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Weekly Update - On Testing's Doorstep + Mentales

3 years ago1,776 words

I'm at the point with Atonal Dreams now where I can almost start the next round of alpha testing. I know I've been saying that for probably months, but while then it was on the horizon, now I'm standing on the doorstep. I've got badly burned out getting here, though, so I've also been recovering a bit by working on a side project, Mentales!

In the next weekly update - not this one! - I'll formally ask for testers. That is, I'll give myself another week to focus on polishing things, then start thinking about that. So don't volunteer yet!

(I say as if everyone's eager to jump at the opportunity, though I'm honestly concerned about how many - or rather, few - people are likely to show interest... I'll worry about all that next week.)

A couple of screenshots:







Those are the final encounters of the Sprouting Isle, and the alpha/demo would end when you entered that cave. I need to clean up some dialogue still, though; I've revised everything so many times that it feels quite tangled at the moment!

I could have finished off everything this week, if I'd used the hours I had fully... But I'm clearly suffering from some major burnout. I have been working on this thing for many more months than anticipated, after all. While I've been able to get a few hours of work in each day, it feels like pulling teeth; I get headaches just trying to focus. Feels like doing a homework assignment. That kind of thing. I've talked about it a bunch of times, as it comes and goes in waves.

While running the testing the week after next, I'll also need to research how best to do a Kickstarter, I'll have to remake a bunch of promotional images and videos and stuff that are representative of the game in its current state, I'll need to draw more attention to the Steam page for the game (which I've been refraining from drawing attention to until I've got all the stuff ready that doesn't show an outdated version)... All stuff I despise the thought of.

So maybe the burnout is largely due to anticipation of those dreaded impending tasks? Probably.



It's strange, though, how motivation works. I've spent my mornings and afternoons forcing myself to do work on Atonal Dreams, with difficulty, but in the evenings I've been madly motivated and productive while working on a few personal projects to the point where a Repetitive Strain Injury/carpal tunnel issue has returned for the first time in years. So that's... mixed!

It's very satisfying working on these projects, but it's a shame how I mostly keep them private since either they're too specific to be interesting to anyone but me, or there's little point talking about a game project only for my whims to shift before long, making it another public disappointment to add to the pile. But of course keeping everything to myself doesn't bring in any money...

So I've been trying to redirect some of this energy to Mentales, a remake of sorts of Alora Fane: Creation (AFC) that I talked about a while back. I've not done a huge amount with it - mostly I've just been amusing myself making silly characters with the editor, which allows the easy creation of pixelated faces - but here's a short video showing some basic features I've started to implement:



That is, you can now create characters, drop them into a room, switch to play mode, then run around and start some basic dialogue with them. Just the basics, but the behind-the-scenes setup - like deciding exactly how the data for rooms and characters are managed - takes time!

I'm not entirely sure what to do next with it though. I have a bunch of different ideas, and I don't know what'd work best.

The original AFC was meant to allow people to make simple JRPG style experiences, with turn-based battles, but it seemed like people who made quests with it typically didn't use it in that way. So I was imagining this as something more focused around narrative, though also maybe with aspects of the 'emotion battles' I've been exploring over the past few years.

Essentially, I imagined that you'd have two forms of interaction: an inventory of items you've collected (more akin to Adventure game items rather than RPG inventory trash), and a selection of mental-element skills, and they'd all basically just be used to trigger dialogue.

So for example a character might have the skills Friendly Greeting and Insult, and instead of going to an NPC and pressing a basic interact button, you'd have to use one of those skills to trigger different dialogue states. Or you might collect a MacGuffin, and use that on the same NPC to trigger a different dialogue state.

But I don't know if there's enough to that to allow for the experiences that people would want to create. And maybe it wouldn't be clear how the 'skills' thing is meant to work; I'm not entirely sure myself!

My mind also keeps going back to Belief, which has turn-based battles using silly social-styled skills to get your opponents to leave their side and join yours. I feel it's pertinent to the Zeitgeist - maybe a title for a game like 'Belief Battles' or 'Belief Wars' would easily resonate with a lot of people? - and the gameplay opportunities can be entertaining too. I've rewatched this demo video from ages ago a bunch of times just because I find the concepts so entertaining:



A thought I had regarding that a while back - I can't remember whether I mentioned it in the blog or just wrote about it in my private notes - would be a game where you essentially try to build your own religion around an idea that you named (eg "Yalortism", "Stoatism", "Sexism"). You'd have a central hub where you could collect followers and build a church or equivalent for your religion, and you'd be able to go off into possibly procedurally-generated dungeons to acquire those followers. Or something.

I event started building a battle system thing around it; I think I must have talked about this in the blog before, then?




I've been doing some brainstorming, and there are two ideas I like:

One is that you create a character who wants, for whatever reason, to spread around a religion that you name (so 'Shrekism' or whatever). You have a central hub area where you can build a church and accumulate followers, but to acquire these followers you must venture out into dungeons; this was the plan I had ages ago. Now, though, instead of those dungeons being procedurally-generated or whatever, you venture into tales created by other people. These tales would need to be structured such that the player could bring in their own character rather than the creator specifying the protagonist. At the end, you'd acquire a character of the creator's design to bring back to your church.

So there are similarities with Animal Crossing to some degree, except instead of villagers randomly selected from a premade list, you'd get something more personal and carefully-crafted which would remind you of an experience you'd had.

Yes, I'm sure it'd be wonderful visiting tales made of a single room where you achieve instant completion to bring home another Shrek or Penisface to add to the crowd. Very satisfying.

An alternative is that instead of creating a character and venturing into other creator's quests, I could play around with the ideas of dreams, of divinity, which are relevant to the setting I'm already exploring. Maybe you're a fledgling god, who - in order to ascend or see yourself fully realised or whatever - you must essentially 'dream many dreams', live many lives, meaning you'd go into these tales (or whatever) which have creator-specified protagonists, you play as them in whatever scenario they present, and from that you develop as a god or something. Kind of like that short story ∞ The Egg ∞, or an old game concept I came up with ages ago called BE-a-St, which I've always wanted to return to in some way. But I'd still want to keep the 'belief battles' and acquiring characters to take back to a hub/village/whatever, which clashes a bit here.

I don't know whether it's worth adding any kind of battle-like system at all, but if I did, maybe it'd be tactics-style, where battles take place in the rooms rather than switching to a separate arena, and you take turns using and aiming abilities with distance ranges. Rather than sword slashes or Fireballs and the like, they'd be things like 'Insult' or 'Sorrowful Song', with effects like 'chance to cause Crying' or whatever. Maybe elements + runes but no numerical stats? I've not given it much thought yet.

My ideas are still blurry at this point, and I'd be surprised if I'm communicating them even slightly effectively. I also have concerns about restricting creativity, and whether that's a good thing (like meeting up with strangers with a shared activity so there's some direction to any conversation), or a bad one (you wouldn't have free rein to make your wildest dreams come true).

It all definitely needs some refining, if I bother to stick with it at all.

But I really shouldn't be focusing on this, should I? I should be focusing on Atonal Dreams... I just wish that I could focus on that non-stop month after month! 12 hours a day!!1 It's a shame minds don't work like that.

I've no intention of NOT completing Atonal Dreams, but I suppose I need to redirect my focus every so often for the sake of my sanity. Might as well direct it towards something that might also end up manifesting as a game eventually, right?



But yes! I'll likely continue focusing on both of these over the next week, with Atonal Dreams as my 'job' and Mentales as a fun, mind-refreshing side project. And as I said, I'll ask formally for alpha testers next week! We're almost there now!!!