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.

Script Updating

We're nearing demo mode.

Most of the art has been finished.  I've been tweaking the background art with the background artist.  He's doing mock-up animations which we might use for the final version.

The character art is, for demo purposes, finished.  I could use one or two more pieces, but I'll wait until everything needs to be compiled to decide whether I want to invest another two weeks of art time.

Then again, maybe I should review the art again.  Hm.

The script is being reviewed.  There's a lot of logical errors left to correct.  I have thought recently (or at least for the next version) investing in a script writing software.  I do a lot of mock-ups and a basic word editor doesn't really cut it anymore.  It works for now, but when you start getting a 50-100 page script, it starts getting a little creaky and sometimes buggy...and the last thing I need are corrupted files.  (I would jump off a very tall building if the file corrupted.  Back-up files are my friend.)

The hardest thing about being a producer of a game project is that you are there to motivate everyone else, but when it comes near to the final product (and when I mean near, I mean annoying final hump near) the last thing you do is feel motivated.  It's the long weekend in Canada and all I want to do is turn off Netflix and let the game coalesce on its own without me.

Which will never happen.

...

Unless I clone myself.   But that probably wouldn't turn out that well.

A slight delay

When art has to be reformatted it's never good.

We've been dealing with some great pieces of character art, that, at the last I should have edited for size a long time ago.  Take, for instance, Gavin, the werewolf demigod character:

If you'll notice, he's a giant amount of pixels wide.  Almost 600 pixels wide.  The whole iPhone screen is about 640 pixels wide.

Clearly there's an issue.

So, I currently have our artist reformatting, and slightly redesigning the character.   The new base Gavin sketch looks like this:

There's certain things I like about this a lot more, there's a lot more action in this pose, but also it takes away from some of the moodiness of the character.  However, it's the proper pixel ratio, which is something you have to deal with on a hand-sized touch screen.

My #IGDATO post: Tales from the Script

Arriving late, I managed to run into one of the organizers of #ToJam while going to the event this evening, and it was nice to catch up with a few old acquaintances.

The event itself featured some truly amazing speakers:

• Navid Khavri from Ubisoft Toronto
• Matt MacLennan, a tv script writer who is the screenwriter for Splinter Cell at Ubisoft
• Kan Gao, who made To The Moon, a smash indie hit.
• And Dan Vader, from Capybara Games, who made the also smash hit, Sword and Sworcery.

The panel was funny, the room was packed, and it was sweltering in there.

Three main takeaways:

• There were a lot of people wondering how to get jobs in the game industry as a writer.  (This seemed odd to ask, since if you really love writing, you'll write your own game and find a programmer)
• There is often a gap in taste level versus what you're capable of writing
• Be prepared to meet some of the nicest people and some of the people with the worst egos.  Generally, though, video game land has some really nice, friendly people.

In between this, there was a lot of humour (these people are writers, after all) and a lot of insight.  Good event by IGDA Toronto...very enjoyable.

Sprite Sheets

Now that most of the art is complete, I have begun taking art from the artist and compiling into sprite sheets.  Since I have no idea what I'm doing (no really) I decided I would give SpriteSheetPacker a whirl on a couple of tests images. 

I was hoping I wouldn't have to format the images to similar sizes (the examples on the site seem to suggest they can be a couple of different sizes, but I only got images of the same size to work in a sheet.)

I'm going to investigate this tool a little more.  I feel that if I can get it to work for me, I can save myself hours of time in the future.

The thing that sucks is that it seems to be a windows specific tool, which means I'm switching back from windows to mac all over the place.  I'm trying to cut down on that and use the mac as much as possible for the game assets.  It gets tiring switching platforms all the time.

Good conversation with the programmer yesterday

We've decided on a schedule, and we're officially going into 'alpha' phase and beginning to roll out a demo.

We're revamping the battle system, but I'll save that for another post.


The good news is that most of the art is done for the demo (maybe a few items here and there) and that most of the prelim coding is done, as well.  The programmer is going to send me something tomorrow in regards to the conversation system, and we'll go from there.

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.