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Game Design
Example of new dialogue style
trance2
Second of two blog posts scheduled for September 25, 2022.
To kind of help get me into a groove with how I want to write dialogue, I've been using a fantastic website called Trails in the Database to get a feel for how the dialogue in the Trails games flow, given it's one of the major inspirations for my writing going forward. If anyone's curious, one of my others is AdmiralStyles' Love and War, which is equally as verbose (and I love it).
In that vein, I've been working in Scrivener (a fantastic tool for writing if you're at all interested) creating "game script files" of NPC and story dialogue. It feels like Falcom kind of just kitchen-sinked the writing in Trails in the Sky where they have seeming drafts of interactions along with the actual text that gets called in the game. So I've also been writing multiple versions of the same conversation in kind of a drafting format.
As one of the major inspirations for the dialogue is the Trails series, every NPC has a name and has their own life outside of the player talking to them. So because of that, I've been writing different dialogue for each NPC depending on when in the narrative the player talks to them, who's in the party, what other NPCs the player has talked to, whether the player has actually talked to that NPC before in the first place... Though it's not necessarily the machine learning dialogue branching that Emily Short posits as the true evolution of dynamic narratives, it's closer in state to the dynamic authorial leverage that Jacob Garbe puts forth in his PhD dissertation (and more succinctly in his article about the same found on his GitHub).
In layman's terms, expect every NPC to be unique and have not just one line of dialogue, but many based on progress and player interaction in the world.
tl;dr, here's an image example of one such exchange with a character from Vera's past, while being accompanied by her civilian childhood friend Amiee, if the player has not talked to said character the first chance they're able to. Note: This is still draft dialogue and is subject to change in the final product.
I hope this gives a neat glimpse into the writing style and eventual feel of Sagawind going forward!
To kind of help get me into a groove with how I want to write dialogue, I've been using a fantastic website called Trails in the Database to get a feel for how the dialogue in the Trails games flow, given it's one of the major inspirations for my writing going forward. If anyone's curious, one of my others is AdmiralStyles' Love and War, which is equally as verbose (and I love it).
In that vein, I've been working in Scrivener (a fantastic tool for writing if you're at all interested) creating "game script files" of NPC and story dialogue. It feels like Falcom kind of just kitchen-sinked the writing in Trails in the Sky where they have seeming drafts of interactions along with the actual text that gets called in the game. So I've also been writing multiple versions of the same conversation in kind of a drafting format.
As one of the major inspirations for the dialogue is the Trails series, every NPC has a name and has their own life outside of the player talking to them. So because of that, I've been writing different dialogue for each NPC depending on when in the narrative the player talks to them, who's in the party, what other NPCs the player has talked to, whether the player has actually talked to that NPC before in the first place... Though it's not necessarily the machine learning dialogue branching that Emily Short posits as the true evolution of dynamic narratives, it's closer in state to the dynamic authorial leverage that Jacob Garbe puts forth in his PhD dissertation (and more succinctly in his article about the same found on his GitHub).
In layman's terms, expect every NPC to be unique and have not just one line of dialogue, but many based on progress and player interaction in the world.
tl;dr, here's an image example of one such exchange with a character from Vera's past, while being accompanied by her civilian childhood friend Amiee, if the player has not talked to said character the first chance they're able to. Note: This is still draft dialogue and is subject to change in the final product.
I hope this gives a neat glimpse into the writing style and eventual feel of Sagawind going forward!
Announcement
Announcement
Progress Report
Progress Report
World maps, story outlines, and randomness, oh my!
*takes some time from playing Project Diva*
I always seem to be working in spurts, don't I? Albeit really sparsely placed spurts, but spurts nonetheless. Regardless of how often (which isn't often enough), I'm not dead yet. Even if trying to finish up this last semester makes me wish I was. Either way, progress!
I'm actually sitting down for once and writing out an even more specific timeline of events for the game, going from Chapter One all the way through. Not only will this help set a timeline of stuff I need to finish, but it'll also help figure out where things go, exactly where in the story certain things are, and... finish off the item database I guess? Key items might have something to do with it, but I'm sure puzzles help with that as well. So far, I've had little bits of pieces of just about everything written down and/or floating around in my head. With this, I'm consolidating everything together into one document. So it's not just "oh, random story spoiler happens." It's "this is what leads up to random story spoiler."
In that vein, I've been actually working on the biggest map - that being the world map. Though, after playing a couple of times with what parts have been filled in by flying over in the airship, it's not as big as it looks in the map editor... Either way, pretty much the entire landmass for Chapter One is finished. I've just got to make some parts a little less open and also fill in a couple of blank bits. After that I might actually *gasp* work on location maps, then start filling in the dialogue and scenes to go with it. By my estimate, Chapter One should probably be about 6-7 hours? There's six or seven "dungeon" areas to be had, so that makes for some decent content, I suppose.
Otherwise just plotting stuff out like I should've done years ago, as well as STILL not being done the stat curves... I've got everyone's AP done and I think most everyone's HP. ATK/STA/MYS/RFX stats are still in the works for about... three characters, though. And finishing Lucien's HP. Very confused why he only goes up to L23 with that...
Anyways, have a picture of a late-chapter town on the world map. Still thinking of adding a time-of-day indicator of some sort to the upper-left and the world map on the bottom-right is still a little WIP since as I fill in stuff, I'm also trimming and adding. As well as adding major rivers which may or may not show up on there.
I always seem to be working in spurts, don't I? Albeit really sparsely placed spurts, but spurts nonetheless. Regardless of how often (which isn't often enough), I'm not dead yet. Even if trying to finish up this last semester makes me wish I was. Either way, progress!
I'm actually sitting down for once and writing out an even more specific timeline of events for the game, going from Chapter One all the way through. Not only will this help set a timeline of stuff I need to finish, but it'll also help figure out where things go, exactly where in the story certain things are, and... finish off the item database I guess? Key items might have something to do with it, but I'm sure puzzles help with that as well. So far, I've had little bits of pieces of just about everything written down and/or floating around in my head. With this, I'm consolidating everything together into one document. So it's not just "oh, random story spoiler happens." It's "this is what leads up to random story spoiler."
In that vein, I've been actually working on the biggest map - that being the world map. Though, after playing a couple of times with what parts have been filled in by flying over in the airship, it's not as big as it looks in the map editor... Either way, pretty much the entire landmass for Chapter One is finished. I've just got to make some parts a little less open and also fill in a couple of blank bits. After that I might actually *gasp* work on location maps, then start filling in the dialogue and scenes to go with it. By my estimate, Chapter One should probably be about 6-7 hours? There's six or seven "dungeon" areas to be had, so that makes for some decent content, I suppose.
Otherwise just plotting stuff out like I should've done years ago, as well as STILL not being done the stat curves... I've got everyone's AP done and I think most everyone's HP. ATK/STA/MYS/RFX stats are still in the works for about... three characters, though. And finishing Lucien's HP. Very confused why he only goes up to L23 with that...
Anyways, have a picture of a late-chapter town on the world map. Still thinking of adding a time-of-day indicator of some sort to the upper-left and the world map on the bottom-right is still a little WIP since as I fill in stuff, I'm also trimming and adding. As well as adding major rivers which may or may not show up on there.
