Alora Fane

I refreshed my memory about the story, wrote out some themes I'm intending for the narrative to explore, and wrote a potential script for the intro that I'm still not sure about! I also experimented with a suggested way of integrating music into battles, though I'm not sure about that either since it doesn't work with the existing battle track (included here)!

Some weeks, I'm really productive! This was not one of those weeks! My productivity is tightly tied to my confidence about what I'm doing, which has been low recently as I'm still struggling with indecisiveness about the things I talked about last weekend: how to handle the musical resonars, and how to write the intro.

I've posted a few times on ∞ my Patreon ∞ throughout the week to try and work through some ideas, so most of what I'll be saying here is a summary of what I posted there.

Reminding myself of the story

I started the week by making a planning document (similarish to the one I included with the Steam version of MARDEK) for Atonal Dreams' story. Or rather, I already did that months ago, before I started, but I revisited it and refined a few things. I'm happy with the overall structure! It has some interesting turns and the overall scope shouldn't be unmanageable once I get through these annoying snags and finalise the gameplay mechanics.

I realised while writing this that I want to rename the miasma and monsters, since the former was stolen from FFXII apparently and the latter is too boring for such a key gameplay feature (but then again Pokemon was - and still is - called 'Pocket Monsters' in Japan!). I've been working through a few ideas, but nothing's clicked just yet!

Narrative Themes

While trying to plan why certain events would happen, I thought about the major meanings that will be threaded through the story. While I don't want the story to be preachy or anything, having clear motifs helps things feel more deliberate and less like a bunch of stuff just randomly happening. Plus it helps with my creative decision-making!

I'll just paste the bulk of my Patreon post about that here:

Atoning for past misdeeds
Characters have things in their past that they regret, and they wonder whether or not they can be a 'good person' despite that darkness. Collie previously being a Blight Wolf, for example.

This guilt is something I know well (what with all the murdering I've done, of course), but I imagine people generally feeling 'not good enough' in a 'moral' or 'worthiness' sense might be a common thing? Maybe?? Or perhaps it's restricted to people as BROKEN!! as I am, I don't know. Either way, it's common in storytelling, so it should be interesting even if people can't directly relate to it.

I might try to draw on my frustration about people getting condemned and 'cancelled' etc for even relatively minor misdeeds. I really don't like that, and it ties well into what I've already had planned for months.

How we see ourselves vs how others see us
This is made explicit in the dream sections, where characters literally look different depending on who's leading the dream.

It's also less directly explored with things like how Collie greatly admires the 'Splendid Savitr', but Savitr himself finds that depiction irritating since he doesn't feel that way about himself.

Compassion vs toughness
I don't exactly want to go with a 'nonviolent' route that chides players who like violence, but obviously this is something important to me that I've thought about a lot, so it's in there to some degree. It'd be more a part of the narrative than the gameplay (summoning monsters is ambiguous about whether or not it's violent, since the actions are destructive but the monsters are not alive).

The Blight Wolves have a "survival of the fittest" mentality, similar to 'toxic masculinity' (a term and concept I find annoying); "only the strong survive". The Seraphim, by contrast, try to help the weak.

I had a traumatising amount of experience during my formative years on Fig Hunter clashing with tough-minded people who saw compassion as weakness and 'tough love' as helpful, which would colour how I'd approach this. I'd aim for something more subtle than puppy-kicking evil vs kitten-saving saintliness.

Inner beasts
In Divine Dreams, I planned characters to have personal 'Nightmare' monsters that were manifestations of their deepest fears or insecurities.

I'm doing something similarish here. The Beast represents Collie's general feelings about being a Blight Wolf, for example.

A big part of the plot also involves characters earning 'personal monsters' - I wanted to call them something like 'Spirit Animal', or 'Spirit Animon' or whatever, which is why I wanted to rename them from 'monsters' - which represent their person's positive view of their personal value and strengths.

Intro Structure

∞ Last week ∞, I wrote about how in the nightmare intro, Collie attempted to use a skill called 'Salvation' while getting interrupted by The Beast's beatings, eventually leading to Savitr coming to save her.

I didn't like how that made Collie into a helpless victim; it wasn't really fitting for the character or the story I wanted to tell.

So I revised it. Rather than trying to summarise it, I'll just include the sketchy, unrefined script I wrote here:

This would guide my writing rather than be added to the game as-is!

It's meant to show that the Blight Wolves are bandits, stressing the 'wild beasts' angle, so they 'hunt' travelling merchants etc to steal their food... though Mania pointed out that it makes them look like cannibals, which I'd need to clarify isn't the case!

I planned from the beginning for Savitr to be famous in some sense, so Collie would have heard of him before and would be giddy about being paired up with him; there are a bunch of story reasons I want this to be the case. Early on, I had her mention writing about his adventures in a notebook, but I had the idea a while back that maybe she'd have read some comics about the exploits of 'The Splendid Savitr'.

Comics existing in a fantasy setting like this is unconventional, but what they are and the basic meaning behind them are well-understood and in vogue at the moment, plus I felt it could be funny to draw a comic cover starring Savitr in this kind of style:

I imagine they'd have been produced partly as propaganda by the Seraphim, but primarily in the same way that fantasy bards sing songs about wondrous heroes. Savitr doesn't like the depictions of him at all because he's not vain - he's just trying his best to do the right thing despite his deeper insecurities - so I find the discrepancy between Collie's love of them and Savitr's distaste interesting.

Maybe having Collie's life changed around entirely by a comic book seems a bit silly, but I personally love the idea that a narrative could provoke such a huge change, by exposing her to something she'd never even thought about before. It underlines the value that narrative media can potentially have (and makes me feel better about wasting my life making such things myself!!).

This intro is meant to be a dream, so it's a kind of mish-mash of memories from different parts of her life. I'm uncertain whether that's the best start for a story; perhaps it'd be confusing? But haven't a bunch of other stories done similar things? Probably??

I feel this would work better than her just singing for someone else to come and save her... but it's not without potential issues.

I saw ∞ this tweet ∞ from an unfamiliar developer with a large following this morning:

I've had to think a lot recently about how to present tutorial features, especially after the first alpha test showed me how much people can potentially miss if it isn't explicitly introduced to them. Some people didn't realise that taming was a possibility, for example.

It's why starting with the Pierce battle - which introduced attacking, taming, and controlling tamed monsters - seemed an appropriate intro to the gameplay... but then this additional intro before that muddies things a bit, since Collie is physically attacking here. Would this put into players' heads the expectation that this was what the game was about, leading to frustration when things changed up later?

HMM.

I don't know! Maybe I need to revise some things?

Musical Interactions

I also talked last time about concerns I had about how to integrate the musical instruments with the battle background music. A couple of people suggested having the instruments activate additional instrument parts of the BGM, and I was curious to see what that would be like, so I experimented:

I feel... ambivalent about it, I suppose. In some ways it's both less intrusive and more immersive, and I like the interplay between the player and the BGM, but in this case I had to compose additional parts for a piece of music that wasn't written with them in mind. A piece that was driven by the violin - Savitr's instrument - meaning that his additions were drowned out.

There are other issues, too. The instrument bits fade in and out quickly, which is unsatisfying. A couple of people suggested things like having the music play throughout the character's turn, but I can't imagine that'd make much difference since it's the fade out that's the issue... or having methods to build up these tracks so they stay playing, but that's a fundamental shift to the gameplay.

It might work better if the music was specifically composed with this in mind - like if maybe it was purely or at least primarily piano - but it'd take time to compose such a piece, for one thing, and it'd be a shame to lose the two pieces I already have (a battle track, and Pierce's battle music) because I like them a whole lot! Here's the current battle track, for example, which I composed after the alpha test to replace one I already posted months ago (there are a couple of small tweaks compared to a version I posted on Patreon a few weeks ago):

So I don't know. Maybe just going using quick melodies for playing instruments would work best. Also this method took way more work, so that'd be much easier from a development standpoint!

I've written three blog posts this weekend! That's silly! Probably!! There's this one, plus:

∞ A look at a game from my childhood that I replayed, Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus ∞, and

∞ A personal post about some non-game piano music I've been composing lately ∞ that I love but which I don't expect anyone else to be interested in (unfortunately).

10 COMMENTS

purplerabbits148~3Y

I remember watching a video talking about the Dark Souls games and how Bloodborn "fixed" the game series. It's pretty well known that the only real advice other people give is "get gud" because the game is that difficult. Right? The game is difficult, but there is one telagraphed moment with an item that really made it difficult for people to "get gud." That moment comes in when the player character gets severely injured by the first boss and gets dropped to another floor where they find the shield item. That shield telegraphed the "wrong" way to play. With a shield, the player subconsiously thinks that Dark Souls is a game where attrition is the best way forward, but it's not. Its not very funn to go into each battle slowly wittling down the oponent and then dying again and again. You can complete the game that way, but it will be a slog since defensive playing is not the moat fun way to play a hack and slash.

Bloodborne "fixes" the Souls games by removing the shield from the beginning of the game. That way, the players are forced to play in a more active way, the more "fun" way. With a more active form of playing, players are no longer confined to the slow rhythm of defensive play, but can enjoy the "dance" with the opponent with active play.

Pathologic is a game that starts out with the first person game with a gun and money for buying items as you go around trying to save the village from the plauge. From that description you'd expect a zombie shooter game in avillage right? Wrong. The game throws you in for a loop where the very next day, the typical things you expect from a game gets thrown out the window. The starting money you have becomes useless because the villagers have their own form of currency. The gun your brought also becomes useless because there is no reliable way to get bullets. Pathologic is a game that starts out looking like a typical game of its genre, but it immidietly breaks conventional ideas trying to tell the player this is not your typical game. One way it does so is that there is an option to sell your gun. What game has the only viable way of beating the game when you give up the only way to defend yourself against the rabid villagers? The answer is : a game that has 6 levels of deconstruction of the genre. Pathologic is definitely a game that breaks so many norms and conventions. However how well they do it can be seen by the steam achievements where barely 15.3% (I think the number was lower before people did breakdowns of the game lie this guy [LINK] and brought up the number) of all global players have gotten the "easiest" achievment of surviving the first day. So the teleagraph of how this game is a decronstruction may not have gotten through to the majority of people.

On the other end of explaining the mechanics of a game. Pokemon Suoer Mystery Dungeon has one of the longest "tutorials" I have ever been hand held through. It was very through with all the mechanics, but the way how they "taught" the player is by having one mechanic get explained in a school day with one dungeon. That sounds like a great way to integrate story and gameplay right? In theory it did, but the school section took like 5 in game days and more than an hour irl. A TUTORIAL SHOULD NOT TAKE MORE THAN AN HOUR TO EXPLAIN. What didn't help the school section is that for each new mechanic it was a single mechanic per in game day. The handholding almost killed me because I played almost all the previous games so Its easy to intuit most of the old mechanics. The new mechanics like Emeras and Alliances would need to be explained, but given the button clues and items those mechanics could have been discovered or the player could have been able to beat the game without it. A better way to condense the number of in game days and time for the tutorial would be to have the tutorial with the school be a single dungeon where every 2-3 floors there would be an explanation for a new mechanic, so that there is enough floors to explore in between each mechanic. Instead, it is a 5 floor dungeon for each mechanic with absurd hand holding. I get that Since Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is a departure from the rpg genre of the original Pokemon games into the rouge-like genre, there needs to be aome explanation for how the game works. The in dungeon explanation for traps and dungeons works well with explaining what each new trap and item does, it was only mildly annoying for me since I already have the 20+ years of original Pokemon info and the many years of playing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon since the first game.

Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon is a bizarre case of trying to introduce new players to the franchise while having the the care to give thanks for the people who have played from the beginning. The middle and end partys of Super Mystery Dungeon would not be as impactful for newer players. But for people who have played the previous games, Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon keeps on the suprisingly dark moments and keeps turning the franchise on its head. So its a strange clash that the game has an hour long overly hand holdy tutorial while building up the story of the game having a connective universe to the past entries of the series.

I know that when it comes to game design that there's always a worry that you don't want to hold the player's hand too much, and you want the players to have that excitement of discovering things on theor own. From my experience with dnd, players are a lot less smart than they think they are. When it comes to clues and the like, they need repetition of the same information for someone to pick up on the relavent information. So that leads to how in games, it can easly range from too hand holdy to not explained enough.

Bloodborne "fixes" the Souls games by removing the shield from the beginning of the game. That way, the players are forced to play in a more active way, the more "fun" way. With a more active form of playing, players are no longer confined to the slow rhythm of defensive play, but can enjoy the "dance" with the opponent with active play.

Pathologic is a game that starts out with the first person game with a gun and money for buying items as you go around trying to save the village from the plauge. From that description you'd expect a zombie shooter game in avillage right? Wrong. The game throws you in for a loop where the very next day, the typical things you expect from a game gets thrown out the window. The starting money you have becomes useless because the villagers have their own form of currency. The gun your brought also becomes useless because there is no reliable way to get bullets. Pathologic is a game that starts out looking like a typical game of its genre, but it immidietly breaks conventional ideas trying to tell the player this is not your typical game. One way it does so is that there is an option to sell your gun. What game has the only viable way of beating the game when you give up the only way to defend yourself against the rabid villagers? The answer is : a game that has 6 levels of deconstruction of the genre. Pathologic is definitely a game that breaks so many norms and conventions. However how well they do it can be seen by the steam achievements where barely 15.3% (I think the number was lower before people did breakdowns of the game lie this guy https://youtu.be/JsNm2YLrk30 and brought up the number) of all global players have gotten the "easiest" achievment of surviving the first day. So the teleagraph of how this game is a decronstruction may not have gotten through to the majority of people.

On the other end of explaining the mechanics of a game. Pokemon Suoer Mystery Dungeon has one of the longest "tutorials" I have ever been hand held through. It was very through with all the mechanics, but the way how they "taught" the player is by having one mechanic get explained in a school day with one dungeon. That sounds like a great way to integrate story and gameplay right? In theory it did, but the school section took like 5 in game days and more than an hour irl. A TUTORIAL SHOULD NOT TAKE MORE THAN AN HOUR TO EXPLAIN. What didn't help the school section is that for each new mechanic it was a single mechanic per in game day. The handholding almost killed me because I played almost all the previous games so Its easy to intuit most of the old mechanics. The new mechanics like Emeras and Alliances would need to be explained, but given the button clues and items those mechanics could have been discovered or the player could have been able to beat the game without it. A better way to condense the number of in game days and time for the tutorial would be to have the tutorial with the school be a single dungeon where every 2-3 floors there would be an explanation for a new mechanic, so that there is enough floors to explore in between each mechanic. Instead, it is a 5 floor dungeon for each mechanic with absurd hand holding. I get that Since Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is a departure from the rpg genre of the original Pokemon games into the rouge-like genre, there needs to be aome explanation for how the game works. The in dungeon explanation for traps and dungeons works well with explaining what each new trap and item does, it was only mildly annoying for me since I already have the 20+ years of original Pokemon info and the many years of playing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon since the first game.

Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon is a bizarre case of trying to introduce new players to the franchise while having the the care to give thanks for the people who have played from the beginning. The middle and end partys of Super Mystery Dungeon would not be as impactful for newer players. But for people who have played the previous games, Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon keeps on the suprisingly dark moments and keeps turning the franchise on its head. So its a strange clash that the game has an hour long overly hand holdy tutorial while building up the story of the game having a connective universe to the past entries of the series.

I know that when it comes to game design that there's always a worry that you don't want to hold the player's hand too much, and you want the players to have that excitement of discovering things on theor own. From my experience with dnd, players are a lot less smart than they think they are. When it comes to clues and the like, they need repetition of the same information for someone to pick up on the relavent information. So that leads to how in games, it can easly range from too hand holdy to not explained enough.

Tobias 1115~3Y

Interesting; thanks for taking the time to write this out!

Getting the tutorial right is definitely something I hadn't really prepared myself for when I started. My old games like MARDEK didn't even have tutorials! But it seems to be what people will judge the game on these days. It's... interesting, I've been thinking, devoting so much time on something that's supposed to be fun, but which you have to essentially convince people to even give a chance. Hmm.

I've never even heard of Pathologic, but after Sindrel Song I've been realising how much people seem to require things to be as they expect, so it's not surprising to me that so few people even got the early achievements (though from what I recall it's common for only a small percentage of buyers to even play any given game for more than a few minutes?). These days I'm wary about doing something that's too much of a deviation from expecations, which is a shame since that's such interesting territory.

And I hope that focusing on one battle for each mechanic in Atonal Dreams won't be as overwhelming as that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon tutorial sounds like it was!

Interesting; thanks for taking the time to write this out!

Getting the tutorial right is definitely something I hadn't really prepared myself for when I started. My old games like MARDEK didn't even have tutorials! But it seems to be what people will judge the game on these days. It's... interesting, I've been thinking, devoting so much time on something that's supposed to be /fun/, but which you have to essentially convince people to even give a chance. Hmm.

I've never even heard of Pathologic, but after Sindrel Song I've been realising how much people seem to require things to be as they expect, so it's not surprising to me that so few people even got the early achievements (though from what I recall it's common for only a small percentage of buyers to even play any given game for more than a few minutes?). These days I'm wary about doing something that's too much of a deviation from expecations, which is a shame since that's such interesting territory.

And I hope that focusing on one battle for each mechanic in Atonal Dreams won't be as overwhelming as that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon tutorial sounds like it was!

MontyCallay101~3Y

In the clip you showed, even the little extra emphasis that Savitr's playing gives feels really satisfying! Puts an additional emphasis on the character and the skill they used. I feel it would be a great addition to the game if you used it consistently. If you decide to fully embrace the instruments-as-weapons path, not doing something like this really feels like a missed opportunity, even if it does mean some extra work!

Tobias 1115~3Y

Ehhh... I'm getting the feeling that if I don't use something like this now, people will complain, so I'm sort of regretting posting it because it's significantly more work and it'd require redoing the battle tracks I already have and like... I'll need to think about it.

I'm wondering though whether you were interpreting parts of the BGM as Savitr's violin being introduced; the latter is barely audible except during the accompaniment-only beginning bit.

Natrythe4th10~3Y

You could have Collie only auto-attack until Savitr shows up so players’ first battle actions are the taming they will use for the rest of the game. Violent beserkers and animal type characters are stuck on auto-attack sometimes, so it makes some sense. Plus it’s a bit symbolic of the nightmare beast being the one in control of her until Savitr helps out.

Though I suppose that could get in the way of your earlier stated intention of letting the player play the game as soon as possible. You could also gray out or put an x over the normal battle UI and put Collie’s physical skills in front. That way players would at least see how the way they battle will change pretty soon.

Tobias 1115~3Y

The way I've got it at the moment is that Collie starts with a basic 'Slash' skill - the same one used by some monsters - and only that skill, which the player can select. Though it's different to the summons in a lore sense, mechanically it requires the same actions, so it hopefully wouldn't feel like a different mechanic!

Collie feels bad about her past actions, so having the player actually carry out those actions feels like it might help the player empathise more with that. Maybe??

Astreon152~3Y

If a monster is like a nightmare incarnate, i suggest renaming it naemon. We get the familiar "monster" part, the "nae" being a mix of dae (as in daemon) and night (from nightmare).

And is the miasma also a manifestation of the mind, like negative thoughts that leak out and then condense ? If so, maybe calling it "thog" (thought + fog) would work ?

For Collie's nightmare, since you are using a comic depicting Savitr and she fantasizes about him, you could have her, in a pinch, improvise a parry to a deadly blow with the comic, and then, since we're in her mind and anything's possible, Savitr would come out of the comic, repel the blow, and help her from the side. Her inner deity helping her defeat her inner demon, both being manifested from her thoughts, seems quit consistent ? Savitr could disappear at the end sayin he's not really there, he's in her, i mean, the light in her, always there to fight her darkness.

Tobias 1115~3Y

Would you pronounce the start of daemon and nightmare the same?? Ideally I want something that strongly suggests 'illusory' or 'solid hallucination' or 'mental figment', rather than just 'evil thing', but it's tricky! Usually with things like this I'll play around with a bunch of things, rejecting a bunch until something just clicks, eureka-like. I'm not there yet!

Also, thog: [LINK]

Ha, as striking a scene as that might be, the logistical difficulties of animating a scene with Savitr emerging from a held-up comic prop makes me squirm! I've mostly got something now, most of which was structured around ease of development, and it's kind of the same idea maybe?? This is just the literal intro though, so it shouldn't feel resolved.

Astreon152~3Y

I wouldn't pronounce it the same of course, but your game isn't vocalized, and when i read it it doesn't strike me as odd. Well, english is not my main language, so...

Darn, there really is a word for any and everything on the net nowadays. Makes it way harder to find something original.

Violet5~3Y

tutorials are a tricky balance, for sure. introduce too many systems and subsystems in a short timeframe and you risk overwhelming the player, but take it too slowly and it feels a bit too much like handholding.
as far as avoiding giving a misleading first impression goes- intros that don't provide an accurate look at how gameplay normally functions, due to missing key mechanics or whatever else, are not exactly out of the ordinary. as long as game/dialog/story beats are there to make it clear that there's more intro up ahead that will add/build on/change what the player's already been shown, i don't think there's a huge issue?

the concept of having instruments actively add layers to the BGM is an intriguing one; though the logistical challenge of writing pieces around having entire parts missing/present and still sounding good is *slightly* daunting- especially when a turn-based system effectively enforces short, snappy actions, and thus lots of turning instruments on and off for brief snippets.

//as an aside, character-based bgm shifts feel like they would be tailor-made for a game like Ar Tonelico, funnily enough- the back slot of the party is reserved for one of several singer-archetype characters, who act at will, outside of the normal turn-based order. obviously not something that would work for atonal dreams without a major paradigm shift, but in a game whose music is intrinsically tied to the characters and overall lore, a dynamic BGM of this nature would've been amazing to see.

the concept of having instruments actively add layers to the BGM is an intriguing one; though the logistical challenge of writing pieces around having entire parts missing/present and still sounding good is *slightly* daunting- especially when a turn-based system effectively enforces short, snappy actions, and thus lots of turning instruments on and off for brief snippets.

//as an aside, character-based bgm shifts feel like they would be tailor-made for a game like Ar Tonelico, funnily enough- the back slot of the party is reserved for one of several singer-archetype characters, who act at will, outside of the normal turn-based order. obviously not something that would work for atonal dreams without a major paradigm shift, but in a game whose music is intrinsically tied to the characters and overall lore, a dynamic BGM of this nature would've been amazing to see.