This week had some of the highest highs as well as some of the lowest lows.
On Tuesday I had perhaps my most productive day so far on the technical front, and on Friday I finally reached the summit of Mt. Dialog and implemented that system I had put off for so long.
But I also spun my wheels a lot. Some days I’d look up and realized that hours had passed without much to show for it.
This coming sprint ends on a full moon – and with that, a new release. I’m hoping that such a big occasion helps clarify my focus and productivity…if only to avoid being embarrassed by what I eventually put out there for folks to try
HIGHLIGHTS
Solved a nasty FPS drop that was being caused by Vsync. Weird, right?
Accomplished a huge goal by designing and finishing a new dialog system
Experimented with some ideas related to diversions (like claw machines)
Implemented some feedback to reduce clock size, fixed up dog animations, and more
Bought a harmonica! More on that later…
Fixed our vacuum by splicing together a new plug – hey, it counts!!
Started adding layers of ‘flavor’ in the form of random birds that fly by
A lot of major and much-needed refactoring & improvements to the inventory, clock, and popup notice systems
Created a proof a concept for world map viewing, panning, and zooming
LOWLIGHTS
More than a few wasted days
Refactoring is pleasing from a problem solving standpoint, but I’m not exactly moving ‘forward’ when I do it. I should try to minimize the amount of rework to systems I’m doing
Welcome to another edition of Feature Friday! Yet again we’re taking a deep dive into one of the many features and systems you can find in Village Monsters
Today, I’m going to talk about how conversing and dialog will work. Let’s take a look.
You’re going to be doing a lot of talking in Village Monsters. There will be villagers to build relationships with, merchants to barter with, and lore to be learned around every corner.
The actual text itself is of course important, but even more so than that is the delivery. How text and dialog is presented to the player is of utmost importance to how the world is shaped in their head.
In this post I’m going to focus on two specific strategies for communicating dialog with the player: The use of portraits, and the use of narrator text intermixed with dialog.
Robust Portraits
I probably don’t need to tell you that my professional background isn’t in art. It’s, uh…it’s rather self-evident, right?
sorry
While I may be unable to animate an entire sets of sprite to communicate what’s going on in a scene, I should have enough talent to handle portraits. As such, this is going to be a major focus of my time and effort when it comes to producing art for this game.
By way of example, I want to talk about the wonderful Undertale. Like me, Toby Fox isn’t exactly an artist,
sorry, toby
but he uses an impeccable style and design to bring his characters to life. One of the many ways he accomplishes this is via his liberal use of character portraits.
Take a look of this list of Undyne expressions next to “artist interpretations”, by Tumblr user g0966
It doesn’t take much to communicate a wide range of emotions and personality of a character when making a portrait. There’s nothing in the way of animation here; it’s just purely good design. It’s a wonderful bang-for-your-buck approach that non-artists like me can use to make the most of our time.
It’s too early to share something of my own that’s the same level of quality, but here’s one little guy I’ve been working on – codenamed Signey
More on this guy later on in this post.
Narrator Text
Next up, I wanted to explain the usage of what I’m calling narrator text. Let’s use another example, this time with Obsidian’s excellent CRPG, Pillars of Eternity.
You can tell Obsidian was trying to make the most of their money and work within their own limitations. Like the Infinity Engine games before it, one of Pillar‘s biggest limitations is its small animation set – you have your walking, fighting, and magic casting, but not much else.
Nearly every non-combat encounter with an NPC is them standing in an idle animation – no gestures, moving faces, or other animations are there to give them life.
Their solution to this was brilliant: they use narrator text intermixed with dialog to help paint the scene.
I think this is a genius. Without animating a single frame you can picture Maerwald as a frail and terrified old man who is likely losing his mind.
Pillars is a big, epic, D&D-style RPG, and its narrator text reflects this,going so far as being on the same caliber in style and volume to a fantasy novel
Frankly, Village Monsters is simply not that, so there will be some key differences. Notably, sentences will be shorter and much less descriptive overall.
Here’s an example of what it looks like in my game:
The above GIF actually shows what it looks like to combine both a portrait and narrator text to communicate with the player.
I have a lot of plans for narrator text in this game. For one, the narrator won’t be some detached voice – it’ll be its own personality and have its own opinions on what’s going on.
Bastion had a narrator that was dripping with personality
I’m also going to use it communicate other things beyond dialog to the player. For example, in most RPGs when a character is “done” talking they’ll just loop what they said last.
In Village Monsters, I can instead let the narrator do the talking. Instead of repeating themselves, I can instead use narrator text to tell the player something like, “I don’t think this character has anything more to say”, or “The villager looks at you kindly before returning to work”. Same effect, but in a way that’s a bit more effective than repeating text.
Summarized in a different way, narrator text will be yet another method to inject some flavor into what is hopefully a delicious meal.
Talking Back
One area I’m not quite ready to talk about is the ability to talk back to villagers. Instead, I’ll talk a little about my philosophy.
Most important to me: your character won’t ever have any lines of its own.
This is a very deliberate choice for the style of game I’m going for. Consider the below two possible ways for a character to accept a quest:
With a Voice: “Sure, I’d be happy to help look for your cat, Mrs. Seymour”
Without a Voice: You agree to help find the cat.
The 2nd option is without a doubt drier than the 1st, but this is intentional. I want you, the player, to project your own vision onto the character. Would your version of the character say “happy to help”? Would they be so formal in addressing a person by their last name? Maybe, maybe not, but I want it to be up to you.
Nintendo is infamous for using this ‘excuse’ for explaining why Link doesn’t talk in any of the Legend of Zelda games, but I think it’s a smart and ultimately correct strategy. You are the player – this should be true in all aspects, even speech.
Despite this, there will be plenty of ways to ‘talk’ without just saying yes or no. More to come on that, and much more, in the coming weeks.
The state of our WARP CORP continues to hold steady at ~insanely heckin’ good~
The Extinction-Level-Event (ELE)is now ~45 weeks away. Remarkable!
As my team of highly-respected accountants points out, this was the first week in the WARP CORP’s history that we had to start drawing from the reserves. It seems likely that from here out the money is only going to dwindle down, but we’re still in great shape.
The past two weeks have been wonderful and productive, but it’s time to get real here: There’s no way I can be successful just being merely “productive”. I need to switch from “good” to “great”, whether that’s in quality, output, analysis, and just a general overall ability to move tasks to the Done column.
I think I can do it. I don’t feel mentally taxed yet – if anything, it’s the opposite – so I still have plenty of brainpower I can consign over to the WARP CORP. My team of highly-respected accountants nod hungrily at this assertion, their blank expressions briefly betraying their attempts at humanity.
SPRINT GOALS
I keep trying to alter what I say in this section because it seems almost inevitable that whatever I say here won’t actually happen. I don’t know.
The next were-release – code named “Snow” – is set to release next week. This gives me added incentive to focus on things that are actually tangible so that players can begin testing them and trying them out.
There are a few longstanding issues that I think I’ll finally be able to address this week. Here are the top 3:
Address player movement and make it better than it currently is
Make the inventory feel far less ‘placeholder’
Actually finish the dialog system so it’s not so god damned weird
After those 3 big ticket items I think I can get started on more activities. I want to especially think about fishing, gathering, and maybe even the historical society system. It’s also important for me to begin constructing the actual town and start thinking about its personality and feel.
Finally, now that my day/night system is up and running I can start iterating over it and hooking up other systems to obey it. As always, there’s lots to do!
Another week in the books, and another good one at that.
This week was that of systems. The biggest – by far – was the enabling of the day/night cycle and related systems surrounding it. Slowly but surely this virtual world is waking up and becoming real. Soon it will grow far beyond my control, and I am very much looking forward to that!
The only thing I’m bummed about is this feeling of leaving money on the table – not actual money, of course, but rather the feeling that my time could have been spent better. I have a feeling that’s going to be a common thought as I grind through this new life of mine. I could always be doing more, always be doing better.
Well, I can at least always try.
HIGHLIGHTS
It cannot be understated how important getting a day/night system up and running was. I am so excited for what’s to come
I finished my first lore piece that details the history of a fictional (?) game company creating a fictional (?) game. Expect many more of these as development continues, though their content and style will vary wildly
I settled on a new possible game title through sheer coincidence. By simply reversing the original “Monster Village” I have stumbled upon the much better – and likely final – Village Monsters
I have begun – in earnest – to work through HeartBeast’s wonderful tutorials
Several new villagers have been thought out, written down, and constructed
The player has been shaven and then, paradoxially, received a stubbled beard in its place
LOWLIGHTS
I’m a 29 year old man and my days are still being derailed by naps that destroy me. I need to stop!
I had a tough day on Friday and it impacted me more than it should have
Today, I’m going to go over one of the constants in life and video games – the passage of time.
What Makes You Tick?
First up, I want to talk a bit about my overall design goals for the passage of time in my game.
Village Monsters is a mashup of genres, but above all it’s focused on one thing: being a village life simulator.
To properly simulate an interesting village life you really need a lot of systems that play off each other, and there is perhaps no more important system than that of time. It’s certainly the one that I’ve given the most thought to!
Early on, I knew what I didn’t want to do…
I didn’t want an Animal Crossing system of everything being in real time
It’s a neat idea, but didn’t fit my vision
I didn’t want the player to stress about what time it was
I see this frequently with the Harvest Moon “subgenre” where you always need one eye on the clock. This also didn’t fit
I didn’t want to stray too far from realism, either
There’s going to be some strange things going on in this digital world – I want to give player plenty of opportunities to latch onto things that obey predictable rules
My first decision was to abstract the concept of time itself. Behind the scenes I still keep exact measurements, but to the player there are only eight slices of time for each day: Early Morning, Late Morning, Early & Late Afternoon, Early & Late Evening, and Early & Late Night
A very early draft of the day-night wheel, ranging from Early Morning (the yellow slice with the sunrise) and Late Night
As the day marches on it’ll gradually transition from one time of day to another. There’s only eight of them (compared to, you know, 24 actual hours!), but that’ll let me give each one enough attention to make them feel distinct in their usage of music, color, lighting, and various happenings. In this way I can communicate the passage of a day without the player needing to think about the exact hour or minute.
Tick-Tock
The next challenge had to do with the length of day itself
It’s hard to make firm decisions this early on; after all, I have a single room with a couple interiors and not much to do – how on earth can I decide on a length based on that? Still, I needed something.
I ended up researching other games, such as Stardew Valley, Majora’s Mask, and Minecraft, for inspiration
It seems an average virtual day can range from as short as 10 minutes to as long as 20. Ever the compromiser, I settled on something right down the middle
The current rate of movement allows for about 2.5 minutes per time of day, for a total of about 20 minutes for a full cycle. However, practically speaking an average day will be more around 15 minutes – you won’t find much success in working sunrise to sunrise.
This rate isn’t necessarily locked in stone, either, as there will be various ways to alter the flow of time in-game. I’m open to adjusting it as we go along.
The Clock Wheel
I wanted the UI element to be an important part of the time system itself. I have especially fond memories of Major’as Mask and how it communicates time to you with a big, simple visual at the bottom of your screen
I also wanted a visual like this, especially because of the game’s top-down perspective – you can’t see the sky, so communicating the passage of time (as well as the feel of each time of day) would fall heavily on the UI
I went through a lot of iterations of a circle-based “visual clock wheel” of sorts. Eventually, I settled for the below. This is it running at “real time”…
It ticks once a second
…and here it is rapidly cycling through an entire day.
Everything – especially the visuals and transitions – are very much works in progress, but this gives you a sense for what’s possible
Each slice corresponds to a specific time of day as well as the weather. You” have noticed that it doesn’t just display the current time and weather, but also upcoming weather as well. This is yet another strategy of communicating the flow and passage of a day without being too obtrusive.
In the future, it’ll even tell you of upcoming holidays, events, and other things that are time-dependent – all of this, rolled up into a fairly unobtrusive UI element. I’m really happy with how it came out!
There’s also the method I am using to create the time wheel itself. Instead of creating one static image of a wheel I’m instead drawing each “slice” separately and stitching them together as the game runs. This makes it trivial to add new graphics for each time of day, weather, or holiday, and should help me stay as “futureproof” as possible.
Mega Months
I’m not quite ready to talk in great detail about other forms of time – like weeks, months, or seasons. But I did want to give a sneak peak of what I’m thinking of.
Similar to abstracting of time of day I want to also abstract the passage of months. Many games already do this, actually – in fact, the majority use a simple “1 month = 1 season” system and have four such months per year.
I didn’t like how “quick” a year felt with this system. In Village Monsters, you’re going to have a lot to do on a given day, and there’s going to be a great amount of holidays and events. I didn’t want it feeling like a month – and, by extension, an entire season – was flying by.
The current system I’m experiment with is a “2 months = 1 season”. Similar to my “Early Morning / Late Morning” system, I’m going with Early Season / Late Season
The “feel” of the start of a season is very different than the end of a season, and this type of system really lets me capture those differences. It also lets you ‘breath’ in between various holidays, events, and other things that’ll take up your time.
There’s always the risk of taking too much time, though, especially as it relates to how much time I can realistically ask people to play to experience everything the game has to offer. It’s a balancing act!
[Isaac, thx for getting in touch. Found the below on the old rig. Rough draft, rougher than I remember. Mind the grammar]
“For you, it was Saturday. But for me? It was the start of the rest of my life”
I didn’t know it at the time, but I had just experienced my first “Robert-ism”, a name given by the peers of John Roberts to the quips and idioms he repeats at every opportunity.
Roberts, a stocky man in his mid-30s with a closely-cropped beard, is disarmingly pleasant. The first thing you notice about him is how he is always smiling, always ready to laugh at some hidden joke that only he can hear.
His eyes glimmer as he waits for me to ask which Saturday he’s referring to. I eventually relent, and do so.
“August 22nd, 1987,” he says without hesitation. “You know what happened that day? The Legend of Zelda was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It changed everything for me.”
Our interview is in his office, an expansive room nestled in an equally expansive office building. His desk – a solid slab of mahogany polished to an almost blinding sheen – is unadorned save for a notepad and single picture frame facing him.
“I was always a big gamer,” Roberts recalls, “Pac-Man at the Pizza Horn in my hometown. Rogue and Castle Wolfenstein on my brother’s PC. But Zelda was more than a game. It was a world, you know? It was a feeling! Freedom and exploration and adventure. It taught me what games could be. I never saw them the same after that.”
The walls of his office are as bare as the desk, save for one spot directly behind him – a framed poster of The Legend of Zelda
“Five years later, when the 3rd one released – Link to the Past – it’s like I had this vision of the future of video games. I didn’t want to just be an outsider anymore. So I gathered a bunch of coworkers at Shockley-Bell and we all quit together. Formed the studio that same day”
Luckstone Software, founded in 1992, has become something of a legend among hardcore video game enthusiasts.
Roberts downplays it now, but his business connections – thanks in part to his father and successful businessman, James Roberts – propelled his ragtag team of developers into a multi-million dollar studio.
“My connections got my foot in the door”, Roberts is careful to concede, “but I’m the one that gave the door a shove.”
That “shove” was the game pitch that Roberts has since become famous for. Securing initial funding of $10mil, then an additional $25mil after that, Luckstone Software and its debut project – The Tale of the Monster Slayer – quickly became the most funded video game and studio of its era.
But perhaps more famous than its inception and funding is the secrecy surrounding both studio and game. Very little is known about The Tale of the Monster Slayer other than “it’ll be a world you live in, not a game you play” – another Robert-ism often recounted in interviews.
There are also hints that there’s been a great deal of trouble behind the scenes. It’s been delayed twice – once for 6 months, missing its initial holiday 1995 window, and then again after that. No new release date has been offered.
Roberts appears to be nonplussed by the delays. “The price of innovation,” he explains, “It’s a non-story. It’ll be done when it’s done.”
Our 5-minute interview – the longest Roberts would agree to – is nearly finished after that. I thank him before being escorted out of the office as the next interviewer in line is ushered in behind me.
This would be the last time that I – or anyone else – would speak with John Roberts for 4 years.
The Roberts of 2000 appears to have aged two decades since we last spoke. His hair – now more white than brown – reaches to his shoulders in an tangled mess. His beard is unkempt and stained near the edges. There is no smile this time, no Robert-isms as we sit down to talk.
Luckstone Studios shuts down this week. It was able to survive nearly 7 years of bad publicity, lawsuits, and even rumored reports of arson. But few companies can survive the incarceration of its owner.
“I’m not dead yet, though. Not dead yet.” A hint of a smile – of the Roberts I spoke to back in ’96 – creeps onto his lips. “They’ll need to
[Cuts off mid-sentence – very dramatic! Sorry, buddy, this was the only page I could grab. The rest of the draft is corrupted.
I’m working on the recovering the other documents. There’s also the transcript of my convo with Lovette. I’ll send them as soon as I can. Hope this helps! -J]
