Alora Fane

This week, I've redesigned the overworld a bit, composed some music for it, and planned and started making some monsters to populate it!

Depression got in the way a bit this week, so I didn't do as much as I might have liked. I still got a few things done though! I'll save the rants about the causes of that for the personal and new promotion post categories.

Also, this isn't really week 3 since I've been working on this in some way or another for months now; I talked about my uncertainty about what week to label these posts last week. I think I'll just use this number though, whatever!

Progress Bar

Despite setting this thing up, it's pretty much unchanged since last week even though I have got some stuff done, and I'm now quite far behind my predictions.

This is entirely because of how vague the tasks on it are. The remaining tasks for the second week are "Build overworld" and "Plan and make monsters for overworld", which seemed entirely doable when I wrote them in, but ludicrously vague in hindsight. I also haven't ticked off this week's tasks, though there are only two: "finish making overworld monsters" and "dialogue scenes for overworld".

So this weekend, I'll revise this to include more granular tasks so it's less useless and I'm not complaining about this same issue every week.

Overworld Layout

In last week's post, I included this image:

As I've said previously, Atonal Dreams will be set on a single island which has an 'overworld', 'underworld', and access to the drealm, representing life, death, and transcendence. Originally I planned for this overworld to be one fairly large chunk, which is what I'd started building there.

However, I didn't like the feel of this, either to play with or to make. It felt both restrictive and overwhelming, since the whole game world was one small island, but the layout of that island was rather convoluted, even confusing, with everything crammed in and overlapping.

For a while now, I've wanted to make a game where the playable world is divided into small, easily-mentally-digestible chunks, either floating islands or ocean islands or something similar. It's why I liked the dissolving dioramas concept I had for Divine Dreams early in the year. I personally love the feeling of completion this affords, kind of like a story divided into short chapters, or even a blog post divided into paragraphs.

The petal the Bold inhabit has been an archipelago of small islands in a ferocious sea since their conception, so that means I can do something like this without deviating from what I've already established of the lore.

(As an aside, I've been calling the Bold's petal the "Bronze Archipelago" since the beginning, but I want to come up with a new name. A map for Divine Dreams used "Numina", but that's a continent in the petal rather than the petal itself. I don't know what Atonal Dreams' setting is called and should really give that some thought!)

Previously, I drew out the layout of the island like this:

The structure is carefully planned: you start on the south-western beach in a battle (against Pierce) to introduce combat mechanics. This is followed by a bit of exposition in a conversation between Savitr and Collie. They then travel through a battle-ridden linear path towards the monastery to gradually familiarise the player with the gameplay. After a short route, they reach an obstacle which must be unlocked by gathering six items in any order by travelling down sub-paths; the acquisition of each item would also trigger a dialogue scene hinting at Collie's and Savitr's backstories and relationship. Once these items are gathered, you unlock the boss (in a way I think is interesting but won't spoil), then the monastery, where there's more chance to delve into deeper lore and talk to people before progressing to the underworld section with a new ally. A fairly typical game progression which hopefully appeals to people who enjoy battling, lore, and exploration.

These paths are shown as different-coloured lines on this drawing. It's a mess, though! You weave back and forth around the island's cliffs, and while testing what I built of it, I found it confusing.

So here's a revision:

(Less colour means less clarity; I made it for myself and didn't know I'd be showing it!)

This time, you start on an island in the middle, with the obstacle to the north, and the monastery just beyond that. So the first linear path involves weaving around this little island, then once you reach the obstacle, you have to return to the beach where you started and travel across the seas freely to look for six other islands to get items from.

These islands wouldn't be large! Here's the basic structure of the one you start on:

Adding decorations to the bare ground makes a huge difference:

So having less land to fill in this way is less daunting a prospect for me as the developer. With the larger island, I thought "god, I have to fill it all up with decoration ALL AT ONCE, but that's so mentally taxing that I can't do it now, I'll do it later". Like the thought of writing a whole essay instead of just writing a paragraph. The thought of decorating a smaller island is way more digestible.

I could also use this starting island as the demo.

And the thought of discovering the other little islands by yourself feels more satisfying than just backtracking a lot over the one you started on.

So I like this idea. However...

Crossing the Seas

How do I handle this aspect? I've been thinking about it a bit.

Lore is important to me - obviously - so I needed for there to be something clearly shown in the game world to explain how Savitr and Collie got to the island in the first place. So this is something I'd need to tackle regardless.

Late last year, when the thing I was working on was called Belief (I'd say that's morphed into this rather than me 'giving up' Belief exactly, though I want to reuse some mechanics of that in a future thing if sticking with this seems feasible), I gave some thought to how the Bold traversed their archipelago.

Here's some concept art:

They're called 'paroats', and they're a cross between parrots and boats (and horses). Parrots because the Bold were originally designed with a pirate aesthetic, plus I suppose it works well for a JRPG because they're similar to chocobos. Belief's protagonist - who's riding one there - is called Lileah, so their tail feathers look like a lily pad.

I could return to that idea, maybe. Savitr could have a white one which is long enough that four people could sit on it. Or would just he sit on it while your allies disappear? Would I need to do mounting and dismounting animations? Figure out how to code and animate your character(s) riding it? Would you be able to ride it ONLY on the sea? What would it do while you were off exploring the island??

A boat might address some of those issues, but would be less interesting.

There could also be alternate magical means like water-walking or even flight, which might be easier to implement, but have a lot of implications for the workings of the world.

So this is something I'll need to give some thought!

Overworld Music

I've also composed some music for the overworld, which I'm really pleased with (and keep listening to over and over)!

From now on, I'll post most or all of the music I compose for the game on ∞ my Patreon ∞, as I already have done with this.

Monster Designs

There's little I can actually do with the game at the moment other than run around an empty island. I need to add some monsters, and I don't want to just reuse (all of) the ones I already made for Divine Dreams' dreamcave.

These monsters form from mental states, so I want them to look the part rather than having the generic orcs and lizardmen and bees or whatever.

I've enjoyed designing 'miasmon' in the past, and there are a lot of those I could draw on or even reuse outright. None of them really felt appropriate for this area, though, which is meant to represent LIFE, and which surrounds a monastery full of monks.

Scheduling creativity is unreliable though. So even though I might give myself a day or two to 'come up with monsters', it doesn't guarantee that any good ideas will actually come to me!

Here's some concept art:

I was struggling, so I made a randomiser to give me a random element and two of the 'body types' the game uses:

Some interesting ideas there, though I felt they weren't exactly relevant to the area. So rather than just using these superficial aspects as a starting point, I made a list of all the characters - including the monks - and what their thoughts might be during this story, and how those thoughts might manifest.

Eventually I ended up with this (to-scale) lineup:

A little bit about each monster:

Pawnite (Courage/Warrior/Beast) is chess pawn + paw (dog) + knight. Represents Collie's doggy courage, Savitr's thoughts about being used, and how Pierce sees monsters (as pawns to use). There'd be a black Destruction-elemental variant, which might share the same name. Seems a good first monster to introduce the switching-sides mechanics with (even though that's not something that happens in chess).

Somunculimp (Bliss?/Fey/Cellular) is based on the ∞ cortical homunculus ∞ (putting my Psychology degree to good use!!), and as such would represent 'brain given form' in a general sense rather than specific thoughts. They could be used to fill the 'goblinoid fodder' niche, then. I wasn't sure about the element; none of them really fit for what's essentially a representation of physical perception. Somatic + homunculus + imp.

Brigrrnd (Destruction/Beast/Warrior?) is a bandit wolf, born of Collie's thoughts about the Blight Wolves. I struggled with the name, to the point where I made a grid of 'wolf words' and 'bandit words' and their combinations. Here are a few: Lupandit, Brigrrnd, Outlawolf, Outlupe, Howlaw, Outpaw, Pawrauder. Mania also suggested Desperadog on Twitter, which I like, though I wanted to go with the 'wolf' angle explicitly rather the tamer connotations of 'dog'. "Schoundrel" also came to me later, though that has the same issue. I chose Brigrrnd (from brigand + grr) because 'grr' could also be seen as an emotional expression, which fits nicely. Whatever!

Psyclops (Bliss/Arcane) needs some design improvements! It's based on the monks, but also something else you should understand if you've been following this blog for a while.

Coconatal (Creation/Plant) represents life: seeds, eggs, babies. It's a raw coconut, with a tree as sprouting leaves. Coconoct (Creation/Plant/Undead) would be its undead version. Both were derived from the coconoct design I've been using for many years in other projects, and which I fully intended to reuse here, though I thought this redesign was more interesting.

Contemplato (Bliss/Golem) represents the 'ancient ruins' look of the islands. It's a golem meditating. The name's from temple + contemplate + Plato because of the philosopher and because I think it sounds like the name of a silly robot from Futurama or something.

Rexplorer (Courage/Dragon) is obviously a T-rex combined with an explorer, a representation of pure exploration. It doesn't really make sense for the setting of this world, which doesn't have dinosaurs as a cultural thing like we do, and I've been wondering to what extent that matters, Though you could say that even lore-heavy fantasy games make heavy use of things that shouldn't exist in a non-Earth world, since they're so embedded in our basic understanding of reality that it'd be too alien otherwise. I think too much about such things!

Of the monsters I made months ago, I think I'll definitely reuse Stratapillar, since that's appropriate for the setting. Maybe I'll also include Buddhafly as some optional superboss you can unlock by doing something involving Stratapillars.

Pawnite Model

I posted some progress pictures of this on ∞ my Twitter account ∞, which I'll continue doing (I'm currently trying to decide which posts are worthy of a tags like hashtag-gamedev or hashtag-indiedev...). Here's the result:

Annoyingly, I forgot the tail! I'll need to add one.

Also, since I find this interesting, here's the process in one image:

If I worked in a team where the concept artist and 3D people were separate, the concept would have to be fully refined before any modelling started. But since I'm doing it alone and trying to be as quick as possible, I do have the opportunity to tweak things a lot during every stage. Not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it is what it is!

My goal for next week is to have models and animations for several - or all - of these monster types, so then I can add them to this island and run around battling them. Let's see how that goes!