Yo.

I wanted to make a post after making more progress on the actual game itself, but since a lot of time has passed already, I'll just post some pictures I drew up.

Costume test

Style test

Update + Projected Prototype Date

Welp, my portfolio site is all but gone. I was a dodo and did not transfer my domain properly, so after hosting with GoDaddy expired, everything got wiped. It was a pretty simple portfolio site though, so I'm not all that perturbed about it.

I ended up dropping a class, which I'm ashamed of. It's made things a bit awkward with the professor from that class (whose office happens to be right across from the game lab I work in). But hey, I learned two things from this ordeal. One, I now know fairly accurately how many hours a task or classwork will take up. Two, I should never be too apologetic in my emails. It doesn't really do anything for anyone. In fact, it may make the other professor even more uncomfortable around you, which you can't really do anything about since another apology isn't really going to improve things. I'm more interested in my first point, my ability to discern the amount of time a task will take. When this semester started, I was still fairly poor at this and faced paralyzing fear when faced with my assignments. Now, I am able to know precisely how many hours a paper, a coding task, a painting will take. It was by working out how many hours the remaining assignments for this semester would take up that I realized I could not keep up with all four classes without compromising or dipping into lab time, so the CS class I was doing bad in gets nixed.

More importantly, I then jotted down the tasks remaining for the current game, then discerned how many hours each phase would approximately take. It had kind of felt like this game was just a murky haze kind of taking shape in places with no clear pattern. Now I can visualize at what state the game will be in at various points in the future. Old remnants of doubt and dismay that the game would ever get finished are little more than wisps now. I am also confident that the game will be 2D now. The whole scope of the game is more manageable and doable. Based on current projections, I should have a prototype of a social interaction system done around the end of January 2015. It'll be a pretty rough prototype, but it will hopefully hold the potential for deeper gameplay. So yes, I will definitely have something posted at the beginning of February.

The story world and history are also coming along quite nicely. I think I'll refrain from divulging any of the history, since uncovering it will play a major part, but as for the setting, it will take place high up in the mountains. I mean, I wanted there to be perpetual snow throughout the year, so I didn't have a lot of options. It was either mountains or the poles. I also pictured a frozen caldera with a small village illuminating its center, and wanted to capture that in the game.

I used to crazy love science, and one of the things that excited me in geology was calderas. They're collapsed indentations at the top of dead volcanoes. Sometimes those indentations fill up with water, and you get this beautiful quaint, quiet lake, encircled by a rim sloping inwards and surrounded by sky. Sometimes those caldera lakes will freeze. A perfect, circular frozen lake with a village in the center would be really pretty.

I'm a bit sad I'm not rendering the setting in 3D, but alas it would take me twice as long to finish the game if I did use 3D. Originally I wanted to make something akin to Animal Crossing that looked similar to this really beautiful WebGL demo. I really want to have a beta of the game done, at least before I graduate though. So bye, pretty original vision for the game!

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - by OutsideOfSociety

Another fairly important bit: I have a title for the game now! It will either be called 'the Clarity of Ice' or just 'Clarity.' The direction the game goes will determine which one I go with. If ice plays as much of a symbolic role as I hope in the narrative, then I'll go with the first title. Otherwise the second title works as well. So hooray, I can refer to 'Clarity' instead of 'the current game I'm working on' or 'that red, ice themed game.'

I dunno, I've also played around with the chara design a bit more. I can't get myself to picture her with long hair but whatever, I've been trying it out. Have a sketch to end the post with!

Acknowledging my Lack

Ugh, man, I like never update this thing.

I know that one reason for this issue is that I'm scared that my tone will waver and be inconsistent here. I mean, I've blogged consistently on more personal diary-esque ones ever since high school, so I'm certainly no stranger to blogging, but here the association with some industry makes the stakes and expectations higher. Since this is a blog that is linked to my work, and therefore kind of a professional thingy, there's a level of formality and distance I feel is expected and required. This should be treated like one of those update post blogs, where you reassure your reader base about consistent progress or announce some hiatus thanks to real life stuff, or maybe treated as one of those editorial-esque soundboard blogs for my thoughts on stuff happening in the industry. This is no place for emotional outpourings or disordered ramblings, or heaven forbid the interjection of petty personal drama.

There is also the fact that, unlike my obscure personal blogs, this blog is linked to my portfolio website. If I ever finish my game, it will also be linked to that as well. It is bound to have a stray pair of eyes chance upon it, quite possibly an important pair of eyes, skimming and formulating an idea of the potential professional I am from the text presented. Shouldn't I then keep the tone consistent to help with the generation of this persona? Shouldn't I be assuming a professional no-nonsense tone that relays relevant information on the project as efficiently and curtly as possible? Shouldn't I present myself in the best light possible, in the visage of that great, passionate, motivated and on-top-of-things sociable developer? I know though that this consistent, reliable and noteworthy persona that hem such portfolio blogs is one that I cannot sincerely lay claim to.

I am a flawed human being with a lot of room for improvement. I am driven by anxiety, highly emotional and impulsive. I waver between productive and destructive states. I am still green and immature, frequently forgetful of the divide between what I presume and what actually is. I like waxing pseudo-philosophical and pondering and speculating, to the detriment of productivity. I am also highly flaky and a perfectionist marching to a markedly different beat. Those who really know me know how unreliable I can be. To those that do not know me, I no longer feel like posturing to be polished and responsible, of bearing the persistent anxiety of uglier colors peeping out.

I am tired and sorry of feeling like I am lying all the time, especially when those who know this uglier side already are bound to come across this faux facade. I am, simply put, flawed, and it is my selfish hopes that by embedding the values I've disregarded for so long into something I revolve my life around, personal projects, that I will come to incorporate those traits into my own life and redeem myself as a human being. I wish to take these values into account and show my respect for the people around me properly. But this is not an effortless endeavor for me, and I do not feel like pretending it will be.

I do not feel like story-fying or glossifying this project with promises of a steady stream of inspired, productive update posts, of wondrous revelations and dashing triumphs over setbacks, of great innovation or even of completion. The least I can attempt to do is aspire for transparency. I want to record more earnestly and truthfully the mental journey I've been going through to generate the story at its current place. I want to be able to look back and see how the messy naive real me scrambled about. I want to catch and share the moments when something inspired me, when something clicked and an underdeveloped aspect of my project suddenly came into focus. I want to be able to jot all of this down here without regards of how out of place, ADD or unrelated it may seem.

I want to be able to look back and see where I veered off. See the places where real life caught up with me and kept me unable to do anything for a while, or the places where I sat stagnant with nothing really going anywhere. I want to see the places where my weaker points of ignorance, bias and misinformation led to painful stupid moments and the ways those moments humble and inform me. I want to present a preservation of the full process I engaged in, and I feel I owe this to whoever stumbles upon this thing of mine.

All that being said, I want to say that, at this point in time, I am nearing the end of my first semester as a transfer student at NEU. I was dumb, and I was right: four classes was too much for the current me, especially with lab on top of that. I am really happy that I am nevertheless able to consistently and reliably help my brother with his coding hw. Like, really happy. Regardless of how this semester turns out, I will look back fondly on the ways I helped my brother catch onto for-loops and structs and all the lots of many bugs.

It is dumb, but I keep on veering off and thinking about stuff for this project when attempting to do my classwork. My mountainload of classwork. All it takes is a little glint of potential material, some little seed in my reading or project that could lead to some new idea for the game, and I find myself lost on a crazy tangent. It's ironic (and ridiculous) that a game on self-control is itself being a major source of temptation. I want to write more frequently here (I have plenty of stuff to talk about), but until the semester ends, I need to control myself and shelf actual work on the project for now. I look forward to December 4, when the time to engage and the muse of winter are mine to claim again.

It was Always in the Back of my Mind

What is up, blog?

Wow, it has been too long since I've posted here. Never fear, I have not abandoned my game. In fact, I have new arts scattered throughout this post to keep your eyeballs somewhat engaged. I feel that the juxtaposition of different concepts this challenge presents has helped me to see and stumble upon and think about ideas and phenomena I would otherwise never have encountered, so even if I were to never actually bring a game to fruition, I would have more than enough interesting stories and discoveries to share. I am the obsessive type, the type that gets completely suckered into a fandom, a research topic, and more importantly, a personal project, so this game idea has literally haunted my every thought for the past, I think, 2-3 years? The degree of my obsession has gone so deeply that themes of ice and the color red literally pervade my dreams on a semi-regular basis now. I am doing research even in my dreams; one of my dreams this past week involved me approaching one of numerous gigantic weird glacier-things scattered around an old mining-based town the class was visiting, and prying off a piece to study the way the colors shift and absorb light at different angles, so I could better understand how to capture its essence visually. My dream self will literally grow excited when it finds an inspiring shade of red or happens upon a snowy bank, or consciously note if some event in the dream world would be an interesting addition to the game.

Well, by divulging the depth of the challenge's impact on even my dreams I am not implying that this obsessive tendency is a good thing, and I definitely know it has no bearing on my actual progress with my game. But it is nice to know that, even when asleep, my brain naturally starts processing and playing with all the cultural bits and pieces I've discovered regarding the cards I've drawn. Dreams have become particularly useful in formulating a unique and personal aesthetic for the game, and though my abilities to translate that into digital form may be limited, some of that essence will definitely persist. I am also especially lucky this winter, since a variety of releases and events have been providing me with even more opportunities for aesthetic inspiration. Frozen has been excellent in teaching me how to catch the enchanting, soothing heavy wash of pink that casts over the snow at dawn and sunset, and Sochi has provided me with many examples of inspiring, strong female leads. And though I know that with the cold comes great discomfort and danger to the homeless, I could not help but glean inspiration from the weeks of snow and ice that cast upon Atlanta twice. Of course, I would rather that not happen again; I could get more out of a skiing trip than that without endangering anyone.

I personally don't really like this picture, but whatever.

Anyways, what I want to say is that during all this time, I have been collecting bits and pieces, turning them over in my head and fiddling with them, gaining insight into things I never knew, and slowly pulling together a blueprint for a game that can naturally encompass all the elements of ice, red, tact and self-control. Oh, I should probably mention that with progressive research I've decided that the terms 'tact' and 'self-control' more accurately encapsulated the essence of the original words I drew, which were 'diplomacy' and 'self-discipline,' but that's info I can cover more in depth in another post. I know how I want to present these pieces now, and I know the basic narrative and mechanics I would use to do just that. Now that I have a high-concept idea of how to present a game encapsulating abstract terms, though, it's time I stepped back and whittle down the idea into something that I am actually capable of building.

A full-body shot that isn't anatomically implausible! Yay! I really despise her sweater, though.

First, though, I would like to talk about the full extent of the idea I've built up. Ideally, if I had a magic wand, I would create this game set in a 3D enviro, inspired by works by guys like Timothy Reynolds. It would be navigated by clicking upon objects and persons, which the mouse would naturally snap to. You would not really walk around the place like you would in a standard adventure game, because the game would be simulating how an extroverted social person sees the world. The mouse is therefore your only and primary means of navigation, and it is representative of your proximity to certain things in the room. If your mouse is close to the gossipy housewives in a corner, you would consequently pick up bits and pieces of their conversation. Move the cursor closer to the younger clique in the corner, and you'd overhear that group's gossip. Click the clique and obviously you'd be interacting with them. You make true narrative progress in the game by the information and interactions you unlock with people, and the key to do just that lies in how you've been spending your time each day. If you've been doing your homework, then you'll be able to better communicate with your professors, and therefore comprehend and be able to ask questions pertinent to the overarching narrative.

Okay, cool, so obviously this whole people-interaction thing covers the tact card. Calling the professor a fatty is clearly a tactless move, and commenting on the implications of blah blah blah smart stuff with the guy a whole lot tactful. Now we need to cover self-control.

Self control would come in by using your standard old 'here's a list of stats, level them up!' system. It would be a bit like the Sims. Click that treadmill: five minutes later, oh look, your Sim's Athletic stat went up! Here is where my interpretation of self-control would come in to differentiate it, though. When you make Sally get on that treadmill, you don't just sit there and wait for her to loop through her running animation until Athleticism goes up to Level 4. There are going to be some major Mental Hurdles that pop up! Sally is, just like most people, not always going to be in control of herself. That means that if she feels lethargic and tired of feeling sore all the time, she may autonomously step off that treadmill and beeline for the couch. This negative state of mind is reflected in negative note clusters, and the only way to counter them is to play note clusters representing positive ideas. There is also a goal/motive window thing, and if it happens to be fuzzy and fading away, chances are her stamina and will are not going to hold up very well. Play those positive notes well enough and on tempo, and that goal may come into sharper focus for her. (There is a reason I'm using music as a means of controlling mood, but that would be something for a later post).

Something else that I'd want to implement in the name of Self Control is a feature for habits. It would be painfully tedious if you had to do the whole note-playing rote series of task-clicking every single day. The key is in doing something, like running at 5pm every other day, regularly enough that Sally cannot help but start autonomously doing it every day. When something becomes a habit, happy buzzy feel-good special effects and musics pop out at you and instead of making you sit there while she runs, it skips through the action and summarizes it, otome-style.

Here's an example from an otome called Love Revo:

Here you see the protagonist attempt a weight-reducing activity. The outcome is based on a stat called 'Info.' Once you initiate the activity, there's not much else you can do to control the outcome.

If she has a full routine of habits going on, then you've got some serious pumped up music sequence stuff going on, with all these cool graphic success-indicative panels flying at you. You also end up saving time. None of this is fixed, though. While she walks off that treadmill and heads towards the easel to, I dunno, practice painting like she usually does, you can cancel that and make her walk over to the guitar instead, and switch up her routine. As she becomes comfortable enough with various types of tasks to form habits with them, her stamina also levels up, and picking up a related habit (like learning drums after learning guitar) is far easier and accessible.

Yay, something lineless! Also, I really need to work on rendering gems, that looks like an oversized gusher on her arm.

Obviously this is all very abstract, conceptual, Babel-y stuff, and whether it actually would be enjoyable is something that I really cannot predict. Whether I can actually implement it is also another matter. I feel that this model does encapsulate tact and self-control, though, and while I definitely won't be implementing all the particulars of what I've just described, I'll be taking the general ideas presented and placing them inside a less ambitious, conventional framework (like a top-down pixelly RPG). I have been taking an AI class this semester and, um, I am made all the more aware of how inexperienced and noobish I still am. I have wanted to try and implement it in Unity, but my mind draws delusions of amazing soft, crystalline shaders lovingly drawing sophisticated, life-like NPCs on screen, and well, reality check says that's not possible for me right now. Instead I'll be focusing on using Flash to build what is basically a dollhouse. I will have a single semi-autonomous AI roaming about a single-room house, and it will be surrounded with items for building habits and skills. I am debating on using Flixel or plain old Flash at the moment. I'm most interested in the Habit/Routine mechanic. If I could get just that part down, I would feel like I'd accomplished a major chunk of the challenge. If I succeed, I wouldn't mind just wrapping up the rest of the game into a standard otome.

What I come up with for the prototype is probably going to look like the now-defunct PlayFish social game Pet Society. Except the pet will be replaced with a person. Gosh, I hope that doesn't end up being weird.

Also, I've been doing a lot of (attempts) at digital painting this semester for lab, and as you can see I've managed to pull out a few more colored concepts of what the protagonist may look like. I think I pretty much have her face/hair down, but am still kind of struggling with her outfit.

Anyways, there are a lot of things I want to talk about regarding the past few years, and I plan on populating this blog with detailed info on all the interesting things my research has unearthed. Dry posts on the particulars of a speculative blueprint aren't particularly all that entertaining. A fun post I plan to do sometime soon is on the range of solely ice/snow/winter-based games out there at the moment, both commercially and less formally via Indie platforms or flash portals. I'll try to make it a habit to post here more regularly, probably every week. I am really teetering on the edge with Grad school at the moment, so I definitely can't do much on the prototyping end, but compiling all the research I've done into digestible posts should be fun and relatively easy. I have to keep my writing muscles nimble for that final master's thesis anyways!

Before I go: check out this ice-based game from the interwebz. It's simple and pretty satisfying to play:

www.kongregate.com/games/Nitrome/ice-beak

My development plan! Also, a sketch!

Sorry about the lack of updates, blog! I've mostly just been trying to get back on top of everything, as I usually am, admittedly. I've been having stamina issues, meaning usually I'm not particularly productive after getting back from work, but I think daily exercise should take care of that issue! I'm trying to run at least half an hour a day, preferably in the morning before work. I'm also going to try and give myself a designated lazy-day, maybe on Wednesdays, where I can just sleep and do stuff as much as I want. One of my major problems has always been this tendency to have these spells of hyper-productivity followed by long periods of burnout. I think having a day where I know I can just kick back and relax will prove beneficial to my productivity in the long run, because it provides me with a weekly moment to recharge. I think it'll help me become more balanced, in addition to the exercise.

As for my current plan regarding the game, I'm kind of off-schedule at the moment. By this time I should be making concept art for the game, and finished with some kind of prototype. Admittedly during the past few weeks I've mostly been ruminating further on the story and sketching possible designs for the main character. Oh, I've also ruminated on how she might see the world and the kinds of underlying beliefs and ways of thinking that would drive her approach to life. After seeing the sheer amount of work that is going into my current project at work, I honestly doubt I'll be able to finish my current game before the start of fall semester. At any rate, I'm probably going to just ditch my current block schedule and just wing it for now. For the next few days, I'll be mapping out the mechanics of the game, so I can break different parts of the game into separate prototypes that can still be integrated easily into the main game. I honestly just do better when I have everything mapped and planned out; I'm actually a bit in hot water at work at the moment, because my code has gotten so messy. Since I need to remap and reorganize all my code for work anyways, I may as well do the same for this current game of mine.

Here are the boring steps I'll be taking to plan out how I'll tackle the game's development: haha, sorry if it doesn't make much sense. I'll probably explain what each step means later.

A   - Higher-level game map
B   - Module identification
C1 - Detailed feature mapping/ expansion
C2 - Priority denotation
D   - Tool creation consideration
E   - Feature parts breakdown
F   - Classes Map
G   - Task list

Anyways, have a concept sketch I made some time ago. I've been looking into birds associated with the morning like the lark and the american robin, as well as looking into winter fashion and fashion icons in general. I feel like the clothes I give my protagonists are limited by my own lack of knowledge, and I'm hoping that expanding my repertoire will allow me to design costumes that better reflect and augment my characters' personalities.

Yo

I just wanted to post a quick update: unfortunately I am really behind in tasks and promises I made to other people, so I haven't been able to do much for this game. I'm also going to need this week to get back on track again. Man, I feel kind of bad just slapping a really quick entry up like this (I guess that's why most people seem to gravitate towards Tumblr), but I'd really like to try and post weekly, to make it a habit. Blurgh. Anyways, I'm really hoping I'll finish everything by Friday, and then maybe this weekend I'll focus more on my prototype.

My Premise is about a Magical plot device

Man, my posts keep getting less timelier and timelier. Hmm, to be honest, I really wanted to have a strong grasp on the major plot points of the narrative by last Sunday, but I was still struggling to have a firm grasp on my premise and my protagonist's personality. I guess it's good I mostly focused on the actual game mechanics instead, because, well, to be honest a structured plot is not an integral part of any game. I mean, I believe that story, even in minimalist games like Tetris, will always be present (I'm not going to delve into that), but it is in my opinion subservient to the rules that make up the game. Anyways, what I am trying to say is that although I wasn't able to come up with a set plot by now, I feel like I was able to be fairly productive. I kind of found it impossible to think about the plot without thinking about how it could be told.

I really should have thought of this earlier, but 'Game Design' should have been the first thing on my list of 'blocks.' Then following that there could be Coding or Writing. Game design really does require a lot of thought, and I always took it for granted until I started tackling design problems at lab and at work.

Well, as of now the premise is as follows:

You are an undecided undergrad student just beginning summer classes following your first year. Thanks to your nonchalant attitude you're in danger of getting booted out due to your atrocious grades, which has netted you an appointment with your adviser this morning. Much to your bewilderment (and relief) the whole campus is suddenly battered with snow and ice, effectively closing it down. Before you can kick back and relax, however, a strange child-like thing approaches you for help. And against your better judgment you find yourself compelled to help this strange child-thing get back home, launching you into a journey that will test your will and wit.

I'll probably just stick with this premise for now. I mean, Super Mario Galaxy had a ridiculous premise, and it ended up being insane-awesome. What I really wish I could do, however, is craft a story that naturally arises from the conflicting interests of the story's characters. I mean, right now I pretty much just have a plot device/ magical person fall from the sky and 'spur the heroine into action.' Which is painfully overdone. When the story is the product of a rich world with rich, multifaceted characters, then even the simplest story from that world can feel extraordinarily immersive and compelling.

One recent game I've played that really brought this aspect to my attention was the HTML5 game 'no-one has to die.' by Stuart Madafiglio. Oh, man: it's so simple, yet the way the narrative reveals itself through the motivations of each of the characters is just thrilling.   It's a game that, counter to what I said earlier, builds itself around the central narrative. The mechanics are there to dictate how the story unfolds before you: you may still have great autonomy, but the game still holds control over the story's pacing and delivery. Everything is insanely simple. But that tightly-woven narrative and its delivery just really make this something else! It doesn't take long to play, so if you haven't played it and have time to kill it's definitely something to check out. ^_^ Many of its fans seem to compare it to 999: I'll have to check that out sometime.

Hmm, anyways, my priority with this game is to first and foremost just get it done. And of the various aspects I could focus on, I would say that creating an interesting, somewhat-novel game mechanic is priority for me. Some of the most memorable games for me (Earthbound, Phoenix Wright, Gregory Weir's the Majesty of Colors) had extraordinary writing, but if I don't have working code then I can't really present a story, no matter how awesomely-well crafted I may think it is. Right now I am working on drawing up a very lengthy list of all the features I'd love to include in a shiny, idealized, unrealistic super-version. After that, I plan on stripping that list down to its absolute bare minimum. I'll then break that minimum down into milestones, and try making just a bunch of little prototypes.

One of the things I've (very quickly!) learned at work is that you should code as stupidly simply as you can. Because you can always just go back and clean up/append to it later. If you try to architect out some perfect framework from the get-go, it can bite you hard later on, because the code has already lost some flexibility. So unlike my first attempt, where I tried to start backwards and make myself an editor, I'll be doing quick and dirty prototypes. My hope is to have at least one working and playable by the end of this week. Oh, also, lab has basically ended for me today, so I'll have more time to spend on prototyping as well.