Me Yaught, the Daydream

Lud, a Gui m'dear

2006-10-10T04:36:00.000-07:00

Ok~dillio~

Here's a mock up of what I envisage the gui to look like. In the picture it is opening the icon set after clicking the appropriate trigger. Might opt out of the swinging in thing depending on how annoying it is. Will see.

"Dynamic" shadows in 2d

2006-10-10T03:14:00.000-07:00

So I've been thinking. One of the (visual) elements of Still Life I enjoyed very much was the dynamic shadowings on the characters.

Of course, Still Life was done in VirTools with 3d character models, and short of writing my own engine in C++, which I don't intend to do, I have got AGS and 2d to work with. I like 2d anyway.

So how to dynamically light something that has no Z-axis dimention? Obviously I need to have a seperate sprite for the shadow oriented with respect to predefined light sources in the different environments. It's simple enough on the surface.

Time to get my cartesian geometry on:

Let lightsource be (a,b) and let character be (x,y)

Angle = Tan((x -/+ a) % (y -/+ b))

Rotate ShadowSprite = 360 - Angle.

Done.

Except the problem then arises that dynamically rotating sprites in AGS slows the *shit* out of the engine and not provide fun at all. Functionality more important than pretty. That's what I'm always telling people.

So. What to do. Well, the solution if this was to be a commercial project is to write my own engine like I should anyway - however as stated, not gonna happen because we loves the RAD approach don't we precious?

Well I figure that a nice little work around would be to have all my dynamic light sources to be reasonably far away, thus making things look a little more realistic due to not needing to change as rapidly (ever seen a bug fly around a lamp?). Then once that is managed, I will split the screen up into 8 segments. The eye will *probably* interpolate the shadow differences if there are as many as 8 regions for the character to walk through, each with a different shadow length and angle specification.

That's what I reckon.

Anyway, I've also been sketching around tonight and I have come up with a nice little interface design that I think is fairly innovative. It incorporates a mood display, a thought display, inventory, active object, icon bar, and text entry panel. It's a bit heavy on screen real estate but it is fold away so that might just let me away with it. I have to test it out on the backgrounds I have already done. If it works, I think I'll go with it and make all new backgrounds accomodate the new gui.

Gotta think more about the way people interact, what they want, and what is good to keep. I know one of the things that gets me screaming in adventure games is the way (at least in the point and click era) that the player gets a list of selections or icons and that is all they can talk about until they unlock new ones. Essentially reducing conversation to an inventory puzzle. For me, I'm always thinking "Oh you bastard, just say *blah*" whilst feeling annoyed I have to let the character discover *blah* for him/herself.

My idea is to incorporate the text parser into conversations whilst retaining the point and click archetecture, as well as the list based stuff and maybe some sort of "notepad" hint interface to let the player know the "critical path" of conversation.

Plus other stuff.

Anyway, it's just a paper idea at the moment, but I'm gonna see what some implementation looks like over the next few days.

Cheers.
I haven't thought out the scripting yet, but it shouldn't be too hard.

Game music

2006-09-26T01:05:00.000-07:00

Hey.

Actually a game related post. Shock.

So I think I've come up with an appropriate themesong for my game. No wait, lower that jittery shotgun I'm not singing. Hell I'm not writing lyrics. *shudder*.

But melody I can do without Baby Jesus crying. So I've got a rather pleasing Emin,G,D,Asus,Amin progression that I'm working out with various melodies running through it and a bit more complexity that isn't quite as well thought out yet. Shall hopefully lend a somewhat professional slant to the score rather than abhorrent midi bashings, and for minimal effort on my part - that's a good trade.

Kind of like the effect seen in The Apprentice 2 - Knight's move. The production values for that were so bloody high for an indie. Brilliant score - especially in the rainy stable / race course.

Also my paradigms are Quest for Glory V (musically anyway) as well as the sublime Gabriel Knight series but especially the music from 3.

And eventually, once I get a little more familliar than I am with my synth rack, I wanna get some EBM type stuff for the second act of the game (mirrored in the fourth but not as full on). A good example of music I would love to steal and enact nefarious breaches of copyright on is The Last Firstborn by CellDweller. Really good song that fits the mood of what I have in mind (which is completley seperate from all music discussed to this point).

http://www.celldweller.com/ <-- the splash page has a little embedded loop of a sample from The Last Firstborn which is really cool. I'd like to make something for act 2 that is in line with Red Tape by Agent Provocateur also... especially the industrial beat with the grungy bassline. Maybe crossed with something like Institute's Bullet-Proof Skin (mainly just for Gavin Rossdale's unbelievable vocal skills, but seings as I don't actually know him, nor anyone who can sing like him...). I have nooooo idea what sort of musical mood I should aim for with the first act. If I had to figure out what genres to shoehorn the acts into I'd say:

Act 1 - Film Noir / Gritty Brittish crime
Act 2 - Sci-Fi
Act 3 - Steampunk
Act 4 - Cyberpunk / Steampunk

Hence beaty angry darkwave moving to acoustic chilled out (which fits act 3's setting as well) before blending the two in 4. But 1? It bears thought. Especially as 1 will be the shortest, "hook" act to engage players with it's own somewhat insular story to kickstart the universe. Hmms. I was toying with the idea of emailing Nickel, not to be confused with Nickelback or that other Nickel something band. They're a seriously indie band that haven't really done anything since '97 when they got one of their songs on a season 1 or 2 episode of Buffy. Their music is perfect and they're just small enough that they might let me use their music if I give them full credits. Maybe. Maybe. Ok it's unrealistic but hey... what else is a contact-us link for, right?

Sigh.

First Post

2006-09-24T23:02:00.000-07:00

Hey.

Eventually this will evolve into a development journal for my myriad projects, including my as yet untitled game which I resolved yesterday to sell on Lulu when it (in 2025 heh...) reaches completion.

Anyway- I just registered now to post on Remote Wanderings, my friend Jack's movie review journal. Identity theft can be a bitch, but so too can preemptive bashie.

Well, in the spirit of things, the latest game news is that I have decided to amalgamate no less than four (4) medium length games into one commercial length game (and hence the sell decision. not that I'll charge anything real. But it'll be a nice little addendum to a cv.).

Yeah, I also evolved the idea of the third version (the one I was previously working exclusively on), and will now be able to incorporate it's (was to be) direct sequal into the timeline. With a different playable character... ammounting to what... 4 or 5 playable characters total, and a chronology spanning a few hundered years at least.

Viva la adventure game. The indie community will assuredly do something about the impoverished state that is our game industry at the current.