1168: Dev Diary

I’ve been working a bit on my game over the weekend. And just to prove I’m not just all talk, I present to you two world exclusive screenshots.

“Boy,” you’re probably thinking. “That sure looks like an RPG Maker game.” And, of course, you’d be absolutely right. The relatively generic appearance and use of stock assets is deliberate for several reasons, though: firstly, it allows me to concentrate on what I feel is the important part of the game, which is the writing and overall structure, and secondly, if you read my vaguely spoilerish post from a few days ago you’ll doubtless be familiar with why I’ve chosen to stick with the “default” aesthetic for the moment.

What these screenshots perhaps don’t clearly show is that I’ve built a little on the stock assets with some additional material from the RPG Maker community and beyond. The portraits you see in the second image, for example, were created by RPG Maker community members Archeia and Scinaya, who took the time to make some “emote” variations on the stock characters’ portraits. This means that I no longer have to have characters smiling even while they were being angry or upset, which was a little disconcerting.

What you really can’t tell from the screenshots is the fact that I’ve found some great royalty-free music to use for the game’s soundtrack. While I would absolutely love to compose the entire score to the whole game, again that’s something that would distract from the important part of things, which is actually writing and implementing the game’s story and structure. I’m not ruling out the possibility of composing a custom soundtrack in the near future, but for now I’m very happy with the high-quality stuff I’m presently using, as it suits the atmosphere I’m going for quite nicely.

Insofar as the story and scripting is going, it’s going slowly but well. I’m almost finished with the interactive introductory sequence, which is probably one of the more complicated parts of the game, as it will branch off into more linear “paths” shortly after all that concludes. I’ve been taking care to incorporate hooks for my intended game structure, which will help encourage people to replay with variations on scenes and alternative ways for events to unfold according to the player’s past actions and decisions. I’ve implemented these in such a way as to make them hopefully seem pretty “seamless” when playing the game for the first time, but those with a keen eye playing through again will notice the places where it diverges slightly. I believe doing this sort of thing is quite important, as no-one really wants to read through the exact same material several times just to see the whole game. Plus there are other rewards and incentives in place to explore all your available options, too, but I’ll refrain from discussing that side of things too much for now.

Perhaps most importantly, I’ve figured out my ending, or more accurately, my “true ending”. Again, no spoilers for now, but the structure of the game will be such that you’ll need to play through all the “normal” paths and meet a couple of other conditions (which I’m debating whether or not I should make explicit) in order to see the definitive conclusion to the game’s narrative. I can see how the ending will unfold in my mind’s eye, and it’s a good ‘un — in my humble opinion, anyway. I actively want to get the story to that point, to bring the characters to that finale. I’m half-tempted to make the finale events now while they’re fresh in my mind then go back and fill in the middle part of the game, in fact. But we’ll see.

So far as writing the rest of it goes, I have a vague idea of how each path is going to go, but not the specifics as yet. I have a firm idea of who all these characters “are” in my mind, though, which will make it easier to write scenes with them as I progress onwards. I like the characters, too, which is important, and the introductory scenes I’ve created so far hopefully help to establish their personalities and other character traits. The challenge from here is, of course, ensuring they remain believable and consistent as the rest of the story progresses, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Anyway. In summary, things are going slowly but well. I’m enjoying myself. And hopefully at some point in the next fifteen years I’ll have something more to show those of you who are interested.