Fresh Thoughts

I'm still not working on this again (sorry to anyone reading this, I need a bit more time before I can get back to full throttle, how much I cannot say, but I approximate like ten days.)

However, today I realized that my game ideas might be outgrowing the capabilities of Ren'Py. I need to have a lot of animations which Ren'Py doesn't excel at which is pretty much the biggest problem.

Now the original plan was to make a Corruption of Champion styled gameply game (exploration wise) but actually with graphics, and a bunch of minigames (such as an actual world map system) but the problem that arises, is that while I could make a dungeon crawler styled minigame quite easily, some gameplay elements I would like might be hard to implement, there are some slightly complicated minigames I want to include, and since the world is pretty huge, exploring through buttons rather than actually just walking through it might not be for the best, this is something I will have to ponder a lot.

But I figured, instead of using a visual novel base, I could do the whole "Dust: An Elysian Tale" thing and use a platformer as a game, now that I have 2D graphics within my reach, this is a viable route, but I'm still not convinced, chances are I might have to actually mix and match (use platformer style gameplay for exterior cells, and use dungeon crawler style gameplay for interiors) but I do not think people would like having so many genres packed into one game (<- Developers can never know right) so I will ask myself if I would like it, and I do not think I would because it would lack consistency. I have to choose.

Now a trick I could use perhaps is use platforming for all cell exploration (instead of dungeon crawling) thus making my game a lot more graphical and nice. Don't get me wrong, I'm starting in visual novels one way or another, an I will also probably do some flash minigames for various experimentation purposes.

Now, the problem with using platformer style gameplay for cell exploration would be that I want the combat to be turn based, have you ever heard of TBC Platformer? I have not, and the reason for that is simply that to convert from platformer to turn based combat gameplay, you would usually have to kick the player out of the platformer gameplay into a turn based combat module (such as in final fantasy or the last remnant for an example) the alternative to that I can think of is adding a combat UI on top of the screen and zooming the camera in to a combat simulator styled zoom where you see your character and the NPCs. That would look a lot more dynamic, but that will also probably require me to learn a bit of graphics programming, and that is something to dread since it's known as the hardest form of programming to exist, and I would have to use OpenGL which is not as easy to learn as DirectX (due to poor, but improving documentation)

What I really really really want to do, is Wizardry 8 styled gameplay (as in world exploration and combat, for the most part anyhow, except that in this case you're usually travelling alone, not in a party) but the problem with that is that I do not have access to a 3D Modeler, Animator and a Texturer, and even if I did, they wouldn't make a world as big as what I have planned for free. Not in any decent quality anyways, so this means I would have to do it myself, and while I'm pretty confident I can think of something to generate inanimate objects (such as the ground, and everything that's stuck to it, like buildings and whatnot) the real problem becomes characters, NPCs and Monsters, and what would be hardest of it all, Sex animations, which you may or may not have seen so many 3D games fail at, including Oblivion and Skyrim mods, as well as some Illusion Games (Rapelay, Sexy Beach 3, Artificial Girl.. I think out of these sexy beach did it the best)

In other words, I'm easily confident I can cover the modesls, and with a bit of research and hard work, I'll get textures down too, but what's keeping me from 3D games ultimately is animations and the massively increased amount of sound effects you need in a 3D game compared to a 2D one. But well, this games development is still young, and I will make quite a few prequels before I get around to making the real deal final product, all of which meant to be full blown games in their own right.

I technically do have access to a 3D modeler, Texturer and Animator, my little brother. But the problem with this is that he is like 14, and completely new at it, quality is not acceptable for any full blown game purposes basically.

Anyways, these thoughts are an interesting development, which is why I posted them, I will get my grips on art pretty fast (by the looks of it) but after that, will I get down to programming again like I was before? or will I go nuts and get into 3D modeling and the like?

Quite frankly, I have more reasons to want in on 3D modeling, for one the 3D printers that are becoming so accessible and so popular, 3D modeling + 3D printer = saving a lot of money (I could make my own furniture, even if they'd be made of plastic, I don't give a shit. But I'm waiting a bit before I jump on this train because I want to wait for printers that can print other materials such as metals to become more accessible too. The RepRap looks like it might come a long way if I give it a couple of extra years. The other thing I want to wait for is for improved recycling technology, like the recyclebot which can turn shampoo cans into 3D printing materials. It's gonna be super fun to toy around with this tech when I get my dirty paws on it, chances are my brother will beat me to it. The future is an unclean mess right now, and I cannot predict anything more than "I am going to make this game" and "I will get good at art" as well as "I will get good at 3D Modeling" these are just 3 definites for me, give it 5 years, give it 10 years, or give it 2 years, I can't predict how long this will take, but I know that it is going to happen. I can see the future like that ;)

I've already got a place to start on 3D modeling even.

This is all thats been going on in this games development for now, sorry it's nothing more than thoughts at this stage, apart form this I guess I may have created some nice little characters in my head that would match into my game, and I've had osme crazy ideas like, I could eliminate males from the game and make a world full of girls and futa chicks :D Someone in response might make a game with men with boobs and other men with vaginas, that would be hilarious although I wouldn't play it.

Don't wait for me, my game will come at my pace and right now said pace is turtle speed, I'm trying to change it to race-car level, but it takes time, just stay tuned on my DeviantART non-featured journals to see exactly how well I am doing.

Edit: An extra thought; I could also try to play Wakfu and learn from them, they have like super simple 2D styled graphics, I could probably pull those graphics off and possibly even without using 3D models (although I probably wouldn't, since graphics of that simple level would be easier to do in 3D than 2D) I will definitely have to look into that.

Delays!

Thought I'd post this, as you can see nothing has been posted for about a week now, this is because I'm running into delays (life problems), my plans changed, I need to finish a certain picture I've been drawing, and it's really taking me longer than planned, when that is finished I've got other priorities to work on that will directly affect my mental health (or be wasted time) to be more specific; I plan to get a strong grip on self hypnosis. Then when I've done that there are several things I need to set straight; bad habits to break, stuff like that, and then and only then can I start following a sort of schedule I made recently which involves sharing time between game development and various other things and get back to working on these games more full time.

I keep this game's development behind my ear at all times, and even if nothing is actually being developed, I get some fresh ideas from time to time that I write down and may add to the game, in other words, I constantly think about this game (series) when I'm not working on them so fear not, it is going to get made.

And again, fear not that I am not doing anything related to the games development, I am actively practicing my skills with art which I started doing just for this game series to begin with; I needed an artist or 3. With a bit of luck my optimistic way of thinking is hoping to be a decent-enough artist by the end of this year. Good enough for my game at least is what I hope, and to acheive that I need to draw like a fucking lot. If I'm going to be the artist every second spent on art is beneficial to the game series, it may sound arrogant of me to hope to be a decent artist in just one year, but I'm progressing ridiculously fast.

Until I get back to developing this game as hardcore as I used to be doing, you can track my artist progress on my deviantart page (link at the top of the page)

New Blog!

I decided to create a new blog for my game related stuff, the old one can be found here if you're interested of reading back in time.

From now on the blog is restricted to game development related info, this means it's not guaranteed anymore that I will keep making blog entries daily, it also means that the entries will be a lot shorter than in the past and written at the end of the day instead of over the day, if you like reading these walls of text I write about my not so eventful life then the DeviantART non-featured journals is where I dump all that now.

I'm writing both my DA journals and this blog for myself simply to keep track of what I'm doing. This applies in particular to the DA journals now since I dump a lot of non-related info in there.

The Wiki is still outdated, I will update it once I intially made it just to keep track of my work, but now that I have articy: draft I can store it's easier for me to store that info locally. I will however update the wiki on the occasions where I have something solid to put there, it's just not worth the effort to update it every day with info that could change later.

Anyways today (as art day) I only had to work on game development for 1 hour, I'm still working on my first digital art piece (on and off for 5 days now) and to tlel the truth that is at this moment taking higher priority than game development; it is probably the single most important and meaningful work of art I will ever draw as it represents how far I've come in my first month as an artist and will ultimately help me decide if art is something I should pursue or not, when that piece of art is finished I will be focusing 50/50 on game development and that art piece.

Today I wrote some of the storyline I thought up over the past month down, it's pretty solid so I've decided how the prologue of my first game will be from start to finish, all I have to do is get a few names down (one town name, and names of several characters) and then write the dialogues, as well as start working on chapter one. Since tomorrow is game dev day I will be putting at least 3 hours into doing that tomorrow. Unfortunately though I can't go spoiling the storylines too much in here, so I can only write how much I've written in here rather than actually what I wrote (unless I decide there's an occasion to give a snippet of story in here)

My main game development days are tusedays and thursdays, so I am guaranteed to make a blog entry in here on these days (for now at least) but theres a chance I'll work on all other days as well, with the exception of sunday which is a convenient day to take a break from both art and game development, and I think I won't work much on saturdays either. But mondays, wednesdays and fridays are pretty much unpredictable where I am dedicated to working 1 hour on game development but 3 on art; how I spend the rest of the ours of these days is up to me and I could end up working hard on game development on these days, or just for that 1 minimal hour.

Thats it for todays entry, thanks for reading :)