Doing final story edits for the demo

We're almost there.

The demo needs about two weeks worth of edits and we'll be ready to program.  The background artist and the character artist have already started on the second half of the game.  Now I have to hurry up with the edits, and send them to an independent third party.


So much to do, so little time.  But we're nearing our September deadline for the demo, and things seem to be on track.

Making Stories in Video Games

Many video games have had ground-breaking, successful stories that captivated their audiences.  I can think of several that come to mind on console: Xenogears, FF7, and Street Fighter, of all things. (All three of these have had multiple movies and spin-offs made from them.)

I'm making a game that's a mash-up of mythology, anime concepts and graphic novel, so it's important for me to consider a lot of elements that don't always have to go into video games to make them fun.  I'm limiting myself even further by making it for a mobile console.  (Anyone that thinks making for mobile isn't limiting is stupid or lying.)

I just finished watching Fate/Stay Night's prequel, Fate Zero today.  It didn't live up to the original series in my mind, but there's a couple things it did right that always, always capture a large audience.

1. They used mythical heroic characters that are interesting and vivid.
2.  Each hero has a persona.  They are not a Hero, but a 'hero class.'  It makes for an interesting shift in dialogue and scenario. There's a meta-level to the hero story.
3. Instead of being about survival, like the first show was, Fate Zero is more about the deep personalities each Servant have and fleshing out the content involved.  By comparison, the Master characters are much, much less interesting.  That was clearly a design choice in this series.  (probably due to the popularity of characters like Sabre, etc.).  Anime watchers, and fantasy lovers in general, usually love deep fantasy. This series and (Fate/Stay Night) is a pretty good example of that.
4. Each of the characters steal the show in their own right.  The Caster class duo are both the comic relief and the source of tension for the entire series.  The Rider Class and Lancer class are both bold and herioc.  The was very much a series about being heroic, which is a huge contrast to the original series, which was about kicking the crap out of different heroes and villains. 


This show was a gamble from the normal story structure of a hero anime, which is good, since I think anime is changing the way it does its storylines.  (Not such a bad idea, since the formula hasn't changed in decades.  I'm looking at you, Bleach.  You used to be a good show.  Then you had a second season.)   I feel it paid off well, and I have decided to incorporate several story elements into the game that I didn't plan to that have more anime inspiration to them.  Hopefully it will balance out the story structure and simplify it a little bit.

Reviewing the story documents the copywriter sent me

Still having issues with file sharing, but making it work. 

I need to start working on these things before midnight.  I have to get up early, geez.

I have like 2 pages of dialogue left to complete

And I'm completely creatively tapped.

I've had a really strong two weeks of working really hard on this material, but I'm really struggling, I think I've burned myself out a bit with this. 

I'm blocked.  I'm at the endings sequences, and I'm having performance anxiety.  The way the current endings are structured don't make any sense.  I can't make too many changes without adding changes to the programming....sigh...this is going to be a little rough.

I don't have time to recharge creatively, either.  The clock is ticking, and this is going to get more expensive the more time I waffle on this.

I seriously need a solution that is going to work.  Stat.

Finalizing the music

The composer has put together some amazing stuff...I'm getting really excited about it.

So far we have:

Two area themes
One battle theme
A 'boss' theme
Battle sfx

Now just need to e-mail the background artist.  E-mailed the copywriter last night.  Had to explain that I'm doing a lot of editing which is normal for a first draft, but hoping the second draft isn't as much editing.  (I can't afford to be held up another two weeks on copy again.)  But he's doing good for just coming on board, and pretty sure this is one of his first freelancing gigs.

I'm going to be working on the game script while I jam to the music, and I need to e-mail the programmer.

I had such a good sleep last night.  It's amazing what a little bit of R&R can do for your outlook on life.

Had a phone call with the copywriter this eve

He's ready to move onto the next section, so that's good news....I suppose I should hand him back his chunk of the story (it's about 40-some odd pages now for one storyline, so 20 pages of text without any spaces)

By time we're done this, it looks like I'll produce a novella worth of content.


I've thought about starting a video blog about this.  Since there's only that guy (girl?) from Alaska who reads this blog, and my friends (sometimes) I'm curious to know if people would actually want that.


I need a couple more week that I don't have for the story dev stuff.  Sigh.

Storyboards...almost...finished...

I just need to finish it tonight, and then I can go home to bed.  Not to mention, that means I can hammer out the dialogue in a massive fell swoop over the next few days.  Which is awesome.  Happy that I'm almost done the storyboards.

Kind of wanted to go the whole 'shades of grey' with a lot of things, but decided for money purposes, bestif I stick to a slightly more optimistic storyline.  People like dark storylines, but that's the not the focus of the longer storyline arcs, here.

Well, 3/4 of them, anyways.


Sigh.  It's hard to be a manager and be creative at the same time.

I have just spent the last three hours playing iphone games

And I have learned three things:

1)  Good controls make sucky games alright.

2)  Most people who release games for the iphone don't know how to spell.  The rest don't know how to spell plot, much less create a plot.  Casual game stories suck.  How do people get away with this?

3) There just aren't a lot of good games on the iphone, period.  The only one I can think of that I would actually call a game that did anything interesting, and I haven't even PLAYED it but I KNOW it'll be what I expect, is Infinity Blade.  Honestly, why don't indie devs realize how bad the games are on here?  I'm not saying I'm going to make the best game that ever existed, but where's the fun and where's the creativity and WHERE'S the SPELL-CHECK.  (Mage Gauntlet has just been loaded and I have high hopes for the  writing.)


As always, go to www.interragames.com and sign-up to be a beta-tester for a great fantasy-themed visual-novel style iphone game. (Say that three times fast.)

Today's purpose: Storyboarding

It's almost done, I just have to push a little longer and it will be finished. 


Hopefully I finish it before it finishes me. 

Someone needs to finish these storyboards for me

And also find me an extra 500 bucks so the game can have really good music.

Sigh.

Need to stop having client work interrupt my video game work

Also need to stop letting blogging interrupt the storyboarding.

Currently on the search for a video game music composer.  Sigh.

OK, Now I have a title

I took all day to decide it, and I finally came up with the tagline. 

Working title is


Legends of Varia:  The Artifacts of Basque


Hope that works out.  I went through about 7 titles today.  Not many fit.