Sophie’s Screenshot Saturday #6

OK so I know last week I said “Anyway it’s just a little project for now, if you see it start to pull me away from my RPG you have my permission to yell at me a whole bunch“

…I don’t have anything to add to that, I just want to point out that I know that I said it.

In all seriousness I’m not worried about this distracting me from my RPG project, I am WAY too psyched about it (and omg I have mythology ideas starting to coalesce in my head! it’s so exciting!). But this cubing thing… it has *definitely* distracted me from my 7DRL attempt this year, but I don’t feel too bad about that to be honest.

Anyway, yeah – I think I’ll be spending a few more days on this to turn it into something I can put up on itch (and maybe steam and other stores) and give to you all. After that I’ll be back to RPG stuff full-time again!

Sophie’s Screenshot Saturday #5

So today I took a little time away from my RPG project to prepare for 7DRL (which starts today!). I am continuing to plan things out for it and I am getting a sense of the kind of mythology I might want (and the kind of bad actors who might try to exploit it for their own evil ends!) but it’s not really anything I can show yet.

Most of this week I have spent putting together a way of writing short elements of interactive fiction in tracery, and have unity generate stuff from that. The plan is to use this so (hopefully) by the end of the week, I’ll have a gamebook generator! I put a lot of work into my gamebook system and I’m a little annoyed there is only one released and playable book that uses it, so I really want there to be an infinite number of them instead 😛

Also, yesterday I felt like crap so I spent the whole day in bed and just started working on something I’ve been thinking of since I started getting interested in cubing. Put simply, it’s a magic cube system in unity, you can have cubes of any dimension, and I have been working on gamepad controls that feel like using a real cube. I’d like to make it into an app kind-of like my dice (but omfg I will not spend that much time on it) so you’d be able to make custom cubes, play with them, learn algorithms, have it show you how to solve your IRL cubes… OK yeah that could take a while. Anyway it’s just a little project for now, if you see it start to pull me away from my RPG you have my permission to yell at me a whole bunch 🙂

7DRL over, I didn’t finish a game!

OK yeah so I might have been a bit too ambitious, but honestly I’m still really happy with what I managed! Two weeks ago I kind of got an idea for a game and a world the game could take place in and now it is actually kind-of taking shape!

That shape being, a tabletop RPG that (if you want) you can play with the computer being your GM, so it’s both TTRPG and a roguelike. And I know what you’re thinking “Sophie that is exactly the same as the project you were working on when you started your patreon.”

And you’d kind-of be right, BUT I have a much better idea of what I’m doing now, I’ve gotten over my absurd dislike of dice (Which you might have noticed since I am now a designer of dice?????)

honestly, my older rogulike approach was mostly to just take the *aesthetics* of a TTRPG and just make my idea of a roguelike, this is much more about cool role-playing in a cool world. I’m just, way more excited about this. Plus eventually all the cool stuff about that project (like different characters/AI having their own mental picture of the dungeons ~as they appears to them~) can be part of this project too. And for now I’ve done away with stuff that can leech a bunch of momentum and development time like 3D models and stuff, now it’s all crappy drawings and little plastic stands to hold them. If I want 3D models I can add them later (and honestly, I do want to add them, I love modelling cool 3D fantasy stuff)

anyway I should probably talk about what I did and didn’t manage to get done for the jam. Stuff I did and am super happy with are a character creator (automatically fills out your character sheet!), properly implemented all the main systems (objects/characters, properties, actions, map tiles, GM, UI), you can move around the map and perform basic actions, there is some simple procedural generation, I even learned coroutines and got them in at the last minute so an action can pause and wait for you to roll your dice IRL before it continues.

So that is all really cool, and I’m super happy I managed to get it all implemented within a week… buuuuuut of course that is an absurd amount of stuff and so I couldn’t do other things as well as all that, things like enemy AI, a looting/trading system, and even weapons don’t… do anything yet. Honestly I’m still thinking about how I want them to work in terms of the action system (specifically, should each weapon have one attack action, or should some have multiple, eg a sword that you can use and choose between a slash and a thrust?). Point is, there is still a lot left to do.

Anyway, I’m not done with this yet! I’ll be taking things a little easier to recover from pushing myself so hard over the last week, but I’ll keep working on this and it will probably be this month’s WIP build, if anyone is interested in that 🙂

oh and I even started work on a Player Handbook type deal because I’m a huge fucking nerd 😛

Hope you’re well <3

Sophie’s Screenshot Saturday #4

OK so I admit “screenshot” is probably the wrong word for this week’s update, I’ve not been working on visual stuff so much until I have a better idea of the game systems and story they will fit into, unfortunately there will probably be a few weeks where I don’t have much to “show”, especially when I start writing, but hopefully the things I do have to share will make up for it!

For example, this week I made enough progress on thinking about how I want the game systems to come together that I have been able to write the first version of the game’s GDD (Game Design Document). This is a thing that will be updated throughout the whole development and unlike the more hectic notes I’ve been sharing with you, this document describes what I am aiming for the game to be, and not just random ideas of what it could be.

It’s only a few pages right now, but you can check it out and see what I am aiming for with the project right now. (Although story/character/world sections are all TBD, if you want to see what I’m thinking there you’ll need to dig through the updated notes I’ve been taking > here < (reminder: some of the notes may become spoilers!)).

The GDD is attached below:

Sophie’s Screenshot Saturday #3

So this week I have mostly been figuring out pre-rendered panoramic environments (which exist in a few games, but I don’t know of any that combine realtime 3D in them with occlusion).

Also I spent a few days improving/simplifying my camera system (it had some annoying issues before but they are gone!), and also also I’ve continued to jot down LOTS of notes.

You can check my full notes >>>here<<< (I don’t think I’m gonna dump them in these posts anymore. it’s getting out of hand :P) Heads-up though, starting this week the notes contain stuff that could be spoilers!

For the next week, I’m planning to familiarise myself with some blender rigging/animation tools, as well as unity’s mecanim system (I’ve only used the legacy animation system until now). A game like this will likely need a bunch of preperation/understanding for character models so that’s something I need to do.