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Atonal Dreams Weekly Update 17 - Communicating Characters

4 years ago - Edited 4 years ago1,322 words

I've been coding some dialogue stuff this week! Here are some videos. Also some thoughts about characters' first impressions.

(I used to post these on Saturdays, but I'm writing them on Sundays now!)

Atonal Dreams uses a conversation system I've had since Belief late last year, I think? Something like that. It has these little scenes with full character models which emote much more variably than the standard fixed-speaker-portrait-in-a-dialogue-window thing I still see in a lot of indie games. I'm quite proud of it!

The code behind it didn't allow for selecting between branched options, though, so I added that this week, as you can see in this video:



I've planned the game's plot, but I haven't written any of the actual script yet. I've yet to devote time to fully figuring out the characters. So none of these lines for Collie here are final, and I've got the impression that they're not very appealing. Hmm.

I need to give some thought to how best to portray her in a way that's charming to people rather than off-putting. What I'm trying to do with her is have her represent the physical, pragmatic, the R(eal) rune, compared to other characters like Savitr who represent the abstract, the otherworldly, the cerebral and/or spiritual, the A(bstract) rune. As such, she's very body focused, which manifests in the sexualisation of her crush on Savitr, which also helps to characterise him through the way he handles that, plus she has a dog motif for the silliness and because she's effectively a tamed member of the Blight Wolves, she grew up 'wild' but is trying to be tame which is what the correcting-her-own-inappropriate-comments thing is...

And so on. There's a lot I've got planned for her psychology, her story role, and her place in the game's world, which I hope would be satisfying to experience... in its entirety. But obviously people can't see that from minute-long out-of-context clips, can they?

I recently finished my first playthrough of Undertale. It's been a mental challenge because of the perspective I've been coming from - a far-less-successful indie developer who's attempted to make similar games - which I talked about in the ∞ post I wrote about it ∞.

I've played through it once, but the impression I'm getting from people's comments on that post is that it's not fair to judge it based just on that; instead I need to replay it multiple times, explore and analyse every nook and cranny, and only then will I be able to really see what the game's all about!

And I can understand that, but it gets to me because it feels as if I'm being told I can't possibly form an accurate assessment based on several hours of gameplay, while at the same time it's perfectly okay to form an overall impression of Collie from just a few seconds of unrefined dialogue...

It's just how psychology works though, I suppose. I just need to think hard about how best to convey these characters, especially in their introductions. First impressions matter a lot. People wouldn't give this a chance in the same way they give Undertale a chance because of all the external factors at play.



Another thing I've been needing to get around to for ages is the intro to the game, where you battle against Pierce. I've finally got started on it! Here's what I've got so far:



As soon as you select an empty save slot, the game instantly begins a battle. No foreplay with scene-setting text or cinematic cutscenes or anything. The characters exchange a bit of dialogue which I hope succinctly introduces who they are and what the driving force of the story is in the first few seconds.

Writing such a scene is extremely challenging, though, and I imagine I'll return to this several times to refine it, especially as I come to better understand the characters as I write more of their dialogue. Based on past experience, there's usually a period of a few weeks where I'm still figuring out how characters think and talk, but eventually they click and writing their dialogue flows more naturally. At that point, the earlier dialogue I wrote for them feels off, but I can tell why and how to fix it, so it's valuable to go back and revise it. I'm still in that figuring-things-out stage.

I'll need to think about how to make Savitr and Pierce appealing right from the start too. Savitr's driven by guilt, and "please forgive us" is a subtle hint at that. Pierce maybe hopefully comes across as comically insane through his emoting if not the actual lines, but I feel some eccentric wording - something quotable - could work well, if I can think of such a thing. There's a lot that could be tweaked here.

There were a few things that needed coding to get this scene working. Conversations had to work in battle - using the same code classes as outside battle, but with some differences due to the positioning of the models - and I had to add things like a cinematic(ish) camera which I can freely position. Lots of behind-the-scenes stuff which took a while. I've still got work to do, too; the bit with Pierce summoning a monster is obviously a mess here (he's not got a casting animation so he uses Savitr's violin-playing one with his flute, the camera angles are wrong, the particle effect - which isn't the final one anyway - appears on his face for some weird reason rather than where the summoned monster spawns...).

(It also pauses briefly because I think my computer was doing a virus scan or something while recording; I tried like four recording attempts and it kept freezing in different spots, so I just thought bugger it, who actually cares, and used this one. What an exciting story.)

I also need to code it so that more dialogue can be triggered throughout the battle by different circumstances, so the whole thing essentially becomes an interactive cutscene rather than just beginning with one. I do like that the 'cutscene' transitions directly into battle though! (This is something I loved in the gym battles in Pokemon Sword/Shield.)

The way it works currently, characters can't change their pose emotively once they've drawn their weapons (other than the face, head, and neck), which is unfortunate since I'd like Pierce to wave his dagger around after he draws it (you can barely see it as it is). This will require some new animations and new code to support them, but I think it could add a lot so I'll probably at least try to add it.

Once that's all done, I'll have all the tools I need to finally start filling the game with meaningful content, and I'll (hopefully) be able to move on from this spot I've been stuck in for what feels like ages!

Oh, I also plan to give Pierce his own battle music - like Muriance had in MARDEK - though I'm still in the process of composing it. I'm thinking it could start with an anticipation segment which swells into the actual battle theme once the cutscene's over and you take control. That'll be a challenge. The battle track that plays in that video isn't final or appropriate.

(It amuses me how they look like they're pulling their weapons out of their bums. How else would the animation work though??)

I'll spend the next week on this Pierce battle/cinematic in-battle stuff, and hopefully at the end of the week I should have finished and can add what I have to Steam and do all the private probably-patrons alpha testing stuff I've been talking about for a while. Things tend to take longer than I expect though, so we'll see how it goes.