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Weekly Update 2020-4 (Development)
5 years ago - Edited 5 years ago2,593 words
I started building the field section of Divine Dreams this week, and I've achieved a lot!

I was intending to focus wholly on story planning until the end of the month, but I was seeing diminishing returns from each session, as I think I said in a previous post. I felt I needed a break, a mental shift, so I decided to devote a couple of hours to programming stuff and got carried away! I've been so focused on it that I've had little time to even so much as think about anything else, which is a satisfying feeling.

The 'field' is the section of the game that's not battles or menus, and I've been unsure how to handle it in this. Or rather, I'd not really given it any thought! MARDEK used a tile-based 2D map system, since that's what the games it was inspired by (such as the early Final Fantasies) used, plus it made it easy to make large areas relatively quickly.



Each 'tileset' only had a small number of tiles, many copies of which were combined into larger maps. I actually liked how repetitive it was, as it reminded me of the love for Lego I had when I was little. With that, many instances of identical blocks were combined into larger models, and each individual brick type took on its own qualities, such that it was exciting to see them used in atypical ways (eg a green flame block being used as seaweed). I think I've talked about that somewhere before!

I first experimented with a 3D variation of this tile-based map approach last year before I'd even really conceived of Divine Dreams, which I've talked about in other posts. I posted gifs like this on Twitter:



That directly mimicked MARDEK in that movement was locked to a grid, so you could only step in the four cardinal directions, one tile at a time.

The next evolution of this was the field of Belief, months later:



Since I was using 3D now, that afforded the possibility of extra elevation levels that I always wanted to include in my Flash games, but they were annoyingly tricky when everything was flat. So each map is made up of layers, with additional maps at fixed intervals (2 metres) above the previous one. The only way to move between the layers was to climb up or jump down special ladders.

Establishing area boundaries is a pain which different games solve in different ways. Some use vast models with edges you can see but never reach, but that requires building all the non-explorable parts, which takes time and effort. In MARDEK, tiles beyond the map bounds were flooded with a 'default tile', which worked out okay because of the fixed 2D perspective and player-centred 'camera' that limited how many you'd ever be able to see.



How to better handle this was something that I thought about a lot over the years, even when working with 2D. Something that I particularly liked was how in some old games like the Zelda ones for the GameBoy (Link's Awakening, Oracle of Time, Oracle of Seasons), you could only see one screen at once, with a transition to the adjacent one when you left an edge.



The areas were designed sensibly such that it never felt like you were walking blindly into the unknown even with everything so cramped. I particularly liked being able to complete a map of connected 'rooms' like this, where visiting every room felt more feasible than, say, exploring every corner of Skyrim. It's a nice feeling of achievement and completion.

This 'grid of rooms' as a design concept was one I used several times in old games, like Clarence's Big Chance, and unreleased projects like Marooned and Alora Fane: Creation.



I also really like the look of dioramas, which ∞ it seems 3D artists are fond of making ∞. Things like this:





There's something about that fishtank-like slice of a body of water that I've found extremely enchanting since I was little, for whatever reason!

I originally wanted Sindrel Song's environments to be dioramas like this, but the setting meant that the 'play area' being surrounded by an ocean stretching into the horizon made sense. I used an ocean for the same reason in Belief, but I can't really use an ocean for every area in Divine Dreams.



So those were my inspirations. On Monday, I made this in a couple of hours:



Mostly because I was curious to see the effect, I decided to go one step further than Belief with converting tile-based maps to 3D. Rather than layering maps above each other and connecting them with ladders, instead it's more like a true 3D 'voxel' map, of which Minecraft is obviously the most notable example. I wasn't exactly aiming to duplicate Minecraft - I've never even played it (I've just seen youtubers playing it) - but I thought it'd give areas an extra layer of depth which might be intriguing.

Because of the possibilities this opened up, I added a simple jump mechanic - along with free (rather than grid-bound) movement - on Tuesday:



I added the gradient 'sky' background because a few other games (Final Fantasy Tactics and its Advance sequels come to mind) which use maps floating in a void use a similar technique. It was sloppily added though - it shifts around and is cut off at the bottom - because I wasn't intending to keep it.



On Tuesday evening, I'd added some basic textures to the blocks, plus some rudimentary water, which really helped to bring things to life. I was also playing around with giving outlines to the tiles - like the characters have - for a stylised look, but decided not to stick with that.



On Wednesday, I'd added some more detail, which I feel enhances the look and feel drastically! This little diorama was meant as just a way of playing around with the tiles, but I liked it so much that I wondered whether to just keep the diorama look for the final game.



Currently the tiles are very cubular though, whereas the original plan was to add edge tiles to give a look similar to Belief, but that's a lot of effort so I've not done it yet. I wonder whether people's love of Minecraft would allow me to just get away with the cubes, saving me a lot of work... but I don't know, I'd like to at least experiment with the edges when I find the time.

The areas were already built as 'rooms' of a grid like in AFC etc, so I needed to allow some way to travel between them. At first I wondered whether to add special exits to explicitly transition between rooms (so you'd leave one edge, then it'd either snap or quickly fade to the next, and you'd walk in automatically). However, the way I'd built things made it very easy to add seamless movement between rooms by just walking off the edges:



This disappearing rooms are really jarring, though, and completely ruin immersion. Obviously this wasn't good enough!

On Thursday, I attempted to improve it by doing this:



Here, the camera focuses on just the current room, but when you approach the edges, adjacent rooms dissolve in with a fancy shader effect I quite like (I've never done anything like that before, so it was interesting to figure out how). Then when you enter a new room, the camera quickly shifts into position.

The camera can also have two zoom levels. At this 'far' view, you can see more of the rooms from more of a top-down perspective. A nearer perspective focuses more on the current room, so it mostly fills the screen (though different screen resolutions would be a pain here).



Each room has an 'ambience' value, which determines the colour of the sky and the general lighting.



Finally, on Friday I added some miscellaneous things like sloped tiles, objects on the maps, and houses.





Overall, it's... interesting. I quite like the idea of using a very stylised way of portraying the world like this, both as a sort-of reference to old game-building techniques born of limitations, and as a way of giving the game a distinct look and feel which would set it apart from a more straightforward RPG.

I suppose there are two ways of looking at it. One is seeing it as a limitation; "I can't see what's coming next and I don't like that!", or "the space feels really constricted and small!". Which is fair enough. Another way though is seeing it like... each room is its own thing, self-contained, kind of like a little world in itself (which is the feeling dioramas aim to inspire). And when you're within one of those little worlds, it becomes your focus, nothing else matters; the other aspects of the world literally disappear from awareness.

I've been wondering how I could tie it to the themes of the game, but it's a bit tenuous. Something about consciousness building the world, such that when it's not present, nor is the world. "If a tree falls in the woods with nobody to hear it, does it make a sound?". It's interesting how quantum physics experiments - the Double Slit experiment is a notable example - show that the presence of an observer really does alter outcomes, and there's another big quantum physics idea I'll be incorporating into the story/lore so I do like the additional connection there (I've not talked about that yet on this blog yet).

Mostly though, it makes it easy on me as the developer, since I can build these rooms as little worlds, complete in themselves, without having to fill in every detail of some enormous map. So I'd be content to stick with it for that reason alone, though I don't know whether I'd be able to get away with it.

I suppose it's not really possible to know how it feels to play at this point though, so just keep that in mind; even I don't know for sure. You'd need to actually play a demo to see how comfortable or immersion-disturbing it is.



I am concerned about the free movement and jumping though. These maps were built to robustly test the mechanics rather than as representations of what the final game's areas would look like; I definitely wouldn't intend to have that much jumping around! But even having some jumping around seems to add some potential actions that are surely amusing for the player, but difficult to know what to do with as the developer:



Honestly I'd rather constrain movement a lot more, perhaps even return to a grid-based movement system with jumping being limited to leaping off ledges or across one-tile-wide gaps or something, but I imagine players would prefer the free movement, so I'll have to think about how best to handle it.

I don't intend to make maps that are overly athletic though; it's still an RPG, not a platformer. I remember playing Final Fantasy games way back in the day and wondering - with some annoyance - why I couldn't jump in them. They're 3D! I should be able to jump! But that's not what those kinds of games are about, and once you introduce the mechanic, it feels like you have to design game elements around it, which means more thought and work put into things that aren't even the main focus of the game...

Also, in MARDEK, your allies followed you on the map (in a neat line; they were very disciplined), but that'd be much harder with this. Unity has pathfinding stuff I could use, but it's mostly for flat surfaces; having your allies jump around an area with elevations would be a tricky puzzle to solve.

Another possibility is to allow the player to switch who they're controlling at will, while your other allies are invisible. Like how FFVIII had your allies follow you, but FFIX scrapped that and had you just control the protagonist. FFVII was the same, and I remember getting excited as a child about sections where you controlled someone other than Cloud, but disappointed that I could never control my favourite character, Red XIII, on the field. I imagined that if I ever made a game, I'd allow the player to play as whoever they wanted! But then I went and made MARDEK where Mardek's locked in the lead the whole time. Pfft!

So if you had, say, Mardek, Deugan, and Emeela on your party, you could press a key to shift who you were controlling on the map. Then, to extend from that, maybe they all had special 'field techniques' that they could use for different effects? Maybe Mardek slashes bushes with his sword, while Deugan can block projectiles that otherwise bar your progress down a particular path? Or maybe Mardek's the only one capable of jumping?

I know some other RPGs had similar things, and I feel it'd add a nice bit of icing on top of the functional field mechanics, kind of like how reactions add to battle attacks so you've always got something to interactively do.



I've shown a lot of images here, but most of what I've been doing has been behind-the-scenes stuff, like building a map editor for myself, and writing code that generates maps with fewer vertices from the tiles provided. It's a shame I can't really effectively show that, but I suppose a lot of the time spent making things like this isn't really showable to the player in an obvious way. As players, we focus on the 'what', but as the developer, I have to focus a lot on the 'how'. Figuring out how to make 3D voxel maps is a lot harder and more time-consuming than just deciding to do it!

There have also been a bunch of irritating bugs and physics issues - like the player getting stuck at the top of slopes for no clear reason, or being able to stand on thin air before falling off edges because of how collisions work - which are largely unseen by anyone but me, but they're the primary motivators behind wanting to do something less free with the movement. I'll need to spend quite a while looking into how to iron out those kinds of issues, which I can't say I'm looking forward to.



I'm interested in your thoughts, especially since we're right at the beginning here so it's really the only time for major changes, but keep in mind that seeing a few gifs and experiencing this as part of the game would be very different experiences!

I think my goal at this point should be to make an interactive demo sooner rather than later. I'll postpone finishing off the story planning until after that.

At the rate I'm going, I imagine I could easily get a demo done before the end of February. When that's ready, I'd look into how to do crowdfunding, I'd re-release the original MARDEK on Steam, and I'd get back to those character silhouettes as part of the hype-building!

45 COMMENTS

Ampersand68~5Y
You know, this style actually really reminds me of another indie-game that takes inspiration from Zelda; Tunic! That game also has relatively "blocky" rooms/zones, but manages to be quite pretty and atmospheric with the use of gorgeous lighting and particle effects. The "rooms" in the game seem to be much larger and seem to fade in/out outside of the player's view (which follows the player rather than snapping to the next section of room), rather than all being discrete boxes of the same size, however, which seems to help with the verticality aspect. That said, I do like how your transition animation looks, though if it were directional (fading in/out from the direction you're going/coming from), I think it'd make it feel smoother.
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Tobias 1115~5Y
I actually pushed through my crippling comparison anxiety!! to look that up, and I think I've seen it somewhere before? Is it not out yet, though? It's on Steam, but has a release date of TBD and no reviews. A shame; it seems like a good source of inspiration for this, as it's blocky like you said.

Also, since that comparison anxiety is still of course there, do you know if that was made by one person or a team?
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Ampersand68~5Y
It seems to be made by one person, though to be fair, this one person has been working on this project for years and was a professional video game dev before that. For a couple weeks' work, your own stuff compares quite decently. With some more textures, props, etc. I think the game world could be very pretty, certainly bringing more to the table than what a pixel-based map might. And there's also another way to look at things- if one person could make Tunic, there's nothing stopping you from making a game of similar, or even better, caliber. There is still the issue of getting noticed, though (Tunic got picked up by a publisher and even got on E3 as a result!), and I'm not exactly sure how one would go about doing that.
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Tobias 1115~5Y
Interesting... I wonder how many games actually are made by one person. It seems like at most one person did most things, but someone else did another fairly major thing like all the music. Do you know if he did all the music too?

Having experience in the industry is going to make a huge difference though! I imagine the connections from that would be the most important boost to success; I imagine that's how he found a publisher, and got to E3. I definitely don't have the connections for that myself! Still, I'm trying to see the success of something like that as inspiring!

Do you know where I could actually get that game, since it's not available on Steam for some reason? And do you know why it isn't?
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Ampersand68~5Y
It has a store page on Steam, though it hasn't been released yet. The scheduled release date was in 2019, but as usual for indie games, schedule slip happened and it's been delayed, apparently. I just based my observations on gameplay demo video, as it's visual similarities that seem the easiest to point out, given that the game's gameplay is much different from Divine Dreams'.
[LINK]
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Tobias 1115~5Y
Oh, okay; it sounded like you'd played it, so I wondered whether maybe it'd been removed due to exclusivity on some other platform or something. I'll have to look out for it coming out, then!
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Tama_Yoshi82~5Y
The visuals look really good O_o
I'm really curious how the shader for the appearing/disappearing effect... From what I can tell, it's a blend between an expanding sphere and a noise channel. At first, I thought the effect made the maps appear very "suddenly", where the character could walk on a still-appearing tile, but then I thought this effect could be blended into a cutscene: "what's behind that hill? Let's look!" -- scene is revealed, and they're surrounded. "Oh." Maybe some map can be very very small, giving off a "campfire conversation" feel; that'd help for intimate dialogues, or blocking out external narrative elements to be revealed later in the cut-scene. Having different types of transition also can create different narrative effects (a fade-in to enter a cave makes more sense than the cave merely appearing out of nowhere, I think; it enhances the connectedness/separateness of maps).

I know how annoying platforming can be to code in unity, I've had to code some platforming logic myself, and I was never satisfied, always feeling my solutions hacky and ugly (e.g. comparing the collision object with the model). One thing I dislike is having the character float on the tip of his feet, despite the fact someone would normally fall off in these circumstances.
Weirdly enough, Super Mario RPG had that problem, but I really LOVED its platforming (it really is quite the same). Its isometric design made it difficult to judge distances... but THIS game isn't isometric, so yay! I'm surprised you gave a screenshot of Link's Awakening, but not the remake, which you said found visually appealing. Didn't you base yourself off the aesthetics of the remake too?

Quantum Mechanics? Okay, technically, TECHNICALLY, (And I'm aware this is an over-zealous analysis that likely doesn't even matter in the scope of this blog) the idea that the wave-function collapses because particles are observed by intelligent beings is an urban legend (I think it began with a misinterpretation of Shrodinger's cat, which was then popularized in The Secret?) It's one of the many widespread misconceptions surrounding Quantum Mechanics. Quantum physics is really, REALLY weird; there's even stuff that appears to break causality (cf. Delayed Quantum Eraser Experiment; is time travel possible with this?!?!??)... but I'm pretty sure whether *we* observe the particles doesn't change anything!
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Tobias 1115~5Y
The shader effect is surprisingly simple! It uses a monochrome noise texture as a clipping mask, with a variable determining the clipping threshold. The texture coordinates are based on the viewing angle, which is what allows for it to be applied to the whole model!

I do have fade-through transitions when entering interior areas, though I don't have any gifs of that yet!

Super Mario RPG is another thing I had in mind a lot while making this, though I particularly disliked its isometric view so I deliberately avoided that even though dioramas tend to typically be shown isometrically. Interesting that it had the standing-on-nothing thing, but what solutions even are there for that problem? It's not like you can just make the collision radius narrower without making it easier to run into walls...

I actually intended to mention the new Link's Awakening, but forgot, whoops! I've been looking at a few screenshots for it while making this. It's interesting how in that all the external 'rooms' were combined, now that there weren't the same limitations, but the individual fixed-angle rooms were kept for dungeons because the gameplay heavily depended on their arrangements. Combining the exteriors definitely helped with immersion, but personally I felt it made the world feel a whole smaller than it did on the GameBoy! Though maybe everything felt bigger back when I was a child?

I also particularly like how it used camera and material techniques to make everything look like a small plastic model; that's probably the most notable thing about it for me. I've been wondering whether to do a similar thing with this if I can, but I feel it wouldn't really work with the story (Link's Awakening barely had one so there wasn't really much to disturb there).

I think with the quantum mechanics thing, there are going to be more people who'd be familiar with the incorrect (and in my opinion more interesting) interpretation, so that feels like the most important thing in this particular circumstance! Perhaps it'd be better to just draw a connection to the philosophical idea (tree falling in the woods) rather than an incorrect scientific one though?
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Tobias 1115~5Y
I definitely thought I should use it for drealm maps even if I do something different for the 'real world', but I suppose using it for everything is like saying "it's all a dream anyway, and there's no significant difference between the waking and sleeping dream worlds!!"?

If I'm picturing the same thing as you, that's a fairly amusing way of going about it, though it makes me think of regiments of soldiers or something!
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RedHalo22~5Y
What's the core gameplay loop?

Killing progressively harder enemies to gain exp and loot? Eventually progressing to a battle with the main enemy?

It'd be nice if there were at times multiple ways to progress the main storyline, other than just killing everything.

Like instead of defeating a guard to get past him, maybe you could bribe him with a certain item? Or talking to a certain NPC earlier gives you an extra dialogue option so he'll let you pass?

And please give the player some reason to be emotionally invested in the protagonist. Too often they're just a hollow blank slate with no individual features.
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Tobias 1115~5Y
Hello, I wonder why you're commenting here, since it sounds like you haven't played MARDEK, or you're not familiar with the kinds of games I make?
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RedHalo22~5Y
I think I've played nearly all your games. I put in countless hours in Mardek 1 and 2. (Though Deliverance was my favorite)

Memody and some of your recent games seemed to go far outside the normal hack & slash games that I frequently see, and I wondered if this new game would follow the same trend.

And when I said, "And please give the player some reason to be emotionally invested in the protagonist. Too often they're just a hollow blank slate with no individual features." It wasn't towards your games, I just had some bad experiences in other games on Steam recently with this issue.

- Sorry if I didn't elaborate enough, and I rambled too much earlier.
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Tobias 1115~5Y
Interesting; it sounded like you just didn't know that I've been tending towards making games with deeper characters and more than just killing things.

The characters are the most important part of the game for me, though I also feel that making the protagonist a blank slate - or at least less assertive of their personality than other characters - can be better than being forced to play as a character you despise! Mardek's not one of those in this though.
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Maniafig222~5Y
Just like you, I also quite liked the field design in MARDEK and Taming Dreams. They felt well put-together, especially the MARDEK Chapter 3 and Taming Dream ones.

Boundaries are often a difficult aspect, I recall that one big roadblock you encountered when making Clarance RPG was blocking off outdoor areas since there was no easy way to block off roads and alleyways. Boundaries are also really important in 3D games, since running into invisible walls is frustrating and immersion-breaking.

I remember making rooms using the AF:C engine, it was often fun to work out how rooms connected and whatnot. One trick I liked was to have a room with several doors in it, and every door connected to the same interior map, so once you entered one door you'd see what was behind the others doors and might get curious to see what the NPCs would say. Usually it'd just be nonsense, of course!! I was rather fond of the room with 5 beds, 5 Ogres and 1 Goblin. [LINK]

I always liked the aesthetics of the FFT series, the isometric rotatable view made it so any map was easy to decipher regardless of how many height discrepancies there are.

My question regarding jumping would be "What does this add to the game?". It's a big change to the way the overworld works, so there should be a justifiable reason for it being there. It makes sense in games like the Mario RPGs since jumping is part of Mario's core identity, and it also makes sense in overworlds such as Yooka-Laylee: The Impossible Lair's since it's a platformer, but Divine Dreams is a JRPG that has nothing to do with jumping.

And I would suggest taking a look at Yooka Laylee: The Impossible Lair's overworld, it's very well-designed and the way that game balanced the jump is to make it a very tiny hop which you can only use to scale tiles about half the protagonist's size. Such a thing is more fitting for Mardek than the current Mario-like jump.

Should Mardek be able to jump onto enemies to get a first strike? Should the game have platforming? How high should Mardek be able to jump? Personally I agree with limiting the movement and diving deeply into that rather than having a broad but shallow selection of things to do in the overworld.

I really liked how the party followed the player in MARDEK and Taming Dreams so I hope that stays in the game! It was still possible to change the order in MARDEK during segments where you select your on party. I'm not sure whether the remake is even going to have those though, and I'd be cautious about implementing it.

I recall that MARDEK 3 was difficult for you precisely because the player could form parties from a pool of like a dozen characters so you had to write a lot more dialogue to account for it and had to sequester most character beats into P-dialogue as a result. I was more partial to Taming Dreams's more linear set-up where the party set-up is determined by the plot and constantly shifting. Perhaps a combination of both where the main plot parties are predetermined but optional side content has freeform partybuilding?

Special field techniques could add some flair to the game, and promote backtracking and secret-searching in old areas when your party configuration changes! One part of MARDEK that was really fun was going back to old areas with a new party and seeing how things differed, such as exploring more parts of the Gem Mines in Chapter 2 after obtaining Emela and then again in Chapter 3 once you get Oxyale potions.

Are you going to rerelease Clarence's Big Chance before or after the demo?
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Tobias 1115~5Y
I'm surprised you remember the Clarence's Big Chance boundary issues! I was thinking of that myself during this, and it's something that's been on my mind weirdly often since then as well; I make a point of looking at how the issue's been solved by other games I play.

Seeing that (completely ridiculous) screenshot of AFC makes me want to do something with that, release it in some way, so I probably should do that at some point!

I'm only replying now, but I've been thinking about what you said here regarding jumping, and I've decided it's more pain than benefit and have removed it.

My thinking when adding it was that I wanted to add something that added interest to field traversal, in the same way that reactions add interest to attacking. Something you can press a button to do, but which isn't just completely superficial. I was also thinking about how much of a pain adding those ladders was in Belief; a simple jump is way easier to code and animate and much more versatile as well. So it seemed a two-birds-with-one-stone kind of thing: it allowed easier navigation to higher parts of the maps, and it gave the player more engagement with them.

So now I'm wondering what I can add instead which isn't as disruptive, but which isn't pointless or too specific either. I do like the idea of having different unique skills that your allies can use since it gives them more a little bit more personality and gives the player a reason to switch between them, but I'm not sure yet what kinds of abilities those could actually be. I'm very open to suggestions there!

I like the party following too, and without jumping that should be a lot easier. I like the idea of changing leaders and having your control switch to someone else without any of their positions changing. That wouldn't have been possible in 2D, but I think I can do that with this.

The way I've planned the story so far, many sections require maybe two or three characters, but you can include whoever else in the remaining slot(s), sort of like Zach and Vehrn in MARDEK 2. MARDEK 3 already did this, sort of, though the characters had to be on the party for plot triggers but then you could remove them if you want.

I'll talk about this in another post (especially since it's just a vague idea at this point), but I'm planning to make the P dialogue primarily based on paired connections that develop by using characters together. I think someone might have suggested this at some point? Maybe it was you?? I can't remember! One of the big things about the plot is psychological connections that bind two minds together as they get closer, so it makes sense to do it this way. Connections between Mardek and his allies would take the place of MARDEK's unlockable-by-level-up dialogue.

I also saw on one of your blog posts that in Hiveswap (I've been meaning to play that myself), you mentioned that there were bits of text for when you used every thing on every other thing (or something?), and you said you found that overwhelming and quit, I think? So I think adding too much P dialogue wouldn't be a good idea, especially since it'd be an overwhelming amount of work for me too. I'll try to be selective about it.

Also, I didn't know there was a Yooka-Laylee spin-off! I was curious enough about the first one to play it a while ago, but couldn't finish it due to bugs... Annoying. I looked up screenshots, and the layout of some maps does seem like something I could use as an inspiration for this even if I'm not keeping jumping. Maybe I'll watch some videos on it.

I'm not sure what to do about CBC! When those amazingly successful people contacted me recently, I thought about releasing it through them since it seemed much better than just adding it to my site and earning nothing from it. But since I'm not going to do that, I'm not sure what to do! Releasing it on Steam feels weird, but releasing it here is certain to get no attention, hmm... Or maybe it'd get more if it wasn't consumed by some algorithm? I feel I should attract some more people to me first though, at least. Maybe release it around the time I re-release MARDEK, so there might be some spill-over? Maybe I could release AFC in some form then too?? Honestly I've been too busy focusing on this to give it much thought!
2
Maniafig222~5Y
Oh, I got to this reply very early it seems!

Posting the AFC screenshot actually got me to dive around in my files and ask some other Alora Fane people about it, and I managed to unearth the .SWF file and my old quests. I've been thinking of recording playthroughs of them and writing about them on my blog, sort of to look back on the thing I put into them and why.

Looking back at some of the stuff I put in there makes me glad the game never got publicized!! I don't think the world could ever be ready for the saucy Ogre brothel scene... So much to cringe about! But also some stuff I actually quite like.
Those Sorrowlad quests hold up rather well in a charming wholesome way, and some of the Quests like Quiz Quest and QuestQuestQuestQuestQuestQuest were at the very least innovative given the engine's limitations, though they're really not executed well.

I think most JRPGs when they want to spice up the world map gameplay go for basic puzzles. You see it all over the place from games like Golden Sun to Mario & Luigi, and even back in the old MARDEK with the accursed Water Temple switch puzzle!!

I think tying the abilities to the characters's sentimancy would be an interesting starting point, especially if they were the same abilities characters could use both in and outside of combat. Like if Emela could use Aqualung inside combat too for some effect, it makes the game feel more cohesive in a sense.

I wonder how many people got stuck in MARDEK 3 due to not realizing which party members they need to trigger certain events. Needing both Verhn and Bostolm/Legion to enter the Lost Monastery was probably the most obscure one, I might have actually had to look that one up!

I don't remember suggesting such a system! It does make sense though, and it ties together MARDEK's and Taming Dreams's systems! I do really like the idea of having every combination be able to talk to each other rather than having everything be filtered through Mardek.

I'm glad you read that blog! You probably noticed yourself when playing, but every room in Hiveswap was very dense with things you can examine, like over a dozen things per room, and then when you have like 8 items every new room suddenly introduces like 100 new irreverent inane gags, and it becomes very overwhelming!

In contrast, the P-Dialogue in Taming Dreams was all meaningfully connected to the current events and further developed the characters. I always looked forward to talking to the party members! The game also spread out its P-dialogue rather well, so not every combination of party members updated after an event, only the relevant ones. And then when something BIG happens you would be able to get new dialogue with every combination, which reinforces the importance of the event since everyone wants to weigh in on it.

I can sort of understand why the Hiveswap did it though, when I played some of my old quests yesterday it struck with me that writing dialogue for examining objects was really fun to do! And it is very in-character for a Homestuck game to be full of dialogue like that for everything no matter how stupid... But that doesn't change the fact that the game is currently collecting dust on my PC! I ought to restart from the beginning some day.

When I played Yooka-Laylee they'd already patched out most of the bugs, but several other people told me about their frustrations with the game. It's a shame! I rather liked the game myself, enough to buy the spin-off. It's worth checking out more of it, or getting it yourself, I've been enjoying it!
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Tobias 1115~5Y
Ha, it sounds like your experience of your own quests wasn't too different to mine when replaying MARDEK!

I don't remember if I've mentioned Golden Sun anywhere recently, but that's been on my mind as an example of the field skills idea. I haven't played it in years though so I've forgotten how it handled them! Maybe I should look to it for inspiration again... though it feels like all the games I'm drawing on are so old! And I still haven't played any new games!!1 I might start Octopath Traveler tonight though??

I'm definitely hoping to have a direct connection between characters' field skills and their combat ones! I've not really given it much thought, but from what little I did do, not as many obvious possibilities jumped to mind as I might have liked. I like the idea of Emeela using Aqualung, but what could something like that do in battle? That could be her field skill, but it's not really something you can have fun just spamming like you would with a sword slash or jump, so HMM...

I think what I'll likely do is having either individual or situational P-dialogue with a (!) thing to mark that it's changed like in Taming Dreams, but not for everyone all the time. Then the paired bits would be detached from the plot. I'll have to see how it goes when I get far enough to worry about the details! I definitely like that kind of thing myself, but it does take time to write!

Hmm, maybe I'll return to Yooka-Laylee first, since I already own it and I've played it before? Maybe! I never played Banjo Kazooie when I was little though, so I felt the game 'wasn't for me' when I played it before, since I'd read it was designed to appeal to people who wanted that same kind of experience but not exactly a remake. An interesting design choice, that. Appealing to nostalgia, but not directly. Not too different to what I'm trying to do myself.
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Metrux3210~5Y
I've been watching a playthrough of the Breath of Fire 3, and they have this thing where each character has a field skill, mostly things they also do in combat, although some characters have the same skill and they're only used either for puzzles, fun tidbits or trying to get some (really very small) amount of money. It doesn't seem bad, but knowing you, in this it should be somewhat more unique.

The Fire Emblem series had at some points a similar system about dialogues between characters that got played together, since in FE you play levels in large terrains, the distance between the characters was the most important. I remember it had a special place wehre you could go to see dialogues, only if you wanted to, and it had either things about the specific mission, tips or the dialogues you unlocked with familiarity. Could work to do something similar, maybe even have the not so immediate ones only in a campfire or such? As in, you unlock them during your walkings, but only see such dialogues when your party is stopped, resting or somesuch.
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Astreon152~5Y
"but I'm not sure yet what kinds of abilities those could actually be. I'm very open to suggestions there!"

Inspired by FFIV: one mage of the party could cast "levitate". Alternatively, could be available through an item (cape, or winged boots ?).
Allows to hover (not fly), so could help crossing pits, move above specific terrain (lava, quicksand) or get on level with an otherwise too high platform, cross over a wall...

Or for the latter, characters could also just give each other a leg up, then pull the last one up. That'd be fun to see and could lead to P dialogue (who's gonna leg up the girl with a robe^^).

Plenty of other solutions besides wind magic: earth magic (bridge/ladder), or a weapon/construction skill that could help climb up something.

Also, you might not have to actually let us see what happens, if it's too complicated to code: just go with a black screen during action, with dialogue pop ups and sound effects to explain what's happening and how characters are interacting during the specific action. Could also be skipped by pressing a key.
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Tobias 1115~5Y
The environment traversal things sound similar to what I included in Deliverance! Strange thinking that even back then, before MARDEK, I was trying to do something like that...

Ideally I want these field skills to be something that you can use whenever you want, as often as you want, which are fun to just use, like jumping or slashing a sword is. It's what makes it tricky! In Deliverance, the environment traversal was tied to items (the crystals, I think?), so maybe I could have something like that and field skills you can use with a button press?

I do like the idea of 'team up' things like the leg up, though as the developer it does sound like a complete nightmare! And I'd want to avoid something that's so complex it requires a fade, or so long it'd be usually skipped!
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Astreon152~5Y
"I like the idea of Emeela using Aqualung, but what could something like that do in battle? That could be her field skill, but it's not really something you can have fun just spamming like you would with a sword slash or jump, so HMM..."

You could use Aqualung in the field to explore underwater puddles. So now go design tiles and hidden areas for that, ha.
More seriously, in battles it could be used as a status ailment protection, for enemies whith air based attacks (breaths). Or, litteraly, to catch a breather and recover points in something (mana, stamina, calmness, whatever breathing exercises are used for: the spell litteraly and figuratively puts you in a bubble).
On field, about the same idea, but that would be very specific: could be useful in areas with toxic miasma, or to resist magnetic fields, etc. ?

Also, if the field ability has to be easy to use (no need to browse the menu), couldn't you make it so that one key is dedicated to that ability, but what the key activates is up to the player ? We'd just select which recently awakened ability we want each character to use on field, and press the said button when we want to activate it.

Or if you wanna make it available to all characters and useful all the time (not in specific context, though i don't see what the problem is with that), there could be stuff like "dash" (move faster on the map, but consume stamina), "camp" (restores all your stats to max, heals status ailments), "jog" (decreases stamina while jogging, but increase max value by +1 every n minutes, cause hey, you gotta stay fit to save the world), "dig" (and find random stuff, like consumables, or just become dirty, or dig up some monster and trigger a fight).

Minor stuff like that would make going from point A to point B more "fun", but let's face it, unless you actually want to invest some programming time into making the field map actually interesting to explore in itself (besides its aesthetic value i mean: by discovering secrets, or at least easter eggs, like Memody's long lost debut album or whatever), it's just used for traveling between towns or dungeons.
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MarninPL33~5Y
To be fair, those models and areas look really gorgeous! I especially like how the water looks. However, when it comes to movement, I believe it should be limited - even to the grid-style movement you have mentioned, with jumping being enabled only in certain places. It would not only make it easier for you, but also it would not confuse the player as much. Too much possibilities is sometimes unnecessary, especially when it encourages the players to jump/run around corners of the map mindlessly instead of focusing on the progress (also it would force you to predict movements of the player to prevent them from bugging everywhere). It would still allow for some secrets being hidden on the maps, and I believe it would also make them less tedious to find. Also, when it comes to map generation itself I'm more of a "I can't see what's coming next and I don't like that!" guy. In my opinion, and I think some would agree, the fact that you are surrounded by a massive world is an important part of RPG experience. For example, in original MARDEK one of the biggest things that kept me immersed (next to music, of course) were the zones that spread out as far as the camera could reach - and it's the same for many other RPGs that I've played. I hope that you will consider some of my rambling, even if it will result just in making generated maps a little bigger.
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MarninPL33~5Y
However, I completely agree that it is fitting for drealm (maybe even with more sparkly effects to highlight it). It would also clearly separate it from the "real world", don't you agree? Also, how much backtracking will you keep from MARDEK, if I can ask?
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Tobias 1115~5Y
I'm replying now, but I read this last night, and it and another comment convinced me to remove jumping entirely! I'd still like to add character field skills, but I'll need to give some thought to what they could possibly be. Suggestions are welcome, but I suppose they'd be tough since only I know the characters at this point!

I definitely appreciate the desire to have a vast world surrounding you to get immersed in. It's important, so I've been thinking about it a lot while making this. It's tricky coming up with a solution which is easy enough for me to develop and which doesn't present a bunch of technical issues, though.

I did make the world chunks a little bit bigger today: [LINK]

But I know it's not a huge difference. I'll need to keep experimenting with it!
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MarninPL33~5Y
I know it might sound strange, but I really liked map boundaries in MARDEK - for example, simple masses of trees or rocks. I don't know, just being next to those borders really made me feel that something is really there, but I just can't see it. All of this despite the fact that they are just copied and pasted trees. Of course, now if you decided to go with similar thing you could make it tiny bit more detailed (nothing serious, just throw a rock in between trees or something) so its not that repetitive. I just think that it would be the best option to build "real world" in a standard, everything-is-visible format and leave procedural generation for more dreamy encounters. This would allow you to keep "vast land" feeling and highlight weirdness of drealm at the same time - two birds with one stone, if you ask me! Of course, its just my silly suggestion. I didn't really considered issues it would cause, but I look forward to your response regardless.
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Tobias 1115~5Y
I definitely get the wide, immersive feeling of seeing hints of the world beyond where you're exploring, but the problem with this is that I'd have to make all these non-accessible areas manually, taking into consideration the 3D angling that reveals a lot more of the distant world than the top-down 2D did, and the fact that drawing a whole bunch of stuff would dramatically increase the number of polygons on screen, possibly causing slowdown.

I might have a think about other possibilities, like having low-poly 'background' meshes or something. The main reason I wanted to stick with the chunks thing was to avoid that challenge, but I think it might be worth at least experimenting with other possibilities. Maybe.
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MarninPL33~5Y
It would be great! Even if it's just meshes you mentioned, I believe it is worth a try! In fact, I think it would have been more than enough. Also, 3D angling does reveal a lot - but you can still play with the perspective. Maybe you could change the angle so it's more... from the top? (I don't know how to explain it properly. Hopefully you will understand what I mean).
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Metrux3210~5Y
Just a thought I've had while reading this reply: Maybe you don't need to really make the areas beyond? As in, you could use the trees and rocks, as talked before, but you could also use some kind of fog, that get's stronger and stronger until you can't see much, meaning you'd only get vague outlines and it wouldn't stretch as far as the player can normally see with the angle. It's also possible to make it some kind of picture that changes slightly with the angling, but this could be hard to do, dependind on methods. I still prefer the smaller rooms, but just throwing ideas your way.
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JohnnyBoi45~5Y
These new areas look really great! I actually find the squareness of the tiles quite charming personally, and I love the addition of terrain heights, which really deepens each map. I don't mind that you can only see a small amount of the map at once, but when the chunks are so small you can cross them in seconds, it does make the scale of the game feel slightly off to me. Like you're walking on an overworld map between levels like this super mario one [LINK] instead of actually being inside an area?

I think a possible solution to that is making the chunk slightly larger to take up more of the screen space in zoom-out mode, but still with the fixed camera/chunk-switching that you have, and maybe in zoom-in mode the chunk would fill the screen to the edges, possibly with camera tracking and chunks loading in automatically? That way you can make both people who like the limited/fixed perspective and people who want typical RPG camera tracking happy? I'm not sure if that's too much work/feasible from a programming standpoint or even something you'd consider investing the time into, but I think it could be a good move that allows you to share your artistic vision while providing another option.
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Tobias 1115~5Y
Interestingly, I've been wondering whether to also add something like the Mario world map for getting between areas!

Today I've been playing around with this a bit more, and I've increased the size of the chunks a little bit. The size that they currently are when 'zoomed in' fills the screen on a screen with a standard resolution: [LINK]

I am interested in the idea of even bigger chunks with a panning camera when zoomed in, but a fixed one when zoomed out, so I might try playing around with that at some point!
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JohnnyBoi45~5Y
I for one would love a mario style world map - it would feel like a charming 3d-ish successor to Mardek's world map, and I think would also be necessary in this tile-based style to differentiate zones.

I had another thought about the chunks, though again this has more to do with technical limitations. What if you had a settings option to render more chunks at once - perhaps up to a 3x3 grid? It could also be turned off automatically for the dreamrealm to preserve your art style. Or perhaps the grid can be covered with fog? I'm just spitballing here, because I don't want to try and compromise your vision, and I actually really like the diorama style, but I do find the look of "island floating in the void" somewhat distracting and would probably play with whatever camera angle minimized the space around the chunks best, or at least appeared as a more connected worldspace. Overall though I am really liking these visuals, and all the dots of this game are starting to connect really well!

Edit: I just saw your latest tweet with the connect chunks and I gotta say, I'm here for that. I would definitely appreciate that as an option.
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Tobias 1115~5Y
At this point, it's more about finding something that's feasible for me to make without taking too long, so I'm not too attached to the whole artistic vision thing! It's just a bonus that I quite like the dioramas aesthetic, since keeping those would spare me a lot of work.

It's definitely possible to show multiple chunks like in that gif, and there's no slowdown since they're still being hidden off-screen, but what about the space where there are no chunks in that gif? I'd either have to make filler areas you can't explore, or fill them with some kind of procedurally-generated background of some kind. I think I'll give some though to what that background could possibly be, since I do appreciate the value of having the world feel huge and immersive.

Another possibility is just building the entire world out of connected chunks, like in those Zelda games. There'd be no separate World Map at all, and you'd be able to run freely between different areas. Perhaps you'd be able to summon up a 2D 'pirate-like' map reminiscent of the original for fast travel between locations you've visited? This is something I'm considering... but it might be even more work than anything else! Planning all those connecting areas, making sure they don't just feel like tedious filler...
1
JohnnyBoi45~5Y
I guess the question this brings up for me is what was your initial intention to establish boundaries in where the player could move. Were certain chunks "dead ends" where just nothing else would load? Or were there going to be chunks that clearly had barriers to moving further, aka trees/mountains/water/angry mob? I do think if it were the former, that could be very immersion breaking and I'd personally want to avoid that. However, the other option would necessitate "filler chunks" outside the barrier points, though I can't imagine you'd need more than one in any direction due to the camera angles. This does put it back into a similar realm as Mardek's camera and maps, but I'd say it would look very good. Alternatively, a "default" tile covered in a thick fog that extends slightly onto the boundary tiles might work and be easier than filler tiles, while being very clear that those areas are a no-go.

0
astralwolf92~5Y
For the maps, why does the previous area have to disappear? Why can't you keep the prior areas visible? Basically all tiles are visible at the same time

The changes are really interesting!
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Tobias 1115~5Y
That would be possible, but you'd still be able to see the 'edges' at some point unless I surrounded all the rooms with empty/decorative ones you can't actually enter, to fill the void. But other than that, it's a deliberate choice to hide them even if they don't 'have to'. I'm still experimenting with it, though, trying to decide if this looks okay or not.
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Verdusk21~5Y
Making the party members follow you around with these new mechanics is quite an interesting problem.

Normally, in grid-based 2D RPGs the party members just follow the same path as the main character, so they're essentially replaying the main character's path, and only the last few steps need to be recorded.

Now that we have non-grid-based AND elevation around, things get trickier, as the space becomes continuous rather than discrete, and they have to not stop in the middle of jumping.

I wonder if we can do this by recording the player's movement keystrokes, along with when they are pressed instead?

Then the party members can just move according to this keystroke, minus some of the last entries so they don't end up overlapping with the player.

With the caveat that, when the keystroke entry is jumping, they won't execute that until the landing entry isn't also within range for execution (that is, all entries minus a few last ones to prevent overlap)

Which means that we also need to record as an entry whenever the main character lands. This way the party members won't jump but ended up falling where the player didn't because they didn't make the whole jump because the player decided to stop moving right away after landing.

I've never implemented this so I don't know whether this would work flawlessly, but I don't see any obvious flaw with this method. Other than that it's annoyingly effort-costly to implement.

Registering the entries may be a bit tricky too, I said the party members will just cut off the last few entries for simplicity but if an entry is simply a keystroke then we wouldn't want to ignore the WHOLE keystroke even if it's the last one, otherwise party members won't follow when you only press one key to walk straight.

What we really want to ignore is a certain amount of distance traveled, so maybe each keystroke entry could also contain the current character coordinates.

If the main character can only move to cardinal directions with the arrow keys, this means the direction won't change without there being a new keystroke, so we can rest assured that until the next keystroke entry, the character walks straight a certain direction depending on what key that is. And since we're also recording the coordinates of where the character is located during each keystroke, the party members' objects can calculate how for down this last keystroke that is within range they should execute.

It's not necessarily an exhaustive algorithm on how to implement this, but may just be somewhere to start.

So, it seems like a lot of annoying work, but also somewhat interesting and seems quite possible to implement, though not worth much in the list of priorities.
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Tobias 1115~5Y
I'm tempted to try to implement something like that just for the challenge of it, but I've decided to do away with jumping now, because it's just more trouble than it's worth! Thanks for thinking so deeply about this though!
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LotBlind53~5Y
Hi,

Am I supposed to be able to see your personal, non-development, posts somewhere? I have only been able to reach them through links in the development posts.

Also in case someone wasn't quite sure how royally the boomers have, in effect, been screwing younger generations, I guess here's how: [LINK]
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Tobias 1115~5Y
If you click "Blog" on the main page, you can see the whole blog, though I wonder whether I should restructure things so then it's more obvious? Maybe just make that the main page you get when you visit alorafane.com?
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LotBlind53~5Y
Ah! Yeah, it kind of just looks like the headline for that left-side column of the page. Didn't realize it was a button. Suppose it's because it's just one button in isolation.
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Metrux3210~5Y
I for only like the way we can only see right around us, which is actually how it is in real life, as much as we can squint our eyes and use tools to see beyond, most of the time our brain only proccesses what is happening right around us. Though I'd like to see, like someone commented before, the transition start from where we are, such that it feels it comes from us, and not from the place itself. Jumping is unneeded, and you already cut it off, but levitation, sword strikes, explosions or shielding are nice ideas for the characters to have. A line following is cool, but I personally like the idea of only one visible and being able to change who, I mean, besides some specific points of the game, how long do you look to the extras following you around? When you're walking, you're thinking about what you need to do, what is on the map, your character not getting stuck, following the right way, looking for secrets... Most of the time you won't even glance to your following, and if they stop you from coming back to where you came, it can be pretty annoying.

That all said, thanks for the work ^^ I'll try to post every week, even if just to thank you.
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