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The best game got even better

  • cabfe
  • 02/14/2015 09:24 AM
  • 398 views
Hello everyone!

A little update for Valentine's day, which also happens to be my birthday \(^o^)/

The game is still in production of course and I'm beginning the making of the biggest mission in the game.
In fact, it was so large that I could have made an entire game with all that is happening. So I had to cut a lot of elements to keep it playable inside Bleeding Moons but it's still a big chunk.
Average mission maps count is around 5-6. This one has already 17 maps and I'll probably need to draw a couple more.
That will imply a lot of interactions and dialogues to write as well, plus sprites and busts to draw for numerous people.
It's a huge task, but doing it one small step at a time I'll eventually get it done.

I also worked on improving previously made elements too, so that the game looks better polished. I'm aiming for professional result, even though I'm an amateur. You can't get worse by aiming higher, can you?

Here is the complete changelog since last update:
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- Changed the display font for Comic Sans. No, just kidding. But I really changed the font.
- Talking about words, the game is over the 100,000 words mark and counting.
- Changed the border of the windowskin, too.
- Added atmospheric effects to the title screen.
- Remade the green part of the water banks to blend better with the rest of the map.
- A few bugfixes and small improvements in the sprites' animations.
- Added the possibility to have a Commentary Mode as a New Game+ feature, only available after finishing the game once. This is required as there'll be major spoilers in those comments.
- The books in the castle's library can now be picked up without forcing the player to read them first.
- Fixed the bug where walls were displayed under the characters in the mission in the barracks.
- A vastly rewritten English version thanks to my friend Trent Jaspar that now sounds more natural to native English speakers.
- Added a slide effect to the menu windows. It looks way cooler now.
- Greatly improved the framerate in the Thorem Castle map.
- Added a Settings menu to let you select your Music and Sounds volume. Also added the possibility to turn off the dynamic shadows.
- Added a help window in the Quest log. It's not intuitive to use the keyboard to scroll the quest's description if you're used to the mouse control so far. Unfortunately, due to the kind of display of the description window, I cannot make the mouse scroll the text by itself.
- Improved the overall look of the Quest log, with new colors and a different background.
- Improved River's search pattern when you play Hide&Seek with her. Totally useless, I know ;)
- A few improvements to the Choices display system. Now you can select the line even if the mouse cursor is on the edge of the window, instead of being on the text. I've also added a small waiting time before activating choices to avoid accidental selection when the player is pressing Enter or clicking to display text faster. By the way, the S key can be used to Skip the text without the risk of making unwanted choices.
- Changed a lot of the icons and drew some myself. Earlier demo icons were sometimes other game's rip resources and I don't want that. There shouldn't be any left now.
- Save menu: added the possibility to enter a name for the savegame slot along with a screenshot of Ian's current location. That feels more like a classic adventure game now.


Some visuals for people who prefer to see the result:
The new font and windowskin:
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The system settings menu:
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The new animated title screen:
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Oh, wait. Commentary mode?
That's a little thing I wanted to add to the game. There's a lot of events happening in the story. Some of them have preceding echoes which will most probably not mean much to the player the first time they see them. I wanted to share my thoughts, anecdotes and behind-the-scenes revelations to people who have already finished playing the game.
Since there will be a lot of spoilers, I prefer to restrict access to this mode to people who already know the story.

In addition to the inside view I'll provide in this mode, I hope players will enjoy replaying the game by making other choices and see new outcomes. And, to keep the interest of the players who already know the story, I'm thinking of adding new scenes that Ian couldn't witness and add more to the characters and the chain of events.

Right now, I'm working on a dialogue where the lines will vary depending on the player's earlier actions.
The next picture illustrates the branching for this dialogue.
All blue text boxes are unique dialogue lines based on choices (the yellow diamonds) made earlier in the game.
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And this dialogue is entirely optional. Sometimes I feel like I'm putting too much work on myself ;)

As you can see, it's a lot of work to take into account the previously made choices of the players and provide a coherent dialogue based on them.
The result is seamless to the player and it's read as a natural dialogue considering what's been done before, which is my aiming at writing this interactive story.

Most people will never notice it nor realize the amount of work done to make the dialogues flow naturally.
I didn't think about it either when I experienced it in games I've played. This all felt natural. On the contrary, when a choice is seemingly overlooked or unaccounted for, it breaks immersion so hard that you don't even look at the game with the same eyes.

It's only when you do it yourself that you understand how much work had been put into a game.

It's all those little things you get to know or understand when you actually create your own game that does game making a wonderful experience.

Thanks for reading and see you next time for some screenshots of the new areas.