Finished

The Project is now finished.

There is CD's available for Ben and Shirin, I can post them too you if you like. (the CD you have at the moment has no Videos on it if you hadn't noticed Ben)

I have also tried to make a version that will run on a PC using a web browser. You can have a copy of this if you like. It's about, well damn near exactly 30MB so maybe I can send it to you on MSN if you have a fast enough connection.
Anyway, yeah, that's it.

Hopefully I'll be able to find some t'internet space to put the files up and then I should remember to link to them here.

Hope

Ben has the forms and last I saw was intent on booking the equipment out for the weekend. I thought I wasn't going to be around on Sunday but that was cancelled so hopefully I should be there but today my body has left me for a happily married life with illness.

Story.

So you turn up.... er... why do you end up in Boscome*, well you do! And you have lots of cash for some reason. Maybe it may be worth a crazy opening video to explain some of this stuff.
So you turn up, everywhere is locked apart from church.
Bingo is locked because old man watching the door won't let you in because he says you are too young. "I'm a Corgi registered Gas...man."
Youth club is locked out because you don't know the secrete code to get in.
Kebab Shop - *some reason*
Club - *Doorman
You can go to the church. Well church exterior.
"Hello, my child. Do you wish to enter and pray for forgiveness?"
1."As a matter of interest are you actually a priest."
"Um...no. Actually I'm er... a shepherd, the father say's I have to stay out side and watch for people."
2. Yes. "I'll go in, but I'm not praying to anyone." minus moral
3. Yes. "Thank you." plus moral

Church interior
You can rob a candlestick
You can rob stamp from Gods fun area.
You can pray. + moral
You can swear at people. - moral.
Can talk to woman. About priest outside. If door checked you can get key from her.
Door noises, if you have the key you can access cutscene of priest doing the business with a sheep.

woman now talks of disgust, door- nothing interesting in there.

When you go to Bingo now you can talk to old man about sheep sex. He now likes you because he is a farmer and you uncovered mystery sheep botherer.

So in the bingo club, you have a woman, you can talk to her, she's got a stamper pen that's run out, you can give her, ink stamp. With this ink stamp she win's the bingo and gives you half of the cash in gratitude. She tells you if there is anything else she can do for you to ask. So if you have tried to get into the youth club you are able to ask about the door code. She will tell you the door code Hazzar!
Also something where you can play bingo in a good or bad way.
cut scene to outside. you meet an old woman who requests your help to get her across the road. You can mug her or help her, or refuse, you end up with a stamp from here anyway. Yes a stamp, a postage stamp.

So you can now get into the youth centre.
in the youth centre. there is a man being guarded be another man. the man has a bag of stuff shining by his side.
"No one gets to see _character_name_ without making a donation first. Something shiny."
So you need to gave him the candle stick is dull. You need to polish it in the dentures polisher that they have at the bingo hall. If you've done that then you can give him the stick. Otherwise you are shown other stuff that you can give him that's just wrong.

*Ah!
The food place can be locked out because the owner has run out of a supply of herbs and is locked in feeling quite depressed.*

OK so you can talk to this 'herb' dealer in the youth club. (avoids the danger of advocating drug use or sale but still has the idea there, good ole double barrel).
you need then also to be bad enough to talk to him.
"I sense you are hardcore my friend."
OK. Um... in conversation with the dealer you learn that he is missing an eye and is a stamp collector. You can then offer him stuff. You need to give him a replacement eye and stamp to be able to deal with him. The eye is made of an lost bingo ball "I-17" that is available on the floor of the bingo hall that needs to be painted up like an eye using gods fun area.
Once you have earned this guys respect his herbs become available for sale.*cut scene of dude with eye and herbs and stuff? once you have some herbs you can go to the kebab shop with them and talk to he kebab shop man and bring him around to opening up. You give him the herbs and he makes you some food. cut scene of food. he then won't talk to you until you pay him for the food that you thought was free, then you can talk to him about I.D if you have been to the club. He can give you a blank I.D. card if he thinks you look moral enough to not be using it for bad causes.
Once you do that, the man on club door won't take this blank ID, you need to get a photo on it. see dealer for his stamp skills to affix a photo. you also have to see bingo lady as she happens to have a personal laminator, you also have to use gods fun area again to touch up the thing ("I'm sure this is too secular for this place."), laminating must be done last.
Finally then with all that, the man will let you into the club.

O.K. you can only go back outside if you have enough money to get back in otherwise you would not be able to complete the game because the bouncer won't let you in without repaying. (breaking the fourth wall "Look if I let you out mate you won't get back in without any money, you won't be able to complete the game."

In the club....

Ohhh... In the club.

For this one I think everything needs to be contained in this area, so at the moment I'm going for a complex interrelation of conversation that slowly reveals more information and so more things to talk about until you reach a point where the right piece of information has been found that gets you the ride home ( possibly similar to Monkey Island's insult sword fighting, in the project it may not be insults but using Monkey Island to describe 'You learn the right insult(s) to win the fight ). Maybe there can be a my friend fancies that person thing and you have to mediate the relationship across the room. cutscene getting home.

O.K there is some kind of basic structure that explains everything. What it is desperately in deed of though is places for video to be inserted and what the content of the video is to be. I kind of skipped them because I don't like them.

Newman Article" Something I should probably read related to my last statement in some way. Something about on-line and off-line something or other.

SCUD OUT.

More Sex Violence and Drugs

Well I ended the last post in mid sentence and now I can't remember what I was saying in it. We discussed our project further today. And so far we have ...

Get mugged.
•Church
Ext. -Preist "Do you wish to come in to my inner sanctum?" Hurhur.
Yes moral bad. Yes moral good. No.
Int.
You can pray
You can shout abuse at the people in the church.
There is a door that makes noises. - Need key from woman. Once have key, door exposes cut-scene Priest & Prossie.
Money Box to steal
Candlestick to Steal
Stamp to steal

•Bingo Hall
- Woman. "Oh no, me ink 'as run out."
Can give woman stamp to fix problem, she wins bingo gives you wadge of cash.

•Youth Club

•Fast Food Place

•Club

Finish.


O.K there is loads of huge gaps and stuff. Need a reason for the Bingo Hall to suddenly become available after exposing the priest.
I like the idea of a police road block.
I must go away and do much thinking.
Oooh! We are also going to have a drug dealer at the youth club that can get you different drugs depending on your cash/morality etc.

Meeting

Had a meeting this morning. So what did I learn.
Quite a few things were established as far as I'm aware, some good progression type things.
We'll most likely go with this basic story:- "Kid goes to Boscome; gets mugged has to get back home or somewhere."
I'm not familiar with Boscome but here it is serving as a rough area and the butt of one big rough area type joke.
Already I'm seeing problems with one of the ideas that we had.
The idea was to present people with these resources [Money / Health / etc.] this should fill them with joy and excitement at the possibilities [

Another Director tester

Clubbing
O.K. This one does some more complicated stuff.
The morality bars themselves were the most complicated things to do. They needed to expand when something happened. Also they need to not expand past a certain point but still keep adding morality points. Also the opposite bar needed to contract when the other side went up, but not to do that if it is already fully collapsed (it did start going back the other way).

I know you're eager to see it so here is the code.

FOR A MORALY BAD ACTION

global gMoralCompass
on mouseUp me
gMoralCompass = gMoralCompass - 1
put gMoralCompass


if sprite(7).width < 120 and gMoralCompass < -0.1 then
sprite(7).width = sprite(7).width + 30
sprite(7).left =sprite(7).left - 30
put "lengthen bad bar"
end if
if sprite(6).width > 1 and gMoralCompass < 4 then
sprite(6).width = sprite(6).width - 30
end if
end



FOR A MORALY GOOD ACTION

global gMoralCompass
on mouseUp me
gMoralCompass = gMoralCompass + 1
put gMoralCompass

if sprite(6).width < 120 and gMoralCompass > 0.1 then
sprite(6).width = sprite(6).width + 30
put "lengthen good bar"
end if
if sprite(7).width > 1 and gMoralCompass > -4 then
sprite(7).width = sprite(7).width - 30
sprite(7).left =sprite(7).left + 30

end if
end


-- The sprite(6) is the bar showing good alignment.
-- The sprite(7) is the bar showing bad alignment.

As well as that we've got the money thing, and testing both at the same time if you have enough money and what you moral alignment is to return different outcomes.

Learning Coding

So I went away and practised using my new found coding skills. This is what I produced : - Point and click test thing.
That there contains a Projector to view the piece and the actual file too, so you can look at what you like.
If anyone does grab it, make changes etc. Let me know, I am interested.

Another file Help Using Numbers
I asked today if you could set numerical values instead of true and false and Martin kindly showed me how you can do that.
I's my plan tonight to build on that information, to try and work out some elements of gameplay I can design with it and try and produce one of them to learn how to.

So I made that. In that piece I managed to form the bases of a point and click structure, and also force things to not happen until certain requirements have been met, from my experience the basic structure of a point and click adventure game.

In the group meeting we had today, I put forward the idea of this point and click structure and it was well accepted (I think this was possible because nobody else had any other solid ideas).

Anyway the plan with this structure is that the journey is embedded in the narrative of the game. Basically to constitute the 'journey' part of the brief all I think we meet is some sort of travelling. So if in this game if the overall premise is that player is ultimately trying to get from point A to point B.

I see the movement being simply 2D side scrolling, only I'm too afraid to try and work in scrolling, so I'd rather just have sections at either side of the screen that take you to the next area.

I thought to simplify things the different areas could be constructed as different movies. This however brings two main problems straight to me, there is the issue of global variables, I've read somewhere that global variables can apply to multiple movies but I don't know how. The other problem is that I thought you could use a slide transition to move from place to place, that would work well I thought (genius I found a good use for those crap transitions) but, alas, if there was static constant interface that would look damn stupid if it the supposedly static interface slid along with the rest of the screen.

Anyway, back to this simple point and click style structure. We're going between point A and B and in between there is stuff. The only other main requirement of the brief is the use of video. I don't really like this video doodah (means I have to get away from a computer as some point of time, forces elements of realism onto the project, I'd prefer to do a short film if I was going to have to mess around with cameras, but I suppose we need to learn to be able to do these things. Myst made it look good I guess.) Urgh.. where was I? Um.. yeah .. using video, so video can come into it at either key points of the narrative of just eventful things that happen in the game that are easy to film.

The idea was, that I should have stated a while ago, THAT... The basic structure can be laid down, and then as we get more and more ideas, they can be added as we wish, the content can become richer and richer. A beautiful vision I know, I hope it's not only a vision.

So what I really need to do now to push this thing forward is come up with first of all some ideas for the overall narrative. Once that is settled on, designs can begin on the visuals. Also then providing the main narrative is flexible enough any general ideas that could go in as content.

Also from my coding point of view I want to get to know what systems can be used, I want to think up systems that would be enjoyable in the game and also that I know I can do, something mildly ambitious.

Another thing I felt was quite important to mention is, well, I suppose some 'quality assurance' took place today, I'n just showing the thing I made to my group. Although I thought everything on the screen was self evident, it turns out is was not. Some users may not be predisposed to the point and click adventure style, an instructions option at the begging would be a marvellous idea. This also lead me to the idea of having another entrance point into the game, another 'mode' if you will that allows certain things that for gameplay reasons may remain hidden in the game to the user (this goes along with my thinking of rating their morality in the background) to be seen, a kind of 'behind the scenes' version of the game.

Early reading.

Some things to read.
Before, At, and Beyond Good and Evil • Ken Bayer -- Source
Video Game Internal Turfs and Turfs of Play • Laurie Taylor -- Source

So I read them: -

'Before, At, and Beyond Good and Evil' was the most interesting. I didn't learn a great deal from it, but what I did get was that morality can be used in games in different ways. And in the examples of Fable, Knights of the Old Republic and Deus Ex: Invisible War Bayer showed three different ways it has been used.

Fable - The advertised consequences are mostly visual and morality is a gameplay tool. The decisions don't have major consequences.

KOTOR - Effects the story and gameplay. The story is all about good and evil. You are rewarded for being either one or the other, the important thing it to choose.

Deus Ex - Makes moral decisions harder. It removes the importance of usual things that would tip you to one side or the other such as money or experience points, leaving you uncertain which choice to make. It deals with the grey areas and forces you to make decisions based on your own morality.

Through all of these the article emphasises the integration between moral choices and gamplay and how this also links to the narrative.