distractionware: devlog

Last year I thought very seriously about coming up with a new idea for a game, every day, for a month, and posting about it. (I’m still sorta thinking about it, to be honest.)

I only mention this because a guy by the handle of Squidi has started a project that’s literally ten times as ambitious, called “Three Hundred“. To quote him:

What is this place?

Simply put, a challenge to myself. Every day for three hundred days, I will post a gameplay mechanic that has (hopefully) never been seen in a commercial video game. Three hundred mechanics. No more. No less.

(I expect it’s the “No less” part that’ll slip him up.)

Anyway, he’s only been at it for a month, but so far it’s absolutely astonishing – check it out. The ideas are great and it helps that he’s a really talented artist. I’m like, totally jealous.

And on that note, sorry it’s been so quiet around here recently. I’ll start updating again very soon, I promise.

…ARSE!

The new Arsecast is out. Bastard didn’t mention me once.

He’s also started something new – an audio blog. This is promising.

On this thread, Handling character death.

Hmm, anyway, real reason I’m posting: couple of years ago I was working on a game called Project Distraction that was going to do something really radical with this.

Essentially, the game was going to completely do away with the usual RPG response to a character getting wounded in battle. Each section of the game was going to have a little subscript that dealt with the different wounded character possibilities.

Say “Ado” and “Remy” are in a party together, for example, and Remy got injured in battle. Depending on the situation the characters were in, it would trigger a plot event and try to write the situation into the game. There was this one section where they were trying to find some bombs that had been set in a building, and in that case Ado would just tell her to try to make her own way out while he continued on – or in another section they’re both trapped and trying to get out of somewhere, and if one character got injured it would trigger a subquest where the injured character would lie against a wall somewhere while the other one looked for some medicine…

And so on. The game would also remember things that happened, and adjust specific scenes of the game respectively – like in the first case above, instead of a celebratory scene at the end, Remy would spend a while moping about how she just got in the way.

In certain scenes, getting injured in battle would mean that a character would die permanently. And then every so often for the rest of the game, the other characters would reminisce about them.

I hoped this approach would make the player feel like they’re playing a game where the ending hadn’t really been decided. Like anything could happen.

I guess it’s probably obvious enough why I never went ahead with this –
(1) It was way too much work. I worked out that it would involve at least tripling the amount of dialogue that I’d have to write.
(2) It became impossibly complicated when considering multiple characters.
(3) It would have meant that good players would see very little of the game’s interesting side – in fact, if the game was any good, it would mean that players would replay the game killing off random characters at certain points just to see what would happen, which wouldn’t have been a good thing.
(4) There was a real danger that the game *wouldn’t* have been any good, and that this mechanic would have turned the game from something entertaining into a complete chore.

Still. I wonder if it’s worthwhile making a minigame on this basis? An hour long RPG that did this might be a fun experiment… 🙂

[yeah, sorry, it’s a bit rushed – I’ll clean it up later]

Someone found my site by searching for Final Fantasy VII Windowed Mode.

Oh the times! Oh the customs!

There’s an election here at the moment.

The problem with politics in this country is that the only people with any hope of getting into power are the two identical Center-Right parties that were once the same organisation. If we’re lucky, party B will get into power in a coalition with an ever so slightly left wing party, but that’s really the best we can hope for.

I say we need more. We need Kouichi Toyama!

It’s exam time in my old college, which is causing problems for my routine… Twice or three times a week, I take my laptop to the (ordinarily) deserted religion section of the library, and work away in peace. For the last week or so, however, it’s been packed – phfft – I guess even Theology students have to study at this time of the year.

Not being able to work in the library has basically meant that I’m not getting anything done at all, so I’m going to give serious work a rest until it’s all over.

In the meantime, I’m making a Phoenix Wrong! I could explain what that is, I suppose, but it might be better to show you:

There’s a bunch more of them here!

I figure it’s an excuse to learn how to use Flash, which, as they’d say at work, is a gap in my competency profile. Also, it’ll be, like, fun and stuff. First thing I need to do is gather up some suitable quotes – I’ve got about 10 so far, but after listening to them again, only five are any good…

Father Ted:

I’d love to use more Father Ted, but it’s hard to find something that both doesn’t depend on a visual gag and isn’t buried under a laugh track…

Azumanga Daioh:

Angel Starr as Chiyo Chan! I like this one, but I worry that people won’t get the joke…

Blackadder:

This one would be perfect if it weren’t for the laugh track. I’ll probably use it anyway though. 🙂

Battlestar Galactica:

Franziska as number six, Gumshoe as Balthar, Edgeworth as Adama… This one could work very well, I think, though it’s perhaps a bit long.

X Files:

Hmm, actually, maybe this one is too serious – not to mention too long. Bah. Godot as Mulder, Mia as Sculey!

… So, yeah. What other ones should I use? All suggestions welcome!