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 I know I said I was going to take some time off, but I'm also brain-damaged. Plus I've been wanting to do more with Dreams and this is great motivation. What is Dreams? Dreams is a "game" made by the folks over at Media Molecule - the same people responsible for Little Big Planet and Tearaway. Made up of former Lionhead Studios employees, they're known for charming animation and all-ages appeal gameplay. When the PS4 was announced MM revealed a mystery game that would allow users to create anything they could imagine. It took a couple of years for something concrete to be announced, but at E3 2015 they showed off their new IP Dreams. For the next few years they did follow up announcements and demos, and a lot of livestreams showing off how the game would work. Finally in late 2018/early 2019 there was a beta, and in April of this year an early access version of the game was made purchasable. It is apparently still lacking a few features set to be present in the full game but if you buy the early access version you'll get the full game when it comes out for no additional charge, saving about $30 in the process. Can you really make anything at all? Yes, abso-fuckin'-lutely. There are tools for sculpting, animation, logic, and even a full music creation suite. You don't need to be Michelangelo, Walt Disney, or Mozart to make something really neat. You can use a regular DS4, but imo it doesn't really start to shine until you use the Move controllers. The Moves' controls are easy and extremely intuitive to use, really just extensions of your hands. Pull, shape, grab, turn, sculpt...all with a flick of the wrist. Even if you can't carry a tune in a bucket you can make good music, either by incorporating premade samples or by mashing some buttons on your own. It's possible to just sculpt something static, but you can also make full-on games. People have made some insanely good poo poo already, including FPSs, platformers, horror games, puzzle games, and even some Dark Souls knockoffs that play just like the original. Another feature is the ability to share anything you've made, so people can take it and "remix" it into something new. Anything you upload to be shared keeps your info, so someone can't take a game you spent days creating, slap a mustache on one character and call it their own without you being credited. Or if you're making something and need say, a car, you can go and search for one, then just incorporate that into your creation without having to make it from scratch. You can also do what's called Dream Surfing where you can go and see/play what others have made. Like anything else with user-generated content it can be hit or miss, but there are real gems in there and it's fun to see some of the amazing things people have created. Like playing eleventy billion games for $30. So how exactly are you going to LP this? We're gonna make us a game! Well, I'll be doing the making, but y'all are going to give me direction. To start, there'll be a vote as to what kind of game we will make. Posters can make suggestions as we go (for example, if we make a hack 'n slash and someone requests "I want a dragon with 3 heads and 2 butts!"), I will do my best to make that a reality. 99% of the time I will make everything from scratch, but I may also use someone else's creation to speed things along - especially complicated logic because TBH I'm terrible in that department and we don't want to get stalled forever while I try to figure out if/then commands. I will do a livestream for an hour or two every weekend, then edit that down to a couple videos so people who can't watch in real time or just want the highlights aren't missing anything. I'll also try to vary the time so those not in the US can watch live at reasonable hours. Also, nothing obscene. MM has a report feature and by all accounts they're very good at responding to flagged content so we don't want to get banned. I don't think a curse word or two will get us in trouble, but no making GBS threads dicknipples or hentai or that sort of stuff. I can also use VA or music samples you provide as long as they don't violate TOS/copyright. We're gonna make us a mystery game! Next livestream will be Sunday 8/11 at 2pm MDT (-7GMT) Here Streams Getting Started Making Progress Mostly there Videos That is not logical SubponticatePoster fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Aug 10, 2019 |
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Jul 26, 2019 13:28
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Important stuff will go here. Official MM YouTube channel, check this out for prior streams and highlights of user creations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=user?MediaMolecule
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Jul 26, 2019 13:28
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Well this ought to be interesting.  e: Supporting the noir idea.
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Jul 26, 2019 13:43
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I also support this noir idea! But will it play more like an old-school Adventure Game ala Monkey Island, or more like something like LA Noire?
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Jul 26, 2019 18:23
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As someone who spent an outrageous amount of time screwing around in all 3 LBPs I am very interested to see how this turns out. If you do a noir it should be in black and white because there are not enough black and white games.
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Jul 26, 2019 18:40
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Black-and-white noir would be amazing. I'm also going to suggest that we have something about either the gameplay or the setting that really shouldn't fit with noir just to see if we can make it work. Sesame Street noir. Pac-man noir. Pong noir. (Hey, it's already black-and-white anyway!)
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Jul 26, 2019 19:08
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A black-and-white noir game where some class of inanimate objects is alive and talkative. Like mailboxes. Or lamp posts. Or whole buildings.
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Jul 26, 2019 19:14
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I can see Junpei posted:I also support this noir idea! But will it play more like an old-school Adventure Game ala Monkey Island, or more like something like LA Noire?  We can also do point-and-click adventure style easily. Whatever we end up doing, if there's something I can't figure out I'll try to find tutorials on YT. Also I may do some asset creation off-stream, but I'll record it and speed it up for bonus videos to show how the thing got made. I'll do most creating live though.
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Jul 26, 2019 19:44
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Are we gonna only be making one game, or when this is done will you open suggestions for a second game?
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Jul 26, 2019 19:56
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Junpei posted:Are we gonna only be making one game, or when this is done will you open suggestions for a second game?
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Jul 26, 2019 19:59
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Alright, then, lemme brainstorm. We're going to want some item menus so we can hold evidence. A 'logic' menu where we can look at facts, and combine them to get new information would also be very neat. As for the plot, we could make it a little more bizarre. What if we made it an urban fantasy murder mystery?
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Jul 26, 2019 20:10
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To make things easier are you going to just use existing assets? If not, do you want to build new elements in-engine from scratch, or will there be a conceptual design phase? I ask because the thing this reminds me most of right now is Psychonauts, and that series is 110% based on super-sharp design work that all started as 2D concepts: 
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Jul 26, 2019 20:11
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You could take an Infocom or a Level 9 game and try to adapt a portion of it.
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Jul 26, 2019 20:36
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Gonna create as much as I can from scratch, but there will be times in order to save my sanity (and everyone else's) that I'll use others' assets. Like, I'm not very good with logic and I know there are some existing inventory/equip logics out there. The in-game puppet's logic is perfectly functional and you can tweak it a bit, but creating that from scratch would cause my brain to melt. For this opening vote we'll decide the basic type of game but think about things like overall style, plot, mechanics, that sort of thing.
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Jul 26, 2019 20:41
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Hmm, okay then, how about... You are Slip Tupbadly, accident-prone private eye! In your incompetent hands the simplest cases because monstrous obstacles as black cats, broken mirrors and collapsing ladders plague your every step. You lose evidence randomly from your inventory after failing to resist your alcoholism HUD's pressure to wander into yet another speakeasy; you miss opportunities at revelatory dialog by misspeaking dialog choices the player has no chance of predicting; you have a 1 in 1000 chance your gun will fire even remotely close to its target! But bad luck won't stop Slip- it's the only luck he's ever known! When Slip's beautiful but ditzy secretary Miss Fire brings him his latest job, a simple cheating spouse case, everyone assumes even Slip can't mess it up. But when he accidentally photographs a completely unrelated crime-scene the heat is on, with every gangster in town out to get the evidence you're not aware you have! Can Slip convince the mob he's not actually after them before they execute him in the street? Nearly impossible one-chance dialog trees, unwinnable minigames and maps that you are holding upside-down stand in your way as Slip Tupbadly, Luckless P.I.!
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Jul 26, 2019 21:10
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In a world where the supernatural and the criminal mingle, the 'criminal underworld' as a phrase becomes freakishly literal. You are Donovan McNara, a private eye who specializes in demonic crime. With some assistance from Belial, a demonic lawyer who gives him info on how demons work, his sarcastic assistant Maya Nanashita, and Michael, an angelic judge, Donovan prevents unwitting soul-selling, as well as the trading of souls on the black market. But when a politician hires him to figure out about a new cartel selling a drug named "Hellfire", apparently manufactured from demon blood, as well as the death of a user of it, things get very complicated very quickly. Especially the leader of this cartel, who seems to have both human and demonic blood in him... Thanks to magic apps on his cell phone, Donovan can 'call' Belial, Maya, and Michael for information at any time, even when talking to someone else. This can grant you insight into a conversation while it happens, allowing you to bluff and lie much easier.
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Jul 26, 2019 22:00
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You can't speak but you have a couple of basic signs, and a "dog" who eats other people's words hanging in the air and poops out more signs for you to show to people in conversations. Sometimes the dog poops out usable items. A puzzle involves finding someone to pronounce a taboo word so that the dog can turn it into the object.
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Jul 26, 2019 22:22
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An adorable talking dog detective who normally handles friendly animal cases is swept up into the seedy human world of prostitution and murder when no other dick will take the job. Can a G-rated detective cut it in an X-rated world, or will adult themes and situations be too much for this bashful pup? It's Leisure Suit Larry meets the Wonderpets in Detective Dogg vs The Whoremongers!
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Jul 26, 2019 23:21
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MAIN CHARACTER WILL BE A DONG AND-SubponticatePoster posted:Also, nothing obscene. Aw...  I've always wanted to try Dreams but I got no PS4, this LP seems like a really cool idea. I'm a big sucker for puzzle games in general, so I think we could make something like that, but not too complicated for the first(?) game in the thread. Noir adventure puzzle game? Noir mecha adventure puzzle game? Noir adventure rhythm game? All I can think of right now is that punching people in the face is always a possible dialogue option, for reasons.
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Jul 26, 2019 23:28
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Aww dangit I missed the obvious rating requirement, never mind.
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Jul 26, 2019 23:38
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SubponticatePoster posted:We can also do point-and-click adventure style easily. I'm gonna vote for a point-and-click style, cause I like them a lot and you can have the character (or a narrator, or both) commentate on many things around the world with interesting dialogue. Would be nice to get people in the thread to record VA, but maybe that would be too much effort. I'd enjoy it a lot though, personally.
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Jul 26, 2019 23:56
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e: ^^^ There is a way to import stuff, in addition to recording directly in the game. I can do some voices, but we can also open it up if folks want to contribute. Y'all are cracking me up. Also scaring me a bit  Adult themes (violence, prostitution, etc) are ok, but no actual dongs or boobs or stuff like that. Keep the rating to broadcast TV acceptable. That still leaves us a lot of wiggle room without getting us in trouble.Regardless of what kind of game we make, things to mull over: Style - Realistic? Dreamlike? Cute? Plain fuckin' weird? Mechanics - Do we have an inventory? UI? Do we keep some kind of score? Is there a fail state? Setting - Past? Future? Contemporary? Narrative elements - Voiced? Text-only? (In order to make it accessible if we do VA I will still add subtitles) SubponticatePoster fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Jul 27, 2019 |
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Jul 27, 2019 00:25
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Setting it in the past would fit the genre. Right now contemporary fiction is tough because even tiny minutiae moves so fast: even PS3 games are kinda weird where everyone has flip-phones and "presidential" still means cautious and well-spoken. I can imagine a rotary payphone minigame where the numbers are only five digits long and you have to ask an operator to place a long distance call and insert exact change for it would be funny and interesting.
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Jul 27, 2019 00:42
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SubponticatePoster posted:Style - Realistic? Dreamlike? Cute? Plain fuckin' weird? I'm just throwing ideas here, so let's go. Style - Ya know, my gut tells me to make it as weird as possible, but actually I think we should try to make it a more grounded solvable murder mystery much like old mystery books. Unless we can find a good way to juxtapose the common noir feel with some weirdness. Maybe make the character dream (pun not intended) or be into drugs that could cause weird things to happen, which could also serve as clues to the mystery and add some humour? (like the dog that poops items that SelenicMartian suggested for example, maybe he could show up in these moments for new puzzles and clues). Mechanics - Notebook for writing clues and important dialogue. I'm thinking the player will actually have to write there, but maybe that would be too hardcore, but then again if clues show up automatically it doesn't feel as challenging imo, as you can add red herings to the narrative to misguide the player and they'll think it's a legit clue or something. An inventory would be nice so you can have some item puzzles too. In combination with the drugs/dreams idea above, maybe have some kind of meter or point system that changes depending on how much the player relies on the weird world stuff for new clues, like a pseudo sanity meter, perhaps, which could affect how the game ends. At the end of the game, the player will have to point out the culprit and what happened, and you will be able to get it very wrong, and then you will be scored at the end depending on how much you got right. Setting - Past, ye, but we could have some contemporary stuff like smartphones to make things more streamlined? The smartphone menu could be the main UI, where the actual notes and inventory and the like show up. Narrative elements - Voiced would be pretty funny, so yes if possible. Big Scary Owl fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Jul 27, 2019 |
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Jul 27, 2019 02:08
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Setting: I agree with the past. Maybe the 40s or 50s? Style: I do want there to be weird elements, at least in my fantastical idea involving demonic cartels, but I feel like the basic facts and mystery should make sense. The magic should have rules, etc. Mechanics: Agreed on the notebook for clues. Social situations... maybe take a page from Deus Ex: Human Revolution by giving vague guides for how to approach a question (Interrogative, Relaxed, Comforting, Cold, Reassuring, etc.). Narrative elements: I'm not sure if I can record lines and send it to you, but I'd be cool with helping voice, I have some theatre experience, even if all I have is my crummy laptop mic.
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Jul 27, 2019 02:17
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Detectives did used to carry data around in things called "journals", it's not like we invented note-taking in 2008. Although a rotary smartphone would be pretty funny. Maybe this should be like Brazil and everything is retrofuture?
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Jul 27, 2019 02:18
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So William Burroughs meets Raymond Chandler? I could go for that.
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Jul 27, 2019 02:19
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SubponticatePoster posted:So William Burroughs meets Raymond Chandler? I could go for that. Yeah! Or like Poul Anderson meets Zane Gray. Anachronistic coating around a solid pulp center. Zig fidgeted with his lit vapostick, taking a long draw that filled the engineered firefly entombed in its tip with vibrant light. Just then a call came in on his telefedora, and its mechanical voice announced what Zig had feared: "Ze client, she is calling, oui monsieur? Shall I take zee message?" E- silliness
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Jul 27, 2019 02:30
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Alright, then, we need a core mystery. Probably going to start with a murder, that's just the natural order of things, but mysteries of the noir variety tend to have lots and lots of spreading links. A 'web', something like the way connections are recorded in the video game Orwell, wouldn't go awry, telling us that Maria and Anne are adopted siblings, and Eugene is Victor's assistant, and that James had an affair with Dana, wouldn't go awry.
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Jul 27, 2019 02:37
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A person is murdered by a mantelpiece clock. Then another is killed by a pocket watch fallen from a great height. Then someone is stabbed by a broken hourglass and impaled on a sundial. Then one is crushed by a grandfather clock. The epic showdown is in the clock tower where the criminal wants to drop the face of the tower clock on the crowds below.
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Jul 27, 2019 07:03
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Alright, since nobody voted for anything else (I feel I may have had an outside influence as the op  ) we'll go with a noir style detective game. I have our design document, aka a college-ruled notepad where I've started jotting things down. Here's our summary:Goon Game (working title )1940's/postwar setting Black and white Realistic but with fantastic/surreal elements A "score" for finding clues, possible to fail and get a wrong answer. Voiced dialogue I've taken at least one suggestion from everyone to incorporate into our game. How I work these things in will be part of the creation process, but I've got some ideas. Now, should we only have 1 murder where all of the info you need to proceed is there, or should we have multiple? If it's the latter I would limit it to no more than 3 or 4 so that things aren't needlessly drawn out and also to save my sanity. Along the same lines, I want to keep the supporting cast to around a half dozen or so. Our protag will be a woman since I'll be doing at least the majority of the VA. Now in Dreams, you have pre-made controllable puppets. You can make your own, but that's incredibly complicated. They look like those wooden figures you use for pose sketching. It's possible to sculpt them to have realistic features, but I don't want to take 5 hours making every character. On the flip side, I would like them to not just be identical blanks. If you've never played the game Ashen, they have a really neat aesthetic where characters don't have features like eyes or mouths, but by using angles and hairstyles each one is recognizable and different so I think I'll use that method - some geometric shapes sculpted on so everyone looks like an individual but doesn't take forever to make. And the most important part of any mystery - the plot. The player doesn't need to know what's going on at the start but we do so all our clues point somewhere, even if that's in the wrong direction It helps us make a cohesive game, and good games' stories are like fiction. Characters have motivations, personalities, quirks, etc. We don't have to write a 300 page backstory for every single one, but we should have a clear picture of them and how they fit into our narrative. Same for our killer. Are they doing this randomly because they're crazy or is it for a specific reason? Is it one of our supporting cast or a shadowy nemesis? Is our narrative linear or can we choose where to go? Myself, I feel like the first person we question should be set, but with the option to branch from there.
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Jul 27, 2019 15:41
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I think starting with one murder would be best, for simplicity's sake. It can be the template for future additions. As for our detective, she needs a motivation and a hook: why is she a gumshoe and how is she unique at it? The immediate model is Miss Marple so let's indulge ourselves and not just make her another pet lady like we're writing every Jane Patterson novel. So... Sarah Motive is a bold, charismatic former actress whose co-star (and lover) was gunned down on opening night for gambling debts to the mob. Now, despite her city-wide fame she works as a private investigator specializing in disguises and false identities, using elaborate costumes, counterfeit documents and an uncanny skill at mimicking anyone to shed her celebrity and infiltrate anywhere and everywhere in the criminal underworld. But not every criminal is so easily fooled, and as Sarah gathers clues and evidence every opponent she faces has a personal "suspicionometer" that slowly rises, gaff by gaff, until she is recognized and in danger! Death is keenly watching every performance now, of Sarah Motive, Mistress of Disguise! (We were talking about classic Tim Schaeffer style adventure games and one of the standard elements of those is the "combine three items into a disguise" dynamic. Maybe combine that with Fallout style faction disguises and tricky dialog writing, and every single NPC interaction becomes a minefield!)
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Jul 27, 2019 16:23
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There's probably a way to do a disguise mechanic, but envisioning how to program that is giving me fits. Might be a tad too complicated for my tiny brain. I want to do something fun, but I'd also like to get it done before the turn of the decade Each disguise piece would need to be sculpted individually, then kept in an inventory, equipped (which would involve extra animations on top of clipping/attachment issues), plus some sort of recognition mechanic for NPC's which in turn would need additional programming for their behavior. Since we've got surrealist, possibly drug-fueled elements, how about our protag served in the war in some capacity? Women weren't carrying guns and shooting people, but they were there. Maybe she was an army nurse, saw lots of horrible stuff and now she has PTSD which is either warping her mental state or she's self medicating with drugs or alcohol causing her to see weird poo poo. Take "damaged war hero" and flip it on its head. Samantha Spade, if you will. Single murder - we can have the victim known to our protag or a stranger. Known gives us a reason to investigate without needing further justification, but maybe ol' Samantha is just a mold-breaking woman ahead of her time working as a PI. Or she has a twin brother that she resembles closely enough that she can pass as him, and he's the actual police detective assigned to the case but he fucks up or is otherwise incapacitated so she takes over as Sam. Maybe Sam has some bad habits/vices of his own leading to some hijinks where Samantha has to extricate herself from some delicate situations without giving the game away, adding a bit of levity to an otherwise grim setting. I've sketched out some character archetypes for our interactive NPCs now edited with placeholder names: Busybody old lady (our starting witness/mandatory conversation) - Gladys Street tough/low level criminal - Vinny Obviously evil person (our red herring) - Richard Femme fatale - Bette Helpful regular person - Joe Technical expert (they can analyze our clues or otherwise give us info a typical person wouldn't have) - Clancy 2 surprise NPCs (fits in with our surreal elements) - these are surprises and I'm not giving anything away  I think I'll go with a shadowy nemesis - we can have obvious clues point to our red herring, but if the player actually takes the time to look around, exhausts all our dialogue options, and generally pays attention then we can set up a final confrontation. Now all we need are the nuts and bolts - motivation, method, and how we get the player from A to Z. SubponticatePoster fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Jul 27, 2019 |
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Jul 27, 2019 17:56
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I agree with starting with just one murder, we could even have a fake murder if need be later on, but maybe that's too cliche. Will the shadowy nemesis appear early on in the story or will they be "invisible"? I think the culprit should show up at some point so the player can suspect them. If the culprit were someone that hadn't appeared until the end it wouldn't feel fair to the player imo. I like the idea of it being non-linear too. Should we think about the victim already or should we think about the supporting cast backstory first?
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Jul 27, 2019 19:51
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Save the resources on disguises by making a disguise look like an icon over the character's head?
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Jul 27, 2019 20:16
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I like the war vet idea! As for the murder, I do agree. We should follow Ronald Knox's 10 Commandments of Detective Fiction. 1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow. 2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course. 3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable, and such a passage may only be in a house or building for which it is appropriate by age or purpose. 4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end. 5. No Chinaman must figure in the story. 6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right. 7. The detective must not himself commit the crime. 8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader. 9. The stupid friend of the detective, the "Watson", must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader. 10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
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Jul 27, 2019 20:22
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Junpei posted:I like the war vet idea! While
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Jul 27, 2019 20:38
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Wait wait wait wait wait there's an explanation for number 5! This was not a case of racism, despite the Values Dissonance of the now-offensive but generally obsolete term "Chinaman". This was in fact an admonition against something considered both racist and clichéd even then: the Yellow Peril villains, magical Asians, and inscrutable Oriental characters prevalent in dodgy crime fiction at the time, most notably Fu Manchu. The modern American equivalent would be a terrorist from Qurac or a scary black man. Even then, the token minority was automatically either the guy who did it or played for the rest of the story as a red herring.
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Jul 27, 2019 20:40
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What if our protag is trying to solve the murder of her twin brother, by disguising as him and generally infiltrating in her brother's life, unbeknownst to the other people. Naturally his murder would be a unknown affair to everyone else either because it was pretty recent, his body was hidden somewhere or whatever. And, obviously, she also has to hide from the actual murderer, but I'm not sure how this would actually play out. I still like the other ideas, though. Just spitballing here. Space Kablooey fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Jul 27, 2019 |
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Jul 27, 2019 20:53
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I think it's important that Johnny Five-aces at least plays a minor role in this game, since he fits into noir style pretty easily, and then we'd have the prerequisite goon reference. Maybe he runs a clock shop and is someone you interview?
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Jul 27, 2019 21:07
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