The Censor [Dystopian/SF] [Nano 2013] - Demo completed

[saguaro]

Update: Demo link at the new WIP thread.

I decided I need to stay on top of this with a devlog thread. Making a game in two or three days is easy because everyone expects it to be crap anyway. Thirty days is just long enough to expect a solid product, and just short enough not to be able to get there.

Currently working on the narrative. The main character is an information censor for the government. My original idea was that you would be able to censor letters and alter game events accordingly, but I'm not sure how or if that will be worked in.

I think I can bullshit everything but the story. I want to get that part right.

Basically, if you don't throw up in your mouth I did it wrong.

[SundownKid]

This is basically the same idea as The Republia Times, so you might be able to get some ideas from there, if you didn't play that already.

[saguaro]

Thanks for mentioning that one, I'm going to check it out. I was interested in Pope's Papers, Please development and I think I saw Republica Times on his website and forgot about it because the aesthetic seems familiar.

I was going to focus more on the player impacting personal lives rather than major events, because this censor's job is to monitor general personal communications either censor it (minor infraction) or report it (major infraction), but based on how Republica feels I might move in another direction.

[SundownKid]

Republia Times is about a news editor who has to empasize "propaganda" stories and downplay bad ones, so it's at a really macro scale, but you could definitely go the other direction and make it about monitoring messages or communications. You should still play the whole game though, it seems right up your alley.

[saguaro]

Hit 4k words today and switched over to Twine. So far, the story really has NOTHING to do with censorship, so yup.

censor_nods.png (9.85 KiB) Viewed 3092 times

[CheeryMoya]

Whoa, those Twine nodes are organized o: Mine always end up being a lumpy ugly mass but it's not like anyone sees them besides me >_> I assume you're gonna convert that into Ren'Py using your .tws -> .rpy converter?

Can you tell us more about the story so far? I'll be keeping tabs on this.

[saguaro]

Hey Moya, thanks for keeping track of me.

I'll try to talk more about the story when it gets closer to the final version, but in the draft version, the MC is a censor at the information bureau. A graffiti artist begins leaving messages on walls around the sector, and due to the nature of the messages it is clear there is an information leak. The censors are tasked with combing through the sector communications to find the source of the leak. This mystery starts the story but it's not the focal point.

One aspect I'm trying to work out is how the MC can have censorship work that isn't monotonous to the player. I'm already interested in letting the player skip whatever they want to skip (unlocking all endings and scenes after the game is beaten once, or maybe even having everything "unlocked" automatically), so the censor aspect will definitely need to be something the player can skip with little consequence, but will give them more information about the world and characters if they choose to pursue it.

[saguaro]

I knew this would happen. I decided to set up some of the screens, to make sure I could actually have the narration flow the way I want, and now I'm fiddling around with ypadding and styling instead of, y'know, writing the story.

The galaxy background pans, so there's always motion. Hopefully it's not distracting.

[saguaro]

Interspersing writing with working on the actual censorship, uh, gameplay. Yes.

The working idea is you can dig around in people's BUSINESS and choose to either censor parts or reportthe whole message. When messages are reported the sender is flagged as a potential problem and falls under government scrutiny. So your actions have an impact on individuals, but it's not necessarily one the player immediately sees.

Also, developing metaphors about chocolate that I don't completely understand. This is standard operating procedure, I'm sorry to say.

[CheeryMoya]

Ahhhhhh I missed so much during the week OTL This is NaNo we're talking about though, so I guess that would happen.

The galaxy background pans, so there's always motion. Hopefully it's not distracting.

It would depend on how fast the background is moving. Static would be boring, but if it's too fast then it'll distract from the text.

The working idea is you can dig around in people's BUSINESS and choose to either censor parts or report the whole message. When messages are reported the sender is flagged as a potential problem and falls under government scrutiny. So your actions have an impact on individuals, but it's not necessarily one the player immediately sees.

Dang, I can't even imagine how many variables are gonna be involved D: Do the reported persons ever pop up again or are they one time appearances, not really too important to the overall story?

metaphors about chocolate that I don't completely understand.

Don't worry, somehow I turned a discussion about pancakes vs. waffles into a metaphor about sexuality. You'll be fine.

[saguaro]

It would depend on how fast the background is moving. Static would be boring, but if it's too fast then it'll distract from the text.

It's as slow as possible without looking crappy due to stutter.

Dang, I can't even imagine how many variables are gonna be involved D: Do the reported persons ever pop up again or are they one time appearances, not really too important to the overall story?

Yeah, the variable situation is not too great. I'm leaning towards this being supplemental information, but I have an idea for at least one encounter that results from manipulating other people's information.

[saguaro]

I had this idea that I would treat this like a devblog and post everything I'm doing but no, not gonna happen. I'm doing a lot of ATL stuff and screen fakery, none of which makes a decent screenshot.

The story is coming together. I think this node map will be pretty close to the final framework, a lot of what I'm doing now is improving on ideas (e.g. staring at the wall, listening to Led Zeppelin, etc. etc.).

I think I should at least make a pretense of showing assets, so here's some chair. And some bed. Everything will be in a simple style that (I hope) will let me mess around more with ATL.

Maybe one of the dumber things I did with Locked-In was create assets exactly the size I needed for 800x600. Now I appreciate that designing assets much larger than you need is the way to go.

[Auro-Cyanide]

Oh, I do like me a dystopian story ^o^ This is a really interesting concept and I like the visuals of the GUI so far. Looks like it will be quite an interesting play, good luck with finishing it.

[saguaro]

Thanks, Auro. It's starting to come together, but it might take a little more than a month after all.

LSFriends, I tell you what, I have been spinning my wheels on this thing.

I spent a lot of last weekend working on assets. I had this idea for a more cinematic approach, so I made these 3000x1080-ish sized rooms, and set up a bunch of traditional 'shots' (pan, close-up, etc.). The bad news is I didn't feel confident about the look at all, and it didn't feel like me, so I trashed everything, including god-only-knows how much code. I learned a lot about ATL though so I don't really consider it a loss.

The good news is I came up with better visuals after that. Since I haven't shared many assets up until now, here are the stages from initial mockup to final-ish design. The sprite is rough but the background should be pretty close.

The panels are animated (they float and the contents change, depending on where you are) and the sprite is also animated. The characters wear 'digits', which are inspired by Philip K Dick's "scramble suits", that disguise their identities. I will probably redo the GUI I showed before. Not a lot, but enough to make it mesh with the new look.

I have some ideas for "living" rooms, where the screen always scrolls to the new place instead of fadeout/fadein. Not sure if that will get implemented though.

[CheeryMoya]

I feel you on the ATL, I eventually decided to scrap most of it since it was gratuitous and the BG folder took up a lot more than it should have. I really like the look of these new visuals though, they're pretty sweet O: Keep at it!