Indie-cade and Eye-candy

If you’ve been following this blog for a while (specifically a year), you may remember when I set a goal for myself to submit my game to Indiecade. Well, you see, though I may have implied that I was aiming for Indiecade 2013, I was actually planning on submitting to Indiecade 2014 the entire time! That is to say, in roughly the next week I’ll be submitting my game to Indiecade, right on time, just as planned.

Hmm. Yes. That’s what we’re going with.

It’s pretty exciting to send the game off for the first time to a real critical “audience” (if only of one or several people) – and it’s exciting that I feel the game is at a point where it’s really presentable and can speak for itself. Though aesthetics may or may not be critical for game competitions of this sort, I definitely took a lot of time recently implementing changes to the game’s visuals that I had been aching to for a while.

Let’s take a look, shall we? (NOTE: Below are some GIFs which wordpress resizes, and it kinda messes with the image. To see them in their proper resolution, simply click on them.)

1. Shadows!

Bonus included: The tiny "redesigns" that rooms go through over time — Bonus included: The tiny changes that rooms go through over time

Once upon a time, Why Am I Dead At Sea had no shadows. It existed in a world with purely ambient lighting; light was everywhere. It came from nothing and went nowhere, and therefore, no shadows! Someone pointed out to me that shadows were a relatively easy change that could make everything seem more grounded. It was obviously good advice, but at the time I wasn’t willing to go through every prop when I had a million other objectives, so I took a half-measure and added shadows to all of the characters.

Well now, all people and objects have shadows! And as expected, it didn’t take a huge amount of work, and definitely makes the game look better. Everything is less floaty and it’s much clearer where they’re positioned on the ground. It also just kind of breaks up the flat colors of the floors and adds some much needed detail.

2. Additional Backgrounds

I never thought I'd be making these graphics when beginning the project... — The middle one, the sunset, was finished a long while ago and seems to still be the best of the three.

As the content for the game continued to be made, there were points in the story where it is made clear that time is progressing, either from one day to the other or from morning to night – and yet when you go onto the ship’s outside deck, it was always the same time of day – sunset! That’s obviously because it was the only background I had made at that point. For some points in the game, though, it seemed really important that I get the alternate backgrounds which show different times up and running.

They help set the mood for the story in a big way, so once I got to a certain point it became a really high priority. But, that’s not all I did with regard to the outside-the-ship area!

3. Parallax Scrolling

I don't usually put GIFs directly onto the blog out of consideration for those with slow internets, but this just doesn't work in still image. — I don’t usually put GIFs directly onto the blog out of consideration for those with slow internets, but this just doesn’t work in still image.

If you’re not familiar with parallax scrolling, well, parallax is the effect of objects farther away not moving as much to us, thereby creating our perception of depth. Parallax scrolling is the simulation of parallax in media whereby different objects scroll at different speeds to signify depth.

After creating my lovely backgrounds for the outer deck, I brutally chopped them up and put them in separate images. I then created a special kind of Prop (ParallaxProp) that contains a set of images and has them scroll along with the game camera at different speeds. It was actually really simple to implement on the code-side; it probably took more time overall just cutting up the backgrounds and making sure the end visual result was what I was looking for.

Because the area is so relatively wide, if the scrolling is too extreme things don’t really match up or work out how I want them to. So, the scrolling difference is intentionally small, creating a subtle but still noticeable effect.

This one is particularly subtle, but the lowish FPS of the gif doesn't help. In game it's more apparent. — This one is particularly subtle, but the lowish FPS of the gif doesn’t help. In game it’s more apparent.

This was one of those features where it was “really cool if I could implement this, but I don’t know…” So, it feels really nice that I actually did end up getting it done! And it really didn’t take me a huge amount of time.

3. Water Animation

splashgif — I tried to keep Darryl inside the ship for this shot, but he directly disobeyed my orders!

I always knew that the boat’s lower outline and the ocean were going to need some kind of…change. A pure and unchanging blue rectangle didn’t quite cut it. What I have now is still imperfect in several ways, but at least communicates what is actually happening and isn’t as blindingly static.

Figuring out how I wanted to do this and implementing it were surprisingly tricky. For one thing, the water was originally a part of the map itself and I’d never made an animated object as large as this before, so there were a lot of possible ways I could implement the small waves in the water. I could animate them tile by tile, in which case it might make more sense to make it an extension of the map itself, or I could make one huge animated object, in which case I would probably make it a prop. The latter would most likely put much less strain on processing time, but would result in a really unwieldy and humongous bitmap. I ended up taking the middle-ground and made some 7-8 animated props, each of which was a small but wide “strip” of the full thing. The image files are small and simple, and there still isn’t a lot of labor that the game has to do to animate them.

I also had to decide how I could get animated water to agree with depth, since the part of the background above the horizon has objects (ie the sun and moon) that are far in the distance, while the animated water is completely flat. Most ways of trying to actually get the water animation to obey depth seemed either ugly or way too hard, so I compromised again and simply had the opacity of the waves fade as they get closer to the horizon. This was only possible because of the approach I took in cutting up the animation into small little strips, so it’s nice how the two issues fit together!

Actually this is not all of the visual changes I made, but they’re probably the most apparent ones, and they’re the ones I’m proudest of. None of the changes I have made are huge, as I’m not looking to give the game a full make-over, of course…but they add up to a much prettier game nonetheless. While there are still some things I really want to fix or renovate, the game is actually really close to how I expect it will look as a final product.

Now then…fingers crossed on the whole Indie-Cade business!

Stem to Stern #1: Narrative/Gameplay Structure

I had originally planned on opening up my series of more informative posts with a big post on AI, but since I’ve been mostly doing dialogue and cinematic writing, I’ve been inspired to make a post about the game’s overall structure instead.

Let’s start by describing the game in the simplest and most basic way possible. The gameplay involves me throwing a huge amount of writing and text at the player, and having them search for the important bits of information in there. Unlike other adventure/mystery games, there aren’t many puzzles or problems that if you can’t solve, you’re stuck. In WAID you always had access to everything you need. If you felt up to it, you could always brute-force through the challenges of the game by triggering every single dialogue and dialogue branch.

The challenge is to find the hints I’ve scattered in order to figure out which character interactions will get you on the right track. Of course, the non-vital dialogues are both an obstacle in that they obscure what you need, as well as a bonus in that they can flesh out the story and give further insight to the characters.

Let’s take a look at the structure of the previous “Why Am I Dead”. There is a wide body of what I refer to as ambient dialogue: the sum of dialogue which obscures the way forward. There are also smaller pieces of story dialogue which are actually needed to trigger the ending of the game. The way the game was structured, it could take you hours to finish it, or two minutes.

How does this structure look for a longer game, though? I would certainly like “Why Am I Dead At Sea” to last longer than that, whether “that” is two minutes or two hours. So how do we make that happen?

There were two challenges that I saw going into this project. Firstly, it seemed to me that a longer/larger game would run into the problem of overwhelming the player with far too much ambient dialogue far too quickly. As it was, the original WAID wasn’t extremely navigable and could bring the player down time-consuming dead-ends. Some people enjoyed this, but some did not!

And secondly, for a larger story I would want time to pass as the plot moves forward – that is, things would have to be a bit more sequential in order to make sure there was some plot. In the previous WAID nothing happens without player input except at the beginning and end, which was fine…but in this game that severely limits the kind of story I can tell!

So I decided I wanted to taper the beginning of the game, bringing the player into the ambient dialogue slowly. I also wanted to cut up certain parts of the game into self-contained ‘chapters’, in which there was only one entrance and one exit, so that some modicum of stage-setting could be done. The resulting structure for Why Am I Dead At Sea looks like this:

This is accomplished, admittedly with some awkwardness, by restraining who you can possess and where you can go at the beginning of the game. For the first two major parts of the game there is a substantial amount of optional dialogue accessible, but not so much that the player is drowning in it. Objectives are hopefully much more clear. As each new character becomes available to possess, however, the amount of ambient dialogue also increases.

This also allows for that oldest of design tropes seen so often in LoZ dungeons – if there’s a new character you just unlocked, you can be confident you will have to use them pretty soon. I wasn’t allowed to guide the player in this way before!

And just as importantly, having certain choke-points for the story allows me to do things such as have small periods of time pass, or move characters move around, and so on. This isn’t trivial. A weird thing about the last game was that, to preserve an interesting pace, characters had to spill their guts to each other very quickly, without knowing anything about each other! It was possible to suspend disbelief, but definitely felt off. This time around I want dialogue to feel more organic, which means at least the illusion of some time passing.

So that is, in a nutshell, the layout of the game.

The Grind

There’s been a grab bag of progress since the last update.

1. Character AI / Behavior

Perhaps the most substantial accomplishment has been what I can only hope is the final slaying of multiple bugs in character AI and behavior — getting characters to move around the ship on their own, handle transitions between areas elegantly, and react to obstacles (including the player). I definitely anticipated that this feature would cause me some trouble, but I have to say that this has been extraordinarily tedious to implement. It has become something I dread working on by this point and definitely sucks on my energy to work on the project.

And I’m sure there are still several bugs that will only show themselves after play-testing. Hooray!

One feature that I lump into “character AI” is something I haven’t shown yet: the ability to have characters follow you around, caterpillar-style! This will be used at a couple points in the game when the plot demands it.

As with last time, click on the image to see a GIF of this!

Getting the follower to work correctly was quite tricky. The normal pathfinding for characters moving on their own was too clunky and not responsive enough to follow the player around closely. So, I had to write a simpler sort of AI that beelines towards the point the player was in about 30 frames ago. However, this can be exploited by the player as well to get the follower stuck on obstacles, in which case the follower will walk in place for eternity.

Each approach had its faults, so I created a hybrid of these two behaviors. The follower now uses the simpler behavior until it finds itself stuck on an obstacle, at which point it shifts to the more complicated path-finding behavior in order to get around the obstacle. As soon as it reaches the player, it then shifts back to the simpler behavior. You can see this in action in the GIF when I get the follower stuck on a wall-corner, and she moves around it after about a half-second pause.

At some point I think I’d like to make a huge post about all of the small idiosyncrasies, bugs, hangups and annoyances of character behavior. It would be cathartic.

2. 100% More Kitty!

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this on my blog yet. There is in fact another possessable character, up until now never spoken of! Who could it be!?

Yes, you get to possess a cat. It may not be the most useful for getting other characters to open up about their dark and troubled histories, given that it can only say “meow” or “hiss”. But, it makes up for that by being the most agile and lithe of your potential hosts. Observe:

The cat has the ability to jump, a feat that no human in the game seems capable of (or at least interested in). And combined with its small size, this allows the cat to go through crawl spaces and open up new areas that you couldn’t access with your human hosts.

3. The Introduction

One of the final things standing in my way for a complete demo is a proper introduction that pushes the game off. This was something I could have pushed back; I could have released a demo without it. However, I’ve heard that feedback is a bit of a finite resource, and I’d really like my first ‘wave’ of feedback to include the introduction to the game.

In the previous “Why Am I Dead”, you are simply thrown into the game. Instructions are given as black text on the ground, and you are given a short conversation that explains the premise of the game. This time around, the introduction will still be short and sweet, but much more involved. This is partially because of a difference in premise — the last time around, you start hovering over your fresh corpse. Combined with the title, it really spoke for itself. In this game, things aren’t quite as simple, and it really warrants the extra effort to explain things.

A little peek at the introduction outlining the protagonist’s end.

This meant creating original art for the introduction and scripting things to get the timing just right. It’s been pretty easy to implement, but surprisingly time-consuming.

I know I’ve taken way longer to get to a closed demo than I had predicted, but I really am getting close now. I promise! For real this time!

Really Piling it on Here

Hello from Xi’an, China! Things have been a bit hectic; I’m just getting over jet-lag now, and I start teaching English classes tomorrow.

Lots of new stuff to adjust to. New country, new apartment, new school, new students (lots of them). It might be a while before I get comfortable with all of it! So, what better a time than now to make clear my goal to submit Why Am I Dead At Sea to IGF 2014?

The deadline is October 19, which gives me about a month and a half to get my current build to competition-readiness. That really isn’t much time at all! But more importantly, this gives me a solid deadline and a great reason to get back into full-time development. To be honest, even though I completely failed to reach my goal of submitting to Indiecade, that was by far the most productive time for me. I never really was able to match that pace afterwards. And now that I’m in China and teaching English and all that crazy and awesome stuff, it’s more important than ever that I have a clear goal that I’m working towards. It would be very easy to lose sight of development in the midst of everything else, and I am determined not to let that happen!

Most of the work left is writing and polishing. Prioritization is going to be key here — there are lots of side-features that I’d like to implement but which are by all means optional. If I want to even have a chance at submitting my game I’ll have to be much better at leaving that stuff to finish later.

So….here goes!

One More State-side Update

Sadly this past month hasn’t been as productive as I might have liked. The main culprit is probably the fact that tomorrow I’ll be flying to the other side of the planet, where I’ll be spending the next year. Aside from the time I’ve had to spend preparing for the trip, it’s a bit hard for me to focus on development with something like that looming over me! I guess you could say the move has stolen the game’s thunder for the time being.

For the next week or so I’m guessing I’ll be swamped with getting situated. After the initial craziness though, I’m hoping that I will actually be more productive overall with Why Am I Dead At Sea than I have been this summer. Though I’ll have less potential waking hours to contribute to the project, I think that my day job will keep me from burning out and will force me to value my development time more. When all of my day-to-day structure is self-imposed, it is so much harder to stay on task!

With all that said, there has still been a good deal of progress that I can share, so let’s get into that! Note: Every picture is linked to a GIF that shows the same thing but with animation. If you want to see the animation, just click on the picture!

1. Scenery Layering

One thing I did since my last blog update was rewrite a lot of my collision detection code, mainly because it was legacy code from the first “Why Am I Dead” that was needlessly complicated and honestly just done very badly. To make my life easier in adding other stuff to the game, I decided to just bite the bullet and tear it all out.

One thing that I then proceeded to do with the help of an improved collision detection system was to include support for layered props. Previously, only characters could be layered to give an illusion of depth, while props were completely static and could not be moved in front of or behind, but simply around. Now, they operate in the same way:

So that’s neat.

2. ‘Spectral’ Effects and Unlocks

I’ve known that I wanted to have a different visual style in the game for the ghostly/supernatural things that happen in the game — something that seems to be separate from the pixel art of the rest of the game. After flirting with particle effects, I decided on a…motif of sorts, involving relatively simple vector art combined with lots of different animation effects.

The screenshot below, actually, is a pretty bad example of that, but it also demonstrates one of the big applications that this motif will be seen in.

This is still really rough, but gets the idea across. So…what are we looking at here?

Currently the ghost is using an ability to sense what things it can interact with. As you might guess, green means that it can, and red that it can’t.

In most cases, both characters and new areas must be unlocked before the ghost can successfully enter them. In the case of possessing characters, you generally have to be able to understand the motives of that character before you can steer them. And in the case of different areas, you need to have explored the place behind a door before you can ghost-magic your way through it. This means that you have to possess someone who has access to that area before you have the ability to visit it as a ghost.

This may strike some as rather un-ghostly; generally ghosts can pass through anything, without question! However, you will very quickly be able to unlock most areas and will spend the majority of the game floating through everything. This is simply a way to give some more structure to the early parts of the games, and allow for a few surprises.

3. Mind-reading

You have yet another ability in your ghostly arsenal: mind-reading! This can be done on anyone at any time, and satisfies two functions:

– Additional, optional background and development for those who are interested in seeking it out

– Hints and cues for those who are stuck

It’s as simple as going next to a character while in ghost form and hitting a button. You will then be brought to a screen that generally has an animated pattern in the style that I outlined before. On top of that, the thoughts of the character fade in and out.

Each character will obviously have different text that corresponds to what’s going on in their heads at that time in the story (and it will change over the course of the game). But more importantly, each character’s mind-reading-screen will have radically different animations and visual effects that correspond to their personality and emotional state.

Given how eccentric some of the characters are, I’m going to have a lot of fun with it.

Well, that’s it for now. The next update that I make will be from the city of Xi’an!

Anchors Aweigh

Quite a bit to cover this time.

New title. I’ve decided to change the name of “Why Am I Dead 2” to “Why Am I Dead At Sea”. It’s not a huge change, but a lot of thought was put into it. I came to this decision primarily because this project really isn’t a direct sequel in many ways, and I wanted the title to reflect this. In addition my hope is that this game will be able to reach a much wider audience than its predecessor did, and I don’t want anyone to think they will need to play another game to understand it. It really is a project that I hope will stand on its own…so tacking on a number at the end didn’t seem to fit!

Though I feel it’s a bit on the wordy side, I went through innumerable potential titles and could find nothing else that more accurately described the spirit of this project than “Why Am I Dead At Sea”.

Beta testing. Though development time has exceeded even my wider estimates, I can happily say that I will soon be ready for closed beta testing / play-testing.

Given that the weakest area of my last project was the amount of bugs it had on launch, this is something I’m taking very seriously. The last time, the only play-testing that my game had was from fellow developers on FGL.com, a website for other free browser-based games. This was a big mistake! While I’m eternally grateful to everyone there who helped me out, I should have really used it in conjunction with other sources, as I didn’t get enough feedback on the game to smooth everything out.

For instance, the reason there were game-breaking bugs at the end of the game is very simple: out of all the people who played my game before it was released, I think only one person who gave me feedback actually reached the end! And then when the game was launched and I was scrambling to push out new fixed versions, I didn’t have anyone but myself test those, either…so they sometimes ended up creating new bugs. It was a mess!

This time I’m going to be much more proactive in getting feedback, gathering a wider pool of testers, and putting the game through play-testing longer. My plan is currently to find volunteers who would be interested in the type of game I’m making, and offering incentives for their help (obviously a place in the credits being one of them, but ideally other things as well).

Marketing. Around the same time that I start beta-testing, I will have enough assets to feel comfortable in making a serious effort to publicize my game. This will mean a teaser trailer, a website launch, a Greenlight page, and loads of other stuff.

My plan for publicizing the game is a two-parter, since I feel the game is in a bit of a grey area. It has a lot of elements that I think would appeal to a smaller, but more dedicated audience — which means that the sooner I start talking about my game, the more likely I am to reach that audience. But my game will also be very cheap and on the smaller side — which says to me that most people will only give it their attention once, and if it isn’t available then, they won’t pursue it later.

So my compromise is to release everything I can to publicize the game as early as I feel comfortable, with the sole exception of a free demo, which I will reserve for the day that the completed game launches.

There’s still a lot of work to be done, but I’m definitely reaching an exciting stage now where the game is taking shape. Hopefully by my next post I’ll be able to show a teaser and the game’s dedicated website.

Menus and Screenshots for WAID2

Happy Fourth of July for any state-side readers!

Progress on Why Am I Dead II could be fairly characterized as slow but steady. After giving up the ghost (ha) on the Indiecade deadline, I have to find something else to latch onto so that I can push myself harder.

But that’s not to say that I’ve slacked off! I decided to take a break from art and return to programming. Much like how pulling a thread can unravel an entire garment, a small change to how I displayed things on screen turned into a pretty thorough upheaval of the whole game engine. It was a long time coming, since a lot of the original code was 1) written a year ago and 2) written with a much smaller project in mind.

The benefit of all that work is invisible, but present. The code is just overall a lot better and less stupid. It’s still pretty stupid in some places, but a lot less so. And that’s always good.

I then returned to the initial reason I made the change that started all of that, which was menus! I wanted overlapping flexible menus, and now I have them. This will be used for the starting menu and the pause menu, and will be responsible for loading your game and changing your game options.

A rough version of the screen housing your Save files.

The biggest challenge for this was mostly getting the controls to work for both the mouse and keyboard smoothly and intuitively.

I was then able to return to working on the game art feeling a bit refreshed. I’ve now expanded the scenery assets to a point where I’d rather not even list them, as it’d take up too much space! I’ve also filled in the majority of the game maps, to the point where the end is in sight. You can probably infer this, but there is a lot more space, and a lot more scenery, and a lot more everything in this game than the last. A big reason this is taking longer than I estimated is what I guess could be called art creep, wherein I compulsively add this or that art asset on the fly to fill things in more.

So, for the first time, I’d like to share completed mockups of the game in action. But as tradition goes, let’s start by revisiting screenshots of the original game:

And now the new — keeping in mind of course that this is a tiny fraction of the completed environment/scenery from the game!

The Gang’s All Here

Here’s the art post that I had promised. I’m overdue, which means that this is going to be relatively long, and I’m going to indulge myself and ramble a bit!

I am right on the brink of finishing my character art, which is a huge milestone. The character art, while taking up a small amount of visual space in the game, is the focal point (it’s where you’ll always be looking) — and it is where I have allotted the most amount of development time out of all the visuals. And I think it really shows, and is a substantial improvement from my previous work.

To get a good idea of that, let’s first bring out the mugshots of the cast from the original “Why Am I Dead”:

Brings back memories! At the time, I was pretty happy with this work as a total beginner to pixel art. And now the full cast for “Why Am I Dead 2”, in all its glory:

Okay, well, with just a quick glance they do seem rather similar. After all, I haven’t changed the basic style or resolution of the sprites. HOWEVER! I think that even without taking the (much smoother) animations into account, the extra time that I’ve put into these new sprites can be seen when looked at closer. There is less wasted space in the new sprites, and far less jagged outlines and edges. Everything about the new characters is more varied — the posture, the frames, the hair, even the structures of their heads. I’ve also become more sparing of outlines, which helps me free up space, and ultimately add more details.

To give an idea of the progression I, as well as these characters went through, I’ve dug up the older versions of some of the sprites and put them side by side.

First up is Alton, the blonde guy. As the first character I worked on, he went through the wildest progression.

version 1 : OH GOD MY EYES! Everything about this was terrible, though admittedly it was just to get the idea down. The hair is too noisy, the arms are nonsensical and hunched over, and the legs are short and stubby.

version 2: Thankfully I changed the arms and legs to look, well, human. I also simplified the hair, and added color. His headphones still looked nothing like headphones, as I was struggling with how to depict them. I was trying, and failing, to draw them as if they were poking straight out at the viewer.

version 3: Subtle changes here. I tried another kind of headphones, and it also was not working. I also changed the logo on his shirt from one meaningless shape to another meaningless shape.

version 4: I simplified. A lot. Took the t-shirt logo out, and used the new space to draw the headphones as if they were lying flat on his chest. Toned down the shading on his hair, took out the shading on his pants, and changed the shape of his feet so they weren’t webbed-looking.

version 1: Hadn’t decided on colors yet, and was struggling with all of the information I was trying to get in. Rolled up sleeves, collar, undershirt, skirt design — the heavy outlines just looked really busy.

version 2: I changed how the sleeves looked, and added color in a way to make things less busy. Some details kept their hard outlines, while others lost them.

version 3: Changed the color and shape of her hair, which was cone-like and weird before. Removed some more outlines, and went back to white shoes.

version 1: Yuck! I was trying to experiment with different face-types, and knew that I wanted to give him a distinctive nose. I wasn’t able to use my limited space to do both without making him freakishly huge.

version 2: Downsized his head, arms, and legs. Also played with the shirt and sleeves to change his posture and make him look less macho and stiff.

version 1: I had NO idea what I was doing with this guy at first, and was just throwing stuff at the wall. His hair, face, and clothes are all a mess, and I did this stupid thing where I outline a black shape with a different black.

version 2: Simplified a whole lot. The hair, arms, and legs all got smaller, and I alternated colors a bit so I didn’t have black on black with everything. At the same time, I felt I strayed a little too much from my original concept and lost the effect I was trying to get with him.

version 3: A good compromise, I think. Added detail rather than removed it, for a change! The posture is more what I had in mind originally without looking stiff, and the different pieces of clothing are actually distinguishable from each other.

Once all of the art is done, I’ll be a hop skip and a jump away from a fully presentable demo. The hope is to get there by the end of this month. Time to break out the coffee!

The afterlife gets a facelift!

Today I’d like to show the art behind one of the characters in Why Am I Dead 2, and use it as a bit of an example for what can be expected in the sequel’s art.

Meet one of ten major characters in the game, Alton.

As you can see, I’m sticking with the Earthbound-esque style of the previous game, which means bright colors, strong outlines, and simple shapes. However, I will be putting much more attention to detail in each sprite, making presentation better all around. This particular sprite above is the result of many iterations, and a lot of time spent learning more about pixel art. I’m generally not so concerned about visuals, but I really want to cram as much personality into each sprite, since the game is so character-centric.

But the part I take most pride in is the considerable improvements that all animations will have. In the first game, every walk animation had four frames, but with the huge caveat that two of them were just the regular idle frame. Doing that saved a lot of time, but it’s poor form and looks really shoddy. To demonstrate, let’s revisit the character Cricket from the first Why Am I Dead.

These animations served their purpose at the time, but would be a huge limitation going forward. You can probably notice that the legs come together and apart in an unrealistic way, which is the cost of recycling frames — and overall it’s a bit choppy. All of the new animations, however, will use six frames rather than four, and all of them will be unique, and they will have full-body animations, not just moving hands and feet.

(There will also be some bonus animations that I shall not be posting yet, but which will be in game!)

The one thing that the previous game did have going for it was that all of the animations were done ground-up for each character; I never used character templates to speed things up, which means that every character had a different walk, as choppy as it was. Quite a few people pointed this out, as it gave each character a different feel, and brought out their personality more — some ran, some hobbled, some sauntered. Well, that is a practice that I fully plan to continue for the sequel, as time-consuming as it is. So, expect to see more characters in the future, each with their own strut!

An Update List on Why Am I Dead 2

I was hoping to have an update sooner than this, but programming goes at its own pace and no one else’s. This should be the first, and last, major WAID2 update that lacks any visual or audible component, as I’m wrapping up the nuts-and-bolts development and moving into art and writing.

I’ve been on the fence regarding how early I actually start uploading material from the game. I’ve decided recently that I’d rather hold off until I’ve moved past art/writing/assets that are “work in progress” (or worse, place-holders!) before I do so — any benefits of a greater sense of progress for me are outbalanced by the risk of making a poor first impression.

So, sadly, you’ll just have to take my word that all of the following have been done:

Completely rebuilt how dialogue is handled, which means…
- Writing dialogue is way easier for me to write, and for others to read (hopefully)
- Looping dialogue; before, all dialogue options inevitably led to an end. Now some options can loop back around to previous parts of the conversation; convenient for menus or for revisiting information.
- In-dialogue variables (eg. <player> tag in script will be replaced with whichever character the player is controlling)
Save / Load Function! This would have been useful in the first game, but is a necessity for the second!
Game “props” (such as doors, tables, beds, etc) have some extra attributes…
- They can initiate dialogue when you try to talk to them, as sort of an “examine” function
- They store information about which character can “use” them. For example, some doors will be locked for certain characters, and open for other characters (who presumably have a key).
- Some props will have different dialogue results for different characters. One character might be bored by an object, and one might find it of great personal significance.
New possession ability mentioned earlier: some characters can be “fully possessed”, which allows you to talk as the Ghost through their body, opening up different sets of dialogues and effects!
Completely rebuilt how collision detection is handled, which allows for both smoother and more efficient movement.
Finished character AI, adding safeguards that should drastically reduce unwanted emergent behavior.

I think that’s all the major stuff, though there were some minor background changes that are much more boring. Sorry this update is so colorless, but I wanted to get it out anyway.