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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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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 07:13 |
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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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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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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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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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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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So William Burroughs meets Raymond Chandler? I could go for that.
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Jul 27, 2019 02:19
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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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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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Junpei posted:I like the war vet idea! While
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Jul 27, 2019 20:38
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Gloomy Rube posted: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? But I also was going to have the murder occur outside a neighborhood bar or casino since that gives us an explanation for Gladys knowing everyone. That place could be "Johnny Five-Aces." Maybe with an out-of-place clock (brand name Zybourne, of course) stuck on the building?BoldFrankensteinMir posted:Here's a question- is this a dramatic or a funny detective story? Junpei posted:Character submission: Griffith, a slightly oblivious but earnest young policeman who assists our heroine by giving her information from the official police sources. During certain sections, he joins up with Samantha (are we calling her that? Or is that just a placeholder name?) as a Watson of sorts to bounce ideas off of her. Now that I think about it, I'll go back and update my character list with their placeholder names so it's easier to talk about them. If we want to make changes should do it soon so we don't spend pages using one name and then suddenly start referring to them with a different one as it will probably cause a lot of confusion.
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Jul 27, 2019 23:04
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Junpei posted:Is there a 'free market' to dreams where someone can write up a code or function and then say "Feel free to use it if your game requires this idea!".  Stream tomorrow, at noon MDT I've updated the OP with the time and my channel info.
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Jul 28, 2019 02:23
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Kimberly Clark posted:Would it be fun to directly or indirectly follow plot lines from cult classics like RHPS or Clue? Mix the two and make a RHPS Clue game? Or at the minimum - have NPCs roaming around, randomly quoting lines from those movies and other hilarities?
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Jul 28, 2019 17:52
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30 minutes! I think today we'll construct our crime scene. I'll show off the basics of how you do things in Dreams, sculpting, and time permitting we'll do some initial scripting for items and clues.
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Jul 28, 2019 18:27
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I hope y'all enjoyed the stream. Kinda sloppy, but I'll get better with practice my dad posted:Didn't want to interrupt the stream with this, but Incompetech.com is OK for background music if the selection in Dreams isn't enough. I used it for the dramatic reading of that disaster of a book "Twisted" with Bobbin Threadbare and the others.
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Jul 28, 2019 20:22
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Big Scary Owl posted:I started watching a little late, but it was a very nice and chill stream. Makes me wanna get the game but I'm not gonna just buy a PS4 for it. Looking forward to seeing how music-making works and the Junpei posted:We need to work our way out from a central mystery if we're writing this. I'm still voting Gladys, "harmless" old lady. She gives you dirt on everyone (except the victim) in order to throw suspicion off herself. But folks can chime in with their own votes/ideas. If Gladys is the killer, I vote for a minor or inane reason - Gladys is just bugfuck crazy and whatever Charlie did to slight her set her off. She's killed all her husbands, but nobody ever suspected it as they appeared to be accidents. Poor Gladys, all alone; good thing she has that insurance money to live off! As for the rest...I think the murder should be fairly brutal. Say our victim is found with a hatchet in his skull. Turns out the hatchet belongs to Gladys, it was hanging on a pegboard with some other tools. She claims Charlie did handyman work for her and must've left the garage open. We could make it actually be open to support this and have it searchable. Maybe some other items are missing too, like a set of coveralls that belonged to her last husband, we can discover them in the alley soaked in blood. Gladys slipped 'em on, killed Charlie then chucked them so she didn't get any blood on herself. Gladys is also the person who called the police. Since everyone knows she sees everything that goes on, it would be weird for her to have missed this. She kills him, ditches the evidence, goes back inside and calls the cops. Forensic science wasn't very good back then so even a half hour between time of death and the police arriving won't be much of an issue, let alone 5 minutes. In order to explain why nobody is going in/out of Johnny's we could set it in October, so it gets dark early and it's the World Series so everyone is inside listening to the game on the radio. It would be weird for Gladys to be up in the middle of the night, but not at 8:30pm.
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Jul 29, 2019 00:31
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Happy to report I've made some good offscreen progress. In addition to our existing level we now have a functioning title/menu screen  I've also made a simple base puppet that we'll build all of our characters off so they are the same but each one will have hair and some other features added so they're also individuals. I also have some recorded footage to edit into a bonus video, I'll post that tomorrow in addition to Stream tomorrow 7/31 at 7pm MDT I'll show off our progress and demonstrate some of the logic that goes into making stuff function, like our title screen. SubponticatePoster fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Jul 31, 2019 |
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Jul 31, 2019 05:06
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Junpei posted:Hmmmm...
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Jul 31, 2019 08:41
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Stream starting in 15. We'll do some more work on our crime scene, I'll show off the title/menu screen and go into logic a bit. May also touch on making music. Here's the first bonus video, where I took a couple hours' work and condensed it down. I'm really sorry about the music. Ok, I'm not, what did you expect with this loving thread title? I do promise never to do it again, though. Making some stuff Now I didn't make the music on the title screen for that purpose but it is something I created from scratch, just to give you an idea of some of the things you can do.
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Aug 1, 2019 01:50
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should be back up.
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Aug 1, 2019 02:49
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Well other than the stream making GBS threads the bed halfway through I feel like we made decent progress. Sassy puppets! Neon signs! A handcrafted door! For those that missed or got in late, link to stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCUXPqNXpts At the beginning of the stream I showed off our title screen. It's got weather, music, and appropriately spoopy atmosphere. I also showed off how you link scenes and some of the logic required. For our neon sign I'll figure out some kind of pulse reset so it works on a continuous loop like a real sign would. It was a good example of using the in-game tools to solve a problem. We could have sculpted every letter individually which would give us some different options but I feel like that would take up too much thermo and animating it would be a horrendous pain in the rear end. Still it's possible so you do have multiple ways of getting to your goal which is nice.
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Aug 1, 2019 03:46
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We have some actual, quantifiable progress! Our crime scene is all blocked, now it's time for adding fun details and laying out (hurr) our murder victim. I decided I didn't like the way I'd gone about things so I deleted the whole level and started over (I'm terrible about doing that). Don't worry though it looks the same, just more efficient sculpting. I was able to get our neon sign working after banging my head against it for a while. Ended up just copying some logic I'd made for a set of flashing lights, which was way easier than anything I'd been trying to attempt. Oops. There are two working level doors/exits - one into Gladys's house and another to our yet-to-be-made hub. I'm envisioning something like a small section of downtown where we can put our tech expert and one of our surprise NPC's hidden away. Maybe Vinny too so we don't have to sculpt an entire new level for just a guy hanging out. I'd also like to make some level/diegetic music so I think we'll delve into that today as well for at least a bit. Stream today 8/4 at 12pm MDT
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Aug 4, 2019 16:48
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 07:13 |
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Well, life's been busy this week but that doesn't mean no progress has been made. I did figure out music recording, they stuck the button under a different prompt instead of just on the screen so now we can see how that's done. And I started on our new hub area which is really goddamn big compared to the crime scene. Since there'll be a bit less to actually do there I figured having a bigger open area you could maybe explore a bit would be good. Now tonight I'm going to a concert and I may overindulge so tomorrow's stream will be a bit later just in case. Stream 8/11 at 2pm MDT
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Aug 10, 2019 18:27
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