Worlds and Characters

Grackles. Okay cool, I got the bird thing out of the way for this post.

Wait no, I do have grackle things to post. Here's a video where I do the near-daily catch game with these three male grackles.

And here's another where a mother feeds her rather noisy offspring. Watch your volume, they get loud up close like this. (I'm a derp for not dropping the volume on the video.)

DT3 World and Characters
I may have mentioned it before, but I prefer character driven stories the most. And really, stories that have well developed characters over well developed worlds. I've been thinking more about this as I start to think on what I'm going to do next. (And I finally know what I'm making after DT3.) Distorted Travesty is weird to me in that sense because it develops the world more than it does the characters. Admittedly the third game does a lot more in developing its characters than DT1 did, with a bit more focus on Claire than the others, at least in my opinion. But I still find that it favors world building over characters. Especially now that the world is already set up prior to the game starting. I find it weird since I generally make what I enjoy most and I did the opposite when it comes to story telling.

When it comes to making games, I always start with a gameplay idea in mind and then think about some of its functions and nuances and how they can be used in possible game scenarios. From there, I write characters to fit that gameplay, which then leads to building the world around those characters. DT did things different, where it was: Gameplay -> World -> Characters. Thinking back on when I started the first DT game, a lot of things were simply to justify running through worlds of various video games and my odd take on them. I just needed characters to fill that world.

That's probably why I enjoyed the writing itself more in DT3 than in DT1. While there is a lot of world building, which I think is natural at the state of things when DT3 starts. I wrote DT3 with the characters in mind first. Such as giving the protagonists a bit more personality and SOME backstory. More importantly (well for me anyway) were the antagonists and what they mean in the story.

Future Things
I won't say exactly what I'm working on next, however the thing I've always really liked are asymmetrical multiplayer gameplay. Meaning, multiplayer games where each player has a different control scheme or play style. More specifically, taking those examples and each player is also working towards the same goal. I've played around with this sort of thing here and there, even over the course of developing DT3.

About a year ago, I linked a very rough example of something I made about 5 years ago. (and it hasn't gotten any love since then either) I linked a Breakout variation (which I will also link again) where all four sides are open and there is a paddle on each side. Up/Down controls the left/right paddles, and Left/Right controls the upper/lower paddles. There is also other things occurring that require the mouse to be used along with this. The idea being one player takes control of the paddles and the other uses the mouse. Eventually there was going to be something else the mouse user had to watch and react to as well, but you know, the game didn't get much love. It IS beatable. (though nothing happens when you clear the board) A friend of mine who helped me decide on power ups and mechanics beat it along with me.

I've been thinking a lot about really going into this sort of thing as it has always been an interest of mine. The idea of differing play-styles working toward a single goal specifically is what I have in mind.

DT3 Is Soon

DT3 will be done this month!

That doesn't mean it will be released this month. I still have some cleaning up and a bit of bugfixing to do. My estimation is somewhere between July 11 - 18, as I'd like to have time for the testers to give me their last bit of feedback and to be able to iterate on that, if necessary.

Of course I'll still be doing bugfixes and such after the game is released as I'm 100% sure things will slip through. I'd like to, of course, have as much of it as solid as I reasonably can before that.

So yeah, be looking forward to DT3 in the middle of July!

Very Short Break and Grackles

I'll be taking a break from DT3 for about 3-5 days while I work on a secret project for a friend. This will only delay DT3 for about 3-5 days, so no worries.

That final level is pretty sweet though.

So here's some videos of birds visiting me to hopefully tide you guys over till DT3 comes out. The Witcher 3 comes out like... tomorrow, play that, I've heard it's pretty good. And it has a 3 on the end of it!

Grackles 1
Grackles 2

Also to the comment made by Francois, 2 blog posts ago, I forgot to respond to you.
You said:

"Ah, magnifique, Monsieur le Burst!
Will there be another game similiar to DT with platforming and combat(but original sprites)?
Or a Zelda like top view game with your own sprites?"

I'm not exactly sure which idea of mine I want to do next. I may join a group of others and work on someone else's idea for a bit. I haven't done that in my own development time for awhile. At least that which wasn't small requests here and there.

Interview and How Are You

The thing I mentioned on Twitter the other day is here. Actually it was yesterday, but I'm dumb. A friend of mine has a podcast where he does interviews with people. (And other things.) On his 4th episode, he features an interview with me, about me... and stuff.

You can find it by clicking on the green word here.
It went well and all done in one cut. I did a goof and had my mic right next to my mouth during the interview which upsets me because I know not to do this. Other than that, BAM, interview. Wow I had other things to say about it, but that's just... gone. Ah yes, the interview is not entirely about DT, but mostly about me. No worries, there's no spoilers aside from stuff that happens in the first game. Also yes, that's my name on there, I don't really care if it's out there. It's so incredibly generic, as there are a bazillion others with that exact name.

Also check out Dylan's episode 2 of his podcast, I rather enjoyed that one, as it has quite a crazy and true story. I had actually heard it directly from him before hearing it on the podcast itself.

And good news, I'm not nervous about the final level anymore. The tweet last week is now a lie. Seeing it play out exactly how I've envisioned it these last few years is pretty great. It has the right atmosphere and a really good difficulty level that I feel closes up the trilogy in a great way. (Spoilers, it's pretty difficult.)

Getting There

By tomorrow, the only content that will be left to fully implement will be the final level. So this week is when I'll be devoting all my dev time to that level. I was gonna work on a lot of the stuff I'm doing now after working on that final level, but I swapped around the order of things.

Just the level and 2 boss encounters left to fully implement. Well the ending too.

Game Progress: What's Left?

This is an update about what's left to create.

Currently I'm revamping Gate 6, which previously I was unhappy with. There was a heavy dialogue edit along with new encounters coded. It was pretty sparse before this. It's kinda hard to talk about it specifically, considering spoilers, and only the testers saw the previous version of it. So I'll leave it at that. It's almost done though, will probably have it done by tomorrow.

Next up is the encounter that occurs if the player completes all of the Nightmare Gates. That's not a spoiler, everyone knows SOMETHING happens.

After that is the final level and all its fun bits that go along with it. I'll code/script the ending during this as well.

And then, I need to return back to the world itself and finish up some loose ends. All the little secret/hidden areas in the game that aren't there now and finish placing all the optional items, like the remaining heart pieces, etc. This phase won't take very long.

When the above are all in, all the game's content is finished! THE GAME WILL BE RELEASED THEN... but not really. After that, I'm of course playing through the game again and heavily editing the game where it needs it. I'm guessing this phase will last about a month. There's a lot of feedback from the testers that I agree with and haven't actively addressed in the game yet. They're mostly small edits and tweaks, but those small things definitely address real issues, and it's during this last pass that I'll be going through those and iterating on them. No new content will have to be added during this phase, so overall, it should be quick comparatively.

When I'm happy with the game, it'll be released. Well no, that's a lie, I don't think I'll ever be fully happy with the game, but there will be a point during that last phase where I'm saying, "DONE, fuck it!" I'll be announcing a release date just before this phase hits though.

So this is where I'm at with the game. It really isn't all that much left.

DT3 Multiplayer Mode Confirmed

You may have noticed that DT3 has been taking me longer to finish up than I thought and said it was. This is partially due in part to life changes as mentioned recently, as well as just having a more social life outside of gaming. That's all good and true, but there's another reason the game has been delayed for this long. I've been working on something alongside the main project that is now integrated with the game. The testers have been working hard with me on it to make sure it runs great and its been awesome this last month.

DT3 now has a multiplayer mode. One player will control Jerry, while the other controls Claire. It's a mode independent from the main game, though a lot of it does use levels from the main game, but redone a bit to make use of multiplayer. It took some work, but it's all done through network play, though unfortunately I couldn't quite get local multiplayer to work. It's best done over a LAN, so I'll provide links to Hamachi and such when the time comes.

Below are a few screenshots that should show somewhat how it works.

As shown, you can see the other player's current energy (of their current active ability) next to yours. Both players have to be on the same map, but they aren't confined to the same view. Map exits work the same except both players must be near it for it to work. (Within half a screen.)

Both players share the same health pool. This also means that if one player plummets down a pit, it's game over for both players. The game over rules are the same, though it's the host player that has control of what happens in menus. Currently only the host player can control the pause menu as well, which means that player is also responsible for allocating skill points and equipment for both players. I'm looking to fix that before release.

I had thought about announcing this last month, but it wasn't as far along as I had wanted it. A gameplay video of how the multiplayer looks will be coming soon.

Actual progress on the game proper is still moving nicely as well, despite not having worked on it all that much the last 2 months.