Messages

Thanks, I just joined. 

I can't give you any exact numbers or the viability of doing this as a job. Not yet at least. Although I think Dave Gilbert has already answered that part pretty well anyway.

But to give my two cents, you have to keep in mind that the "starving artist" is a stereotype for a reason.
From what I've heard, there's a lot of uncertainty, a little bit of luck, and a whole lot of self-marketing.
If game development is not something you enjoy, then you'd probably be better doing something else that you don't enjoy, but where you're guaranteed to be financially stable.

My recommendation would always be to start off small and make a few free games in your spare time, so you can get a feeling for it all, a bit of an audience, and just general experience.
Also, if you're planning on going into Indie Game development for the money, then maybe it's just me, but I think there are probably more lucrative genres than Point and Click Adventure Games (we're kinda niche).

Nice logo. Good luck replacing all the placeholders.

Thanks, I appreciate it. 

So, as I said last week. I wouldn't have much time to work on my game this week, and that's been true.
That being said, I did give the fonts another pass, made and implemented an animation for the scarecrow, and started working on making the characters actually sit down on that sofa in the intro.

It's not much, but it's still something. I should be back to business as usual for next week though.
Obviously I still have another two characters I need to draw sitting down.

One of the Ultima games? 5 maybe?

[Full Throttle]

The concept of a radial menu or pie menu goes back to the 1960s, and it was apparently used in the RPG Secret of Mana (1993), but within adventure games it's usually credited to Full Throttle (1995). The "verb coin" name comes from Curse of Monkey Island (1997), where it was an actual coin.

The radial menu in Secret of Mana is nothing like a verb coin. 
In Secret if Mana, it's basically just a normal menu in an RPG (stats, equipment, items, tactics), but with the options ordered horizontally, instead of vertically, and then put into a circle for aesthetic reasons. There's even submenus!
A verb coin on the other hand is more of a list of commands put onto the screen directly where you clicked for immediate use on the thing you clicked. A verb coin has more in common with the menu you get from right clicking something in Windows, than it does with the radial menu in Secret of Mana, despite the shapes.

Beware of verbcoin. I suspect it's just another one of those crypto scams!

I'd be surprised if there hasn't been a crypto called VerbCoin. 

People who feel obliged to comment on people's diction without knowing if that person has Dyslexia... Yes, they do exist... 

I can confirm that, since my sister has dyslexia.

But yeah, well said Slasher. 

Alright, this week has mostly been about polishing things up and finally getting around to all of the "placeholder" stuff that's been in the game for so long, that I've forgotten it was just a placeholder.
I've worked on the main menu some more (making the background animate). I also finally made downwards sprites for two of the characters that you play as (the main character already had hers made ages ago). I finally got around to making a proper pixel-art version of the logo. Also, I worked on the basement some more, since there was something in there that was literally copy and pasted from somewhere else in the game, and I completely forgot it was just temporary.
Lastly, I've done the first pass of the fonts. (That's right, I've decided I'm making my own fonts for the game.)

The new fonts look surprisingly nice ingame, especially considering I just eyeballed it and as such is just a first pass. A little hard to read in places though.






I probably won't have much time to work on the game next week. So there might not be an update then. If there is, it'll probably be a day later than usual.

Dink Smallwood is free permanently. 

Hasn't Dink Smallwood been freeware for years?
It's nice that it's finally gotten onto GOG though. 

This week I've been working on the main menu and the credits screen, as well as the game's music. Not to mention a few odds and ends, such as the microwave humming then dinging after you've put something inside it, and the character wielding the weapon they use to attack the scarecrow.
I also implemented the functionality for the game to recognize which of the four endings you got, so it can unlock the secret ending if you manage to get all four. I've also put in said secret ending. Although now the main menu looks rather cluttered.

[imgzoom]https://twentyquidamusements.thecomicstrip.org/files/black_friday_2/screenie12.png[/imgzoom]

I'm running out of things to show off. There's some things I definitely don't want to show off, so they're something new to look at when playing the game for the first time. But I've got to show something.
So with that being said, I'm willing to take a request for what I'll show off next week.

This is petty, but it grinds my gears when people literally write "something-slash-something" or "quote unquote". Those expressions are meant for spoken communication, but it makes zero sense to write all that when the keyboard you're typing on already has slash and quote symbols. "She's a developer-slash-game designer", no, you mean "developer/game designer". "He's a quote-unquote genius", no, you mean "He's a 'genius'". 

I can’t say i’ve come across this but it would grind my gears too. It’s not like typing “period” or “full-stop” at the end of a sentence because that actually performs a function beyond just typing the actual symbol. But the examples you gave don’t do anything that just typing the symbols doesn’t already do, so yeah, that would annoy me too.

I am so glad I've never come across that as well, because that would also grind my gears.

Just before coming back from holiday, I got sick. That mixed with the heatwave has meant that I haven't made a whole lot of progress this week.

That being said. I did work on the ending cutscenes. They still need custom animations for that extra bit of polish, but what is there is now at an acceptable level. If I wasn't planning on selling this game, I would leave those ending cutscenes as is. But I need to make proper animations for things, like characters falling down and such. 

Other than that, I also implemented a note that you can pick up and read. I'm trying to include all of the Indie-Horror Game tropes, but I'm trying to do them in what I consider to be the "correct" way, since those tropes typically annoy me. (I mean why would you leave pages of your journal confessing your crimes, scattered around your house? And who on Earth locks every door in their house?)

In the meantime though, here's a background from the start of the game:

It's an establishing shot that appears for less than a second, and never again.
Why did I spend so much time on something that barely anyone will notice? Because it adds to the atmosphere. The thing is though, I can clearly tell it still needs a lot more work.

For example, it'd be brilliant if I could take a photograph and then have it be redrawn in the style of The Curse of Monkey Island. That's not going to happen though.

Pretty sure AI tools that take in 1 image as input for the style/aesthetic and the other image as input to convert to that style/aesthetic already exist.

They do, and they're not good. There was a thread on here hyping them up, and I showed how terrible my results were.
It turns out that they're good if you want useless abstract art. Which are pretty to look at, but useless for game making. But if you want something like what I just said "a photograph and then have it be redrawn in the style of The Curse of Monkey Island" I don't think that'll happen anytime soon. (Try it yourself if you don't believe me, you'll just get an ugly collage.)

The thing is though, while most people are saying things like "Could this replace artists?" or "The dangers of using this!" I'm instead thinking "How can I use this as a tool to aid me?"

I am thinking all of this. For now it is a great inspiration and can make an artists life easier when it comes to finding colour choices or composition ideas etc. But as it is getting better, like all technology, I think it could become a valid concern that it can replace artist to some extend. A lot of artists also make money with social media like with posting new artworks on instgram and creating a following. Now instgram is already getting flodded with midjourney art that was done in seconds and (almost) looks like done by a professional. Does that create a false picture of how much work a "real" artwork takes?

I doubt it'll replace good artists. Just the amateur ones that think they're special (which there are way too many of in my opinion).
After all, it'll be a very long time before these programs can make something which could be used without any input from an artist. Making you that perfect background or animation. And until that point in time (if it ever happens), people will have to go to an artist. And if they aren't willing to pay the price, then they'll have to do it themselves, perhaps even using that tool. In turn letting them gain an appriciation of how to make art themselves. Worst case scenario, we get another huge influx of amateur artists with huge egos.

And does it create a false picture of how much work real artwork takes? Yeah, probably. But people already have that false picture. You already get people wanting to pay artists in exposure due to not realizing this. And there are many MANY people who don't want to pay for anything because they think it's not worth as much as it actually is, and it's prevalent in any field. Ask any gardener about it, and you'll hear just as many horror stories about it as you would from an artist.

Saying this will replace artists is like saying how the camera replaced painters. Because what's the point of buying a painting of a landscape when you can take a photograph of it? It's like saying how digital painting software like photoshop replaced traditional artists, because why paint when you can easily edit, copy, paste, and print your artwork?
On paper, it sounds like something that should be worrying. But in reality, it doesn't make any sense. And that's because you're worried about something being replaced by something that only appears to be equivalent on the surface.

It's a paradigm shift, yes. But it's not going to make an entire field obsolete. We could literally invent the food synthesizers from Star Trek, and the culinary industry would still thrive. Artists will be fine. 

They can make some pretty good stuff. Enough to impress even me, which is saying something considering I'm usually rather disappointed with the results when something like this comes along.
(Also, it pairs well with AI scaling tools, just so you know.  )

The thing is though, while most people are saying things like "Could this replace artists?" or "The dangers of using this!" I'm instead thinking "How can I use this as a tool to aid me?"

For example, it'd be brilliant if I could take a photograph and then have it be redrawn in the style of The Curse of Monkey Island. That's not going to happen though.
But it turns out that this particular tool is brilliant for giving you that initial spark of inspiration, like what pose to use or how to angle a shot. It's never going to output something I could actually just straight up use, like a background for a game, or a walking animation. But it could give me something that's a little more difficult to get than simply drawing it, like a picture of an open blank book or a blank piece of paper. Something that you could actually edit and use ingame, and not have to worry about taking a picture yourself or searching for a stock photo online.



Now can anyone point me towards an AI where I can feed in the script of every single Slasher movie so I can see what it spits out. The thing about Slasher movies is that they're all basically the same movie, just with a few slight alterations. It's actually why I like them. It's fun to see what part of the formula they decide to keep and what they decide to change. And I really want to see what an AI would consider to be the most generic Slasher movie of all time!

But I have to ask again... could you turn the cup round so the handle is on the left?

No, because we settled on the version that got most votes. Now it is only about making the logo look nice depending on the background.

Yeah, I think a left sided handle was one of the choices among the versions, and the right sided handle won.

Still, the handle being on the right is probably the better choice. The handle is on the right in the current logo with Larry holding it, in the icon for the software, and on all of blue cup emoticons in this forum. Not to mention that most people are right handed and are therefore used to the handle being on the right. (As a leftie, I'm personally used to the handle being on the left.)

This week I worked on act 2, polishing up a lot of the cosmetic details such as everything getting darker when the power goes out.

And what's an indie horror game without random scraps of paper that you can read?
So here's a book that you can look at ingame. Due to the resolution of the game, you scroll up and down using arrows.

I'm very proud of how it came out. The other little bits of readable objects in the game probably won't come out as good as that unfortunately.
And yes, I did write down the other page in its entirety, although you'll never be able to read it. Unless someone asks me for it, that is.

I second the demo. 
Try to restrict it to two or three rooms, and hopefully it won't take too long make.
This will also let you gauge how much effort a full project will require.

Nice to see a steady progress! I also love that they all seem to be always smiling in almost every screenshot 

They truly are an optimistic bunch. Sure, they're being hunted by a crazy killer scarecrow, but they're not going to let that ruin their day. 

Also, thanks for the kind words. 

This week I finished off the inventory icons, added lip syncing to all of the characters (although there won't be voice acting), and sorted out the majority of the room interactions.
I also finished off the cutscene that plays when you transition from act 1 to act 2.


Now you too can admire the proper lip animations!
Truly a step up from the lip flapping. I tried adding random bleep and bloops to make it seem like they were talking, but it was kinda annoying and weird.

Hey, I use a number to keep track of the story as well. 
Sometimes though (when I'm feeling too lazy to declare a single variable) I use a location of a character. Since I know I can just throw a character into the main menu room and then check that to see where you are in the story.

The only major problem I've encountered so far with using a number, is if you decide to expand on the story from the middle. You either need a make a new variable or push every other check up by one. (And looking for every time that variable is checked can be a pain.)
Another problem is that it can sometimes be difficult to know where you are in the story with a simple number, but I usually include some notes in the global script, so I know where in the story each number represents.

High-Rise Invasion?