Bandito Juan presents

John I. Gottschalk / Freelance Game Designer, Producer, Event Manager

[johnig]

I came across this while spelunking my folder structure and just had to upload it, I just love the wings during fast travel xD

[johnig]

Westerado: Double Barreled - Reception

Westerado: Double Barreled was what consumed 2014 and the first half of 2015 for me. As its quest producer and scriptwriter I had my head so deep fixing quest bugs that I didn’t have time to be nervous for release. In the end we garnered a lot of attention from both critics and fans, and I just wanted to cover some of my favorites.

Rock Paper Shotgun liked W:DB a lot and gave us a bunch of coverage, with a glowing review, placing it as #25 favorite PC action game, and #6 on the RPS advent calendar.

Polygon blessed us with a McElroy Brothers overview, and an interview to get to the depths of Westerado.

Further along IGN gave us 2 reviews, a Spanish 7.5 and an Italian 8.2, PC Gamer dropped us a tidy 83 and Destructoid gave us the full 100! A nice surprise which we were not expecting.

We had our fair share of lets-players as well, Etalyx does a fine job exploring quest lines, while [streamer]** got more distracted by the western atmosphere and soliloquizing.

One of my favorite pieces of coverage though, was a recording of the final scene of the game being voiced by the streamer Woddee. Many streamers and reviewers felt inspired to read my dialogue out loud, but Woddee, after a long challenging playthrough, had gotten the perfect crazy exasperation to voice the Murderer’s last moments, the drama just spills out of him!

*fanart credit: Romitas **not all folks turn out to have the best values, intentions or actions. The name of the streamer and the link have been removed to not direct traffic towards them.

[johnig]

Here’s a small curation of garden themed games. I hope you like soothing experiences :) http://padlet.com/JohnGottschalk/GardeningGames Garden Exploration games, Procedural Audio-Visual Gardens, Space Gardens, Terrariums, Biomes, Bonsai Pruners, Pollination Bees, and various others.

[johnig]

Whenever I describe to people how I find cool things, I find myself wishing there was some way to encapsulate it and make it available to others. That lead to this mock-up for a connection or specifically inspiration mapping app.

Each node is a piece of media, and each connection is something that links them: a creator, a theme, a phrase, an aesthetic, or maybe even just a hunch.  [Made in Google Drawings because of the node linking capabilities.]

[johnig]

I recently went to the JOIN Local Multiplayer Summit in Berlin, and recorded a lot of interviews, here's a selection that will be followed up by a longer, more varied piece!

[johnig]

I read some of the twitter-bot created poetry that you can find at https://twitter.com/thewillthewisp. Bot made my Devine Lu Linvega aka aliceffekt. If you’d like me to read something, just hit me up @BanditoJuan on twitter.

[johnig]

Quest Design - Overview

Warning SPOILERS for Westerado: Double Barreled!

The first image is a complete flowchart of the narratives from Westerado that I designed to track progress of the writing and quests. It was also used during testing to systematically approach the content and find bugs or problems in the flow. The second is a close-up of the chart.

The following 3 are examples from a spreadsheet in which I and our level designer kept track of any relevant scripted variables from quests for either of us to use as we implemented relevant conversations, triggered sequences or in-world changes.

We also used Google Analytics to track which missions testers had reached and to automate crash reports, and we used JIRA to log bugs found during tests. 

“When life gives you bugs, make a dinosaur.” - Yhorik Aarsen

[johnig]

Quest Design - Journal Process

As the quest designer and lead writer on Westerado it was my responsibility to come up with characters, their narratives, the quests they have, document them for tracking and testing purposes and implement all of the journal entries.

This example is a very clear quest from the Haberdasher, Miss Hatt, where she’s looking for extra hands:

1. Her whole narrative structure; made with Google Drawings. 2. The JournalData spreadsheet in which I entered all the journal entries along with their quest titles, states, relevant map markers and conditional failures. 3. Our conversation and scripting editor, where I trigger Journal 202 from the sheet at the point when you are told about the quest a second time. 4. An in-game shot of the relevant journal entry as seen by the player.

[johnig]

World & Level Design

As quest designer and lead writer, I was responsible for where quests had to take place, how to space out locations and place important NPCs. I did this in combination with our level designer and artist, to create interesting as well as functional environments.

I also analysed many of the paths to and from important locations to clarify how we lead the player as well as the internal logic of the environments.

Although I wasn’t the level designer, I was familiar with the tools so as to fix placement and layering issues (Mapographer), check and fix triggers during bug testing (BloXcrypt) or looking up and fixing level names (World Builder). I also helped design the level editor for our needs since I did the original level design for the prototype in Ogmo.

[johnig]

Narrative Design & Writing Non-Linearly

Gunversationist was a multi-faceted tool in which you can write conversations, script character progress, unlock achievements, set journal entries, change in-game names and trigger audio or animation cues.

I got so comfortable in the tool, I laid out design ideas in it, I scripted shops in it, I dreamt in gun-versationist. 

Relevant information for parsing the images above: - Dots are NPC dialogue, lines are player options. - Green dots are starting points, blue dots are ending points. - Yellow lines are talking options, red lines are drawing, cocking or shooting your gun, and blue lines are holstering it. - Orange dots are portals used for conditional variable setting on linear dialogue paths as well as splitting up non-linear content easier. - Purple dots are comments and used for clarity.

[johnig]

Behind Westerado: Double Barreled Tools of The Trade - Part 3

In this segment I walk through how an in-world event gets triggered, and how the character selects what they need to say when a dialogue starts, using 3 different tools, the Gunversationist, the Mapographer and BloXcrypt.

*Tools developed by Yhorik Aarsen @ Ostrich Banditos.

[johnig]

Westerado: Double Barreled Tools of the Trade - Part 2

During this portion I really focus in on the Gunversationist to break down how a conversation is structured, and why you want portals in your nonlinear narrative editor.

(Admittedly the editor does interpret the content from left to right, but we can loop back at any point we want.)

*Tools developed by Yhorik Aarsen @ Ostrich Banditos.

[johnig]

Westerado: Double Barreled Tools of the Trade - Part 1

Starting off I run through our introduction conversation in Gunversationist, partially explain how we replace gender-specific pronouns and show off the wonders of spreadsheets for procedural generation.

*Tools developed by Yhorik Aarsen @ Ostrich Banditos.

[imagosfilms]

The Ballad of Westerado

A lone gunman scours the west lookin’ to avenge his family. The Ballad of Westerado is the first ever interactive video game spot for Adult Swim Games’s Westerado: Doubled Barreled.

[johnig]

The super-awesome interactive live action trailer for our game!

[johnig]

Self-made mini-magnet versions of a book collection for a friend’s birthday. They were a big success at the party, as you can easily look through and point out books you’ve read/have/are interested in. Considering doing more if anyone is interested in having/buying some. Might set up an etsy? I dunno. Probably should do it with more pop-culture heavy content before anyone would pay attention.

[johnig]

Coming to Steam on 04-16 for PCs and Macs!

[johnig]

Playthrough Gifs of Potato Knights card game to show turn order and base mechanics. [Dice = spuds (resources), Pixels on Cards = Chips (health)] (Hopefully to be digitized sometime soon!) |Potato Knights designed with Jordi Boin|