I will enter the Mini-LD.

After considering the theme, I don’t actually have much interest in creating a story through text.  The concept is about dialogue.  Since I generally don’t like to explore mood and story via dialogue (I prefer the ‘show, don’t tell’ method), this theme is challenging for me.   Therefore, my entry will likely be somewhat unconventional.  I will be pursuing one of two goals:

Either:  Concentrate on a dialogue engine.  I have never written a robust dialogue engine before and I need to know what goes into one.  I have a rough outline of what I would like it to support and how to code that.  As such, I would be producing a tech demo for the competition.  I would still attempt to do some story (I have a vague idea), but I might just have to fall back on old poetry I’ve written as a script.

Or:  Try to be innovative with the idea of all talk.  What if the characters (this would work best with two human players) could not speak to each other, but still had to communicate (ala Journey, the upcoming atmospheric PS3 title).  What if the characters were robots, and instead of speaking verbally, used some protocol language (R2D2 anyone)?  What if you were interacting with aliens and had to learn their language (The Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis)?  I have a basic story to go with the robots idea, and I may pursue that.

Feel free to steal any of those ideas (actually I’d be excited to see anyone use them)!  I’ll see you guys in irc, and I’ll be watching the blog.  Good luck, all!

After sifting through several different ideas, I’ve got a premise that I like.

I should be able to finish it without too much trouble.

I’ve decided to go way out of my normal development fare. I’m making a furry girl’s love game. Oh hell yes. And the best ending has polyamory. No further spoilers about that.

It’s about a vixen who has a crush on her next-door neighbor. Along with her best friend, she courts the neighbor and tries to win her heart. The game will track how the neighbor feels about the protagonist as well as how the protagonist’s best friend feels about her. The ending will ultimately depend on those two things. However, either opinion reaching an extreme value will give an ending that depends on both opinion values.

The game will be told from a third-person perspective. IE: The protagonist appears as a character on-screen instead of being the narrator. I like writing stories from the third-person perspective. It gives a nice feel to calmer stories, where a first-person perspective is better for action-packed plots.

I’m very happy to be doing this game. It’s a great break from the sorts of things that I’ve been doing. It’s also a good reason to do a bunch of drawing. Also, I get to learn to do actual art in Inkscape. (Granted that I don’t have a tablet, so I’ll have to use a mouse)

I will use a manga style, no gradients, and no outlines. The flat colors and lack of outlines are style elements that I’m very comfortable with. The manga art style is new to me, though, and I haven’t made static character art in quite a while.

The music will be done in LMMS, and sound effects will be made with some clever LMMS work.

I look forward to working with Ren’Py. I’ve been playing with it for most of today, and it’s loads of fun.

Peace,

— Mr. Dude

So I thought i’d share the way I am structuring the dialogue in my game.

I am using a node graph architecture – each piece of dialogue exists as a node in a tree. Each node can have several child nodes, representing the next piece of dialogue. A child node can be any other node – including itself, or the parent of itself. This allows for recursive dialogue (“try to open door” -> “door won’t budge” -> “try to open door”…..)

Throughout the life cycle of the game, a pointer to a dialogue node is used to track the “current node” – this is the piece of dialogue which is currently being executed, and switches to the next piece when it is able to do so. A disadvantage is that it cannot execute more than a single node at any one time – i.e. only a single piece of dialogue can be displayed.

If a node has a single child, the dialogue switches directly to the child node when the current node has finished executing. However, if it has multiple children, the choices are displayed for the player to choose from. The choice selected then becomes the new dialogue node.

To fill these nodes with content, and link them together, a description of each node exists in a table Lua-side.

All of the nodes listed in the AllNodes table are created and linked together at run-time automatically. To create nodes, you just place new node descriptions in this table, and specify the names of the child nodes.

The first prototype build, which shows the dialogue tree in action (with only a small part of the Soldier path complete) is available here:

Journey through hell – prototype

Next step – text effects! more content!

-DBS

Hello folks, I will be participating in this MiniLD! But since making dialogue in Game Maker is kind of tough, I’ll probably just have a story in my game, The Struggle for Humanity. In this game that I’m working on with qwezc, you are of an ancient alien race that has to introduce new technology and ideas to the early humans. I’ve never really done something like this before, so I’m excited to see how this turns out!

Here’s an early screenshot:

Tags: alien, evolution, first, games, human, ld, mini, simulation

Hi guys, the game that qwezc and I are making is moving right along. Its now got actual game play! Every time a baby is born you get points that you can spend to introduce new technology to the humans. It still doesn’t have much dialogue or a story but that will come later. I’m thinking of adding some special powers that drastically change the humans’ opinion of you.

Here’s another screenshot:

Tags: evolution, for, game, humanity, humans, progress, struggle

Updated Hieroglyph deciphering experiment Rosetta some more:

http://www.ninjadodo.net/temp/LD19/rosetta_v7.zip

Fixed some bugs, improved usability.

Tags: Egyptian, Rosetta

I warmly encourage anyone working on a dialogue system for the MiniLD this month to check out this interesting article series:

Designing a Dialogue System From Scratch

Part One:
http://tom-jubert.blogspot.com/2011/06/designing-dialogue-system-from-scratch.html

Part Two:
http://tom-jubert.blogspot.com/2011/06/designing-dialogue-system-from-scratch_08.html

Part Three:
http://tom-jubert.blogspot.com/2011/06/designing-dialogue-system-from-scratch_14.html

If you know of other similar articles, I’d love to hear about them!

The game is about a chubby farmer who is about to lose her farm. In order to keep it, she needs to reinvent herself, or perhaps she will be able to find happiness with the way she is now…

Marry your way out of your financial troubles, or get smart and make your farm profitable. Get the bank off of your back by paying off your loan. Or, you could take the easy way out… You could kill whoever tries to get between you and your farm…

Walkabout

Tags: fat farmer girl

I’m really sorry about this. I’m not sure whether to continue in what I’m doing. I don’t know whether I really want to be making a visual novel.

I don’t know why I’m feeling this way. I shouldn’t. I’m really conflicted, though. I don’t know whether to share this kind of thing. Part of me is really afraid of being harassed over it. But I want to share how I’m feeling, and it’s related to game development, so I’ll take that risk. I want people who are commenting to keep in mind that I feel very vulnerable about this kind of post, and that I don’t deal well with jokes about my emotions. Please be gentle.

Working on the visual novel, something felt… wrong. I don’t know why. It was more fun than I usually have while making a game. Something felt wrong about it, though. I really hate feeling that way.

I’m looking at the roguelike I had planned. I will probably work on that. I’m really sorry about not being in the Mini-LD. I’m ashamed of myself, but I can’t seem to focus on my entry. Please forgive me.

I may or may not finish my roguelike. I may or may not get back to the visual novel. I don’t know what I will do. It’s really upsetting for me, but I can’t help it. I really need to look at what I’m doing, and try to figure out why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling.

I don’t know what to do. I really don’t. I wish I could say with certainty what I will do. I wish I could say what I want out of game development. I really don’t know right now. I’m sorry.

Please forgive me,

— Mr. Dude

Although we are allowed to start now, I won’t actually start till that Friday. Mainly because this is the end of a semester for me so I have finals to take and papers to write. I will be using Inform7 to write an IF game. I have never used Inform before, although I have toyed with it in the past. Hopefully I’ll have a complete (probably short) game by the deadline. Either way, I am using this opportunity to learn how to work a fantastic IF creator.

We got a little farther, it’s still far from finished but here’s a little demo. It’s sort of a simulation strategy.

You can download the demo here: http://shard123games.weebly.com/ludum-dare.html

Tags: demo, download, for, humanity, struggle

All right. Basically, I’m setting up a system of “Step here, choices appear, choose one, move on a set path, repeat.” I’m going about making my game like this since I’m very visually-minded. It’s going to have thousands of possible outcomes. Hope you like it!

I love cherries, so Fat Farming Girl has them now. You can collect them and make a pie, or sell them, or maybe give them away as a gift.

So I’ll have to sit this one out, I guess.

Unfortunately I’m straddled with extra-work at my day-job this weekend, and I also should be working on this other game I’m supposed to be making for game-design-school.

So instead, here’s a gif I found on twitter.

-Matthew

Voicebox is a very simple HTML example for RPG games that require voiceover dialogue. Instead of carefully recording all of your game’s speech, certain characters can be assigned an “alien tongue” that is made up of simple nonsense sounds. Much like in the original KOTOR adventure game by Bioware, important characters can be given proper English voiceovers while secondary characters or those you don’t have time to record dialogue for can simply play random snippets of silly “fake” speech like these. Believe it or not I recorded these myself using a microphone (in between bouts of laughter). Feel free to use these recordings in your game. Enjoy!

http://www.mcfunkypants.com/2011/voicebox-mp3/

Tags: dialogue, McFunkypants, mp3, NPC, sound, voicebox, voiceovers

Best day ever!

http://indiegames.com/2011/06/freeware_game_pick_questling_f.html

I’ve been working on a new game for Father’s Day! So far I’ve liked what I have done with the this game. This is my absolute first flash game I have ever made so please give me some slack. Here are the features: A splash screen to start of the game; In the game you evade “your children”,  I mean for a father, isn’t that what its all about? Anyways power up items will appear randomly (1/35) on the game. One of these items is mountain dew. This increases your speed because of the caffeine. Along with that, there is beer. When activated (move over the item) you turn into a drunk dad and your children start running away. When your drunk, if collide with your children, they disappear. Along with those power ups, there are timers for them. For example, when a beer power up appears there will be text in the lower right corner telling you how much time is left before the beer will disappear. Same goes for the mountain dew. Also there is a timer for when you are drunk telling you when it will wear off. If the children run into you….well… your just gonna have to find out.

I would like some people to test this new game and please send me feedback on how it could be better. Thank you so much!

The game is on my website at https://sites.google.com/site/snafugames/

Okay so this theme definitely won me over – I will be putting together a game for the latest MiniLD, and I’m looking forward to it! I considered one of the engines tailor-made for visual novels and the like, but have decided rather to stick with Flixel. I expect to do the vast majority of the development on the weekend of the 25th but I have started laying the foundations.

The game will simply focus around one conversation – a “chance encounter” made while commuting. The usual over-ambitious hope is to present the player with a slew of contextual questions and responses to use throughout the exchange; with your options, and their responses, being affected by the chemistry of the encounter.  By “slew” I’ll probably end up with three, but I’ll see how far I get! If all else fails I might just replace every button with JASON!

I'm on a train!

I am happy to announce that we will be able to release this game on time! Yay!

So far, there are 5 possible endings. You can raise goats, cook different recipes, work for a farmer, play the piano, GOSSIP, steal husbands, kill your banker, pick cherries, and be happy!

Tags: farmer, fat, girl, screenshot