Ren'Py The Journey - Developers blog

[Gomly1980]

Seems only fair to reward hard work, no?

And for us slacker ... cheat engine.

 

[Nottravis]

You'll never find them that way - at least not all of them

Found the one on the last ID card yet? *wiggles eyebrows*

Also! I spent an age losing the name's from Renpy dialogue by reducing the text size and blending the colour so it's hidden, relying on side images instead to show who is talking (on the assumption that people pick up on the visuals rather than yet another name, especially given the number of characters) but would welcome an opinion on whether this was smart on not.

 

[Gomly1980]

I can see the thing in the bottom right hand side is different on the last one but that's as far as my observational skills go.

I have no idea if it's meant to mean something i'm either too old or too clueless to get it.

 

[Nottravis]

That's known as a QR code - and it's readable.

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[Nottravis]

In game PDA finally finished for design purposes. Wanted that balance between being clear for the player yet also semi-realistic in terms of the scenario (also helped I finally stopped adding/changing my mind on what I wanted it to do!)

Top bit is for all in game, in character use (yes, that is a games icon )

Spoiler: Voila..

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Bottom bit is for the out of character use, so save/load, settings and cheats.

Not much but still more progress, so I'm counting it as a win.

 

[Nottravis]

Annnnnnnnddddd......I think that's all I have to share for now. Design is sorted, and thanks for the input, so now just back to coding it all in and making sure the damned thing doesn't fall over when released into the wild. Rock on August...

 

[Gomly1980]

That's known as a QR code - and it's readable.

You must be registered to see the links

I don't own a mobile phone. Last one I had ended up in a canal.

It kept ringing and I was drunk, didn't want to speak to anyone so it went for a swim, never bought another one and that was 11 years ago.

 

[Nottravis]

Progress report!

Tutorial/Prologue

Script - Done
Tutorial renders - Done
Prologue renders - Done
Opening movie - Done
Custom GUI - Done
Inventory mechanism - Done
Combat mechanism - Done
Inspection mechanism - Done
"Gadget" Phone/PDA thing - coded with some bugs to iron out
Mini games on PDA - coded with some bugs to iron out
Tutorial code - Done
Prologue code - about 50%
Bug testing via playthroughs - not really started

Episode 1

Script - Done
Episode 1 renders - 20 % (with only 2GB on the card it takes an age to do renders so may as well get them cooking whilst I can!)
Episode 1 code - big fat zero...

BUT! looking good for end of August!

 

[Nottravis]

Well....

Top tip. Dev's should always play their game from the start.

Having done so, I realised that the inventory mechanic - although nicely done if I say so myself - didn't really add anything to the game. Not anything that could have been handled differently in any respect and was really just leading to false attempts to use stuff. So rather than risk frustrating play...out it goes!

Time for a re-write!

 

[Gomly1980]

Yay, everyone loves doing rewrites.

You can doo eet.

Motivational speaking 101.

 

[Nottravis]

*laughs* Thanks Gomly. Aye it had to come out it was just slowing play really. Same with the gun hanging around on the GUI. That's come out too for now and only pops up when needed. Still, all helps to make it better I suppose (hopes!)

 

[Nottravis]

So it's September...where's the bloody game then?

Ohh! Good question! Glad you asked! Thought you'd forgotten all about it there for a mo! And tbh I have been quiet here largely as I've been working my little cotton socks off on meeting that deadline.

And! I totally finished the tutorial and the prologue for the end of August! So yay me! I kicked it out for some play testing with a few mates and then went on holiday just waiting for the showers of praise for when I returned.

*crinkles nose* That last bit sorta didn't happen though and what I have I now don't consider to be releasable sadly. Well, it -is- but not much point in doing so. Don't get me wrong however, it's not all bad news. Indeed far from it. As with my earlier re-write it seems to be more to being over-ambitious and getting a tad carried away with my little self. Let me share the feedback...

Good points

• Setting was generally thought well of. A realistic background and environment that they all bought into
• Character design was considered very good in terms of how the NPC's reacted to your choices. Even on separate play runs where different choices made annoyed the NPC's, the reactions were considered to be constant with them as individuals. So ..yay..I made believable people!
• Problems when encountered had multiple paths to solution and, even if failed, didn't bring the game to a halt (this was considered a big plus and the best feature)
• Graphics were considered fine to good, although everyone would have preferred 4kHD (who wouldn't...), but they certainly did the job required.
• Story was well paced and they felt that the decisions they made mattered as to what would actually happen.
• Random events on each play run caught them by surprise - which they liked.

Bad points

• The tutorial was felt to be too long and too full of self referential humour. Only one out of the three people liked it as it was...(although the one that did like it did -love- it)
• Content was just too hard to find at times it seems. Although the game play was liked with the freedom it gave, this also meant that some stuff was just missed. On average (although this is partly due to branching story lines) each of them only found 50 per cent of the content; and worse - even if I add up all the different bits they each found, there was still a good third that no one ever touched, even with multiple goes.
• Some of the content felt a little forced in and would be better suited further down the line when the characters and NPC knew each other better. It smacked of "Look what I can do!" rather than feeling entirely natural.
  
• The multiple solution path ended up causing problems oddly enough. For once they realised that it wasn't just a case of "use A at B to do C" they kept trying all sorts of equipment choices on anything - all the time! Ultimately this broke their immersion rather than added to it - which wasn't helped by the odd Easter egg which they did find, and so encouraged them to carry on trying everything on everything and turned the game accidentally into a grind fest where no grind existed... (and yes, yes, I know. I sort of spotted this problem back in July, but thought I found a way to make the inventory mechanic work better. So that was me wrong again...)

• The worse thing though was considered to be trying to give the player a choice of gender. Although sometimes it seemed to work really well when the MC was interacting with the NPC's, other times it felt stilted or bolted on at certain parts due to trying to have sufficiently vague interactions that would work with a male or female PC. I'll confess that I did use a few short cuts here which I was hoping wouldn't really be noticed - but apparently they were and it was more telling than I suspected....

So..not all bad, and indeed fixable. Or at least I hope so.

Solutions to the above

• Totally revamp the tutorial menu. Give the player a choice of a one pager tutorial (I originally planned this oddly enough then changed my mind....shows what I know) or the full tutorial. Trim the latter down regardless and take out some of the humour and asides.
• The content had two problems. Too hard to find and sometimes forced. I'll strip out some of both of these and shove them in Chapter One where I have more scope to give pointers and the player has more time to find them rather than on the short journey from mother ship to planet.
• Simplify and trim the equipment options I think...this one will take some mulling though, and I don't have an easy answer yet as this will be my third attempt at getting this bit right.
• I hate the fact I couldn't pull this one off easily as it is something I -so- want to have. I think the best thing here is to strip out the multiple option for now. Complete it as a male MC and focus on getting that right for the complete game - then go back and add a female MC properly if enough people actually want it.

So..am I disappointed? A little to be honest. But I'd rather I'd done the play testing route than release it wild here I suppose to general dismay; and it is all fixable - if frustrating. Ah the joys of game design!

Alright then so how long and when? Well let me stick my neck out and say by the end of the month? After all I'm largely taking things out than having to put things in!

Laters!

 

[Nottravis]

So I met my deadline and re-jigged everything and asked my friends to look over it again and...

"It's too short"; "I preferred the earlier one"; "What happened to....." etc.

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So I now have two versions of this project, neither of which are regarded as being "there". Alright on one hand it took Goldilocks three goes just to get some porridge so I shouldn't be too down I suppose, but I am sorta wishing I'd just kicked the version I had back at the start of September straight on here now rather than all this faff.

I'll have one more bash and hopefully -this- time I'll hit the sweetspot.

 

[RomanHume]

I am all for encouraging new devs. We were there ten months ago ourselves.

I also want to say that your initial render looks good and I applaud the use of properly proportioned models.

 

[Nottravis]

Thank you!

That means a lot to me having another Dev say something like that.

 

[Nottravis]

A wise chap once said "don't be afraid to kill your darlings" and he's right.

I've spent the past few days trying to hack and slash my way through the two versions that I have.....and I'm banging my head against the wall. Trying to pull a little bit from A and a little bit from B to make something better than the parts.....um..No. It's not working. It's a bloody messy exercise.

It doesn't help that I've also noticed the quality of renders is very different from those I did several months ago to those I'm doing now. Add to that - and some good news at least! - I've finally worked out the equipment option thing.....I 'm going to start afresh. At the moment I'm trying to stitch two not very good games into a single "perfect" one with graphics of varying quality depending upon when I did them. Which, even typing that, doesn't make for compelling reading.

So no, a pain in the bum it may be, but if I'm going to do this I may as well do it properly else what's the point? I -have- learned a hell of a lot from what I've done so far, and it certainly puts to the bed any idea that all you need is a copy of Renpy and Daz and *bam* there's a game. BUT I have enjoyed working on this and what I've learnt, be it coding or Daz skills, will all lead to a much better game, so there's that!

So *rolls up sleeves*....third time is a charm...

 

[RomanHume]

A wise chap once said "don't be afraid to kill your darlings" and he's right.

I've spent the past few days trying to hack and slash my way through the two versions that I have.....and I'm banging my head against the wall. Trying to pull a little bit from A and a little bit from B to make something better than the parts.....um..No. It's not working. It's a bloody messy exercise.

It doesn't help that I've also noticed the quality of renders is very different from those I did several months ago to those I'm doing now. Add to that - and some good news at least! - I've finally worked out the equipment option thing.....I 'm going to start afresh. At the moment I'm trying to stitch two not very good games into a single "perfect" one with graphics of varying quality depending upon when I did them. Which, even typing that, doesn't make for compelling reading.

So no, a pain in the bum it may be, but if I'm going to do this I may as well do it properly else what's the point? I -have- learned a hell of a lot from what I've done so far, and it certainly puts to the bed any idea that all you need is a copy of Renpy and Daz and *bam* there's a game. BUT I have enjoyed working on this and what I've learnt, be it coding or Daz skills, will all lead to a much better game, so there's that!

So *rolls up sleeves*....third time is a charm...

This story sounds too familiar. penedeyewink:

We went through the same thing. We started our game back in January of this year. Knew nothing about Renpy or Daz. Learned so much in the first few months that by the time June rolled around, we did a reboot. At that time, we swore that anything new we learned, we'd save for the next game. But the difference between our alpha and our beta was night and day and the beta is put together so much better. Visually, structurally and the writing is better.

So even if no one else gets it, we do!

If you need any good anecdotes, let us know.

Cheers and best of luck!

 

[Nottravis]

This story sounds too familiar. penedeyewink:

We went through the same thing. We started our game back in January of this year. Knew nothing about Renpy or Daz. Learned so much in the first few months that by the time June rolled around, we did a reboot. At that time, we swore that anything new we learned, we'd save for the next game. But the difference between our alpha and our beta was night and day and the beta is put together so much better. Visually, structurally and the writing is better.

So even if no one else gets it, we do!

If you need any good anecdotes, let us know.

Cheers and best of luck!

Thank God for that! I thought it was just me being a ditz! That's twice in two days you've bumped up my morale now!

But aye what you've outlined there is damned familiar and nice to see it isn't just me. Many thanks, again!

 

[RomanHume]

@Nottravis If I may, I'm curious about your background and credentials. Did you do any kind of programming or digital art prior to starting your own game? Just curious how "new" you are to this.

We had programming experience but in the realm of business software and data analytics. So game design was a totally new thing for us. And Daz we had !zero! experience.

You talking about inventory systems and such leads me to think you've been at this awhile. I can't wait to see what you've put together. It sounds like it'll be amazing.

 

[Nottravis]

Of course you may

And no, no coding background. I've an analytical background myself so the logical thought process useful for coding is there I suppose but as for touching Daz or Renpy....first time I even had a go was in March. Hence why the steep improvement/learning curve I suspect and why stuff I did earlier , especially on renders,- which I thought was OK - now no longer is.

Basically I have my story and decide what I want the game to do - then work out how to do it! Which is where a lot of the fun for me comes from to be honest. That whole "can I make it do this?" sort of thing. It's also why the game originally kept growing and why the playtesters, quite rightly, took me to task over some of the stuff that was originally in the game.

The inventory system is a case in point. I was so keen to have one, just to see if I could make it work, that I did lose sight of -why- I needed one. In the end it really turned out that the inventory system was just adding steps to the game that either weren't really needed or just distracted from the flow. The most cutting feedback I had was "So...I'm getting Hinterlands vibes here..." which if you've ever played Dragon Age Inquisition you'll know what she meant by that!

For example, there is a stage in the prologue where, for the sake of not spoiling anything, an "incident" happens. Now the MC has a number of ways of solving this whilst on a small shuttle craft. And depending on what solution the MC chooses will take him down various paths, impact on how people see him etc. So far so good. Now two of his options require a piece of (different) equipment. Which seemed perfect for having an inventory system - yet all it was really doing was adding a few extra steps for the MC to find X and use X.... It didn't actually add to the game at all, just added a few extra clicks. I mean, he's on a small shuttle at this point - everything is practically in reach anyway!

@Nottravis I can't wait to see what you've put together. It sounds like it'll be amazing.

Oh God...I hope I don't let you down!

I'll confess I -think- it will be a good game - but we'll wait and see what others think!