Save the World Dev Blog 2 - Dialogue and Encounters

(publishing date should read 22nd Dec)

Since settling on our storyline and overall narrative, Group 4 has been busy. First of all, we created an elevator pitch of the project for the class to see the beginning stages of our project. This gave us the opportunity to present our ideas and get some feedback on our initial prototype and narrative choices. Since our pitch was limited to only 2 minutes, unfortunately we weren’t able to detail all of the mechanics and systems we had come up with, although these can be read about in the presentation slides.

You can view the slides from our elevator pitch presentation here.

Since this presentation, my contributions to the project have consisted of many small additions and changes towards the project’s trajectory. I will explain as many of these as I can below:

Dialogue and Quest Plugin

Since this is a half text-based story game, a very important aspect to get right would be how the dialogue presented itself. Since the timeframe and scope of the project didn’t really allow me time to programme my own dialogue system entirely from scratch, I decided to outsource and put some research into if there were any plugins that could be useful for the project. I eventually settled on the ‘Easy Dialogue’ Plugin by Jon Beardsell. This plugin involves custom blueprints using databases which can seamlessly link lines of dialogue and branch conversations into different paths and keep conversation placeholders.
However, since this plugin is not optimised for 2.5D art style, and since it is part of a larger ecosystem of plugins which I haven’t purchased, I still have had a lot of work to do in terms of figuring out how to implement these features in the project. I have created some of the dialogue databases already, however my current challenge is to add those to actors in the environment so the actors can work as interaction points.

Example data table for a dialogue encounter

Music and Audio Design

I am lucky enough to have been able to arrange for two professional musicians to help create the background music for the demo for this project. Here you can view the Bandcamp pages for Daniel Rogerson (who just so happens to be my brother) and Robert Logan; both have worked together before on film music projects. They both have extensive experience in the music industry outside of the music on their Bandcamp pages, however I feel that the tracks on their pages act as a useful demonstration of their respective styles. Robert Logan’s tracks are abstract, atmospheric and quirky, with a strong focus on electronic sounds and sampling. Daniel Rogerson’s ‘White Spirit’ EP has a clean, idle and calming atmosphere, while still delving into the more abstract ambient sounds heard in some of the tracks such as ‘Clock’ or ‘White Spirit’. I felt that a balance between these two styles could beautifully represent the polished, stylised and sometimes frightening fantasy world our characters find themselves in, with a quirky ambient sound to show the alienation of the characters on this planet. I have sent the musicians some of our current content and the elevator pitches, however I will soon be having a meeting with them to discuss the brief and requirements in more detail and start brainstorming.

Scripting and storyline

I have been mapping out what storyline the demo will follow, and the events that will occur. I have created placeholders in the environment to show how the level will progress, and to mark where dialogue databases will later be assigned to actors for the player to interact with. As of now, the current storyline of the demo is planned to be the Following:

It begins with Gustav outside the cave entrance, where he goes to talk to Lily. Lily comments on how the land seems isolated, yet the street lamps around are still lit. She notices that they seem to be glowing with the same type of light as the glowing spores that float around them in higher concentration towards the mouth of the cave.

I also animated all the 2D artworks made by Ziqi and put the characters into the gameplay prototype shown in the previosu entry. This already has it feeling more like our own game.

Level Lighting and Environment Design

Tying in with the scripting and storyline, I have been making changes and additions to the environment to try and guide players towards areas for key interactions. For example I am creating a light strip leading towards where Anala will be woken. I am still mapping out where other guidance points will be.