#the devlog got me pumped

[bipanicoverthegravessiblings]

Have I mentioned how much I love these two?

[i-like-eyes]

DevLog 2

We are at log 2 and real life has already got in the way. As I don't got a lot to show off I'll post some non-spoilery asset stuff and hide the rambling under read more.

While I did get a good chunk of the script done, there is still plenty of dialogue I need to get to. As a result, I didn't get any maps done. I'm trying to make this game with RPG Paper Maker's strengths in mind, but every once in awhile I'll realize I made an assumption of what the engine can do and the script has to be put on pause because of it. For example, a lot of this game I had already planned out having pictures on screen for more cinematic scenes. Literally two days ago I realized I don't actually know how to do that in the engine. Thankfully there is a Discord for RPGPM and the people there have been a huge help.

To supplement my question I had drawn a reference of what I meant; it's nothing significant I just think it looks funny.

I'm probably not going to show off the script itself because words on a doc isn't terribly interesting. Here are talk sprites in the mean time.

In order they are Holly, Jim, and Micheal. I might talk more about them next month.

Grant herself I debating making a talk sprite for, I probably will in the end but I'm wondering if how she reacts in those sections should be left up to the player to interpret. I'm thinking about how you see Phoenix clearly while in a courtroom because of the more cinematic approach to that section of the game, but when talking to other characters you don't see his face; instead the characters are talking directly to you because it's more personal. That (and a stupid amount of over analyzing the portraits of FE13-16 because FETH criticism is fucking weird) contributed to the npcs in this game looking directly at you. Also because horror game, things are supposed to be a bit unnerving. If Grant had a sprite she wouldn't look at the player because you are playing as he;, she should reflect the fact that you are looking at the npcs.

While this is the first game I've taken really seriously as a personal project, it's development cycle still throws me off because of what I've done beforehand for school.

It's weird, normally when making a game I'd focus on gameplay first and story last. I've done a handful of small scale projects at school, and the number one thing teachers drill into your head is to have the gameplay and the narrative play off each other. Most students go in with this epic idea for a story and only really want to make it a game because games are cool, not that they think they can have the gameplay enhance the plot. This combined with a lot of demos we made were based on popular genres (FPS for example) meant our development cycle looked a lot like gameplay first then story built to compliment that. My other game ideas either looked like that or smth more equally balanced, I think of a story element and a gameplay element I thought of happens to compliment that, but I've never had to come up with the majority of the plot first then the gameplay afterwards. Part of it was trying to discourage students from doing that, because they tend to have far too ambitious plotlines in mind. The other part was like fucking hell they are teaching us that weird niche visual novel shit because we are being trained to work for some company's Toronto division pumping out sequels.

But ultimately I've just never had an idea like this one before. Half my game ideas are fighting games and the rest are platformers, puzzle games, etc. I have thought of two -ish TRPG's, and briefly came up with a couple of other visual novel ideas, but they never stuck with me as long as the likes of Red Spikey Hair Guy Needs To Let Out Some Anger The Platformer (WIP name). If that title is any indication, the plot isn't my main concern for that game yet. That's because I want to figure out the gameplay more before I further flesh the story out because I want it to blend together. And then it gets put on hold because I forget how to program. Anyways, with Riverside there is very minimal gameplay. The reason why it is still a game and not just a comic or smth is because I think it is very important that you are put in the shoes of a patient at a nursing home, because you can't really get the same empathy with any other medium. Or hell, you don't get that same experience in real life until it's too late.

[twinhood-2dot0]

Re: Devlog #1

HEYO! Oh, my, your last post got me soooooo excited!

Now, you have every right to punish me.

But I think I’m gonna have to cut down on word count from now on, like, stick to less than 1000 words, and at least deliver consistently. 

1. Your genre

Categories are made up, genres are fluid. Thus, no comment.

2. Your theme

OH. MY. GOD. Perfect.

You might have realized but I adore the audio format for storytelling, and finding out that sound and music is gonna be the core of your game got me extra pumped.

Here’s some Suggested “Readings” and Research Material from my side: Check out “Twenty Thousand Hertz”. They go deep and nerdy into sound, sound design and the stories behind some iconic sounds and mysteries related to sound and what not.

My favorite episodes:

Mine are mostly the stories behind iconic sounds. But..... There are ones that cover somethings you might be interested to find out about - Sound 101, Minecraft, Sonic Bubbles, Liquid Terror, Sleight of Ear.

They're amazing.

And, of course, it’s a thoughtfully, carefully curated auditory experience with some of the best sound design and editing ever.

3. Your Protagonist(s) and Weapons and Tools and Other Details

Love the idea of headphones. Brilliant. Especially the way you made like different headphone designs, made me feel like maybe they could do different things - as in, some people have access to some of the special ones with more abilities, what not, the usual stuff.

Don’t expect me to give revolutionary ideas.

4. HOW DARE YOU CALL ME NOONE

5. Wormholes

YAYYYY I love that this the hardcore sci fi element will be there!! Probably gonna take a lot of work to think through though

I can tell the article on Milanote is written by chat GPT, because, I mean, where’s your self deprecatory joke and your lol and your emoji and actually funny joke.

Sigh, you really need to stop your self deprecatory jokes. 🙁

P.S: I’d love to handwrite for this, but I’m really slow eeeeeee, sowwy..

[fivegaze]

3.31

mm heres what i did today- i added the combo system (where you have to follow the key sequence on screen to add damage to your attack), fixed what was wrong with it (i kept trying to access the scene variables not realizing that with an additive scene there would be two science variables objects and it was trying to pull from the wrong one.) when that stopped being broken (aka i just plopped the whole thing into the same scene which felt like an anticlimactic solution but hey) i finally fit it into the state machine. it's not fully functional yet, but when i sat down they weren't even connected at all

there she is! my incredibly janky combo system. please ignore the way everything just stacks on top of each other that's not. staying there i am going to animate it. none of these ui graphics aside from the menu buttons and text choices are final btw i am not leaving those govt street sign ass arrows in there.

this is what the state machine looks like for the combo system :] i called it combo crusher <3 i always worry that my state machines look really janky and cluttered but i guess that doesn't matter as much as if it's working lol. ummm one day i'll learn C# (and html because god lmao) but for now it's just me and my little visual scripting machines against Da World.

the second pic here is how i'm currently detecting input which feels silly to me but there's no event block for "any key down" just this one so that's what i'm doing for now. my blatant abuse of on update is what got me into such a Freaking pickle with something's on the station. fun fact that game is Not built with fungus like space case and the VN scenes for soul squad. i wanted to do it myself and i spent so long building a prototype for UI that i didn't even end up using at all that by the time it was time to plug in the dialogue i didnt really have a lot of time to work the system out. so it's just the world's worst dialogue system. do you wanna see it it's SO bad

i can't even fit it into one screenshot. every time you click the "advance dialogue" button it checks to see if you're on the last line and if not it's like okay what line ARE you on then. at which point it pulls from a list of every voice line (unlabeled and barely organized btw) and corresponding dialogue line which is, like, fine, okay, whatever, and ALSO,

IT'S CHECKING WHAT LINE YOU'RE ON EVERY FRAME and just going through a giant if/else chain to make sure the right characters are active. also on every frame it's updating the text color, just in case. also sometimes more than one character is active and it just completely breaks the color coded character text. like okay this could definitely be worse but it sure could be better. i'm being overly self-critical bc i'm an annoying perfectionist (to the incredible detriment of my wellbeing and productivity, obviously) so the fact that it was all completed during a semester gives me SO much room to self-crit. i'm still really proud of it even though i ran out of time to bugfix and i didn't have time to level any of the audio or clean up any of the voice lines. (seriously though this is me being proud of something i make i just don't know how to not like pick my work apart. /neutral.)

anyway this is supposed to be a soul squad update so let's move on from that

this is the turn system btw! combo crusher is brand new. i already have a (time consuming) move selection set up which is irritating bc i'm gonna have to go in and undo everything so i can add a new movelist but i'm moving that out of the priority spotlight(tm) because um my (writing) scripts are NOT done and i need them to be done. cheers and light and love this is gonna be such a meaty github upload im pumped. i love writing myself little devlogs for me and me only. like a little treat

anyway that's all i did today besides go to an extremely short job interview which was cool. i really hope i get the job because i would like to be able to afford rent :D

[jelpiparade]

“It is Wednesday, my dudes.”

*shrill scream*

Now, then! If that vine reference doesn’t make me sound too old, I can tell you about what’s happened in the past week. Heroine for Hire now has voice acting! Ocean Pearls now lacks typos! (I hope.)

It was a HUGE struggle to choose VA when so many talented people tried out. In the twelve days that auditions were opened, we received almost 100 auditions for seven roles! Some of the auditions had me dying laughing because of the energy that was brought the the performance.

I’m really satisfied with the cast and we’ve already begun recording! You’ll have to wait if you want to hear some samples, though. ;^)

Now, so brief bad news: the projected release was September 2020, but unfortunately our artist is dealing with a severe hand injury and will be out of commission for the next few weeks. Personally, I’m a huge worrywart and I’m going to say ball park release date is November 2020 at the earliest.

Currently, there are four out of seven characters who need expressions before the game can be released... maybe it was headstrong of me to try to come back from a hiatus with a release. It’s okay, though. Things happen in life and I can polish Heroine for Hire to be better than ever!

Specifically, I’ve been trying to decide what to do with the extra time... if I’ll write the second route OR if I’ll add the VA in for full release. I’ll only have time for one or the other, but that decision will be for another day. Or specifically, next Wednesday’s devlog.

So! In any case~ let’s show appreciation for the artist’s hard work thus far!

Art by waltera_ki; Left to right: Lyre (MC), Fai, Lute, Veris, Ivis

I absolutely adore these characters and I hope that you all do too! Here’s a bit of information about each character.

Lyre. The main character of our tale. She is impulsive with a strong sense of justice, and depending on your choices, can be cunning, kind or brave in addition to that. In the past two months, she’s held and lost eight jobs for various reasons ranging from thrusting an incontinent cat towards a duchess to knocking over an important banking partner.

Fai. [romanceable] The royal blacksmith. A man of few words and fewer expressions, Fai likes to be left alone in comfortable silence. Unfortunately for him, people like to make jokes around him like calling him a hot-head. (For the record, please don’t.) Fai’s favorite animal is the rabbit and he likes cute things in spite of his appearance.

Lute. Lyre’s twin sister. A savage tongued young woman with a penchant for gossip, she likes to always have her ears on the ground for trouble. Currently, she is the reason Lyre keeps finding jobs despite constantly getting fired. Well connected, she works as a seamstress for a local dress shop that services the rich and noble.

Veris. [romanceable] A valiant knight who is strong, brave and... well. Lazy. So, so lazy. For some reason, he’s got a good reputation and uses it to hide that fact that his favorite thing to do is avoid both baths and duties. Despite his laziness, he’s got a heart of gold and an attitude of silver.

Princess Ivis. A sweet face with an ambitious, scheming mind behind it, Ivis is the youngest of six sisters. She tries her best to shine but as the youngest, she knows well that she’ll never be Queen of Faunestra... but that won’t stop her from trying to become queen of some place. Veris and his reputation are her most precious asset. I mean, knight.

....And more! I hope those tidbits are fun to read about.

Now! Ocean Pearls!

I got the routes all edited up and looking pretty. Hopefully that means that Isven, Soh and Lemos all have typo-free demos! Additionally, I’ve gotten the sprites all resized and lookin’ pretty!

So, all that’s left on my miscellaneous check list is...

make sure the right CG unlocks in the gallery

pick a release date!

I tried to do this and broke something so... to the programmer I go.

Unfortunately, there’s another checklist of things that has to get done...

get some glitches worked out as far as some intense lag going on during the chapter scenes

fix the lag in the main menu

Both of those things are things that I can’t do, unfortunately.... but as soon as the programmer bangs them out and I finish my brief CG work, OP’s will be available to play.

Isn’t that exciting? I know I am super PUMPED because it’s been a long time coming.

[clocktower-fifty]

[3] Week 2 - Lots of Flowcharts

Wandering onto Week 2, starting to wonder if I’m getting in over my head, but we’re just going to have to wait and see!

On a personal note, I’ve had acquaintances hounding me all week to play Among Us with them... Guys I can’t make video games if I keep playing them :< Very fun, but very socially draining. I’ve also bought the Into the Spiderverse Art Book today, it makes me super pumped to work on a story idea I’ve had for a long time, but nooo, I gotta work on this game >:( So many fun distractions.

But you guys are here for Clock Tower 50, so here we go.

At the beginning of the week, I’ve taken that paper I made last week and put it all down on a Google Sheets file. Then, I’ve started ordering the rooms until I’ve made...

...This thing! The general blueprints of where each room is in the Clock Tower. I’ve made this using diagrams.net. I was a little apprehensive using this program, since I’ve tried it once to make a flowchart for a university computer science project and got frustrated, but I needed a quick and easy flowchart program and this one is free + online. It ended up being very simple to use this time around, so that’s nice!

As you can see, these rooms don’t make any sense space-wise, but we’re ignoring logic here. Each colour is a different floor, with the highest level on top in yellow and the lowest level at the bottom in green. Each rectangle is a room, there’s fifty rooms in total, hence Clock Tower Fifty :)

The game’s main “gameplay mechanic” is choosing which door to go through, and depending on their choices the story will shift ever so slightly.

A day or so after that, I drew some quick character mockups instead of paying attention to my Physics lecture:

(Ignore the weird turtle creature at the top left, that’s for one of my dream games which I can’t work on until I get more experience.)

Daphne is one of the teenagers (originally named Sofia in the previous post), and Reese is the player (originally named Charlie). I’ve also changed Gabbi’s name to Jasmine, which was actually her original name when I first thought up the plot (Tony [Reese], Skott [Samuel], Jasmine [Jasmine], Gabe [Travis], and Laura [Daphne]). Don’t worry at this stage I will stop changing the names. (At least in my notes until I redesign everyone.)

Speaking of designs, I really like Reese’s design that I doodled in my sketchbook. I like Daphne’s hair as well, but I feel like her design will probably see more work.

Anyway, in the previous post I forgot to share that pilot / piece of dialogue when I was first thinking up of the game. This was the draft for how the game was supposed to start...

...but I made that on September 1st, so I’m definitely not keeping most of this dialogue. (Travis/Gabe is also extremely out of character here.) We’ll see when I get there.

Alright enough meandering. From that flowchart/blueprints of the tower above I tried using the program Twine to plot out each choice the player can make.

The player starts off choosing between two doors. They have the choice of going through either door alone with the four other teenagers through the other door (2 choices), or they can go through either door with one person (8 more choices), or they can go through either door with two people (12 more choices), or they can go through either door with three.............

Let’s just say about an hour in I knew going through with that idea would be too insane, even for me. I was tired trying to plot out all the choices after the first door. So, I deleted that flowchart.

Time to downsize.

The first choice is made in the Observatory. The two choices are either the Aquarium room or the Space room. I decided to make the choices blend in together a bit more-- it doesn’t matter how you split up, but some split up scenarios would cause a different story. In this example, Samuel prefers the Space room and Jasmine prefers the Aquarium room. If you choose for them to be alone in the room they DON’T want, they get angry and that’d change the story. Daphne would not want to be alone period, and there’s also a branch if you choose for everyone to stick together, not splitting up. Five choices, that’s not so bad, I was thinking...

...Until it lead to this mess. If you look at the blueprint above, you can encounter the group you split off from if you choose correctly. That was on purpose, I like forced character interactions. However that leads to this problem-- if a character was split off from everyone in the previous room, what happens if they encounter the rest of the group again in the next next room? Depending on your choices, this can lead to all sorts of interpretations, and oof. There’s just so many storylines from there.

I attempted to shorten it by making bad endings (there’s a bad ending on the square with the red side), but looking at everything I know it’d take forever to complete this game. I do not have forever, I have dream games I want to make eventually. (Side note, I actually really like that bad ending, but I don’t know if I’d ever use it... If I never use it, I’ll probably tell you guys what that ending was supposed to be when the game is finished.)

Okay okay, back to the drawing board. 

It pains me to do this, but in order for this project to be doable, the player cannot choose which room their friends go to. They can only choose their own, or alternatively insist on everyone sticking together.

Okay I know this doesn’t look any better from afar, but trust me this is much more doable than the two previous attempts. Not only have I limited the choices drastically, but depending on the choices some paths would end up the same way.

While I personally hate doing that (what’s the point of choices if some choices would lead to the same ending??), I’m trying to keep to one rule-- each time you make a choice there will always be at least two paths. You cannot enter a room and have your choice be useless, i.e. no matter which door you choose it’s the same ending. This same ending must be conscious in a way.

As you can see from above, I’m not done with this flowchart. I’ve only done 12 rows out of the planned 26. (I would say I’m almost halfway there, but each row gets more and more complicated so I would say it’s more like I’m a quarter there, haha.)

I’m also debating on going with the bad ending thing, to cut off potential paths, but we’ll see.

Finally, to end this devlog, I’m trying out Todoist. I’ve never used that website before, but I think ending devlogs with a brief outline of my current workflow would be a cool idea? I put in some temporary dates of when I’m planning to finish certain tasks, but right away I can see that I’ll probably not make my planned January 18 release date, haha.

Next week, I should have the rough maps on RPG Maker, as well as finished the flowchart above.

Until next time!

- Marisol Cast