It is time again, for another update on the progress for My Burden to Keep!

Today (or technically yesterday as it’s past midnight now) I worked on integrating the introduction sequence into the game, complete with the characters moving too. I got the first two thirds of the whole introduction into the game, the only thing that’s missing from them now is the animations. Pacing, line breaks and movement was tested several times before I was satisfied with how it all played out. I’m picky with these sorts of things, hopefully it’ll show somewhat in the final product.
At first, I ran into a problem with the script for the second part of the intro that I coded today. As always though, the problem turned out really simple to solve (one of those “oh, herp derp”-moments.)

I also got the basic architecture done for the scene outside of the apartment building, rendering it out with some fancy ambient occlusion. All it needs now is some colour, and it’s finished.
I might put up a video tutorial on the method I’ve used for making the backgrounds. I find it’s a very efficient method. It doesn’t look nearly as good as hand-painted backgrounds (old-school LucasArts and Sierra style), but it does have a bit of that feel still.

Anyhow, that’ll have to do for today. There’s work to do tomorrow as well, and I should get some sleep in preparation for that.

Peace, dudes!
Marcus out.

Another day of work!

Today, I worked on a puzzle design for the game, where you have to enter a sequence of numbers accompanied by directions to turn a dial on a safe. It was originally meant to be a test, but the design worked so well that it’ll probably work its way into the final product as it is, accompanied by some illustration though. Right now, it’s just a text box convincing you that you are in fact turning the dial on the safe.

I worked on integrating the first draft of the dialogue trees into the game as well today, which turned out to be a pretty painless task. I tested my way to where to put line breaks so that the dialogue lines didn’t become too long. I also integrated the dual perspective dialogue tree into the game, where you control two different characters and their responses. I was afraid it would be too confusing at first, but it turned out to flow pretty smoothly. There’s only a pair of choices for the second character, so I might try to break up the dialogue into a few more choices to make the player more involved.
After all, the lines that are currently in the game are just from the first version, I suspect there’ll be a few things to change along the way to really get all the emotion and character traits in there.

I also worked on a background today, trying out a new style. It involves both 3D modelling and 2D painting, a mix of both worlds, so to say!

This is what’s in the game so far, visually. Please note however that the characters are just placeholders I did way back for the prototype.

That’s all I have for today. Tune in tomorrow for another episode of ‘Adventure Game Development Shenanigans’!
Or, you know, come back tomorrow for another semi-interesting blog post?

Marcus out.

Good evening, people of the interwebs!

Today, I’ve finished up the first draft of all the dialogue in the game. It was quite a lot of work, but now it’s ready to be proofread and then, it’s more or less ready to be implemented into the game’s script.

One of the later scenes involves you trying to convince a person to give in, and depending on what you choose to say, that person might or might not surrender peacefully. It’s up to the judgement of the player to determine which choices will lead to a calm surrender, or which of them that will lead to a more intense conclusion.

I received feedback from one of our teacher on the course yesterday, and she really seemed to like the story. That’s a great compliment, coming from an experienced book author and all, so I’m really psyched to see if the story holds up as a game as well.

To not leave you guys without anything interesting to read, here’s an excerpt from the dialogue scripts;

“You mentioned that everyone left the party.”
“Yeah, well, the mayor asked us to stay as the last attendees were leaving. He said he wanted to discuss things with my father.”
“Did mister Scott seem upset, troubled?
” Hmm… I would say he seemed worried more than anything, so I guess troubled would be an accurate description.”
“Interesting. What happened then?”
“Mister Scott asked me to go back to my father’s apartment and take Emily along with me, if she so desired. I guess they wanted to discuss things in private.”
“Understandable. Elder adults are often like that, uncomfortable in serious discussions when others are present. So, you and young miss Scott left for the apartment. Your father stayed for how long?”
“I’m not sure. He didn’t come back to the apartment, not that I noticed anyway. Come to think of it, he mentioned that he only had one key.”
“With regard to this information, we may assume that he stayed at the mansion. Logical, a manor of that size must contain a few guest rooms.”

That’ll be all for today. Look out for more stuff tomorrow, hopefully there’ll be some visuals to show off then!

Marcus out.

Another project has begun, and thus, another project needs a logbook! From this day forward, you can follow the progress on my current school project, going under the temporary title “My Burden to Keep”. It’ll be a short adventure game in the classic point and click fashion, revolving around a murder mystery and the people affected by it. It is a collaborative effort being made by me, Marcus, and I’ll be responsible for the design, background art and story aspects of it while my classmate Lukas will be responsible for the characters of the game.

Today, I finished up the GUI elements for the game, which means the gameplay ‘shell’ is more or less ready for action. You can alter commands between Walk to, Examine, Interact with and Speak with, much like in older LucasArts and Sierra titles. I’m using the Adventure Game Studio engine and I must say that the workflow with that engine is really smooth and easy to get into. Highly recommended for point and click adventure fans!

The most important part that I worked on today was writing dialogue and some pseudo-script for some of the scenes in the game. Dialogue will be a large portion of the game, so there’s certainly stuff to do. I finished up dialogue for the first four scenes in the game, which turned out to be a lot of text. For fans of story heavy games, I’m estimating there’ll be a good amount of interesting stuff for you to feast on! Awesome, right?

Other than that, there isn’t much to say. Progress is at a good pace and so far it looks like the deadline won’t be an issue at all. Let’s hope it stays that way!

Marcus out.

Hey everyone!

It’s been a while since my last post. I haven’t had much to report lately, other than the fact that the Captain Condom flash game has been uploaded to the site (see the projects tab.)
Yeah, I’m a bit late with announcing that it’s finished, since it’s been finished for a good while now. Oh well, better late than never!

Life flows on as usual. The current course we’re undertaking at school is one I’ve been looking forward to; story design. For the first two weeks that’ve passed, we’ve been assigned to come up with a story, re-iterate it as needed after first feedback, work out a game manuscript and synopsis fit for a two weeks project and prototype the idea.
All has gone well so far and I’ve teamed up with a classmate from the game graphics course for this final, two week project iteration of the storyline I came up with. I won’t reveal too much about it yet, as it hasn’t officially kicked off yet (not until tomorrow) and there might be heavy and/or light changes in the storyline, whatever we see fit.

The game is going to be an adventure game, traditional point and click style much alike the 90′s games of LucasArts and Sierra. The key element of the storyline as it currently is is a murder mystery, which will be solved through the eyes of two protagonists.
But, as I mentioned before, much of the story might come to change. I’ll try to update regularly as we progress.

Until then..!

Marcus out.