Player to Developer: “Can I be the main character?”

Thats how it should be.

One thing that I always try to remember with our “big” project is an actually super-simple statement, which is that games are means for the normal person to act all heroic and cool. After a hard day at work (or school, or whatever our user is doing) which might have been the exact opposite of successful, most people prefer to at least be a cool hero in games. It’s just natural, and of course, as gamedesigners, we have to exploit this shamelessly. It can be valuable to NOT do it and try the whole “games-are-art”-thing and make the player feel miserable (not really, I exaggerated because it’s fun), but all that aside, we don’t only want to tell a nice story and have compelling characters, but we also want to entertain the player – and, let’s face it, not only entertain him, but let him have some fun with the game.

So one thing that is fun is being the cool hero who does everything right, who is in a position of power (but maybe not the most powerful guy) and who is clever, intelligent and funny. Everything we all want to be, if we are honest. So our main character is clever, he is instelligent and he can be funny. That’s not to say that he is perfect though – the character has done mistakes in the past and struggles to overcome them. This is needed to make the character interesting: Think about your favorite character from a TV-show or a book. I’m sure you will find a weakness in his or her character, and it might be that very weakness that makes the character what he/her is and what makes you like him/her so much.

More on the aspect of creating the main-character soon.

-E

Obligatory Halloween-Post

Boo.

Cynism FTW.

“FTW” means, according to the ever-knowing Wikipedia Fort Wayne, Indiana, among other things, such as “For the win”, which is internet slang and thus perfect for a blog like this!

The main character in our game is not exactly happy with his situation. He has become quite cynical, which, of course, tells you about the character. Again, we are not going to say “AND HERE IS THE CHARACTER YOU PLAY, HE’S A CYNIC BTW!!!”, but instead, we have to convey this with writing. It’s one thing in the dialogs, but quite a different with the investigationtexts.

The investigation is pretty easy in the game. Simply rightclick on the object you want to hear more about. Rightclick on the door and hear what the main character says about it! How about the television? The bottle of wine? The couch? The window? It’s all there! However – that’s the problem. Of course, some will eagerly click on toilet paper, maybe giggling in anticipation of the funny lines we wrote for it – but the thing is, most of these just don’t fit for the main character. He may be cynical, but he is not without pride. He probably wouldn’t joke about toilet paper of all things – at least not in the four-grader-way. Maybe some very dry comment. Possibly mocking the player – as a cynic, it shouldn’t come of as a surprise that he mocks whoever he talks to. And in the investigations, that might just be the player. Of course, we won’t be mean to you, oh no. It’s all about creating a certain character. And maybe have some fun.

-E

Secret Mystery Levels, Part Two

Whoa, nearly finished with daily business, now I have to write another never ever to be read by anyone piece of information for our trusty readers. Yeah, for both of you.

The level I’m currently working on is the summer residence of one of our characters. We’re currently putting most of our time into modelling the props for the level, and there are lots of them.

As a good level designer, you have to be everything in one person: graphical artist, game designer and sometimes even a programmer. At this point, I’m mostly a graphical artist, designing textures for all those items, and game designer, ever thinking of new objects to put into those six rooms I’m working on for some weeks by now, and assuring the environment will be interesting enough for at least thirty minutes you might need to play through first time.

Next big thing will be texturing, followed by lighting and completion/polishing. Stay tuned! Yeah, both of you.

-T

Todays interesting fact

Todays interesting fact: There are way too many objects in kitchen and bathroom. But given that it is extremely boring to hear about everyday-modelling so many times, I’ll tell you some interesting facts about the current status of the scripts of our game. By “scripts”, I don’t mean dialog and storyboard, but instead the code that is written that defines how objects and actors react, what they do, etc. In simpler terms, the code we wrote.

Currently, the whole thing is divided into 12 files. The first is called “main” and is by far the most uninteresting of them: It includes definitions, some debugfunctions and the menus. Many programmers will now shout angrily at me, because one could definately divide these further and make cleaner code, but despite the many times that I said to myself “I’m gonna write clean code! This time, it won’t be a mess!”, sooner or later, I won’t comment a function or ignore naming conventions. Of course, I end up regretting that (in this case, I always, and I really mean ALWAYS, spell the name of one pretty important variable wrong. Whoops), but sometimes, this is how things are. I still know how the code goes and I hope that I will be able to life with it until the end of the project. Then, I can try again. And fail again, probably.

So, how many lines might this funny file have right now? Too many, I suppose. It`s a little over 1500 (1564, right now), but there are plenty of empty lines and comments in between. It’s amazing how fast this goes. Often, I use copy&paste, of course, and then there are some lines that are simply standard-pieces of code, but its still a noteworthy number.

So now that we had this file, I still have 11 other that I can use for a quick update. Well, I suppose I could do something similar with the different sections of the design document, then there are some other documents, and…

-E

Apartment decor and character

We are still creating lots and lots of models for the flat of one of the characters. And although one never really thinks about it, what you can see in a single room, what kind of objects, how they look and where they are, these are all things that tell a lot about the particular character.

Given that the character who lived in said flat isn’t that important, his character-description was shorter in our design document. So when I read the list of the dozens of models needed, we had to discuss a few of the items. Examples of these include table cloths (“I don’t think he’s the kind of guy who would have table cloths”) , ashtrays (“how many cigarette stubs should be in there?” “it should be pretty full”) and, of course, magazines. What kind of magazines is this guy reading? While there was a somewhat obvious answer to this question, we had to think a little more until we found not only a logical, but also a family-friendly solution to this. So now, this character has a lot of interest in boats. Yeah, that’s right. Sailing is his new life. But isn’t this interesting? Think about how you’d judge a character differently when he would not have a magazine about boats in his room, but “that kind” of magazine. Maybe you wouldn’t, but in the moment you see the magazine, of course, lots of associations appear in your mind. These indirect characterisations can create an incredibly strong image of a character. You’re not directly told how a character is, but you see something and make up your own mind. I like these ways of characterising better, as I think they create a stronger image and are more elegant.

However, this is why its so important to think about the objects and the style of these levels. It makes you think differently about the characters. And this is why we talked so long about what kind of magazines we`d create. And I haven’t even said anything about the fake adverts we placed there. Hah! Maybe one of these days…

-E

Low-poly fork-related whining, part one (and hopefully last)

Wow. This modelling of everyday objects is slowly driving me insane. “Oh, it’s a fork, that can’t be too hard, you eat with one every day” (although this sentence kind of implies that I also eat soup with forks, which isn’t the case, I assure you). But then, I never get the proportions right. How wide is the top compared to the handle? Questions like these run through my mind as I slowly realize that I’m spending my time modelling a stupid fork. Which isn’t even remotely relevant to the plot. Or is it? (Spoiler: No, it actually isn’t.)

Also on my list were a spoon, a knife, a magazine and a book. But aside from the fork, none of these were hard. So remember our fine blog the next time you eat with a fork. And I will now stop this post, all about forks. Planned for next time is something remotely interesting again, don’t worry, guys. Comment or something.

Blogs totally worth a visit, part one

Wait, thats what “Blogroll” is for, right?

Todays link goes to the blog of Windmillgames. There you’ll find plenty of interesting and valuable words carefully chosen by Kihaku Kiyaku for maximum effect. His art style is always incredibly inspiring and he was also the one who created the concept art for our very own Secret Mystery main-character! According to himself, his weakness is his failure to keep motivated (yeah, so he dropped out of our project ), but he still manages to put himself together and create pieces of awesomeness. So by all means go there and look around! And then come back quickly. We will wait here with fresh cookies.

In case you missed the link above, it’s here again: http://www.windmillgames.de/blog/

-E

Secret Mystery Levels – Part One

Here it is: the second „daily update“ „Secret Mystery“-post you always waited for.

Hi there! This is my first post so here is the obligatory “I’m new here which means you didn’t know me until now, but you do from now on which is great”, and all that. Having said that, let’s begin with todays topic: level design.

Level design is crucial for most games with a ‘living’ world which you’re able to interact with. Our “Secret Mystery” project is depending heavily on a believable environment – the player will be able to interact with nearly any object he can see. (Note: There will probably be a post on the nightmare of writing humorous investigation-texts, -E)

The good thing is: the player will be able to discover a level and recognize small details in a very natural way, and to investigate it just like in the real world (only that this time, it’s clicking on it with the mouse and not actually looking at it)

The bad part is: somebody has to build all that stuff.

From today on, I’ll submit a few articles on what problems occur while building levels, how I solve them, what skills you need and how to develop them.

I hope this is of some interest for some of you, and feedback is appreciated.

That being said, today is nothing but this introduction. And a screenshot.

- T

List of shock

Yay! It’s the first “daily update”* “Secret Mystery”-post!

As I’ve said before, I’m forced to do what I hate creating lots of “everyday models” to increase my modelling skills. I’m not here to announce that I’ve mysteriously reached the “acceptable”-level, but rather that today, I received the list of models that are still needed. Carefully, without suspecting anything, I asked if the list I had before was still actual or if more models were needed. Little did I know that this was the worst thing anyone could do in any circumstance ever. Because, believe it or not, the list was now at least twice as long. Twice! This means I have to do twice as much models! I of course didn’t show anything and pretended that it was what I expected and that I always thought it would end up like this and tried to hint that most of these models were already done by me in advance (which they aren’t, but I tried pretending). It didn’t work.

Well, well, well. So… I’m going to create these models! It’s not that I have much of a choice. I can still moan about this on a blog on the internet! Yay!

-E

* Actually, this one should be written by someone other than me. But as it turns out, he hasn’t. So now I do. For a moment or two, I actually considered not doing it, but then I figured, promising daily updates and then failing that goal on the very next day is too embarassing. So here it is! The first post! Amazing!