A Postmortem for Of Pieces and Memories

When Game Developer Magazine (GDM) was still around, I used to love reading the postmortems that they published for different games by their developers.  So with Of Pieces and Memories (the game I’ve been calling Memories here on this blog) finished and available to play on itch.io, I wanted to write one as well, to think back on what went right and what went wrong during the game’s development.

What Went Right:

1. The size of the game.  I started Of Pieces and Memories at a time when I was getting overwhelmed with making Tears of the King.  That game is so much bigger than I imagined it would be, and was taking so much more time to make than I ever would have expected (it’s still not done).  Knowing it is important to actually finish projects, I decided to make a game that takes place in a much more limited space: a mansion.  While this game itself took far longer to finish than I expected (I started it in March 2017), its small scale meant the maps were built very quickly (and for the most part have remained the same).  It has also made playtesting the game far easier because all the locations you have to go to are relatively close together.
2. The scale of the story.  The story isn’t big either.  I liked the idea of giving Memories a fairy-tale like feel.  While I don’t know if I succeeded with that, that idea helped me keep the story more tightly focussed.  It also made it much easier to write and edit the dialogue (which I appreciated because, as far as I know, you can’t easily pull the dialogue out of RPG Maker VX Ace and put it into a word processor, or put it back into the game without resorting to copying and pasting every individual bit).  This also made it easier to playtest the dialogue than it otherwise could have been, as game dialogue can very easily balloon to large sizes (for example, I wrote over 50,000 words while working on Black Chicken Studios‘ unreleased game Bell Book and Candle, Attorneys at Law, which doesn’t count the romance scenes I had to go back and rewrite because I was assigned one of the romances that could go to either the female or male player character; this was only one of six romances that were being written for that game.  There were also minor cases being developed as well).
3. Not adding combat.  When I think of RPG games, I generally think of games like Secret of Mana, or even Pokemon, which involves travelling around and levelling characters up through fights.  But I didn’t really want that out of Memories; combat always felt so out of place for this story.  Thanks to playing through Oneshot (a game I highly recommend), I realized I could stay true to my vision for Memories and keep it combat free.  This decision also helped me finish the game sooner than I otherwise would have, as balancing combat within a game is definitely not one of my strong points.
4. Adding different dialogue choices.  When I first had the ideas for the game, I thought it would be really neat to have new dialogue choices open up for the player as you unlock new memories and emotions.  I abandoned that idea as I did the initial development of the game, thinking it would be really hard to implement.  But after I finally figured out an ending to the game, I was worried that Memories was going to be too boring to play, and so decided to put those dialogue choices in.  I’m really glad I decided to do this; it makes the game more interesting to play though (my playtesting friend, Darryl, even said he “liked that you kept getting more emotional ways to respond to people as you went on,” so I’m very glad I added this in). 🙂
5. Sticking with RPG Maker VX Ace.  RPG Maker has a newer version (MV) available.  I’ve been tempted to get it because it has some great features (like the ability to release your games to mobile devices).  But having purchased VX Ace, I really wanted to finish something with it before I even entertained the idea of upgrading.  While I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, I’m really glad I stayed with VX Ace because upgrading would have meant a large learning curve for the new program.  That would have delayed me finishing Memories all the more.  And having stayed with VX Ace means I’m getting much more comfortable with it, which in my mind is a big plus.  It’s getting easier to implement things, and I’m able to implement more complicated things than I originally thought I’d be able to without scripts.

What Went Wrong:

1. Lack of story planning.  This was, hands down, the biggest problem in developing Memories.  Pretty much all of the major issues I had came back to not sitting down and figuring out the story (and have proven to me that I am very much a planner, not a pantser!)  I had a vague idea of a story and just sort of went with it, not even stopping to put thought into the people inhabiting this world.  And so, once the house was finished and my vague story implemented, I had no idea what anything was leading to.  I was further trapped because I liked what I had made so far (and a lot of time had gone into making things like the individual memories with the tinting screens) and I didn’t want to get rid of any of that.  So how do you make a half-baked story with cool game mechanics work?  It took me years (and a lot of space from the game itself) to finally find an answer to that question.
2. Character issues. I remember, after deciding that Memories was going to take place in a giant house, thinking that the house would need staff.  So I researched what kinds of staff a large house might have (I don’t honestly know if I would have even thought this far if not for watching Downton Abbey with friends).  I narrowed that staff down to a number I felt I could work with, lumped them together into families, and, for the most part, done!  I put no real thought into what most of these people were like (not even the main character, Briana) until I had the game built and needed to differentiate their voices.  Briana at least was easy because, as the main character, I got to know her just through the process of making the game.  Same with Godric, the wizard, and Bella, Briana’s twin sister.  But I had big issues with some of the other characters, like Wulfric, the huntsman, who I needed in the game, but had no idea what he was like.  I also spent time developing the character of Alexis, who ended up cut from the game literally a few days afterwards because I realized she wasn’t actually needed at all.  I hope, in the end, that I did an alright job with the characters.  But there was a lot of time wasted because I didn’t put more thought into them earlier in development.
3. The ending.  Yes, this ultimately stems from failing to plan the story, but it deserves its own point because this single-handedly held up the game for years.  My problem with finding a satisfactory ending  stemmed from Godric the wizard, and Bella, Briana’s twin sister.  When I first started making Memories, I made Godric the evil wizard who was taking hearts because he’s evil (again, my inspiration was from fairy tales).  But then I started to wonder why exactly he was taking those hearts.  I read Naomi Novik’s Uprooted around that time, which also led me to question Godric’s motives: was he really just evil, plain and simple?  Or could there be more going on with him (and if so, what?)  I also struggled because Bella gave her heart to Godric.  Does saving her negate that choice?  I struggled with these issues for a very long time; it wasn’t until I finally came up with an ending that I felt worked for all of these characters that I was finally able to finish the game.
4. The title.  I’m not very good at naming things.  So it’s not surprising that I struggled while trying to come up with one for this game.  It also didn’t help that I’ve been calling it Memories forever, so it’s hard to think of it as anything else (note to self – don’t use working titles because you get too attached to them!)  I didn’t think that just Memories was a good name for it though (and when I did a bit of research into coming up with titles, people discouraged a one word title because it’ll get lost in definitions for that word when people search online for it).  I’ve been agonizing over this for months now (I started actually thinking about this when I finally came up with the ending).  All things considered, I managed to decide on one fairly quickly (and I hope Of Pieces and Memories is a fitting title for the game), but this was still super tough for me.

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#WriteTuesday – Memories Feedback Acquired!

My friend playtested Memories over the weekend!  Overall he liked it (he called it a “nice, heartful story”). 🙂  He found a few mechanical things I needed to fix, like how locked doors would open, display the text “the door is locked” then close (he helped me fix that!) and how the ending was a bit weird because after the credits it said “Game Over;” together we figured out that you could send the game back to the Title instead of using the Game Over command, so I’ve implemented that instead.

He also said he really liked how you get more and more dialogue options with NPCs as you unlock more emotions, so I’m super glad I got some of that implemented before he playtested!

So since then, I’ve been working on implementing more of those dialogue choices.  I think I’ve got pretty much everything in place now (there are still a few places where there isn’t a dialogue choice, but I don’t really think they’re needed).

Over the weekend I also noticed a problem with my naming scheme for all the characters.  Here are their names again:

When I designed this, I tried to have people who were related to each other have names with the same starting letter.  I thought I did a good job of this, but I just noticed that the wizard name (Edric) starts with an E, just like my mother daughter combo of Eireen and Ena! 😦  Unfortunately, these names are kind of ingrained in my head now; I took a look last night and couldn’t find anything else that worked for any of them.  So in the end I decided to leave them as is.  Whoops!

So now that the dialogue choices are all in place, I need to actually go back and make sure the dialogue works for each character (and that each character actually has their own voice).  Once that’s done, I think Memories just needs a better name then it’s pretty much finished! 😲

So how’s your week been?  🙂

#WriteTuesday – Beginning Edits on Memories

Seriously, this book is fantastic! I really recommend it. 🙂

Over the weekend I finally read the book Writing Subtext: What Lies Beneath by Dr. Linda Seger.  I’ve had the book for years but never got around to reading it (lol, such is the story of my life).  But now seemed like a great time to read it – I was hoping it might help me improve the dialogue within Memories.  Writing Subtext ended up a really great read – even as I was reading it I had all kinds of ideas for what I could do.  Unfortunately now comes the hard part: actually implementing all of those changes into the game.  I’ll hopefully be going over all the dialogue during the next bit to clean things up and start layering in some subtext to the story. 🙂

On top of that, I decided I’m going to implement something I considered a few years ago when I first started working on Memories: I’m going to add some branching dialogue options as you unlock more memories (and the corresponding emotions).  So once you’ve unlocked the second emotion, you’ll now have two dialogue options with NPCs, rather than just the one I originally came up with.  I started implementing this yesterday and got quite a bit changed already.  So I uploaded the new game files for my playtesting friend.  I haven’t heard back from him yet, so this is perfect; hopefully he hasn’t started playtesting yet and will be able to try the newer version instead!

So how’s your week been?  🙂

#WriteTuesday – Memories Has an Ending!!!!

Hey everyone, how are you holding up amidst this pandemic?  I haven’t been feeling well over the week and so have been staying home.  I started reading through some old magazines I’ve had sitting around for awhile (more about that on Thursday!) And then I started thinking a little more about Memories.

I started with a bit of brainstorming for the ending on Wednesday.  The ending has always been the #1 problem for Memories – how should the game end???  At one point I actually had the avatar character and antagonist saying “What now?”  “I don’t know.”  Lol, not exactly a good place to end up.  Plus the final memory was just kind of there and didn’t really add anything to the story.

My first order of business was to tackle that last memory.  I figured if I could make it a little more meaningful, that would help with the ending.  So I started working on the game on Saturday afternoon.  By the early evening, the final memory was cleaned up and functioning.

So that left the ending.  I kept working with the dialogue a bit (I also had to laugh – some of the stuff I brainstormed earlier in the week were already implemented into the game when I last worked on it – I guess they were really good ideas!).  For a lot of this I had kind of a vague idea of where to take things.  Then by about 10pm I had it: an actual workable idea for an ending implemented into the game! 🙂

From there it took me about two hours to get everything working.  I thought everything was okay until I ran through the game and the ending seemed to just freeze with nothing happening.  I tried everything to get the new end stuff to trigger.  Just when I was about to give up for the night, I realized what was wrong: I had the new events set to “Action Button” (meaning the player had to walk up to them and click on them to activate them) instead of them playing automatically with “Autorun.” Once I switched them to autorun, everything started working properly (which let me run through it a few times to make sure everything actually was running as I intended).  From there, I built a short movie for the end credits, and Memories was ready for playtesting!

A friend of mine (who also likes to make games with RPG Maker) agreed to test it on Sunday.  So now I’m waiting on his feedback before doing anything more (…although in the meantime I may go back over the dialogue to make sure all the characters sound right…)

#WriteTuesday – Edits 2.0 Complete!

I am so excited – on Thursday I finished the edits for the Make Your Way story!!!! I sat down that afternoon and got through the first few sections. I had plans to hang out with my brother, so I wasn’t expecting to get much more done that afternoon, but our plans got delayed a bit so I kept working. I managed to get through all 15 sections just before going to his place, but I wasn’t happy with the last two (sections 70 and 71). So after I got home (and made really yummy Creamy Zucchini and Carrot soup), I sat back down and changed them up quite a bit until I was satisfied with them. And now it’s done!!!

I immediately messaged a friend to see if he was interested in giving it a read through. Ideally I’m hoping to get it to a few friends so I can get some fresh eyes looking at it. Depending on how that goes, I’ll give it another pass or two (I need to look at dialogue to make sure the characters sound different, and of course one last read-through to make sure everything looks good) then hopefully submit it before the end of the month! 🙂

So here’s the new flowchart for what the story now looks like:

You can see that it’s very similar to the old flowchart (just two extra sections added).

With the edits done Thursday (much sooner than I’d expected), I wasn’t really sure what to do next (besides giving myself a bit of space from the story before tackling the dialogue). That night I ended up finishing cleaning up this blog’s categories (I think I started doing that in April, then just put it off since). I’m now down to 14, which is where I’m going to leave things for now.  Originally I was going to get rid of all of my sub-categories, but in the end I decided to keep a few, like the one specifically for when I’m talking about using game development tools, and a few for writing like worldbuilding and characters. I also updated both worldbuilding and game development so they list (and link to) posts about the individual projects I’m “working on” (they’ve been on the back-burner for quite awhile unfortunately….)

As I was paring down the categories, I stumbled on the few blog posts about Memories. It’s been a few years since I put it aside because I didn’t know how to end it. So after I was done with the categories, I decided to play through the game again. I still really like the work I originally did on it, but unfortunately I’m still not really sure how to end it. 😦 But since that play through I’ve been puttering around with the game a bit, fixing some things I didn’t even realize needed to be fixed. A really big flaw in the game (besides the lack of ending) is that there wasn’t enough direction for what you need to do to progress. That first night I fixed a few spots, but got stuck on some others because there wasn’t an obvious  fix. I’m also very happy I made a picture with all of the NPCs (and that I noticed it while cleaning up the categories!)

The next day (Friday), I went back to working on Memories, fixing it up quite a bit. The NPCs now direct the player a bit more, explaining where things are and who needs your help next. I also had to close off one of the rooms that you could originally go through; closing it off directs your path a bit more towards certain goals earlier in the game. I also had to move a couple of NPCs to make them a bit easier to find.

Now that that’s all done, I’m back to needing to figure out how the game will end! I spent most of the weekend with that problem in the back of my head, and I’m still not 100% sure. I’ll have to keep thinking about it during this coming week; hopefully I’ll have some time to figure it out.

While I really want to get some more work done on both of these projects, unfortunately they aren’t my priority this week; ThunderCon is Sept 21 and 22 and I’m once again going to take pictures all weekend (while my friend Scott takes video footage for future ads and whatnot). I’ll be posting my pictures on my Flickr account at the end of the Con; I’ll share them here next Tuesday. 🙂

So how are your projects going? Any plans for the week? 🙂

PS, yesterday I stumbled on this Pinterest board I made for Memories a few years ago; I totally forgot it existed! That was a very fun find. 🙂

Keith Baker’s Stories and Dice

A few years ago, I stumbled on Keith Baker’s Stories and Dice blog post.  Keith got a gumball machine from his wife which he would like to fill with dice.  But rather than just buy a bunch of dice, he was asking people to send him dice along with a story.  The story doesn’t have to be about the die.  I sent him one, but it never did end up posted on his blog.  I’ve actually had this post pretty much ready to go since 2014. Rather than just delete it, I decided I’d finally just post it here.

There were many stories I could have shared with Keith.  But I knew exactly which story I would tell him: the very first time my brother and I roleplayed.  After talking it over with my brother a couple of times, rehashing the details (this happened a very long time ago), here’s the story I sent to Keith:

Years ago, my brother, Alex, used to take piano lessons at my friend Dennis’s house.  One day a week the two of us would get a ride there after school.  I would hang out with Dennis for the full two hours; Alex would come and hang out once his piano lesson was done.

One day, Dennis was flipping through the Palladium Fantasy Role Playing Game (PFRPG).  He had recently enjoyed playing it with some friends, and so talked Alex and I into giving it a try.

Now, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the PFRPG, but it is a rather complex system, especially for people who are brand new to role-playing.  It took Alex and I weeks to build our characters (remember, we only had two hours every week), but finally we were done and Dennis was ready to GM for the first time.  Our very first quest was to deliver a package somewhere.  I don’t remember most of the quest’s details except that we were told we couldn’t open the package or it would explode.  Alex wanted to try anyway, but Dennis wouldn’t let him.  And so our characters set off to deliver the package to a nearby town.  After travelling down the road for awhile, it was time for a random encounter.  Dennis’s choice was truly random: he ended up sending some sort of ogre-like creature after us.  The ogre was far too powerful for our level one characters; predictably it killed both of us.  And thus ended our first foray into role-playing games.  It was several years later before we attempted to role-play again (with a different system!) 

Unfortunately, the die I chose to give Keith has nothing to do with my story.  Several years after this disaster with the PFRPG, a different friend invited me to play the Middle Earth Role Playing Game (MERP).  I had a lot of fun, and tried to find the book for myself.  I went into a local store and the guy working suggested I give Vampire: the Masquerade a try, saying it was similar to MERP. He didn’t actually have the Masquerade, but did have a copy of Vampire: the Dark Ages instead.  So I bought that.  While Vampire is NOTHING like MERP, it was still a lot of fun; Vampire: the Dark Ages ended up the game that actually got me and my brother roleplaying.  

Vampire and the other White Wolf games use D10’s.  I ended up buying a lot of D10’s, and so it was one of those that I chose to send to Keith for Stories and Dice.

#WriteTuesday: Scaling Back a Little Bit

Over the weekend, I finally sat down and read the February issue of bUneke Magazine.  I try to read it every month so I know what’s going on (and also to find articles to highlight on the Sustainably North Twitter, @SustaintheNorth).  In the February issue, Anna East writes about getting things done.  You can find her article here:

Anna East’s article hit me pretty hard because I know I am very, very guilty of not finishing projects I am working on.  Take right now: I’m part way through the story I’m writing for the Make Your Way Anthology, I wanted to start another short story about aliens in the wild west, I have three RPGs that I’m building on RPG Maker (Tears of the King, Memories, and Soccrpg).  And I have various other short stories I have started and failed to finish for one reason or another.

I think Anna East’s problem is my problem, too: I want my work to be perfect.  So when a project is failing to live up to my impossibly high standards, I stop working on it.  I also have a million ideas and there’s never enough time to get them all written, so that doesn’t help either.

And I’m busy.  I know that this is a problem that everyone has: there just never seems to be enough time in the day to get everything done.  But specific to me, I started my other blog, Sustainably North.  I started volunteering my time with bUneke Magazine, writing a monthly column.  I’m trying to get a bunch of reading done (I did make a goal to read 25 books this year, plus I just really like reading).  And then I do a fair amount of writing for my day job too (even more right now because I’m helping out on a few bigger projects that are coming up).  All of this has been making me feel fractured and really time-pinched.  Plus after a full day at work, I find myself coming home and just not wanting to work on anything else because I’m done for the day – I’ve got nothing left.

And since I have no intention of stopping Sustainably North, volunteering, reading, or working on those projects at my day job, I am going to dial back on projects at home.  As much as I would really, really like to work on a story about aliens in the wild west, I honestly do not have the time for it right now (especially since it got stuck in worldbuilding).  Plus the plot just isn’t worked out right now anyway, while the story for the Make Your Way anthology is plotted and just needs to be written.  So I’m going to stop working on the wild west story, and just focus on getting the Make Your Way story written.  And at this point I need to make sure I don’t bog myself down with feeling that it isn’t good enough; this is a first draft right now, so of course it won’t be perfect!  It has to be written before I can worry about polishing it.

Hello 2019!

Happy New Year’s!  It’s that time of year again – time to look at the goals I set for myself last year and set new goals for this year.  Last year, my goals were:

1. Read 25 novels.  Success! I read over 50 novel-length books this year!  I didn’t read many long ones, but that’s okay. Having no pressure to read made it much more enjoyable over 2018.
2. Write two polished short stories.  Failure.  I wrote one, but didn’t finish the second one. 😦
3. Finish a bloody RPG! Failure. I didn’t really work on anything at all. 😦

For 2018 I was hoping to work towards freelancing more.  Even though I wasn’t really successful with my goals, I think I was somewhat successful thanks to starting my other blog, Sustainably North. Thanks to Sustainably North, I was asked by bUneke Magazine to write a monthly column, which has been a lot of fun and tremendous experience.  For my day job I also wrote 9 articles, 7 book reviews, and interviewed 12 authors for TBPL Off the Shelf, so that’s pretty good, too.  Oh and I almost forgot that 2018 saw my first published short story, “A Harmony of Soil and Sand,” which was published in Menagerie de Mythique Anthology back in May.  So while I didn’t exactly meet all of my goals, I still think 2018 was a pretty good year of writing for me! 🙂

Oh yeah, and I participated in my very first game jam back in January!  That was fun, too! 🙂

For 2019 I’d like to do things a little differently, particularly in regards to my writing goals.  This year I’d like to set smaller goals every month rather than big overarching goals.  My thought is that way I can use the end of the month as a deadline, plus I’ll have more flexibility in case other unexpected projects come my way (like when that big freelance project came my way back in 2017).  Plus if something takes longer than planned (like how the story I’m working on for the Make Your Way anthology got bogged down in worldbuilding), I can adjust my scheduled goals accordingly.  So here are my goals for 2019 so far:

1. Read 25 novel-length books. 25 books worked really well for me last year and I’d like to keep the same goal.  Like I said, this took the pressure off of me and made reading more fun.  This goal is the only one I’m naming that’s for the whole year.
2. Finish the story for the Make Your Way anthology by January 31st. I think that’s a reasonable amount of time to get this story written (and hopefully submitted!)

I’m not going to talk about Sustainably North goals on here right now.  At this point I’m kind of just carrying on, trying to get a weekly blog post written plus an article for bUneke Magazine.  If that changes, I’ll let you know. 😉

This will be an interesting year – I really hope that setting smaller monthly goals (with deadlines) will work better for me!

So what about you? Have you set any goals for the upcoming year? 🙂

#WriteMonday – Short Story Submitted!

I did it!  I actually got that short story edited and submitted!

I had a really hard time sitting down to deal with it.  I kept putting off the editing.  Finally on Tuesday I sat down and started writing whatever was on my mind (it was a free write, much like I did years ago in a writing class).  By the time I was at the end of the page, I actually felt inspired and read over the story.  It was in okay shape and didn’t need too many edits.  So I worked on those when I could and finally finished on Friday.  I ended up calling it “A Friend from the Deep;” it’s set on Imezza and deals with a kraken (which is why its working title was the ever original “kraken story.”) I submitting “A Friend from the Deep” to Martian Migraine Press’s Monstrous Outlines: an Anthology of Camouflaged Horror Friday night.  I kind of doubt it will get accepted since that anthology specializes in horror and weird fiction and this piece is probably closer to fantasy (I could have sworn it said it accepted fantasy somewhere but I can’t find whatever I read now). Oh well, the worst that happens is they say no, right? I guess we’ll see what happens.

I need to make sure I remember to free write next time I have a hard time sitting down to work on a project like this!

On Friday I also followed up with my last submission (oh my gosh, that was a year ago!) I *think* the story has been published but I haven’t heard anything from the publisher.  I’ll give more details once I hear back from them. 🙂

So with all that happening on Friday, I had the rest of the weekend for whatever.  I took the rest of Friday night to look over (and clean up) my favourites list on Duotrope.  In doing that I found a few markets that sound pretty interesting; I decided to try writing something for the Make Your Way anthology. Make Your Way is looking for pieces that the audience will have to interact with in some way; I’ve written for projects like Holdfast in the past, so I’m hopeful that I can pull this off.  So I spent a bit of time later on Friday night coming up with a really simple RPG system for use with my story, with the rest of the weekend spent plotting things off and on.

I also spent a little bit of time trying to research tools to help me make this.  I’m a fan of Articy Draft but do not currently have my own copy (I was able to use it for a project I worked on in the past; the license was provided by the company I was working with).  Twine shows some promise, but it’s the type of thing I’ll use if I ever decide to publish this story on the web rather than in a book.  So I ended up defaulting to using my physical white board to plan this out.  Well, until I discovered The GameBook Authoring Tool, which I downloaded and tried out.  I think it’s exactly what I need to link everything together as I go.  So between my white board, my trusty notebook, and The GameBook Authoring Tool, I think I’m good to go for this project!

Soccrpg

As promised yesterday, here’s some info on my third RPG Maker game I’m working on: Soccrpg! Soccrpg started when I went for lunch with a couple of friends.  One of them complained that there was no soccer game made like an old-school RPG.  I have no idea what is out there (the other friend started listing games that combine RPGs with sports), but I started thinking to myself that I could make one.  And so Soccrpg was born.

This is literally what I have made so far:

It’s a soccer field with the positions in place.  The opposing team chases you when you have the ball and you’re in their zones on the field; your team just stands around and will talk to you if you interact with them.

In some ways, this was a stupid project to start.  I don’t really know much about soccer, so I’ve had to research like everything.  So bear that in mind when I eventually finish it (my friend really wants me to make it playable for others) – I will probably get things wrong!

So with that caveat, Soccrpg has also been a great learning experience because this is my first time heavily changing things in the database.  Because this isn’t remotely a traditional fantasy RPG, I’ve had to redefine terms and rename things.  For example, I decided that the only weapon will be “cleats;” currently the database lists all the default weaponry as a type of cleat.