So time is flying a little too fast, being a third of the way through July just about. I hope to get work on acts 1 and 2 done by August 24th. It's not a must, but a good goal since that's when I go back to college. It's been about two weeks since my last blog and I already have plenty of things to share. We'll start with this:

Perspective Extended Edition Details

The game that's out right now is Act 1, and it'll be included in the extended edition of Perspective of course. You will, as of right now, be able to skip act 1 if you've already played it. I'm focusing on Act 2 at the moment, but I am still looking to touch act 1 up a bit. A change of how the player can save is necessary, and I also want to actually, physically write out how I want the intro to go. I'm actually pretty happy with some of the intro scenes, so it'll stay intact. But I hope to improve the narrative, and also make the conspiracy part of the story a bit more relevant to the player and emphasize the fact that a memory level is a separate story from the overall narrative of Perspective. Perspective was mostly about discovering your attribute and solving the mystery of Mr. Anglow's memory. That tease at the end is an example of how the conspiracy clues will largely affect the OVERALL story of the game.

So other than the narrative of act 1, nothing much else will be changed. New, future gameplay mechanics will be introduced in act 2 and later. You can expect attempts to increase difficulty and some things to help replayability. Adding any of these things into act 1 won't really work, with the level being finished already, it's not always a good idea to pack more stuff in. I'll be introducing a lot of stuff in act 2. It's a great first level to start with, so it'll stay where it's at mostly.

So act 2 will be a continuation of the story as well as where I start adding many things to the concept. As of right now I'm working on the cast of characters for each memory and their respective graphics, as well as fresh graphics for the main cast. It's the very next day, and four patients have been selected for Amelia's memory spectating process. Each with an issue regarding spirit activity, each in a different region of the "Desert Countries". The anarchic pirate islands, the desert of Savel, an abandoned docktown on the border between Amalasuintha and New Valorius, and a research facility in the harsh cold of the Lisbit mountains. A lot of different locations being detailed, as you can see. You'll get a look at all the regions of this continent, relatively speaking.

The country on all the desert countries' eastern borders is New Valorius, a location pretty much barred from the player, with only a peek planned in the future. Readers should know that this is not the world of Perspective, however Perspective more so takes place in this world. I don't want to keep saying this, I feel like I have anyway, but I have other game concepts brewing that I have planned to take place in this world. That's not important right now though, as I don't want to overdo a whole series or anything. I'll just say that I have quite a few ideas, each a whole new gameplay concept. But heck, I don't know why I'm saying this other then it felt like a good time to mention it :P. Onward!
Gameplay Additions
Here's a list of planned additions that will be introduced in act 2:

• Multiple memories available to the player at once, allowing the player to do them in any order as well as jumping from one memory to another whenever.

• Difficulty Experiments with Clue-finding, which means that I will be using level design techniques to try and make it more difficult for people to just happen across clues without any deduction whatsoever.

• Conspiracy Clue Connections, which means that the conspiracy clues are back, still as a side-plot to the main storyline in a memory, but they are connected to other memories. While each of the memories have separate main storylines, the conspiracy clues are all connected. Clues in one memory will help you with another memory. You'll be deducing across multiple memories of patients to find the answer to the conspiracy in this act.

• Dead End Clues, clues that are somewhat related to the mystery, but don't lead you to another clue or end up actually helpful in solving the mystery. You won't know which clues are dead ends, and will have to deduce what clues will actually help you in solving the mystery.

• Randomization. In an effort to improve replayability, I took a look at something I thought about but saved for later in the end. Randomizing certain parts of the mysteries. Obviously, the mystery can't be completely randomized. However, there are plenty of parts of a memory I can randomize so it's different every playthrough. That way it's not exactly the same when you go back to play it again. That's all I can say about randomizing for now. It's a pretty risky addition, so I'll be careful going forward.

• "Side-Quests". They are completely optional, small arcs within an individual memory. You'll be awarded of course for doing them. They are side quests in that they are separate stories going on within a memory.

Community Levels
The state of the process I use to make a level is always changing. But it's very possible people can write a mystery, with the clues, characters, maps, whatever. Maybe even put it together themselves. Act 3 is planned to have a bit more freedom in exploring the world in real-time, specifically a location in each region. Amelia is given more control over the office, and you can find some "side-quest" patients. I'd rather not say anymore about Act 3's additions, but I will say that I have been thinking about community levels, however I know full well not a lot of people have played this game as of writing this. This is just an idea for the future, and if someone was interested in getting some levels into the game... :P it's an idea I thought I'd share here.

OKAY! Time to get back to that cast, get it a full cast for each memory. Which probably means about 100 character graphics total. I know I can do it, that's not an issue. But it IS a lot. Hehehe, this is going to be fun! Alright, time to cut this blog short. Any questions, feel free to comment!

Alright, I'm in the midst of the conclusion's rewrite. I'll make sure it's how I want it, but I'm looking at releasing it today! For my subscribers you'll be expecting a notice stating my download is up of course. But if you're not subsribed, the download will probably be up in a few hours + the time it takes to prepare the download after this blog is posted. I'm now excited to get it out there, this rewrite makes me feel safe enough to have it out in public. I'm just adding scenes and rewriting dialogue before I release it!

Edit: I had to take a break, so expect the download tomorrow. I started getting sloppy hurrying to get it done. I'll sleep and finish it off and release the download!

Game Time
The game seems to be a little over an hour long. Most save files seem to go to about 1 hour and 20 minutes but I'm adding scenes so that's more game time of course.

Feedback
When you do play the game, be sure to go to my feedback page and answer my questions! You'll be able to play it soon! After playing, I'd just like to know how the narrative and level hold up. I will change what's necessary in preparation of the contest, but this is basically the final version!

Perspective is complete. I finished my first draft of the conclusion, finishing the game. It's a full game now, game time can't be accurate yet but it's loosely around an hour. I looked at it all in it's completeness and already know mostly what I'm going to polish. Let's start with this:

Seiromem's Test Session
So to start, I had him test it. While my focus was on making it possible to complete, beginning to end, and looking for bugs, we looked at the narrative as well. We have our bug report now and I will crank out fixes tomorrow. I'm preparing for the next two sessions. Both are more "experience tests". I hope to have the game clean for them when they play!

Other than bugs, I've decided on changes to the game that will surely improve it. I'm going to work on the game from beginning to end, fixing the bugs as I go, for these changes. Here's the list of changes:

• Intro changes. The tutorial level does it's job! The rest of the intro is working as a great intro to this game but the very first two scenes need to be changed. This is the biggest change, probably, and will hopefully finalize the state of the narrative in the intro.

• Clue Icons: I need to use my own graphic for the clues so that no matter where they sit, you can see them.

• I want the Perspective title to appear somewhere in the intro.

• Smooth out the intro as a whole

Then I'm going in and fixing all the bugs we found in the level and anywhere else. The stages were perfect according to Seiromem so that's good.

• I need to make sure the player understands what they must do upon starting the level

• Narratively speaking, I need to make sure the bridges between the level and intro and the level and conclusion fit.

• Conclusion needs some enhancement to it's final scenes. I need to take a look at it overall, make sure it fits in the narrative and concludes it so there's closure with the level, but the conspiracy leaves at cliffhanger as there will be more! It's a To Be Continued thing.

So there is definitely more change coming to the intro then anything else, more bugs with the level then anything else, and then some polishing for the conclusion. I plan on doing all of this before my next test session.

I plan on updating this blog entry for the next two tests. Then, one last progress blog perhaps when I'm ready to make the game public! I have a week or so to make sure this game is the way I want it to be!

*UPDATE* Part 2: Version 1.1

Changelog:

• All Bugs from last test fixed

• Intro Changed

The intro now has a different beginning, changing how the game starts(basically erased two scenes, and changed how things were going down), adding a title to appear and some dialogue changes.

• Conclusion Bugs Fixed

• A different default thing is being used to represent clues instead of a custom thing. I tried :p but I'm no artist.

Sister's Testing Session
I had my sister test the game! And soon I'm going to have another friend test it but here's status.

Intro:
Just needs touch-ups to dialogue, scene direction is good. I'd say the last change has now made this pretty much final! This isn't where I'm worried. Need some explanation to different things.
Level:

• Collectibles need to be explained more

• A couple simple bugs found

• THE MYSTERY BUG: My worst bug yet. At some point she had found two clues but the main crystal said she already had found all five. I tried to figure it out and made it worse! I screwed up trying to figure out how many she actually had, using the wrong variable. Now we don't know what happened. We have to keep an eye out for now. I have a plan for the next test, fingers crossed! It's a hard to find bug but I want it gone!

Conclusion:
In her opinion it needed more, however what was there was definitely working as a conclusion. There will be changes to this too.

And some side-notes, I remember calling it a demo earlier that I might release. It would actually be a full game, not a demo, so scratch that. Silly of me, and also the reason why the game is not out but complete is that I want to get these initial changes in and have my initial testers test before I make it public. Make it ready for the contest as best I can!

Intro: 100% Complete
I went back to the intro and refined the scenes that were there, and then added an Intro Tutorial level, very quick but with a different environment(snowy), to ease the player into memory spectating. It's purpose is to show you how a stage works and how the Mystery Room works and stuff. Very quick. Then I added additional scenes. It's DONE but with future refinement most likely to the freshly added things.(Collectibles aren't introduced, when I work on the Collectible system I might add it in or just introduce them in the main level.)

Memory: 90% Complete
This update is obviously after the fact that the main game is changing because of my scope change. There is one "level" but as a whole the game will add up to an hour so I'm not going too crazy.(With extra time, I'll probably be working on new level designs for future extensions of this project).
Out of the four stages in the memory, three are complete. This weekend I'll be focusing on the last stage and getting it done. More on this later.

Steps to Completion
The next step after that is the conclusion, the ending scenes of the game. Hmmm... judging by the looks of it, THE GAME IS CLOSE TO FINISHED!!! I have not worked on any of the conclusion however.

So the steps after the final stage and the conclusion? First I'll be going back to the "body" of the game(thinking of it as an essay), and go add the collectibles. I stopped adding them to better place them in a fully made level. I might change it so there are different types of collectibles, almost color-coded. Basically I'll focus on the collectible mechanic after the game's been finished.

THEN, my next step would be to play through it and quality test the game, with a focus on the body. I might add some more meat to the memory if it needs it here. And based off my observations I'll add some, perhaps, UI changes or add more things to boost the gameplay. We will see.

So design of the stages so far: I've been changing my strategy and process to making them as I go, after all this is experimental and new for me. If I sit down(with the occasional tangents with thoughts in my head) it takes me around five hours or so for a stage. I need to coordinate their move events, plan the timing of the dialogue sequences with those movements, write the dialogue. All of that. It's time consuming, the reason why I guess more then one main level would be too much.
Personal Journey:
But I have to say, I have so much time. It was a good move changing the scope, they recommend it and it was good advice, I'm relieved. With time to bug test and improve quality I'm confident I can WIN the Non-RPG category! The money would really help me with college and such, this competition has definitely grown important to me. Luckily, especially with the scope changes, I've been able to have fun and relax and not stress over the money part.

So yeah, this game is certainly close to being done. I probably will update once the stage I'm working on, the conclusion, and the collectibles are done, basically when the game is done. Then that leaves the refining and revising!

So Memory 1 is about 80% done. As one stage was almost done, I went on a trip for two days. I did very little work then. I feel so behind, but I'll have no distractions for the next two weeks. SO, hopefully I can crank out the three levels of the game.

This game is very experimental. Here's some info on the two levels I've been planning and a good way of explaining how its experimental.

Memory 1 Info
So this memory has four stages, and is my basic idea of the game. You'll spectate this mansion, watching the party guests and staff of the house from the butler to the two maids, to the two cooks. Stages seem to be between 1 to 2 minutes long so far, from the two stages I've made.(1:15 seconds and 1:45 seconds). The player will be coming back to these parts to discover new things though, so short is good. And you can still exit the level whenever you want if you don't want to wait.

Your experience will definitely be different depending on which stage you start with. Using the knowledge of what you saw (In stage four, you can find something very shocking and confusing if it's your first stage.), you'll go from stage to stage trying to find the moment they were talking about. You'll enter a memory mystery room, with crystals displaying the clues and objectives for the memory. Some clues are described with a inquiry before obtaining them, some are "unknown" until you obtain a different clue(to avoid spoilers). So by reading the question, you'll know what the clue answers. They are just markers for you, a sort of note taking.

In this level, you won't interact with much of the scenery(there is one thing honestly), it's strictly spectating and following characters and their conversations to find what you want. My friend tested a bit, he's more of an action game person, asked me while he was playing if there was some action. I felt bad, but knew what type of game I was making. I told him this was a puzzle, exploration game and he understood and felt it was definitely working. He was very intrigued(he played stage four) with the mystery so I know the narrative is working well so far(the part I'm anxious about most for getting right). He did have a question that was very important to think about:
Can I interact with the memory?
I said not with this one, but he was happy to hear the second memory was my experiment with that.

Memory 2 Info
The theft memory! You have to watch the thief steal something from the girl, then follow him, follow the possession to find where it must be present time. This takes place in a desert village, mostly a restored ruin. Here's the difference from the other memory. There are two stages in this village. The third stage takes place in the nearby ruin, where things change. As you explore the ruin there are some elements of dungeon exploration. Perhaps using the other characters in the memory to traverse the memory as Amelia is putting herself in this environment, not just viewing it from above, so she traverses but can't change what's happening so flipping switches isn't possible. The patient in the memory is moving through this ruin, while the thief is too. And their traversing is affecting the ruins, unlocking and locking doors, setting off traps. So it becomes a puzzle to reach the thief or get back to the patient, or view something separate from them in a whole different side of the ruin.

Collectibles
So collectibles are undergoing some more possible changes as I brainstorm different ways to find them and how they will properly add to the experience. I don't know which is better, a few or a bunch in one stage, putting a collectible for viewing scenes unrelated to the main quest or conspiracy or putting them in places hidden. I'm doing both right now, mostly rewarding you for being there to see things happen. I can't decide until the levels are done though.


So that's that so far! Just a peek at my designing. As I keep working, I keep coming up with better ways to put these levels together. It's good, but not fast enough. And I get distracted(like posting this, hmmm) so I need to get back to work. I'll think about memory 2 more once memory 1 is done. Ok, back to work!