Mighter Than The Longsword +3 of Smiting

My new area of research will be looking into making a game which implements dialogue as an actual gameplay mechanic.
Dialogue is often overlooked as a part of gameplay. Either entirely scripted, or with just limited choices based on numbers. In reality though, the act of communication can be just as exciting as a fight. Thinking about it, many of the terms we associate with the act of speaking are also used for duelling.
If somebody deflects a statement with a pithy phrase of their own, or a retort, it's often called a 'riposte', and if hit by a clever riposte, somebody may say 'touché!' a fencing term implying they have scored a touch.
In a courtroom battle, there is a 'defence', even though there is no physical fighting. Words can be inflammatory, wounding, harsh, and a strong negative reaction may be called a 'backlash'.

In Monkey Island 2 (I think it was 2) they took this literally and made a part of the game in which the player fought a pirate sword battle using insults penned by the authour of the novel 'Ender's Game'. It was a very funny and clever set piece, perfect for a pirate game with little physical violence like Monkey Island.
In the Pen and Paper RPG 'Exhalted', the dialogue rules are written like the combat rules. Dice are rolled for the effectiveness of insults, persuasion and intimidation, against the defence roll of the enemy.
Dialogue has a lot in common with fighting. It is about judging your opponent's condition, balance and strengths, picking your timing and trying not to leave yourself open. Sometimes brute force (shouting somebody down) works well, but often subtle persuasion can achieve just as much.

Some ground rules for inventing my mechanic:
1. No 'statistics', or certainly not ones that the player needs to know. Everything on the player's end should be free of numerical values. If a person is shy, they will be represented as such by their actions and dialogue, not by a floating number next to them saying 'shyness: 33'
2. Nothing random. Or not if I can help it. Everything in the mechanic should be based on the player's logic and deductions. I want the mechanic to be like chess, not snakes and ladders.
3. Keep the scenario simple. Interviewing Witnesses maybe? or Criminals? Trying to win an argument or debate? Seal a deal? Argue a court case?

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23219

A very interesting article about making games without violence as the main interactive mechanic.

Yeah. I'm on holiday. So not updating this much ahahahahaha.

Oh the pain

Well, I finished the essay.

...Only to discover I'd misread the date. I have in fact completed my essay a month early.
At least this gives me plenty of time for finishing up the project work. But man, do I feel stupid! It's like I pulled an April Fools prank on myself!

Ahh well. Hopefully I can have some kind of demo of the game going for the hand in date, since I have easter to work on it!

Walk the walk

...Okay, well hours of wasted time have revealed something to me:

I really should forget about the animation and concentrate on the game.

I was trying to make really nice 8 frame walk cycles. It's just not a good idea when you're only trained in rudimentary animation and trying to make the whole game on your own.
So due to how badly the Left/Right one came out, I'm sticking to 3 frame walk animations. It'll have to do. Hopefully I can have these finished for Thursday.

Some teething problems with the area size of the office. Urgh, I'm going to have to tweak it all so it's in proportion with the other areas. Not looking forward to that!
So my goal for Thursday is to see if I can have all the visual bits in order so I can finally start making the game work!

Knuckling down

At the moment, I have a game with two rooms in which you wander around and make snarky comments about things. It's not much of a game yet, but it's a start! At least the walkable areas are set up and I've got the hang of making the character say things about stuff the player clicks on.
I guess mainly I'm going to be making the areas and setting them up, and making the GUI this week.

Wheeeeee

http://adamatomic.com/gravity/

This game is awesome.
It's so absolutely simple, you are a little yellow robot...thing and you climb up a long shaft with thing grapple bungee rope thing, but you do it by hooking onto mines, and if you get too close, kaboom!
The graphics and gameplay may be simple, but there's something really pleasing about how the physics works, and the colours used and stuff. Even though it appears old skool due to the sound and graphics, something about the sound and the fluidity and clean physics of the game kind of make it clear that it's a recently made game. Similar to Cave Story, I guess.

I am rather a fan of really well-done pixel graphics. you can tell a game is new but done in pixels, 'cause the colours are always nicer than in actual old games. I remember pixel graphics, and the colours were NEVER that nice! New pixel games have a much more artistic approach to the colours used, rather than the more functional approach employed by the old games studios.
However much I like the look of pixels though, I'm not a fan of working with them at all. Very restrictive. I'm glad AGS can manage full colour and transparency as well as pixels.
I wonder if I should implement voice acting in my game? (sorry, small tangent here) I think it'll depend on my timeframe and how hard it is to add voices.

Can you believe this is my fiftieth post on here!? Yikes!

Four Pitchy Tasty

Still working on the pitch document. This one is trickier than the 'Palette Battle' one, because the style isn't so clear. Palette Battle the feel was 'dull industrial combined with bright chibi and lots of paint splatters'. This one is more 'chic, suburban hipster lifestyle with hint of nostalgia for retro games'. Aaaaaaagh.
Luckily for inspiration today, Scott Pilgrim vol. 5 finally arrived...This is probably why the cover art came out looking so Scott Pilgrim-esque. If I can say one other thing, it's that Manga Studio is the best inking program in existence. I wish there was a plugin for Photoshop that made it ink like Manga Studio! I've been drawing the characters in pencil, scanning them and inking in MS, then using Photoshop for the colour to do all the character art for this.

It's fun writing the pitch for the tongue-in-cheek tone of it. The art takes much longer though, because it's higher quality than the little chibis from Palette Battle. In general, this game has a lot of 'me' in it. It's very much to my personal style and taste. Basically I'm trying to go for a look that's really a lot more 'hip boutique' or 'indie comics' than 'video games'.