Jolt Country

With less time than I've ever had before, naturally I'd like to pick up The Finisher Project once more.

The Finisher Project is a project where I finish some games I've never got round to finishing, even if that means I use a walkthrough or cluebook.

I will be starting things off by listing one of the games that I'd like to finish.

That game is.... Planetfall.

Oh, I thought you were gonna finish Cyberganked.

I reached the stage where I have doubts that the game is really finishable.

Nooooo, you're too far in at this point! The people of Gank are counting on you! Don't let the CYOA people win!

Well, I don't want to make it this huge thing, it's just depressing how much needs to be done.

It struck me the other day that I have 10 classes in the game, and the game needs to have cool stuff for each one of those 10 classes to do. I'm making the restriction that you can't have multiple classes... but still. If you play through and your best character is a Chemist, the Chemist must feel powerful.

I feel it necessary to write everything myself because I feel responsible for the jokes. The game needs one pass to finish it and make it "finishable by walkthrough," another for each of the classes and then a draft where I ensure every single joke I can think of that's good is in the game. That's three more passes at the minimum.

So I'm just a little bit depressed about it, that's all. Thus maybe grabbing some time to finish games others have made. :)

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:I'm making the restriction that you can't have multiple classes... but still. If you play through and your best character is a Chemist, the Chemist must feel powerful.

Trying to take some advice from that other guy to read more and say less, I'll think real hard to say something short and pithy.

Why not have the Chemist's best skill be making crystal meth, and when he improves it turns blue! And he did it having only one class, too.

I don't think anyone would miss "Chemist" as a class :-P Why not let go of the classes that don't actually sound awesome.

You'll see. You'll all see. YOU'ALL SEE!!!

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:You'll see. You'll all see. YOU'ALL SEE!!!

I have a response about why it's so hard to develop for Adventure Games in general, and Hugo in particular,, and you'll find it here: http://www.caltrops.com/pointy.php?acti ... pid=174890 as it's too long to include here. (Hey, I'm trying.)

It's not so much that I have to keep a lot in my head. I'll try to explain what I mean about why this game looks unfinishable:

I want to have 7 levels of spells. (Well, in the game they are computer programs, but let's use fantasy D&D nomenclature.) You should be eligible for a new spell level every other level, so the game needs to let characters get to 14 of their own levels.

It's lame if it's expected that each character levels up more than once per "area," so originally I wanted 14 levels. Well, originally originally I wanted 20, but I cut it down before I even started to 14.

What's a nicely-sized level? Well, if I had an art team, I'd make them each 100 squares, 10x10. I do not have an art team, so at most they are 10x10, but some are smaller.

Most of the squares need a daylight and night time graphic. I have to make them both.

Most of the squares will depict a third graphic if the player has a particular actor or actress in their party. So I have to make those extra cases. (So if you are playing the game and picked Gerrit as one of your characters, the game could see that you have him and display the Gerrit graphic for a given room rather than the standard daylight one.)

I also need to make art for enemies and items.

There should be SOME text in each room. If not a joke then something where the player is glad they entered the room. "Good writing," or an argument in the party or an observation or something. So that takes a little time.

This brings us to quests. There's 10 character classes in the game, but you can't have two of anything. So I need to write at least six solutions to a puzzle or quest to ensure that the party can use one of them. I need to populate the game with a plot, interesting antagonists, allies and the like.

But with the classes, I am essentially giving these 8 classes cool things to do since they don't cast spells. I do want the Chemist to be able to make different kinds of prescription drugs that do different things. I do want the street magician to be able to cut a person in two and do card tricks and so forth.

When all of that is done, I need to go through the entire game and edit the writing.

When that is done, I need to go through the entire game and play it myself looking for bugs.

When that is done, I need to find testers, set them off at different levels and fix the bugs they find.

When all of that is done, I need to give the writing one more draft.

But even more than that - tonight I had a problem because I couldn't figure out why some thugs weren't responding to questions. I think it is unlikely that other mediums have these technical brick walls, but making games have them. A few hundred people made the last Bethesda game. I'm one dude doing all of this, essentially.

I suspect that your original "September 2015" date was a wee bit optimistic :-P

Is there any part of this that can be farmed out? Not the writing I assume but perhaps some of the graphical work? You've got a lot of friends in here, Jonsey. You've got a lot of friends out there, Jonsey!

Flack wrote:Is there any part of this that can be farmed out? Not the writing I assume but perhaps some of the graphical work? You've got a lot of friends in here, Jonsey. You've got a lot of friends out there, Jonsey!

If one of the parts is drinking rye and fucking off, I got that covered.

Bruce

Flack wrote:but perhaps some of the graphical work?

I offered a while back to help with that but unfortunately the pallate or plugin or something he uses is Photoshop specific and I've only used Gimp for the past 10+ years.

Flack wrote:Is there any part of this that can be farmed out? Not the writing I assume but perhaps some of the graphical work? You've got a lot of friends in here, Jonsey. You've got a lot of friends out there, Jonsey!

I mean, I could, but the thing is that I have a lot of ego tied up into this. Right? Don't get me wrong, the ROODYLIB that Roody put together is fantastically helpful. It's a nice feeling to be able to look back on a work and say, "I did most of this shit."

This is just me venting, I get that now. This is neither the time nor the place for it. It will take a while to finish, but.... it's okay. It's ok!

I am not beholden to a public or publisher. I'd like to finish it to get onto the next (smaller) project, but it's ok. The world isn't going to collapse with me just about to hit "publish" like how David Braben did for Elite.

o_0 <- The unblinking stare of David Braben

It will be fine. I wish I had a fun game for you guys to play sooner than I will.

I'm also -- here's the other thing. Marketing. Jesus, Mary, Mother of God. The Greenlight campaign has stalled in terms of votes. I thought a couple per week would trickle in, but nah. So I have to go around to various sites and try to promote it. I've tried to be on good terms with SysOps all over the world so maybe I can do that.

But I'd rather develop the game and get it finished than market a thing I am still working on.

I really am babbling. I'm sorry, everyone.

bruce wrote:

Flack wrote:Is there any part of this that can be farmed out? Not the writing I assume but perhaps some of the graphical work? You've got a lot of friends in here, Jonsey. You've got a lot of friends out there, Jonsey!

If one of the parts is drinking rye and fucking off, I got that covered.

Bruce

What you did to play the part of the Communist remains one of my all-time favorite things in game making.

Shit, what you did to play the part of Igor Cytserz remains one of the best things ever about making these things. I still get a kick out of that. Goddamn you're a good man, Bruce.

How have the dogs been, by the way?

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:How have the dogs been, by the way?

Well, I don't know if I mentioned it here, but Golem (Puzzle) died in 2013--but he was 12-3/4, so that's really old for a Swissy.

Ursa is about that old but doing much better than he was at that age, so she's probably got some life left in her.

Gremlin is about six now and marginally less neurotic than he used to be.

We've had Argus about two years now. He's brown brindled. He's part boxer. He's part something fast. He's super sweet.

And we unwisely are "fostering" Naga, a border collie rescue. It's kinda cute that she has a job, which is rounding up Ursa (who is almost completely deaf). She's ten months old and just came into heat and oh jesus.