Friday 28th september. In the crossroads..

Work achieved

abstract and more grounded sketches for settings, moods.
Began to novelize the story to take a look at it from a new angle
Research into alternate mediums

Honestly not a good week of progress. Spent a good portion wading in the water after setting my boat on fire. I am pretty close to killing my project as it stands and starting again with clearer and smaller goals. And yet I'm still attached to my idea so I can't just give it up yet.


an excerpt from my writings. (yes its a dark introduction into the setting)

His body was cold. Being exposed to the vacuum of space for 74 years does that to a corpse. I wasn’t concerned about him being dead. Nor was I concerned about the re-bar that pierced him to the exterior of the satellite. I am very much aware of the potential acceleration that can be granted to objects using a suits traversal jet. No, what concerned me was that he was out here in the first place.

 After finishing a slow orbit around the scene below me, I snapped my finger sending an electrical signal through the organ rope that would cause it to contract. Landing like a cat would returning from a tree to soil, My hands worked automatically working the release and return of the rope to my wrist using my right while signing for magnetic soles to activate with my left. The satellite shifted below me from the contact, a long dormant flame ignited to life. Tiny bursts of energy slowly correcting the disturbance I had caused it. The body did not move. Too ridged with deaths chill to greet my arrival. I saw my reflection within the cracked glass covering his face. An emotionless eye peeked through the crack and fell upon my grey form. He never blinked even while I produced a battery operated saw from a hidden pouch and advanced upon him. I began to sever his right hand away from his frozen form. I could feel the vibrations of the saw grind their way up my arm as I worked. In a few short minutes the hand finally disconnected itself and started to drift with purpose. As if it was trying to flee from the body that had held it captive for so long. I didn’t let it get too far. 

so yeah.. its something.. but I'm not sure if its the setting I will keep. My other sketches speak of another setting. The ship designs below being ambiguous enough to fit wherever I decide to place them.

 

It would be fun to go back and just redraw these and flesh out some more of the details

 

 To me these other sketches are of some foreign world. It looks interesting but I'm not sure what narrative I would tie together with them.

                                                                        Tribal huts?


Right now I have to decide if I really want to hold myself to an interactive movie. Or do I want to jump into a new medium or change how the player will interact with the game. I'm currently at a cross roads. Honestly given my level of progress so far an animated adventure might simply be too much to handle...Well we will see how it advances.

(You ever try to glue together something you threw through a wood chipper? My thoughts are in need of gorilla glue...)

Friday 21st September. Figure it out.

Work achieved

Physical work-not enough done.  2 hours of loose sketches

Some time spent writing plot elements but until I storyboard it…it’s not really resolved.

Investigative work done- plenty but still left with some necessary choices unresolved.

This Time I decided I should talk in brief about a few (relatively recent) games that are interesting pieces from the wealth of 54 years of creation.  But before that would you like to see the 1^st? Here it is.

                                       (tennis for two, reproduction for the 25th anniversary)

Tennis for two

Created by a nuclear physicist named William Higinbotham. The game Tennis for two was created because  “it might liven up the place to have a game that people could play, and which would convey the message that our scientific endeavors have relevance for society."-Higinbotham

Tennis for two is the most basic of games from a design standpoint. Two players attempt to score points against one another using a simple controller. It’s quite interesting to see and compare this game with the later and far more famous game pong. I honestly find tennis for two to be far more interesting. The blue streak of the ball as it obeys gravity vs the single white dot of pong…

But I mentioned that I was going to talk about more recent artistic endeavors. Not spend time referring to esteemed creations from video games birth. 

                                            (Thirty Flights of Loving, Blendo games,PC)

So let us instead jump to a game that came out this year. Thirty flights of loving is a short narrative piece (it’s at the most only 20 minutes long) The game leaves much of the story details to the participant to fill in afterwards. The game railroads you through its narrative but because it’s set to such a rapid pace you don’t mind it. The game is wacky, colorful and a good study in the power of good jump cuts. Starting from entering through a hidden wall in a bar to in the end wandering around an art gallery opening that is celebrating the car crash that killed you. 

                                                  (Dear Esther, The Chinese Room, PC)

Moving onto another piece of participatory fiction: Dear Esther is just like thirty flights is based around you walking through the set pieces of the story. Set on an island which may or may not really exist. You as an unnamed party explore and wander over and round streams, crags, caves and the ruins of several beached ships and abandoned abodes. As you progress in your wanderings, A narrator reads letters from various perspectives. The entire experience is centered on exploring: Not only the physical environment but also the events hidden under the letters contents. This game is to be again internalized by the participant. This will again appear in the following games.      

                                                          (Yume Nikki, Kikiyama, PC)

Yume Nikki (translated it means dream diary) was created and released by independent Japanese game developer Kikiyama in 2005. As a freeware cult game, Yume nikki garnered a bit of attention for being made in an engine usually intended to be used in the creation of role playing games. The goal in yume nikki is to gather every item/power in the game then use them to seal the doors of the girls dream world.  But that is only if you wish to see the (disproportionally dark) ending. The real goal is to wander and try to absorb and make sense of what you are seeing. From monstrously large heads who upon eating you lead you to another area entirely, bizarre architecture littering otherwise completely black worlds, drawings that a child would make roaming freely. Meeting fishermen and piano players alike while crashing onto mars… Then there is the girl herself. Locked? In a room where her only actions are to play a video game and sleep (leading to the dream world and all of its creepy-pasta nature. Why won’t she leave? Why does she have to collect powers such as removing all facial features, meet and become a yuki onna (snow wraith) that summons snow? I may bring this game up again later when I talk about the players importance in everything. But that is for another night. 

                                     (LSD, OutSide Directors Company, Sony PlayStation)

LSD dream emulator (The L,S,D stand for hundreds of titles for the game. Such as linking the sapient dream.) The content of the game is based off of the creators dream journal that he kept for several years. The goal is to explore 365 dreams that are created by how you play. Slowly as you progress things continue to get stranger and darker. If you touch an object in the game it will transport you to a new environment. Seemingly random from beginning to end, the events in game may have some meaning but it is so obscure and opaque to be rendered meaningless...But that’s also a conversation for another week.  

                                  (The Stanley Parable, Davey Wreden, Half life 2 mod, PC)

And finally we have The Stanley Parable. Perhaps the best short work of interactive meta fiction I know of. The game starts of explaining how “Stanley” (and perhaps by association the player) enjoys being told to hit buttons in certain ways. (like most video games seem to) Then the player is allowed to move. Walking down hallways and hearing the narrator explain what is going on and which direction Stanley will take when given a choice. And then the choice itself appears. And then you can ignore what the narrator already explained would happen… This leads to varied endings and fights with the narrator. Do you choose to follow his every predetermined step? Ignore everything the narrator tells you? Obey some and resist others? The piece is a wonderful work of participatory art. The act of control becoming the key element of discussion raised within the work. Fully Self-aware, It is undoubtedly my favorite piece out of this small set of games I have outlined.

Next week I will likely talk about the players’ role in the game and how I will involve them within my own work. This will of course require a complete draft of my game sitting/ pinned to my walls. So stay tuned.

(He writes a thousand words on games, including this…)

Friday the 14th: Growing pains

Time table

I…didn’t really keep track of minutes spent. So with that said. I spent maybe 7 hours researching and going through engine/code tutorials so I knew if I could be comfortable using the renpy engine. 1 hour spent tempting a few friends into lending their skills and ideas to the project. And the rest of my time having philosophy debates in my head about various game mechanics, story beats, visual moments and goals…All of which I have not written down… so recapping

7 hours learning a new system/researching various topics.

1 hour recruitment and idea brainstorm

??? (far more than 4) hours spent dreaming and self debate.

Yeah this isn’t a great blog post. Would really like to sit down and explain my points better but since this post is already late…yeah..

The major accomplishment of this week was picking and using the RenPy engine. A deceptively strong tool for making the game I want to make. I picked it because after playing several games made with the tool I knew it could handle my ideas for the project. The other great thing about this engine is that programming will be mostly painless. I don’t have a programmers mindset. Something that in the past has made me wary on taking on these types of projects. But RenPy has solved this with its use of python and being backed up with simple to understand tutorials.

In the future I will…Make better blog posts. Honestly I dislike having to force all three of these elements together. It makes me write stagnate pieces of writing and honestly…not all three of these things are of equal value to the writer or the reader. Later I will want to go in depth discussing certain inspirations and having to lead it with hours spent on X Y and Zed will only detract. Anyways because I’m already just planning the better blog post now and no longer care about this one…I present the bullet points

.better blog post

.a working draft of the story

.a working alpha of the game

(me thinks he doth protest too much)