I’ve been talking a lot about Why Am I Dead recently, mainly because I’m pretty sure 90% of my readership is now coming from people who played the game.  Of course, I’ve been doing other stuff this whole time, but before I move on to other things I want to comment on some of the most common comments/questions regarding WAID that I’ve gotten.

1. Are there alternate endings?

Yes and no.  When I was originally making the game I wanted to have at least two different endings.  However, I cut a lot of stuff out, so the original release only had one.  But after I saw this question repeatedly, I frantically whipped up an alternate ending somewhat similar to what I had been planning before.  So, yes, there are currently two endings to the game.

2. The end leaves so much unanswered!  Who’s the (spoiler)?  And what’s the (spoiler)’s (spoiler) all about?

This was partially because I rushed the ending.  But some things were intentionally left up to the player to figure out based on hints scattered through the game.  I’m not a fan of keeping people guessing for its own sake — generally everything that’s brought up has a canonical answer to it, and not some cheap “Ooh we’ll never know!”

3. Why doesn’t the ghost influence people more, especially at the end?

I had always imagined that the ghost merely pushed people in more subtle ways, rather than completely possess them.  In hindsight, I didn’t communicate this to the player well enough.

4. Why don’t you remember why you’re dead?

You have just been turned from a living, breathing grown man into a floating piece of cytoplasm.  You don’t have a brain anymore.  Memory loss, to me, seems kind of inevitable.

5. The game was/is glitchy as hell!

Yeah, it was/is.  Sorry about that.  I think I got most of the major bugs by this point.  However, some portals may be using older versions of my game.

6. It should have been longer, or there should be a longer version of this concept!

Good news!  I very much plan to make a sequel that will be a longer version of this concept.

I was planning on making an update earlier, but my laptop unfortunately broke and was out of commission for about a week.  I managed to survive this grueling experience but it slowed me down a bit.

It’s been a pretty long time since my last update, and while I really wish I could say that Why Am I Dead is 100% finished, I’m still holding onto it to beta-test and tie up loose ends.  Again, my goals for the project have shifted and become more ambitious: I only get to release this game once, and I’d like for it to be as finished and polished as possible.

I don’t think it would be space or time efficient to explain thoroughly everything I’ve done with WAID since the last update, so here’s a list:

• Wrote dialogue.  Lots of it.  There are 9 characters in the game that can be talked to, 8 of which can be possessed, and each character combination results in a different dialogue.  8 x 8 = 64, plus any additional dialogues which are unlocked in the progression of the story.  So far I’ve written about 90-95% of the base 64 dialogues, and about 70% of the additional story dialogue.
• Finished graphics of the game, which involved making a couple more characters and lots of various props/scenery.  A quick look at the completed cast (some of which were in the last demo):

• Overhauled how external assets were used; originally I loaded them ingame, but it’s far better for distribution to have them embedded into the .swf file.  This occasionally was a bit involved, since embedding can’t really be done procedurally; it’s all copy+paste.  In one instance I had to change how I used my tile sets to create maps.
• Created a pre-loader and main menu.
• Minor fixes with dialogue graphics, such as including word-wrap, making sure options don’t overlap, adding a name-box for the player, prompt to hit ‘E’ when text is done scrolling, etc.
•  Yet again, tune-ups with collision detection, trying to make things as smooth and precise as I can.
• Other miscellaneous stuff, like having NPCs turn to face you when you talk to them.

Now for something completely different.

When I started moving into the final stages of development, I allowed myself to begin considering ideas for my next project(s).  Then when my computer was being repaired and I couldn’t get any real work done on WAID, I took the opportunity to develop one of my ideas a bit more.  And despite what bad practice it was, I used my iPad to write some code for the framework of the game, even though I couldn’t compile it.  I’ve since compiled it and smoothed out any problems, and so I can say that I’ve begun working on my next project.

Since I’ve already got a lot in this update, I won’t talk too much about it.  It’s a turn-based strategy game going for a more strategically complicated Risk-style game.  Two major reasons I’ve decided to work on this next:

1. I spent a ton of time on Mandate, which has much, much more complicated strategy and simulation components.  It would be a nice change of pace to make a strategy game that has a very narrow and understandable game mechanic, but which can still add something new to the genre.

2. Perhaps more importantly, work on something like this is more about programming than it is about writing or art.  Not that I dislike the latter two at all, but again, the simplicity of it is refreshing; getting the game mechanics done is really going to be 80-90% of the work.  I won’t have to create a cast of characters or write their dialogues, I just have to implement things.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to.  The next post will hopefully include me linking to the final version of “Why Am I Dead”!

I’m finally close to wrapping up this game!  In the time since my last update on ‘Why Am I Dead’, I’ve mostly been working on creating art assets, polishing movement, adding objects that you can interact with (eg doors, beds), expanding dialogue mechanics (ie triggers that progress the game), and creating new maps.  The result is that aside from polishing concerns such as having a pre-loader and muting/unmuting music, I can now say that I am 100% done with the core mechanics of the game.  I am also about 90% done with all of the graphics/mapping of the game.

Now I can get to work on what I have been shamefully neglecting all this time: the game’s actual script.  Given that the entire game revolves around character dialogue, perhaps I’m not as close to finished as it would at first seem.  But it’s still a big step forward from my last update to say the least.

Below is another video of some of the gameplay, with dialogue I wrote just for demo purposes.  This’ll probably be the last demo video I put up before the game itself launches.

What I’m going to be doing next falls into three categories:

– Obfuscating the swf file and putting it online for Beta testers

– Obviously, writing the script and testing it out in-game

– Creating a basic pre-loader, finding music/sound effects and programming sound control in

So I’ve finally been able to sit down and work on Why Am I Dead, and I’ve gotten it to the point where I can say that I’ve pretty much finished programming it, and can now focus on writing the script and making the art.  There’s a bit of functionality left to code, but it’s very small and very straightforward.  Below is a quick demo of the core game mechanics using place-holder graphics:

I’ve made as much of the game mechanics as I can to be very generic, so actually filling in the content will be wonderfully straightforward.  For instance when I write the script or change the maps, I won’t have to modify any .as files at all, and I’ll be able to edit the content very quickly and see immediate results.  For map editing, I’m using the wonderful free program Tiled to generate the map, and then my game just reads through the resulting file and creates the map.  For script writing, I’m just typing directly in a text editor what I want the dialogues to consist of (plus a few keywords here and there), and the game parses through that and creates the dialogue in OOP form.

So the next part should be pretty fun!