Alora Fane

I've made models for these Atonal Dreams party members, and a short video scene thing of them interacting! I've also got a plan for when I might be able to finish Atonal Dreams by.

I've done a couple of these 'Divine Scenes' before, as I feel they're a better way of communicating things about these characters than just writing about them. Here's this one:

I'm interested to hear your thoughts!

(EDIT: I tweaked it a bit and added an end screen.)

Ossoum is Savitr's old friend, a Sorrow-elemental 'philosopher' who's interested in the Drealm which lies beyond material reality. He left his wife and daughter behind in Gemsand to visit the monastery of the Beyond Ponderers, who devote themselves to meditating on the drealm. Savitr's set out to bring him home.

In battle, he uses a machine which allows him to deal damage of various elements to all targets at once, without having to summon up his own emotions to do this (like others do with magic). He'd rather emotions were suppressed because he feels they only bring pain, especially within himself.

He was inspired by both Saul and the depressed mind of Legion from MARDEK, as I've said in previous posts (I think?). His speech is supposed to sound like he's the narrator of a florid, pretentious, poorly-written novel.

Pierce is one of the Beyond Ponderer monks; he grew up in the monastery, and - despite being around 40 years old - has never known anything else. This has left him frustrated and stifled. The Beyond Ponderers are of both sexes, and they're no more chaste than anyone else; Pierce - being shrill, rebellious, and sceptical that the drealm even exists - is a black sheep among them, shunned by most, except for his doting mother.

In battle, he summons monsters and uses lighting magic - of his element, Destruction - to deal damage.

He's essentially an adaptation of Muriance from MARDEK (and the various projects he appeared in before and after that).

Progress Planning

There's a term that people who work in businesses etc use to refer to a plan they make for what they need to do on their current project, and when they're going to do each task. I can't think what it is! (Game plan? Road map? Itinerary?) But I've been trying to do something like that.

Typically I work on a week-by-week basis, just doing whatever needs doing fairly aimlessly; this is why often completion feels just around the corner, or why I can take longer than I really should to make the kind of progress I'd like. It's also why I can never begin to predict a release date until it's right in front of me.

Obviously that's not the best way to do things, though, and it won't work if I'm hoping to keep doing this with some semblance of professionalism.

So I've tried to plan all the tasks that I need to do to finish Atonal Dreams, and I've divided them up into weeks in such a way that it feels reasonable that I could complete them, with some 'catchup' weeks included in case I need more time.

From this, I can make the following vague predictions:

- I should start doing some promotion/marketing - including putting the game on Steam so people can add it to their wishlists - around the 24th of August, so around 6 weeks from now.

- Beta testing could begin around the 14th of October, around 14 weeks from now.

- The game could maybe be released sometime in November.

These aren't set in stone, of course; at this point, they're just guesses. But they're more thought-out guesses than the nebulous hope I had previously!

What I want to do is add all the tasks to some behind-the-scenes to-do-list on this site, such that I can mark them as done when they are, and they'd fill a progress bar which I'll put somewhere on the main page. (I used to have progress bars for my games years ago, but I just updated the number based on a wild guess, rather than having them represent an actual task list's completion.)

Hopefully I should have something like that set up by the end of next week. But we'll see!

Finishing by the end of the year definitely feels doable, but it'll be interesting looking back on these predictions when I actually do finish. Unforseeable things can always potentially get in the way, and sometimes tasks take longer than expected, especially if they depend on elusive inspiration (composing music is very much that).

12 COMMENTS

Dingding32167~4Y

The obese giant comment made me laugh out loud! I think in the future, adding a "end scene" with "this is how to find out more" and linking it to Divine Dreams would be useful, like a credits scene.

These scenes are definitely useful to showcase the characters, though I think it could be made even clearer that Ossoum's talking out loud in an obnoxiously pretentious way (and that you the author are in on the joke, though I imagine that wouldn't be a problem in actual gameplay since players would contrast it with other characters. Maybe it's because he had a long monologue at the start before Pierce started talking).

I also remember you mentioned it was discouraging to see numbers not climbing, but it's hard to keep up momentum for busy people without reaching wider audiences when the end date is far away. I don't know how other game devs handle this! You can also consider Gamejolt as a platform to advertise on.

Thanks for the updates, they make my week better!

Tobias 1115~4Y

I'm very glad to hear these have some value to you!

Why didn't I think to add an end scene?? I definitely should have, and will in future! I might edit this one before posting it on Twitter etc. Thanks for pointing that out!

I'm hoping the goofy music and the contrast with Pierce here will make it clear they're both meant to be comical characters, and anyone who's put off by it in like 10 seconds probably couldn't be convinced anyway!

I'm definitely planning to start reaching out more, once I have a clearer vision to share and the time to do it. I'll post on places like Reddit, as I've talked about for months, but I've never even heard of Gamejolt, despite Wikipedia telling me it's been around since 2004 and it sounding very appropriate for what I'm doing?? Is it well-known, and big and active?

Dingding32167~4Y

I don't know exactly how well known it is, though there are a lot of similar alpha-stage games in development there and surely can't hurt as another source of players! I followed another game dev there since Kongregate is shutting down on new releases. It might be nice just as a platform for you to see what other game devs do as well!

Maniafig222~4Y

Amusing! I actually laughed out loud when Ossoum took off his sunglasses to address the audience. I really didn't expect him to do that, it's brilliant.

One thing that did strike me is that relative to MARDEK, there's less text per text box, so whereas Saul's run-on sentences would fit in one textbox in MARDEK, here in Divine Dreams they get split into multiple textboxes, which makes it hard to parse a sentence that's split between four textboxes.

I also think the voice bloops are a bit overbearing, did they always have so many bloops per box? I thought it was just one bloop per box. I do like that Ossaum and Pierce have very different sounding bloops, though!

Also, also, I like the expressions they make! I look forward to seeing how they animate in combat next! As well as how they interact with the other two characters! Having the player introduced to Savitr and Collie in opposition to Pierce would give a much different impression than if we immediately met them as just a pair on their own.

There's a few new tidbits about Ossaum and Pierce here! Are Ossaum's abilities in combat affected by his level of excitement, or can he use any ability regardless of how excited/calm he is?

The bit about the Beyond Ponderers being unisex, not chaste and Pierce being a black sheep are new! The doting mother thing is also new, I hope we get to meet her at some point, the idea of someone like Muriance having a doting mother is amusing!

It's good to see that you've got some plans for a roadmap! And like any indie dev roadmap, but as with any indie dev roadmap it's best taken with a grain of salt, as plans more often cross deadlines than not!

Amusing! I actually laughed out loud when Ossoum took off his sunglasses to address the audience. I really didn't expect him to do that, it's brilliant.

One thing that did strike me is that relative to MARDEK, there's less text per text box, so whereas Saul's run-on sentences would fit in one textbox in MARDEK, here in Divine Dreams they get split into multiple textboxes, which makes it hard to parse a sentence that's split between four textboxes.

I also think the voice bloops are a bit overbearing, did they always have so many bloops per box? I thought it was just one bloop per box. I do like that Ossaum and Pierce have very different sounding bloops, though!

Also, also, I like the expressions they make! I look forward to seeing how they animate in combat next! As well as how they interact with the other two characters! Having the player introduced to Savitr and Collie in opposition to Pierce would give a much different impression than if we immediately met them as just a pair on their own.

There's a few new tidbits about Ossaum and Pierce here! Are Ossaum's abilities in combat affected by his level of excitement, or can he use any ability regardless of how excited/calm he is?

The bit about the Beyond Ponderers being unisex, not chaste and Pierce being a black sheep are new! The doting mother thing is also new, I hope we get to meet her at some point, the idea of someone like Muriance having a doting mother is amusing!

It's good to see that you've got some plans for a roadmap! And like any indie dev roadmap, but as with any indie dev roadmap it's best taken with a grain of salt, as plans more often cross deadlines than not!

Tobias 1115~4Y

Interesting that you say it's harder to parse the sentences when they're split up like this; I definitely get what you mean, but I did this because I could imagine people complaining about being bombarded with stressful chunks of text otherwise!

A couple of people also mentioned that just having one bloop for the dialogue WASN'T ENOUGH, and that I should add some prolonged gabble effect (as I call it; I don't know what it'd actually be called) like in Animal Crossing and they mentioned Undertale, though since I've still not played that I don't know how it does it. But there's no pleasing everyone! I've noticed with this that it felt extremely jarring for a day or two after adding it since it was new and different, but now I'm used to it, it'd feel wrong without it. I'll probably have an option for it, like I think Yooka-Laylee did?

That's a good question about excitement and Ossoum, which I have yet to consider! It'd make sense for him to be outside that system, but it's also a bit weird to introduce it then have one of the few main characters completely ignore it! I suppose Meraeadyth in TD was similar, with her skills becoming more effective the less she was excited (I think?).

I can see someone becoming a cult leader because they've never really had friends!

Is roadmap the term they use, then? And it sounds like it's something indie devs typically do? I really need to keep up with more of them so then I'd know these things! At least it'd be expected rather than annoying if I couldn't meet any planned deadlines though.

A couple of people also mentioned that just having one bloop for the dialogue WASN'T ENOUGH, and that I should add some prolonged gabble effect (as I call it; I don't know what it'd actually be called) like in Animal Crossing and they mentioned Undertale, though since I've still not played that I don't know how it does it. But there's no pleasing everyone! I've noticed with this that it felt extremely jarring for a day or two after adding it since it was new and different, but now I'm used to it, it'd feel wrong without it. I'll probably have an option for it, like I think Yooka-Laylee did?

That's a good question about excitement and Ossoum, which I have yet to consider! It'd make sense for him to be outside that system, but it's also a bit weird to introduce it then have one of the few main characters completely ignore it! I suppose Meraeadyth in TD was similar, with her skills becoming more effective the less she was excited (I think?).

I can see someone becoming a cult leader because they've never really had friends!

Is roadmap the term they use, then? And it sounds like it's something indie devs typically do? I really need to keep up with more of them so then I'd know these things! At least it'd be expected rather than annoying if I couldn't meet any planned deadlines though.

Maniafig222~4Y

I think that for the text boxes, the solution would be a history log for dialogue. That way, if people lose track during a conversation, they can scroll through the previous statements to get a grasp of things. I'm pretty sure both MARDEK and Taming Dreams had functionality for that type of mechanic. I'm not sure whether Memody did too?

The way Undertale did it was that important characters had a few voice bloops that were chained together when they had dialogue, sort of like Yooka Laylee, but a lot less distracting than in that game.

Meraeadyth's skills indeed mostly worked best when she was calm, except for that one optional Sorrow skill in episode 3 that did work better when she was excited.

I've seen the term roadmap used before for this purpose, yes! It's not the only term, I think, so it's just one of several terms or it.

arnold5975~4Y

I already posted some thoughts on Patreon so I'll post a couple of new things here:

I think it's wonderful that you're working on a roadmap of sorts! If I'm being honest, as I read how you were completing tasks normally, it made me think of a development concept I've heard a lot of about: The Agile Development Cycle. It works a lot like what you're already doing where a certain amount of tasks are put in priority for a certain amount of time, then those get finished and it's on to the next one. As a computer science major studying in the US, I've heard a lot about it and it can be effective for both solo devs and teams, should you add anyone else to this project to help. There are applications online that help visualize this process as well. If you'd like further resources, let me know :)

Your relative predictions are really exciting because I'm highly looking forward to experiencing this world and its interesting mechanics. I look forward to the next blog/Patreon update!

Tobias 1115~4Y

The term Agile Development Cycle rings a bell; I must have learned about that and others one some course or another, but it's the sort of stuff that never really sticks with me. I googled it a bit, but I should look into it more deeply, not just because of that method in particular, but because I'm sure I'll learn a lot about how others develop software in a more general sense since there's a lot I likely don't do, working alone. So thanks for mentioning that!

Verdusk21~4Y

I like that Ossoum is playing a trolling narrator complete with sunglasses to take off and wear again when appropriate.

It's very cool that Ossoum has a bone-wrench symbol on his back. I think it's because he's a skeleton and his wife is an inventor, so a bone-wrench is their shared symbol? His wife probably has the same symbol on her outfit?

I've sometimes thought that the necktie looks a tad anachronistic since everything else seems to be more of a medieval (fantasy) age setting, while it's not like necktie requires sophisticated technology to make, I think we do tend to associate it with a more modern setting.

And. Well. Of course Pierce has piercings all over him.

Tobias 1115~4Y

It is indeed a bone-wrench, for those reasons! I've designed his wife, but she doesn't have one; I could easily edit it to include one though, and that'd make sense!

I'm using the fact that it's a fantasy setting to just do whatever with the clothing! Dayvha's wearing essentially a Hawaiian shirt, which weren't exactly common in Mediaeval times... though I suspect there's a big difference between 'fantasy Mediaeval' and real mediaeval anyway? Ossoum's got a tie because the sternum bone looks like one!

Astreon152~4Y

This may have been said already, but is there any sound joke intended with the name "Ossoum"?

Maybe as a native english speaker you would emphasize the second syllable, but i stress the first one, which makes it sound a bit like "Awesome"

Could be just my very own private joke XD

Tobias 1115~4Y

I definitely talked about the several aspects of the meaning somewhere... Maybe on my Patreon?

It sounding like 'awesome' is one of the meanings, which I find funny since he's a wimpy depressed weirdo with low self-image!