SuperBiasedMan Posted June 9, 2018 Hey all! Welcome to my thread. I'm working on a game that's basically a modified version of a game I had already been working on. This is a podcast simulator game, where fictional prompts are generated for the player and they write their own episode of of an Important Podcast. ==================================================================================================== You can get the game now!https://superbiasedman.itch.io/our-newest-show ==================================================================================================== There's a giant JSON file full of prompts that get served up to the player to flavour their choices as the episode goes on. Then to actually play it, you're just given a series of passages to fill out or make narrative choices and string together an episode. In the spoiler below you can see a gif showing how some of the original game works, for writing a Fantasy story. I've started building a new file with prompts and figuring out the structure of an Important Podcast episode, leading to this very early test episode I wrote: Announcing Podcast Simulator 2018 [And Rentacast] Length Choice Announcement [Short: Streamer's Choice] [CHOSEN] Regular Episode [Medium] Episode - My Episode - Power 3 (Starting Power 3) Focus: X Problem: X Guest: Ex Host X: X X: X X: X The hosts just need to announce this rad new game I'm making. Hi Everyone: Awkward and Stilted Hey everyone um. Welcome to Important Podcast for this special episode. Topic - Startups = Hell - Power 3 (Starting Power 3) Type: Startup Hellscape X: X X: X X: X X: X X: X Start ups are just total hell, aren't they? Introduce Topic: X Oh this is a mess Haha [inaudible] It reminds me of, have you seen this new RentaDude? *laughing* What Yeah you can rent, well, rent a dude. But is he a dude, or is he a Dude. What - I, I don't know what that difference is. Attempt 1 Flips HEADS HEADS TAILS [X] Attempt 2 Flips HEADS TAILS [X] Attempt 3 Flips TAILS [X] Failure... Didn't raise Startups = Hell's Power. Conclude Topic: X Isn't this the same as GuyShare? Yeah, or BlokeBorrow. I guess, just that Dude was new. I think DudeSwap already existed though didn't it? No that was DadSwap. Ahhh. What Was This Episode: X ...ANYWAY! We were just here announcing that this rad new game exists. Yeah who needs podcasts now when you can make fanfics of them. Now THAT would be a good startup. Fanfics? No, rentapod. But... that's not eve- Now to determine if My Episode can complete their goal... Coin Pool Modifiers: +3 coins: Starting pool equal to My Episode's Power. Resolution Flips HEADS TAILS TAILS My Episode has barely succeeded. End This Podcast: X This was a disaster. Let's just go. (As you can tell a lot of the prompts are still blank) The main thing I need to do for the jam is fill out the prompts you can get, write up explanations to help a user understand these prompts and improve the UI, because right now it's basic Unity defaults and you can't go back to see most of the stuff you've written. Plus I need to listen to a LOT of Important If True to learn the proper structure of a dysfunctional episode and replicate it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
phill Posted June 9, 2018 My goodness I could almost hear the gang talking through that. I look forward to emulating many episodes Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
infamous space turtle Posted June 10, 2018 Oh this is so sweet. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SuperBiasedMan Posted June 15, 2018 Updates have been slow for the moment, but I should be able to pick up speed next week. However I have been working on making the UI smoother. Now it feels like a real game! Obviously needs actual graphics, but I think the layout is working super well. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Travis Posted June 18, 2018 Looking good. UI looks like it is functioning really smoothly. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SuperBiasedMan Posted June 29, 2018 The game has been released (a week ago)! I released in time for the deadline but I still wanted to do some hot fixes and UI updating before I posted here and declared it released. I was a little bit tight on writing as much as I wanted for this, but I did a lot of work changing grey squares into some rough looking, hopefully nice, paper textures. You can get the game now:https://superbiasedman.itch.io/our-newest-show Big thanks to atlantic creating music for this, when I had a vague and uncertain brief of ambient music that might need to play for a whole hour. Thanks for the kind words folks, I hope you enjoy this house of cards. Please do let me know about bugs too, as I'll be continue to work on the main game this was a branch off of. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
pdotjpg Posted July 2, 2018 I'm not really interested in creative writing, so this isn't for me, but I think the prompt and power systems are cool. I feel like this is an idea worth expanding on, but it'd probably make more sense as a website or a lightweight app or something, rather than a Unity game. I experienced this show-stopper of a UI problem unfortunately: Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nkornek Posted July 2, 2018 I ran into a similar issue where I clicked the little "?" box and a big white square appeared that covered most of the screen and wouldn't go away. Neat idea though! Also, don't forget to mark your build's platform compatibility when you upload it so that people can access it through the itch app. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SuperBiasedMan Posted July 2, 2018 Bah, sorry about that bug! Those examples were made before i adjusted the UI structure, you can even see how they look out of date. I'll fix that and the build compatibility thing. Also the reason I'm using Unity is mostly for me being comfortable with it, and it just being a tool to build programs for different platforms. It hasn't been all that heavy for me, but was it running slow or eating up resources for you? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
brendonsmall Posted July 2, 2018 This game is really strange feeling, but pretty cool atmosphere with the music. I also ran into the UI issue the other folks above did. I managed to keep going by clicking the submit button, though the "click target" on the UI button seemed off on that one screen (the same one pdotjpg shows above in the screenshot). I really like the idea of outputting an html record of the story outcomes. I don't think I quite grasped exactly what was going on, as there was a lot of text to read and understand, but I did make a story/episode a couple of times. The general idea of making a podcast episode into a sort of story/rpg kind of thing is really ambitious and unique, I think Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
eRonin Posted July 3, 2018 I was writing a bunch of stuff, but then I got to a point where I couldn't click submit even though I filled out the title and body. I think there was some other element of the page that I was (literally) missing; a blank space between the title and the text body. When I click the ? in the top left, I get a white box with nothing in it, and then I can't do anything else in the game. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
