Jesse Lozano

How has the Month been for Stillness –

Direct work on Stillness has continued to be stalled, due to school work, and whatnot. Pre-production, and general design work for it has continued (as that stuff is easier to fill into my few gaps of free time), but very little show-able content was developed.

What I said I would do (and did it get done) –

• get 1 more puzzle from level 2 in completely (nope)
• filling in more flavor for the area (not in)
• Playtest? (still nope)

What got done-

So, for one thing, I started drafting up the flow of the conversation scene’s in the Intro segment. For non-linear writing, I’ve found the web tool Twine to be more than useful for my needs of drafting. With it I have a draft versions of the very first conversation in the game (which occurs right after the mandala), and parts of the next two.

now, because I want dialog scene’s in Stillness to feel dynamic, I have been thinking a lot about the systems in play in a conversation. in analyzing it, I realized, a crucial imbalance in my systems! namely, that everything feeds into my Mood system, but that my mood system currently lacks any systematic output!

Now, as you can see, if I were to boil Stillness down to its most basic elements, I’d have these 5 systems. The movement and inventory systems, which together make a sort of classic Point and click experience, and the 3 unique systems, the thought system, mood system, and conversation system. Now graphing these systems out into how they interact (like I have done above) I realize some noticeable issues. while both the conversation and movement systems (both primary, and thus non-intractable, as only 1 is active at a time) work nicely and simply with the thought and inventory systems, and the thought system does interact with the mood system as is, but the mood system has no holistic output into my gameplay loop. Right now, it is only in-taking. Now in the “movement” space, this is not an issue right now, as there plans and grounding to give mood a systematic influence on that space, it just simply isn’t there (its on my ever growing to do list 😛 ). stuff like tinting the screen if the player is heavily sad to be darker, or to have the player’s sprite change if he’s in a happier mood.

Now, back on the Conversation side of things, the only potential output my Mood system has right now are direct, manually placed ones. Basically, me manually checking in mood X is of value Y, then doing Z. Which is by no means bad; I like having that option. But, compared to every other system naturally interacting without any manual demands from me, the mood system is clearly lacking a key functionality. so, with that, I’ve been digging into possible solutions for that.

One posited solution, was to incorporate mood into choices posited. like, at point X in a conversation, there is a player choice, and the player gets to pick from 3 options, but there are actually 8 possible responses. 3 of the 8 are auto-selected based on the then current dominant emotion, and then the player gets to pick from there. the plus side is that it is nicely systematic, and very easily implementable within the current framework. the downside, is the potential need for massive choice branching. potentially, at least. I could easily have only 3 true outcomes of the 8 choices, and they all filter down, with slight mood benefits (nicely feeding into itself).

another idea, was to give each conversation distinct “emotion gauges” of some sort. distinct pools of mood (which can be partially filled before the conversation with their current baselines) that when filled fully, cause the main character to have an immediate emotional response, changing the flow of the conversation. Like, having a panic attack due to anxiety, or rage quitting a conversation. The plus is having things like these would give a distinct objective in a given conversation, even if, in the anxiety examples, the objective is to NOT trigger it. the downside is it would need yet another UI element, to display for the player. and the UI space is already pretty maximized.

Another thought, is me re-looking at how conversations are done overall. One of the core initial concepts of Stillness, was to having dynamic game-y conversations, and to try and replicate, mechanically, social anxiety to a degree. What I could do is retool conversations to be kind of like boss fights. the immediate reference I’m thinking of being the engaging and dynamic dialog fights in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. the plus of that system, is it already exists as a sort of tug of war, setup, needing to keep the “ball” of the conversation, in your court til the conversations distinct end. The downside, is that system is limited to confrontational social situations, which not every conversation in the game is meant to be. it also has the again issue of potential additional UI, which I am looking to minimize if possible.

In general, I’m bouncing a lot of these idea’s around to retool the system, come December (or whenever I get a swath of free time).

Time Spent –

since I did a lot of pre-production work in little piecemeal bits, I didn’t clock any of it. My bad. 😛

What to do next-

so, November is that last full month for this semester, so it’ll likely be more of the same, in little tangible in game work, be a decent set of design and planning.

As such, while there is always the stuff I set out this month, I’m not holding my breath on getting around to them. on top of those hilarious stretch goals, there’s more mock writing, and with that, paper prototyping the changes I want to the conversation system. now, those I think I can get to.

so, in list form:

• Mock up more conversations scenes
• Paper prototype the mechanical changes to the conversation system
• Stretch:
  • get 1 more puzzle from level 2 in completely
  • filling in more flavor for the area
  • Playtest?

Closing Notes-

I got sick at the months end. Super no fun.

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