Bounty Hunter III Update #2: The game so far in 2019

Hello there!
As I've mentioned in my last post, Bounty Hunter III's development is still alive and well.

Looking back, I'm surprised I haven't made a Bounty Hunter III post since June! Time passes by quick does it not? This update will have more pictures than words because I think that a picture can explain what 1000 words can.

One thing I regret about the state of this project this year was that I wish I did something similar to what I did back in 2017 with this game's predecessor which was a public alpha. Maybe not public but still, something that has can be played like a real game - something you can loose and win.

Although the majority of Bounty Hunter II's code in the month of its release is vastly different to the 2017 public alpha, it was still something you could play and did have polish to a certain extent. If I put up Bounty Hunter III right now, it would be pretty unpolished and boring.

I've written several basic ideas of what the story will be including the driving force of the plot, the main characters and even two endings.

I did mention about an ally character the last time I posted about this game, but who is it?

It turns out it is Milbert, the main antagonist from the 2nd game! Yes, he turns good after all of that trouble he put Peast through. Not only that, he's also a playable character that helps Peast with puzzles as well as combat.

Without further ado I will show you a bunch of screenshots from BHIII so far:

Peast in a snowy forest

I don't think so...

Peast's new sprite

Nice view of black from the mountains

Near the hospital

Peast on the beach of a tropical volcanic island

A simple button puzzle

After Milbert and Peast press the switch

"Hey can someone get rid of all of these boxes?"

"Leave it to ME!"

"Thanks Milbert, but where's the rest of the map?"

"Step back now, HUUUUAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!"

That's all from me!

Redefining talking systems in RPGs

Hello there!
I've done quite a bit of thinking about incorporating talking systems into RPGs, because a lot of them involve killing others for EXP.

Preface

There was an Extra Credits video that I encountered a while ago, where they talked about making non-combat in video games as fun as combat. It was uploaded well before Undertale came out.

Undertale was the game that first intruded me to this concept, but it certainly was not the first game that had this concept, as there were games like Shin Megami Tensei which it got the idea from in the first place. I thought of making a game similar to Undertale not long after it came out, but I didn't feel like I could do anything original with the formula. I thought of putting a talking system into a game version of my book 'Evermoral' but the game never came into fruition, partly because of low experience at the time.

That was until 2017 when I came across "Jojo's Bizarre adventure" on the SNES based on a manga of the same name, where you can go through the whole game without killing a single person thanks to the 'talk' option. Admittedly the gameplay was fairly simple and bland where the talking system was not any different from killing. But it made me think that perhaps talking systems could be like combat except without violence, hence I started to think about talking systems in RPGs again.

The way talking systems functioned in the Shin Megami Tensei games (including Persona 2 and 5) was that it was used for recruiting demons and also avoiding combat which frankly I think is far more ethical, interesting and less tedious than trying to catch that particular rare legendary Pokémon by lowering its health and then wasting 100+ Ultra-balls to catch it.

With that being said, I think that the talking system in the Megaten games though important, are a small slice of the game-play pie. You can't talk your way out of a boss battle; you need to deal with them with violence. I think these games utilize the talking system far better than Undertale (or its successor Deltarune - though it is too early to say for the latter), you'll learn why in the next section.

Unrealistically talking smart

Talking systems in games like Undertale and Deltarune are rather simple. They sound innovate on paper, but in practice, in my play-through of both of these games, especially Delatarune's first chapter (in which I didn't even get a game over at all) sparing an enemy was no more complicated than killing it. It involved a lot of routine tasks like spamming 'Spare' or pressing one option that allows you to spare them a turn after.

This is one of the reasons I think these games (at least game-play wise) are pretty overrated and hyped. Not to say that these games don't have their merits, they certainly do but that's besides the point of this post.

A challenge one can get into when developing a talking system for an RPG using Undertale/Deltarune's foundation is that the 'act' options are very context-sensitive: For each enemy there is a specific set of actions you need do which gets quite easy if you know the pattern. These patterns can be mastered pretty quickly.

Since these 'act' moves do not use any kind of stats, it makes the RPG aspect of these games moot. Undertale might as well as be a visual novel with some RPG elements and a Touhou-style dodging system. There also isn't really any reward if you spare the enemy other than some money which can't be used to buy anything useful (given that you are going on a no-damage run).

Neither is killing an enemy, there is very little point to leveling up in Undertale, the late bosses can't even 1 hit kill you - even if you are level 1. I presume that this is to make the game possible for pacifist players but I can imagine ways to make leveling up important for pacifist game-play regardless, more on that later.

That's enough of me critiquing Undertale/Deltarune. I'll move on to Persona 2 and 5.

You can also spare enemies in Persona 5 and 2, with the former involving you putting the enemies down in order to get a "Hold up!" where you can either do an all-out attack where every active party member attacks the enemy or you can negotiate with them in traditional Megaten fashion, where you have dialogue choices and you need to choose the right one to have them join you, give money or items.

In Persona 2 you don't need to put enemies down, there is an option called "Contact" where you can negotiate with them. The interesting thing about Persona 2's system is that you can make the enemy happy, eager, scared or angry depending on your actions. If you anger them they will go fully hostile on you and you have no other choice but to deal with them the traditional way. Another interesting aspect is that you can use any party member you like to do the talking or use multiple at a time. Each party member will have their own actions which will stay the same regardless of specific enemy, but each enemy reacts differently to them.

This is easier to implement in the game than if one were to cater every single character's actions to each individual enemy. The gameplay would feel more organic and not feel like it is scripted. If you fully entice or make them happy, they can give you money or other cool things.

This kind of negotiation system is quite interesting as it offers a good amount of challenge. But this gameplay alone would not make use of the other character's stats let alone be a good way of making the game challenging. Fortunately, looking at the Jojo I mentioned in the beginning there is a way to make the talking system as fun as the combat without compromising stats.

What I will suggest would also make sense even from a combat perspective.

Unorthodox way of beating bosses

When I was trying to beat the Hell Biker boss from 'Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's call/ Nocturne', I constantly got my head handed to me. The boss had moves like "Hell Exhaust" which not only damages the entire party, but also cancels any buffs that my party had. If that wasn't enough, the biker would use "Hell throttle" which would increase the number of times he can attack per turn - easily obliterating my party within a turn, the biker would also cancel out any stat de-buffs that my party inflicted on him with "Dekunda".

At that point I looked up the Hell Biker's stats on the Megaten wiki and found out exactly how much MP he had (stuff used for moves). So I decided to do something ingenious and have the main character and another party member that knows a skill that can drain the bosses' MP and use the other characters to pass to give the MP draining characters more turns.

So I kept draining the biker's MP until it was 0. At that point, he still used those moves but there was a key difference: He did not have sufficient MP to execute them. He was almost helpless, he could not use the hell throttle, exhaust or dekunda.

Although, his melee attacks were still pretty strong, but I could easily offset those with some agility buffs to make it so that the biker misses more. With ease my party defeated him, that was it.

What I can draw from this is that if an enemy's MP, SP or whatever variable is used for stronger skills is depleted, they are pretty much useless. They can barely do anything other than the moves that consume HP or melee attacks - essentially snapping the whole battle in half.

I thought that perhaps this can be a good way of stopping an enemy in battle because if they have no MP, they are almost useless. Using the inspiration from Jojo, I thought of a smart way of how a talking system could be created.

War of words

As I said with my criticisms of Undertale/Deltarune's deconstruction of leveling up, even if you don't plan on killing any enemies, leveling up is still important. Talking and negotiation is a skill, not just consisted of simple patterns to impress someone and then the battle is over.

It involves a lot of failure and practicing, much like in real life. This is why I think that talking systems in RPGs should be something more than just picking a bunch of choices.

My idea of putting talking systems in RPGs is a rather simple one - make it like using elemental moves except with talking instead of fighting.

Since MP (or equivalent) is important to executing strong attacks, perhaps the talking system could lower MP. The enemy, once their MP is exhausted, could eventually be so 'tired' that they give up and you gain the opportunity to spare them. But you may argue, "This is no different than killing them" - and you might be right. Fortunately I have another trick inspired from Lucifer's call.

If there are large sums of enemies, they will reprimand you if you talk to a fellow member, in LC you would need to kill most of the opposing party in order to talk to the demon you would like to.

With my system however, you would need to lower all the enemies' MP or kill them if you want them to not block your sparing. These allies would also be covering a member with 0 MP by restoring it, so you would need to be careful if you are locking on to one enemy and trying to spare them right away.

Another way to separate lowering MP from lowering HP is that the character with the lowered MP can get below 0. They can still fight or talk but they can't use any skill moves. Furthermore, the character with SP below 0 sometimes waste turns, similar to the mother series when enemies or non-playable party members waste turns, trying to pay off  'Stamina debt' (a bit like anaerobic respiration when the muscles aren't getting enough oxygen).

If players choose to defeat the enemy, lowered MP can be very advantageous to defeating the enemies much like what I mentioned with the Hell Biker boss. Perhaps to counter this, the AI could be more defensive, relying on their friends to restore the MP, as I have mentioned before, use talk moves on the players to make it harder for them to use any powerful moves on them, or a melee attack.

Conclusion

Since I don't see talking systems like this in a lot of RPGs (or at all!), I thought it would be a good idea to propose my own idea of what a good talking system would be composed of without trying to sacrifice what makes the depth of combat so interesting in the first place.

In other news I'll make a blog post about Bounty Hutner III, since I haven't posted about that game in ages. Don't worry! It's still in development, I haven't canceled it. It's going to compose of screenshots rather than a lot of text, because I believe pictures can explain what thousands of words can.

That's all from me!

Prownie's art #6: Othermind Concept art

Hello there!

This is art I drew back in 11th November for my friend Joe to translate into the ending sprites in my recently released game "Othermind". I drew these after I drew the sprites for the game - I prefer this because it's much easier to draw them as pixel sprites, then hand-draw the art using said sprites as references rather than vice versa.

I've got a nice novel for only 1 gem!

Its name is not scales by the way.

That's all from me!

Announcing the release of "Othermind: Pipe Dreamer II"

Hello there!

Today is 10 days before Christmas and also the release of the game I've been working on all year which is "Othermind: Pipe Dreamer II". I was meant to put a pre-release blog but I had difficulty finishing it so I will put its contents into this release post as well as providing links to the game to play for yourself.

Credits to Joe for providing the animations, helping me with the tiles and transcribing my concept art (which will get a blog of its own after this one) into the ending sprites.

There are a lot of things I regret when doing this project, like getting an artist pretty late into development. Although I am thankful to them for allowing me to save mental effort in doing the animations, sometimes the artist would be distracted by something else and not work on the artwork or would not be on the same page as I am and sometimes cause me a bit of frustration in having to explain to him things. Don't worry, it's nothing too serious as it hasn't negatively affected our friendship. I feel like for any future projects he would be involved in, I should ask them to do artwork earlier so that when these things happen, there is still some buffer time.

Since I also spent the majority of Othermind's development working on magnum foundation and fixing bugs with it I had to remove some features to avoid burn-out like some of the mini-games. I'm hoping for future projects that use Magnum foundation, I don't have to spend as much time going back-and-fourth trying to implement features and fix bugs to make Magnum foundation cater for almost any game I can make.

Othermind's coding is also pretty messy since that ridiculous mistake I made by splitting one game into two - don't do it! It has some files that contain the same code as Magnum foundation, so I'll have to clear that up before uploading it to GitHub. Since I have a lot of time to work on Bounty Hunter III and already have made a good amount of progress on putting the maps into the game, I will also try to refactor the source code, much like what I did with Bounty Hunter 2 at the beginning of 2018. That will get its own post though.

I'm glad now that I can be more at ease with the fact that I don't have to think about this project anymore and work on Bounty Hunter III, Arm Strong's final episode, and other projects I may announce later on.

If you want to play this game head over here.

Announcing the release of "Arm strong - Episode 2"

Hello there!

Today, in this cold December month is when I release a hot new second episode to "Arm Strong". It contains 12 new levels featuring the newly added in portals which teleport the player from one portal to another. Admittedly the portals were a little bit hard to add in since I had to prevent the player from getting into an endless teleportation loop whenever they touched a portal.

At first I was going to resolve this issue by having the player teleport next to the target portal, but I had a better idea which was to put on a delay of when the portals can teleport the player. They go translucent once the player travels though them to signify the delay.

I'm pleasantly surprised at how I managed to release episode 2 without cancelling it or not bothering to finish it. Other than a few bug fixes, the portal block type and incorporating the levels into the game, there really was not a lot I had to do code-wise which is always great if I want to make something like this.

What's even greater is that I don't plan to add anything in episode 3, therefore I can just focus on designing and testing the levels and not have to worry about trying modify the existing code-base of the game, save for the level select menu, actually including the levels and the ending.

Here is the release if you want to play it for yourself.

That's all from me!

P.S. This is the first time I release 2 games in a month, because in 5 days or so I'll be releasing "Othermind".

Announcing the release of "Spectral theives"

Hello there!

I have released another game today! This is the first game which uses "Magnum Foundation" which I've released. Not only that but it is also the first game which I have released where the assets were not 100% done by me. I would like to give Joe a shout-out for making the smooth animation to the guards.

I was originally going to release this on the 20th but I delayed the game to fix bugs and polish the levels to the 25th. I delayed it one again to put in some more polish and bug fixes, but I have finally released it.

If you want to know what the game is about, it is about a group of thieves who break into a corrupt man called 'Grinman' who's name was inspired by an inside joke me and Joe have where he draws articulate faces with a large grin (here's an example). I decided to design the guards as a reference to the inside joke, except they aren't smiling. I think it fits them perfectly as they look quite tough.

There are design aspects I often kept in mind when designing the guard routes and levels for the game: One of them was that there are no safe spots (other than the hall entrances) the player can camp in, this would mean that they would need to keep moving if they wanted to be safe. Another design aspect is that violence will not be involved as these thieves are pacifists and are only concerned about stealing things rather than harming let alone killing people. This can give the player interesting new challenges.

I also snuck in a reference to the idea of effective altruism in the ending, so be sure to check that out.

I'm hoping to make a series out of this since I am quite intrigued and passionate about these design concepts. I have additional ideas like improving guard AI to react to player sounds and path-find their way there (which I tried implementing in this game but was too buggy so it had to be abandoned) and tools that can be used to temporarily distract or stun guards.

Perhaps I could make Bounty Hunter's spiritual successor!


Without further ado here is the game.

If you want to download it click here.

That's all from me!

The risks of becoming a full time Indie developer

Hello there!

Since I feel like people might get the wrong idea of what my aspirations are, I decided to write this blog to clear and dispel any of these ideas and push in some more reality. 

Preface

Despite what you may hear about 9-5 jobs being 'boring and miserable', many people think that the fix to this issue is simple: Start your own business. Follow your dreams. I'm here to inform that these things won't be the fix for most people, in fact it may make things worse. Unless you know what you are doing, you will be draining your income, mental health, relationships et cetera.

No man's land

If you want to be successful in a business, you will need to have connections so that people can help you develop and market your project.

A few years ago I was enthusiastic about making games all by myself because it was 'cool', however, as I've gained more experience, I believe that it may be fine if I want to make a simple game, but a more complicated game will need more artists, programmers and testers due to the larger amount of content in the game.If I were to jump straight into making games full-time all by myself I can imagine 3 options:

1.  I make a bunch of mediocre to semi-decent games that take less time than a more ambitious game and maybe earn some money.
2.  I could spend 5+ years making a largely ambitious game, similar to the developers of Cuphead or Toby Fox with his development of 'Deltarune', earning no income for a good while.
3. I could do a bit of both and do smaller games for skill development and work on a larger game, in theory I could simultaneously make some money and work on an ambitious project.

All of these options would be incredibly risky, because with the 1st option I would have probably made games that would be on the bandwagon on whatever is relevant (think: knock-off IPad games), because that is what sells to regular consumers. Why do you think that Electronc Arts keep making Fifa or Battlefield games every year?

The 2nd option would be like trying to win the lottery, and by the time I would make a successful product (if I'm lucky enough), I would have already felt pretty burned out and stressed. This is why I don't buy into the advice "Follow your passion/dreams". Why chase something that you think is going to give you happiness when you reach there, when on the way, you are sacrificing your relationship with family, your social life, your financial status, your mental health and your physical health. The irony here is staggering to say the least.

The 3rd option could in theory get the best of both worlds, but it doesn't always work that way. I've already talked about how neither of the above options are a guarantee. Through this option, the stress would get worse from there since I would have a lot on my plate and burn out. Plus if there is a game that I need to get out and released due to publisher demands, I would stop developing the more ambitious game for that one.

For all of these options, I would also need to be good at marketing and outreach, which I'm not the best at. Even if I make a really good game that would have a large impact on anyone who played it, I still need to market it. There are games you have never heard of that are in fact pretty good, for example 'Chaos seed'. That game was released over 20 years ago and is still not widely known today. Keep in mind that if I spent time marketing the game, I would also need to pause development of some other projects if I don't want to burn out.

Here I have shown you how solo game development is not only a hard business, but a stressful one at that, which would be very mentally taxing. Most of the issues here would be resolved if I had a larger connections with other talent as they can take care of some the work (possibly including the business side) and I wouldn't need to be as stressed.

Okay, so I've established working in a team is a better idea than what I could ever do alone, but how exactly do I get these people?

The importance of career capital

I think that career capital is incredibly important, what is career capital exactly? Career capital can be skills and networks you gain. This is what I would need to have if I wanted to make a sustainable living out of making games full-time. Although practicing making them is good, this is not enough because as I have established earlier, there is more to game development than just working on the game itself. This is partly why I am very sceptical of making my indie game gig my main source of income at the moment.

I think it is better to get a day-job and make games on the side. I'll give you some examples of people who worked at established companies before starting their big empires.

Gabe Newell did not drop out of Harvard to start a video game empire, he dropped out because he saw a better opportunity to gain valuable skills at Microsoft, and mind you, it was probably easy for him to get a job there since Microsoft in 1983 was still a startup and the first version of windows was not even released yet. He worked at Microsoft for 13 years, then he founded a game company called 'Valve' with Newell Harrington, another Microsoft Employee. By then he had a rich quantity of experience and money, which would be useful for the incredibly chaotic development of Half life, a commercial success.

John Carmack is another example, where his job at Softdisk allowed him to make commander keen with people he knew there. The success of CK among others, allowed him and the people he met to quit their jobs to make successes like 'Doom', 'Wolfenstein' and 'Quake'.

Some may think that because people dropped out of University, that would allow them to start their businesses and therefore encourage associate 'dropping out' with success. However, keep in mind that these people had backup options if their businesses did not go well. Despite the fact that I'm not in University, full time Indie game development is not the reason I decided against it. Well, that was the case in 2016/2017 but my opinion has changed since then.

My lack of aspiration for University is because I have roughly zero interest in formal education. Large emphasis on grades and loads of theory don't really appeal to me, not to mention the fact that I wouldn't use much of what I've learned on any job. Plus, I don't really know what I would want to study, or if it is even worth studying subjects that I may even remotely like. What am I looking for instead? I'm looking for an Apprenticeship, since that can help me get work experience and a job - I would also learn skills for jobs that actually exist.

I don't want to make this a post about education, because I think that deserves its own post. There is a lot wrong with modern education, but for now that's Bryan Caplan's job to critique education.

Despite this, if I had a choice of University or full-time game development, I would have gone with the former. The reasons why is that I would be able to build a network, gain some work experience and earn a qualification which some companies would require, or have a backup option if I would ever drop out. I would be in a much better position on both getting a day-job and game development. Though, I can gain all these qualities, arguably stronger, through an apprenticeship .

Another option would be to do part-time jobs whilst doing game development, but I feel like an apprenticeship is a better backup option/day job. Although career capital is incredibly valuable, it doesn't mean that it can lead you into a path that you would initially expect. 

Fate's whimsical plot twist

I'm quite a young guy and I don't expect to be the same in the future. Ever since I stumbled into effective altruism, I thought about what I would like become in the more distant future. Although at the moment, my interest in the area is pretty weak, it is something worth contemplating and looking into and strengthening my interest in.

I'm not that kind of person who would for example think "I am going to be a musician because nothing else will make me happy", that would be ridiculous and stubborn. I do believe that I, as well as everyone else can become good at things that they would have never known they would have become good at. 

I'm not saying that I hate making games all of the sudden, on the contrary, it's mentally situating thing but maybe I at some point could think "I've developed enough skills here to perhaps try this new thing". This is why I'm starting to do long-form blog posts in the area of Effective Altruism, so I can learn new skills and get into something new. I like to consider myself a 'Jack of all trades' since I'm not a big fan of getting labels thrown at me like 'Master coder', which I feel would pigeon hole me into one path, keeping my options open is a better idea. The world is a rapidly changing place so adapting to these should be a built-in mechanic of mine.  

Tim cook for example had to write his life plan for the next 25 years for his masters degree; only the first 18 - 24 months were accurate. The rest was not even remotely accurate. This is why committing to one 'dream' can be pretty dangerous - keep that in mind if you are ever having any aspirations in mind.

Conclusion

That was a bit long, but I feel that writing this blog was necessary so I can get anyone who reads my blogs updated with my current views to avoid any incorrect ideas spreading in the future.

Although I was keen on making games full-time and wanted to avoid a 9-5 job as much as possible when I was younger, now I would rather have a 9-5 job because I feel like I belong somewhere and I can meet new people, gain networks and develop skills. 

Instead of focusing on future plans, I would rather focus on building something for myself and being awesome. Game development as well as my blog feel more like extensions of me rather than something I aspire to be in the future. Even if I made my 'Dream game' and it became a big hit, what happens after that?

I would look for something new.

That's all from me!