Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Writing, the lost art of storytelling, new plot stuff and a general rant

I'm posting this: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA7A55AC840F34BFF
It's a youtube channel me and Nick started while we're working. We're weird so the music is quite litterally everywhere. We'll be adding more every time we work. Most of the songs on there are inspired by random real life stories, ideas for character development, or just (when we eventually get big enough to afford it) songs we'd love to put in the game in a really funny incident. Because in space, hearing the Darkness "I believe in a thing called love" after months of nothing would be the greatest thing ever.
Back to my original point, update, whatever. I'm sitting here writing, thinking carefully about what I want to put in the game, what wouldn't work well, etc. Then I started thinking about modern games and the stories therein. The last game I remember the plot of clearly was "Brutal Legend" before that "Star Ocean 2" then I realized that's a rather large gap of games I couldn't remember the story to.
I mean let's look at both games: Brutal Legend: Tim Schafer... Oh that's why I can remember it, he's a brilliant writer and he has a great blend of story and comedy that makes it memorable. Star Ocean 2: Granted this game was a gargantuan time sink (what with the 100 or so endings based on character development) I probably only saw like 40 (I've played it a lot)  Star Ocean 2, in the land of 3D had a "mostly" 2d game. It still used sprites and while it had low res 3D worlds, there was never a cutscene with 3d characters. The Clincher was the private actions where the party could separate and you could interact with them differently.
What we're doing is more Star Ocean 2, but you don't have to hit a button.
A) All Characters are wandering around in town automatically. Klint will be who you control and you can interact with Vincent, Julie, Tsani and "Turk". I can't even go shopping with friends without everyone wandering off, so why would 5 people stay together anyhow? Never understood that logic.
B) Things you do with certain characters MIGHT make the game a lot harder (and more insane) Meaning beware what choices you make, some of the group are a bit insane.
Also as both Joke and Tribute, i'm kinda mocking one of my favorite video game scenes of all time, The Opera House (I seriously play Final Fantasy 6 once a year just because of that) We're not doing an opera, we're doing a "Soap Opera" basic jist is that Klint, Julie, Vince and Tsani get forced into a Soap Opera (because Julie beats up one of the stars) "Turk" isn't allowed (he's too short) so he decides to be a bit insane and be the "Phantom of the soap opera". The Whole scene is dialogue however you get choices and depending on what for example Klint would say, it would change the whole dialogue, stray too far off the script and it turns into "winging it" However, if ratings drop too low, the team is killed by the producers.
Also I'm writing a Pop song for Vincent to sing, just because I can.

I do miss some of the older games. Final Fantasy 6 had great creature design for what it had to work with. That being said, I'm not fond of palate swaps. I assume if you're a backer you know what I'm talking about, however if you're not I'll briefly explain:
A palate swap was a sprite for a video game that had its colors altered. That being said, it was also used on early 3d games (wild arms, shining force 3, etc...) usually implemented to save memory and give the idea that there are a lot of enemy archetypes. Usually they were just the same enemy with boosted stats, and maybe a new ability.
Well due to the fact we're old school gamers (and memory isn't much of a factor anymore...) we're not doing palate swaps. Instead we're working on a script that will keep the enemies about your level and bosses a fistful of levels higher. Why am I doing this? The sweet spot.
I first heard of the sweet spot with Max Payne 1 (great game, though he makes this horrible grimace the whole game) What it did was adjust the difficulty on the fly, meaning if you sucked, it would adjust enemy reaction time, health, number of enemies so the game is "Just difficult enough for you to enjoy but not quit"
Egoraptor covered this in his sequilitsits... sequileist... screw it... he made a great video about castlevania and mentioned the "fake difficulty" of Simons Quest (I'm paraphrasing, go watch the video on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aip2aIt0ROM) we're aiming to a) get rid of grinding xp and b) make it when you do have to backtrack, the enemies aren't quite a pushover.
Someone is bound to email me about how this is adding fake length, but answer me this, whats the difference between being level 20 and fighting level 10 enemies and being level 20 and fighting level 20 enemies? About a fistful of gained levels.
Also our skeletons die if they throw too many bones. I'm not joking.