Grandma June's Robot House [NaNo18] [Sci-Fi]

NaNoRenO is an event where creators make a game from scratch during the month of March.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
azaraih
Regular
Posts: 64
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 12:22 am
Projects: Alectrona: Space Party, Deadnettle Creek
Tumblr: azaraih
itch: azaraih
Location: USA
Contact:

Grandma June's Robot House [NaNo18] [Sci-Fi]

#1 Post by azaraih »

Hello everyone! I'm Azaraih, and I've been working on Ren'py games for fun for a while now but haven't finished anything completely, so I'm hoping NaNoReno will push me to actually finish something this month. I want to try to include some interesting gameplay, but keep it pretty simple. I decided to go with this idea because I love robots, and I wanted to do something fun with a cute and simple art style.

Synopsis
June is an old lady who has always loved robots and has collected many of them over the years to help her around the house. You play as the Artificial Intelligence in charge of running the household and wrangling the other robots. The game takes place one day when June tells you she's expecting a special guest and wants you to prepare everything so the evening will be perfect. But a lot can go wrong when you have to manage a whole house of robots with a wide range of ages, talents, and personalities.

Team
I'll be working on art/writing/programming, Somonastic will be helping with some things too, but I'm not sure yet how we'll divide things up. I haven't done much with music/sound so I'd probably find some free stuff to use.

I'll try to update when I make progress. Good luck to everyone working on their games!

User avatar
femslashfatale
Regular
Posts: 74
Joined: Thu Mar 03, 2016 2:40 am
Projects: Match Made in Heaven, Worlds Without You, Fight or Flirt!
Contact:

Re: Grandma June's Robot House [NaNo18] [Sci-Fi]

#2 Post by femslashfatale »

that's a super cute synopsis! robots are bomb

User avatar
Zelan
Lemma-Class Veteran
Posts: 2436
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2016 7:23 pm
Completed: The Dark
Projects: Cosplay Couple
Tumblr: evns
itch: Zelan
Discord: ltnkitsuragi#7082
Contact:

Re: Grandma June's Robot House [NaNo18] [Sci-Fi]

#3 Post by Zelan »

I'm with fem, this sounds adorable! I get the feeling this is gonna be really warm and fuzzy. c:

User avatar
Antizaba
Newbie
Posts: 21
Joined: Sat Dec 17, 2016 2:28 pm
Contact:

Re: Grandma June's Robot House [NaNo18] [Sci-Fi]

#4 Post by Antizaba »

This sounds super interesting, such a cute idea :)

User avatar
azaraih
Regular
Posts: 64
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 12:22 am
Projects: Alectrona: Space Party, Deadnettle Creek
Tumblr: azaraih
itch: azaraih
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: Grandma June's Robot House [NaNo18] [Sci-Fi]

#5 Post by azaraih »

Thanks so much everyone for your nice comments, I really appreciate the encouragement! I'm hoping to make something cute and positive, I don't think it will really have a "bad" ending, even if things go wrong.

So far my development has mostly been focused on brainstorming to get an idea of what the gameplay should be like. I decided on having 3 main tasks you have to complete to prepare for June's party (cooking, cleaning, and decorating). Each of the tasks will have some subtasks to do, and hopefully at least one mini game. I'm pretty excited for the cooking part, since it'll involve putting together some cute tea party foods. I built a little drag and drop cooking mini game for a practice game before, so I'm hoping to take that concept and expand it a bit for this game.

I also worked on some ideas for the robots that live in the house, since I want to have a lot of them. I thought it might be fun/helpful to include a menu with info about each of the robots, like their name, age, purpose, and features.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to work on some art concepts soon too!
Image Image

User avatar
Zelan
Lemma-Class Veteran
Posts: 2436
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2016 7:23 pm
Completed: The Dark
Projects: Cosplay Couple
Tumblr: evns
itch: Zelan
Discord: ltnkitsuragi#7082
Contact:

Re: Grandma June's Robot House [NaNo18] [Sci-Fi]

#6 Post by Zelan »

Oh, minigames sound fun! That's a great idea. And I think a menu with information about the robots would be awesome if you have time to implement it.

User avatar
M0ti
Regular
Posts: 66
Joined: Mon Aug 15, 2011 1:06 pm
Contact:

Re: Grandma June's Robot House [NaNo18] [Sci-Fi]

#7 Post by M0ti »

As I was reading the synopsis I was reminding of the Assimov's short stories. It would be awesome, if it had some of that vibe in it.

User avatar
azaraih
Regular
Posts: 64
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 12:22 am
Projects: Alectrona: Space Party, Deadnettle Creek
Tumblr: azaraih
itch: azaraih
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: Grandma June's Robot House [NaNo18] [Sci-Fi]

#8 Post by azaraih »

Zelan wrote: Sat Mar 03, 2018 2:06 pm Oh, minigames sound fun! That's a great idea. And I think a menu with information about the robots would be awesome if you have time to implement it.
Hopefully I'll have time! I put together a task list this weekend and I'm realizing how many things there are to do... I'll just try my best to get the important stuff done first, and my other teammate might be able to do a bit more since she has more time available.
M0ti wrote: Sun Mar 04, 2018 8:59 am As I was reading the synopsis I was reminding of the Assimov's short stories. It would be awesome, if it had some of that vibe in it.
I haven't read too much Asimov aside from I, Robot, but I probably should! That's a good idea, I think it would be interesting to include something like that.

Just a quick update on my progress from this weekend, I created the actual Ren'py game project and put together a basic version of the main screens I'll need (map, task list, and robot info). Since you play as an AI, you can't physically interact with anything, so you have cameras set up around the house where you can observe what's going on and talk to the other characters in that location. I sketched out all the camera views and finished the camera UI, but that's all I have done for art assets so far. So I still don't have anything cool enough to take screenshots of yet haha.

I also did a bit of writing on the intro and one of the first scenes, but it still needs some work since I'm still figuring out the characters' personalities. And I worked on the programming for the task list, so now I can easily add tasks and subtasks to your to do list, and update the status according to what's going on in the game. So that part is basically done, but the display looks ugly since I have no art for it yet. Maybe I'll focus more on art this week so the game is a little nicer to look at :)
Image Image

User avatar
azaraih
Regular
Posts: 64
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 12:22 am
Projects: Alectrona: Space Party, Deadnettle Creek
Tumblr: azaraih
itch: azaraih
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: Grandma June's Robot House [NaNo18] [Sci-Fi]

#9 Post by azaraih »

I was really busy with work this week so I didn't get to do as much as art as I wanted, but I did put together a good outline of all the scenes I need. I'm working on figuring out how to manage the events, since I want you to be able to choose what order to do certain tasks. So I'm trying to sort all the scenes into a timeline, with some stuff that can happen in any order and some things that are fixed. It's a little confusing to figure out, but I think in the end it'll be cool and make it feel more like you're actually managing all the things that need to get done.

This weekend I'll be out of town and won't have my laptop, so I'm going to focus on getting all the character designs figured out, and maybe draw some sprites so I can color them in photoshop when I get back home. There's 12 robot designs and 2 humans so we'll see how far I get!
Image Image

User avatar
azaraih
Regular
Posts: 64
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 12:22 am
Projects: Alectrona: Space Party, Deadnettle Creek
Tumblr: azaraih
itch: azaraih
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: Grandma June's Robot House [NaNo18] [Sci-Fi]

#10 Post by azaraih »

I've been doing a lot of work on the game today, mostly on planning out and the programming the cooking minigame. Somonastic did a great job on the food art for it, so here's a preview of some cute infused waters you can have the robots assemble:

Image

I'm hoping to get a lot done this weekend since I have an extra day off on Monday. Right now it feels like the writing is going to be the most difficult to get done, since I have a long list of scenes left to do, but I'll try to focus on it and see how far I can get.
Image Image

User avatar
azaraih
Regular
Posts: 64
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 12:22 am
Projects: Alectrona: Space Party, Deadnettle Creek
Tumblr: azaraih
itch: azaraih
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: Grandma June's Robot House [NaNo18] [Sci-Fi]

#11 Post by azaraih »

Here’s a few screenshots to show what the cooking game is like! You click and drag ingredients while the chef robot tells you what to do. The background in these is a color test version I did so it’s not quite final, and I’ll be updating the font and adding a robot sprite, but otherwise this is what it’ll look like.

Might not finish by the end of March, but we’ll see! If not, then I’ll keep working on it into April and get it done as soon as I can.

Image

Image
Image Image

User avatar
azaraih
Regular
Posts: 64
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 12:22 am
Projects: Alectrona: Space Party, Deadnettle Creek
Tumblr: azaraih
itch: azaraih
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: Grandma June's Robot House [NaNo18] [Sci-Fi]

#12 Post by azaraih »

Hi everyone! Unfortunately I wasn't able to finish the game or put together a demo by the end of the month. I'm still happy about my progress though since I was able to get a good amount done, considering I had a lot of stressful job stuff to deal with and not too much time to work on the game. I'm glad I was able to post about it on here too, since I normally just work on practice games and don't show them to anyone. So thank you to everyone who checked it out, and I'll keep working on it!
Image Image

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users