty good idea of how the entire narrative will play out even though I have only written excerpts of dialogue that are experimental jokes and events that I have decided I want to include. My plan is to write out a first draft directly in TyranoBuilder, use placeholder art for anything I end up needing, and send it to the rest of the team so that I can find out if they like it, if they have any concerns, and see if they have any major changes to the narrative that would be funnier or more expressive of the themes. I won't be able to do all that tonight though, it will probably take me a day or two. So I'll just send simbiotik and Capt. Haistings portions of the first draft in webBuilds regularly as I write it.

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Current Status:

My first draft of the scene I'm working on is so bad. I can't tell if I'm investing in paths that I should probably remove or if I'm creating the necessary armature for narrative brilliance that will come after revisions. 

I don't really have a choice either way I suppose. I just need to be writing it. It's not like I am choosing between writing something good and writing this. If I had the choice, I would be writing something good. Here is a situation where I just need to keep going regardless of the quality. I can worry about quality once I have my armature to add to and manipulate.

I think I probably feel this way more because the characters aren't being silly in this scene. I'm not used to writing dialogue that isn't sketch-comedy jokes. 

I'll keep pushing.

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Today I learned how to identify and manage my limits.

Writing seems a lot like scripting. I really wanted to get to a certain point (tying a scene up) and that motivation actually helped me get a lot of the first draft done. But at some point I was just rewriting one sentence over and over for 15 minutes and becoming less and less satisfied with the results. That was at 6pm. 

I took a break from the game for a while even though I kept thinking about it involuntarily. About three hours later, I wasn't thinking about it as much and I was able to go back in and finish tying the scene up. I did rewrite that sentence, but it only took a minute and it is much better now.

The first draft of that scene is far from perfect, but it is a a really good first draft.

So now I know that I can push it out until I feel like I'm making everything worse. At that time I should take a break until I'm distracted by other things (rather than distracted by it while doing other things). This is useful information.

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I started the first draft of the last scene tonight. It's a relief that I will have something to work with tommorow. This will be the most complex scene as far as player-choice goes, but it's just a silly modular thing that won't get too confusing; it'll just be time-consuming.

I feel pretty confident that I will have all of the first-draft done by Sunday. That's good because I want to have the complete narrative established so I can go back in and smooth out all the inconsistencies in tone and amplify player-expectations of who these characters are and how they will behave. Right now it relies heavily in non-sequitur humor and I want to emphasize the themes more by making the more wacky characters care about their positions for believable reasons. It'll still be comedy though. The point is, I need to have the narrative completed so I can tune the characters and their dialogue.

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So I got most of the first draft of the easy part of the last scene done, but not the hard part. I helped Capt Haistings test sounds in TyranoBuilder a lot today. I also had to fix the non-game related real-life lawnmower twice and mow 1/4 of the yard. I also went for a nice walk and put a load of new art that Simbiotik sent me into the game. With the introduction of sound and some nice variation between the characters and teh backgrounds, our game is really starting to take shape and it's exciting. I'll be sending a webBuild out to Simbiotik tonight, but I have to wait until bed-time. Our internet is slow and the file of the export rose to a whole 18 mb today where it had been around 3. It's turning out to be a pretty cool game.

The things I want to say about the writing I did today is pretty much the same thing I always say. The first draft is so horrible. All the points are heavy-handed and the characters feel like they don't even believe what they themselves are saying. I can fix it, it'll just take time. Right now I'm still trying to write a first-draft to completion. I'm pretty sure there will be a shitty ending and a great ending. I kinda don't want to do that to people, but it ties in thematically, so I'm very tempted. One is like an epilogue and the other introduces new gameplay. I don't want to do it, because this is a game intended to be played only once, but it ties into the theme very strongly. We will see. Tommorow I think I will have a lot of time to introduce that game-play for the last scene. I'm looking forward to finishing the first draft of the narrative so I can start going over the whole thing in large sweeps to examine and adjust the characters to make them more consistent and believable. If things go to schedule, I will have Monday through Wednesday to just do that. But I am horrible at predicting how long anything takes. 

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Here is what  is happening with our game in my perspective. There is always a problem with trying to present 2 competing perspectives when both are both valid and there is not a real solution to make both sides happy. Although this game is trying to show how both parties have valid concerns and needs which are conflicting, one side is a lot more philosophical and have a lot more dialog (maybe owing to that there are 3 of them) compared to the other person who keeps reiterating that the conditions that they need for productivity are not being met without having the backup of reason.   It is frustrating that one group have "reasons" for their perspectives while the other person has "expectations" of their perspective. Because of this I feel like the game leans towards agreeing with one side over the other, even though person B has a reasonable justification for these perspectives. Saying that someone needs quiet because of cultural norms doesn't make it so the need doesn't exist, it just dismisses it. That is not a solution. Saying that someone needs to stop doing something because it is distracting when it is necessary for their job doesn't make it less necessary. Is there a solution for this type of problem for real?

This is a specific problem for me because at my last workplace (I work in a laboratory) there were 2 people who never shut the fuck up, and it was really horrible because we were in a lab, i gotta pay attention or who knows what I just did. I tried "changing my perspective" as is suggested to our character, but that isn't a real solution, so it is frustrating to me here that A. that is the solution presented and B. that there might not be a real solution to a problem where both people are right. Maybe quitting is always the answer, though. That actually turned out really well for me. 

 

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I know what Capt Haistings is talking about, but I've also played the current build which is not yet public for good reasons. It seems to me that the description of the thematic/narrative problem in our game is accurate and communicates the query well, but I'm coming from a priviledged place having played the game.

After Capt Haistings and I argued about this last night (eventually getting to the place where the problem was clearly stated) personally, I was happy to just sleep on it and I think it paid off. I think that the way to approach this is to have the characters acknowledge in the dialogue that they actually don't care if the other party gets their tasks for the day completed; they only care if they themselves are able to complete their tasks.

It would still help if any of you have experiences to share where two people or groups at work had different, mutually exclusive methods of working that eventually reached a productive compromise which wasn't just a time-share.

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I sent a build to SuperBiasedMan for narrative testing and he has informed me that the browser version deosn't work in Firefox which is a total bummer. I've been testing it in Chrome the entire time and I'm not sure what went wrong. I also tried uploading a build to itch.io and to gameJolt and neither of them work. I talked to Capt Hastings about it and it sounds like we might not have a completely working browser version when the deadline hits. That will significantly reduce the amount of people who play it because in my experience people prefer the browser-versions. There will still be mac and windows downloadable versions. I kinda don't even want to uplaod a browser version in case it doesn't always work and people try to play it and just go "Well this is broken", stop and never come back to it. I contacted TyranoBuilder's apparent ombudsman on Steam and sent them a project file so they can pass it on to the developer for further testing. Ugh.

Atleast I managed to procrastinate writing thus far today.

I did manage to put some more character expressions in the first few scenes to animate them more. That looks nice. I also cleaned up the text-box and the choice buttons. I'm hoping to finish the first-draft of the final scene and/or fix the second-draft of the confrontation immediately before it, tonight.

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oof.

I've been working on this for the last 6 hours. 

There are so many jokes that I don't laugh at any more.

 

I think I fixed the biggest problems that we had with the confrontation dialogue. I ripped a bunch of it out, and moved some of the information to earlier dialogues. It's significantly better.

Capt Hastings gave me music to put in for the confrontation scene, converted all the .wavs to .mp3, and added low-pass filters to some of the effects that should be denoting sounds from other rooms. During all of that implimentation we eneded up putting a few more gags in. I had to stop 10 minutes ago because I get confused when trying to do something simple. 

I'm hoping that  replacing all the .wav sound files with .mp3 will make the browser builds compatible with FireFox (just a hunch), but I honestly don't think I'm capable of uploading and testing it right now. Time to play some mind-numbing multiplayer shooter.

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Yesterday I made the credits-screen and a way to get to it. I had to change the size of the text-box during run-time which required looking at the Tyrano Script reference. I've only done so in the past out of curiosity, I did no text-scripting stuff in this game with the exception of the credits-screen. I found out that we could have been using things like background music fade-outs while looking through the reference. Oops, to late for that.

The scripting I did was super simple because there were examples for what I was trying to do in the reference.

I also wrote the epilogue scene and arranged the chararacter expressions and sound-effects and such for it.

With the exception of many little details I want to put in, but won't have time for (mostly branches that I wanted unique events for) the only things I have to do today to finish it are:

- fill in the final scene with as many puns as possible,

- play through it to make sure it still isn't broken,

- and upload it to itch.io

I'm trying to stick to midnight tonight EST.

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I'm done.

I am uploading a build so the team can give me final approval. Once that happens I'll publish the builds (unless they need some changes).

I could continue to do more, but I just want to be done now. There are plenty of things that could get improvements, but I just need a break from this project. I can always come back and make slight adjustments a month from now (but I won't). 

I'm going to go play Titanfall.

If anyone needs last minute help, private message me. I'll be at work most of this weekend, but I can point at internet resources from there.

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I got approval from the rest of the team. I'll upload the game to itch.io when I get home from work.

I'm still bummed about the browser-version not working in Firefox. If the TyranoBuilder developer ever fixes whatever but caused that, I'll re-upload. I was tempted to just not include a browser-version at all because I don't want people to immediately see that the game is broken and never come back, but playing in Chrome is also the linux option (I think). Plus there are probably as many people who will only play browser-versions and who use Chrome, as there are people who will try to use Firefox.

I really enjoyed this project. This was my first group-project game and I can see what the hype is about. I'm looking forward to a few months from now when I've forgotten all the jokes and I can see if the game is actually any good.

I'm going to have to figure out ways to make sure people know that Firefox version doesn't work and that sound is a huge part of the game. If I see a Let's Play of this game with the audio turned off, I might cry (or throw my non-existent controller).

Here is a direct link to the final build if anyone wants to play it before I get home.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/tyrano/2015-4-24-finalBuild-IKnow/index.html

Also, I don't recommend playing it on a phone because it removes the soundtrack.

I'd love to here what y'all think. Please spoiler-tag any details that were initially surprising when discussing.

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It took me a while to get into this, maybe just because I empathised with the agonizing premise. The climax of the game (is it a climax if players can skip it?) was amazing; the interplay of text and audio there is even better than in Duchess. The game's matured so far beyond the original build uploaded here (the shift of setting is particularly welcome) and I congratulate the team on that. Good work, y'all.

 

I noticed a typo:

post-34815-0-53895600-1430141797_thumb.jpg

 

Lastly, a question: do the other characters continuously get the protagonist's name wrong and she never corrects them?

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Lastly, a question: do the other characters continuously get the protagonist's name wrong and she never corrects them?

Up until this point, it never occurred to me that her name is Tiffany Lavant, but they call her "Ms. Blemmings." It was just a place-holder name that never got swapped out because it became invisible as I played through so many times.

What I mean to say is that she is recently married and they aren't close enough to her to know about it. Also she doesn't care enough about this office relationship to correct them.

Thanks for pointing out the typo, I'm making a list of small corrections that need to be made for an improved build.

I've heard some complaints about the pacing of the game, especially about how the final confrontation before the finale drags on or is unnecessary. Capt. Hastings has been trying to convince me that this is the case. I'm not sure if that is similar to your having difficulty to get into it, but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on whether or not the game has doldrums.

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