They say “journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. While I despise clichés, they are so for a reason, I guess. I had to teach myself that the best way to start a project is simply to start it. The “how’s” and the details must be ignored at first. Your doubt as well. You simply need to start somewhere. But what if my first “single step” is more of a giant leap? What I can’t make this leap? What if the scope of the first project is simply too big for me? Damn it. I am doing it again.

I feel like video games have been made for me. The perfect marriage between storytelling and programming. I truly believe that, someday, video games, due to the active nature of playing them, will be the best media for storytelling. They can take advantage of the empathy of the player; as result, will affect him/her more. Also, the technical part is insanely fun for me as well. So here we go. The first quest.

Quest 1_1:

Love. There have been hundreds thousands of arts about it already, including video games. It’s the most overdone theme probably in human history. Yet, no game has used its unique advantages, i.e. a human literally controlling a character, to truly capture the feeling of love, specifically the dark side of it. So, you know what? I am going to make it.

The married components, I talked about earlier, in video games are writing and programming. Or, story and gameplay. The married couple work better if they complement each other. When they enhance the experience of the other by becoming similar in tone and theme.

So, that’s priority number one for me. Story should be told by the gameplay. Gameplay has to make sense in the context of the story.

Speaking of story and gameplay let me tell you the pitch of the project:

So, 2D side scroller game, where the player can move right or left in a mazelike environment. The player is attracted to an amusement park and enters a love-themed house to search for the girl he loves. The character is desperate to fix his unrequited love story by proving his worth.

Pretty simple, right? Well, I hope so.

As I said story and gameplay should work together so how do we invoke the feeling of desperation, confusion, and love through gameplay? How can we make the person playing the game be just as desperate as the character to reach his beloved? These are achieved through the unique gameplay mechanics:

• Character has 2 bars:
  1.  A health bar which dictates whether he is alive or dead
  2. An Oxygen bar which affects the health bar.
• Once the character enters the house his O2 bar will continuously decrease, when it reaches a certain level the health bar, as well, starts to decrease but at a much faster rate.
• The only way you could preserve your life is by defeating monsters in the house. However; monsters are hard to kill and ammo is extremely limited.
• Once a monster is dead, a small amount of O2 is restored thus restoring your life.
• Certain story events relating to the girl, as well, might affect the character’s O2. If he sees her, for example, his O2 is restored, but decreases when she leaves.

(Love isn’t a single feeling. It depends on which type of love. For a dark, toxic love, you feel like you can’t breathe. Like your chest is weighing you done. And this affects your mood. And this exactly what I hope what both bars will achieve.)

• Character can fight monsters (with a gun and limited ammo), explore the house, solve puzzles.
• Character has a mobile phone that can
  • Keep track of his current info (ammo, O2, health, etc)
  • Consult a map for the house.
  • Write notes to help solving puzzles.
  • Has a messaging app where he can interact with other characters, and most importantly the girl herself.

And that’s basically it. I am going for a minimalistic style of game where the mechanics are simple yet powerful enough to produce some interesting moments story wise.

          All I need now is tasks to be done in a certain deadline. I will take a modular approach by dividing up the project. I hope this will help me actually complete the damn project.

The tasks for deadline 1 are as follows:

1. Start writing the story, not necessarily finish, but figure out the basic structure and plot points and write as much as i can.
2. Complete the player character (movement, design, animation, etc..)

And both must be done in end of the week. (I hope)

So, today is 11/7 then see you at 15/7, I suppose. Hopefully I won’t stare at the flashing cursor in Microsoft Word on an empty page without writing anything.

UPDATE 2 : Practice, Patience, and Persistence.

It’s kind of surreal seeing an idea, that existed entirely in your mind, spawn into reality before your eyes. The project is starting to look like a “game”. And started to seem that I might actually do this. Got to say, this week’s tasks were much more satisfying than the last one probably because of the programming heavy nature of them. Will keep that in mind for this time’s tasks.

Anyway, let’s see the progress so far…

• Oxygen Bar (Top Left) continuously decreasing.
• Health Bar (Top Right) decreases when O2 bar is less than 50%.
• Turning off generator stops O2 decreasing. (Will be at the end of every level and the main objective)
• Killing an enemy (Still no AI) will bring back small amount of O2.
• Hitting a vase with a knife will restore some O2.
• Once O2 is above 50%, health restores.
• Ammo can be picked up on the floor.
• O2 and Health Bars decrease is sped up to show effect.
• You can enter new rooms.

I think the exact numbers such as the speed of the O2 Bar effect will better adjusted in the testing phase, where the enemies and levels are almost complete. I further deepened the main gameplay mechanic by adding generators, which must be found and turned off to stop the gameplay effect, and Vases, which can be shattered for a small O2 restoration.

I think the generators are necessary as they provide a “slightly-long-term goal” for the player. If the short-term goal is “staying alive by killing monster”, the medium-term goal is “Find the generator to stop the effect” and the long-term is “story investment.” I think this provides a satisfying gameplay loop. Basically, what I want the game to be is:

Stay alive by killing monsters (but be careful as fighting monsters may risk your health) while solving puzzles and exploring environment to find and turn off the generator to stop the effect in order to progress in the story. And then repeat for every new level.

Pretty simple, yet satisfying, I hope.

Lastly, the cupid’s animation turned out better than I expected:

And here’s the attack animation:

It turns out that with enough practice, patience, and persistence (that alliteration wasn’t planned) you get better at most things. I got a lot faster and more comfortable working with pixels and animations and the biggest thing I learned was simply: keep practicing. As I said in the last update, this task specifically scared me the most. But I am really glad I got a little bit better at least. And it gave be some confidence with the next tasks. Speaking of.

So, this time’s task. I think this will be the hardest week yet. I will try and finish all monsters in the game. Their AI and their design/animation. Not to spoil too much but there’s at least 4 different monsters I am thinking about. I hope to finish them all. I tried to add a healthy balance of programming and animations/design as I think it would help me not kill myself. I’ve been thinking of adding boss fights as well but no promises. We will see.

So basically, I should show you for next time:

• 4 monster designs for next time.
• And their AI being functional.

See you at 24/7…

website: https://thepretentiousquest.wordpress.com/

UPDATE 3: The Trough

My god, this week’s tasks were hard. They almost, ALMOST broke me. It was probably unwise to increase the workload’s amount and difficulty so steeply this week. I drew the animations/designs of the monsters, as well as coding their AI behavior. The process was full of errors, frustration, and sweat. However; I must say it was by far the most rewarding week. The game is starting to be “playable”.

To avoid spoiler, I will only show the behavior and design of two monsters.

The first is the cupid:

The cupid:

• Registers the location of the player
• Tries to get to an optimal range to fire arrows.
• Depending on its health, will either stay at its current position, retreat, or teleport behind the player.
• Its arrows can be destroyed if the player melees them if timed perfectly.

The second is the marionette:

• If it hits the player with its projectiles, the player will be slowed down.
• If the player is slowed and out of range, the marionette will keep teleporting towards it.
• Once in range, the marionette will melee the player.
• Also, has different strategies depending on its health.

I must say I am pretty proud of the designs/animations of all monsters. For someone who literally knew nothing about pixel art or game design the last month, I think they are pretty good. The numbers, like damage and health, need to be juggled a bit. But this will be done in the level design stage.

If I could give myself, or anyone, advice on working on a game or any project in general, it would be: plan the overall picture, iterate on the details until satisfied, and JUST START.

If, and when, you find yourself in the trough of your excitement curve, just try to push through. Don’t force yourself by overworking rather force yourself to do something tiny. Anything. Any forward progress. One line of code, one tiny change. Just keep your momentum.

Now, this time’s tasks. The inventory/phone mechanic. This is going to be a very big part of the game. As you explore the levels and look for clues for puzzles, you will gather needed items to progress forward. Be it keys or something similar. That’s the first use. The other, more important, use of the phone is for story reasons. The player will get messages from the girl he is looking for (and maybe other characters as well). Those messages might be helpful and other times will be harmful.

Think about this, if a very strong theme in the game is the character’s over dependence on his lover, then how can we elicit the same feeling for the player? In other words, how can we make the player be overly attached to the sound of a message from the girl, like how the character is?

The intuitive answer would be making the messages affect the gameplay somehow. When a person, who is in love, hears a notification from his phone their heart immediately skips, some part of them will be hoping that the message is from the person they love and their breath will be held until they check their phone. It’s human nature. It’s the most relatable feeling in the world.

So, in the game, it would make perfect sense to decrease the oxygen bar of the player. This way we show that negative effects this relationship has on the character AND we make the player sympathize because they, as well, are affected.

Just like the character’s heart will skip a beat when hearing the sound of phone, the player as well will hope it’s a message from the girl to avoid losing some of their oxygen bar. So, fitting!

So, here is what I need to do:

• Inventory system that keeps track of the items/clues.
• The phone’s message app.
• A notes section for clues.
• The UI for both of course.

All must be finished on 3/8. A little over a week. I really do need a break. After all, I am human. I think.

website:https://thepretentiousquest.wordpress.com/

It’s been a while. University-related matters kept me busy for a most of this month. OK fine, that’s not the whole truth: my archnemesis, procrastination, had a hand in it as well. Nevertheless, the game’s UI is effectively done and only needs a few adjustments and improvements. The phone’s features, along with the inventory too, are working well. It was a bit challenging due to the precision needed to design a UI. It needs to be intuitive while giving all necessary info to the user. Having friends try them out for you is god-sent.

Here is the inventory UI:

The phone:

A rough test for the map:

Anyway, the pieces needed to make up the bigger picture are all done and now comes the real challenge: making the actual game. Here is the plan going forward:

• The game is made up of 5 different location/levels.
• Spend roughly one week designing each level.
• Try to update this devlog each week.
• Consider adding more enemies.
• Polishing, testing, and marketing phase.

Updating this devlog might be a little hard because I won’t really share any screenshots or videos to avoid spoilers.

I should have at least one level done by 9/8…

First level is done I must say it was a bit of a challenge. I didn’t expect that a simple scene like an apartment would take this amount of assets. Still, at least I improved quite a bit in designing sprites (Relatively speaking!). Anyway, I am sure during the rest of the project I would become much better at drawing sprites. Then I would go back and improve the previous scenes. Reiteration and patience are paramount now. Also got a chance to play around Unity’s 2D Light system which I found delightfully intuitive.

Here is a small taste for the first Level:

Onto the second level now which is a lot more complicated than the first. However; I would imagine it would give me a chance to be more creative compared to the first level. Been thinking of replaying some of favorite Horror games, as well, and try to analyze why they work so perfectly.

Don’t really know how long it would take but I hope a week, or a little more, is enough.

See you at around 9/16…

https://thepretentiousquest.wordpress.com/