#fated paths

[cloudbewwies]

Dates

[infinite-xerath]

Fated Paths

Xerath labored away in the desert heat, helping the other slaves stack cobblestone bricks. They were laying the foundation for some sort of temple, but he didn’t know the specifics; he didn’t need to. So long as he earned his keep, that was all that mattered. Why did he have to live like this? Why must he, along with all the others, be forced to live such a life?

He knew not his parents, nor the day of his birth. All Xerath knew was that he was to do as he was told, lest he incur the guards’ wrath. He looked up suddenly toward the guard tower, scowling. He was surprised at what he saw, however...

---

Azir looked down at the busy slaves, his expression neutral. It was the day of his birth, and as such, father had promised he could have his first servant. Azir was brought out to the slave camp to search for someone he deemed suitable for the task. There were slaves of all sizes and shapes to choose from, yet none of them seemed satisfactory, for one simple reason: they all seemed far too miserable to be his personal servant.

Suddenly, the young prince’s gaze fell on one slave in-particular: a boy, about the same age as he, who was laying down bricks in the sand. His back was turned toward Azir, yet for some odd reason, he senses something odd about this boy. A strange aura hung about him; something more than the hopelessness that resonated from the others...

“My liege,” said the guard captain. “Have you yet chosen?” A brief pause followed, before Azir finally answered.

“No, Ahkale,” he stated simply. “Thinking about the matter more, I’ve decided that I do not want servant. Not yet, anyway. They're all far too much older than I.”

Ahkale nodded. “As you wish. Come then, we must return to the capitol. You know how your father worries about leaving you in the presence of filth for too long.” He ushered the prince toward the exit, and Azir began to walk. Suddenly, however, he stopped.

For some odd reason, Azir could not shake the feeling that someone was watching him. He turned, and caught the same slave boy he had seen earlier suddenly turning his head away. Had that boy been watching him? If so, for how long? A shiver ran through the prince’s spine. There was something about that slave that set the prince on edge...

“My liege?” Said the guard captain. “Is everything alright?”

Azir nodded. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, I am fine. Sorry.” With that, he climbed down the ladder, six men ready at the bottom to catch him if he fell. Thankfully, the prince did not, and was swiftly escorted to the camel-drawn chariot that would take him back to the capitol.

---

Xerath scoffed. That was far too close. He knew not the name of the boy in the guard tower, but from the robes alone he could guess it was someone of high-ranking status. If he’d been caught making eye-contact with such an individual, who knew what horrid punishment awaited him?

Returning to the task at hand, Xerath helped lay the final few bricks for his group. What a life it must be where one could look down on others like insects, he thought. What a life it must be to be cool in the day and warm at night; to celebrate being alive by taking whatever you want, whenever you wanted? THAT was the life he longed for... And one day, Xerath decided, he would have it.

[gamemakernathan]

So What Now?

When I first said my next post would be about what's next for me, I thought I had a good handle on what I was going to say, but I've realized I really have no clue. I could whine about my uncertain future, but I'd rather focus on what leads I have and what I'm doing with them. So, without further ado, here's the GameMakerNathan state of affairs!

1. FruitMancer Orange! (tentative title) My last post was about an RPGMaker Humble Bundle. Turns out, part of the reason it was happening in the first place was the folks that distribute RPGMaker are hosting a game design contest! Any engine goes, and we've got just one month to complete our entry. I was worried I'd spend too much time working out a concept, so I asked some of my friends if they had any low-scope game concepts clunking around their heads. My friend Taiko had a silly idea about a mage that shoots rotten oranges and is on a quest to craft THE ULTIMATE ORANGE. So that's what I'm focusing on now. It's a 2D Platformer, and so far we've got a working player character, camera movement, and one enemy. Taiko's focusing on level design while I man the coding. He and I have one friend each interested in helping with music and sound, and one of our mutual friends may be doing the art. She's doing some concepts of the main character at the moment.

2. Fated Paths Since I last mentioned this 'ol RPGMaker project of mine, I've gotten the party swapping menu functioning just fine!...That's about all so far. Mooooving on...

3. Voice Acting! A friend of mine told introduced me to an independant dev in the Netherlands who was looking for some VO work for a trailer. I sent him my reel and he seemed quite impressed! Not only that, but he'd be willing to pay me for my work, to boot! Unfortunately, it seemed he was just testing the field at the moment. Didn't have his trailer storyboarded out or knew exactly what he needed voiced just yet. He said he'd get back to me once he had it all figured out. Fingers crossed that that's soon! I've also sent out an audition or two besides. If I could get some money from Voice Acting to tide me over while I develop my games, it'd be a phenomenal help. One of those auditions was for a horror game. I decided to include a VO page to my portfolio you can only get to by link, and included a short clip of me screaming. Because horror game.You can check those out here: http://nathanlindleygamedes.wix.com/home#!vo/c1ybp

4. Last Wishes This project has been shelved for now. The more I thought about the lead character and her story, the more I wanted to give them the attention they deserved. Which is bad, since I really need to get a game out to market I can make some pocket change off of. Coupled with my artist's life getting crazy complicated, it looks like this project will have to wait until we're both at a more secure spot in our lives. Apologies to anyone who was looking forward to this game's release. :C

5. Miscellaneous I've volunteered to help one of my (former) classmates with a project he's working on, but have yet to hear more from him. If something comes from that, I'll make a post about it. I've been doing video/sound editing work for 100,000 Strong for MegaMan Legends 3. Awhile back they released some English Dubbed/Translated videos of the Japan-only Rockman DASH 5 Island Adventure, which you can watch here. They covered the first island before the project lost its team, and I volunteered to give the second island a try. First episode's set to go, but the second one's got a nasty problem. Much of the video isn't long enough to fit the VO I've been provided with. A character's speech bubble will be on screen for 2.5 seconds when the audio for it is 6 seconds long, for example. I can edit the video to be longer, but then I need to re-do the BGM track, and the only tool I have to apply audio to video is Windows Movie Maker. It's not fun. One last thing: I have an Ouya now! My sister got me it as a graduation present. Here's hoping I can get one of my games on the Ouya market sometime soon! In the meantime, that's about all I've got to talk about. Expect a whole lotta nothing while I try to get something presentable made!

[gamemakernathan]

What I've Been Up To, Part 2: AI Programming

I learned a couple of neat tricks in AI Programming this semester, although most of it was just listening to my teacher talk theory that went way over my head without any proper experience with code optimization or memory allocation. Still, I made progress on three projects:

Speech Sight Sound is dungeon crawler where the player commands a three-person team. After entering the dungeon, each member lost something dear to them. The Warrior lost their sight, the Rogue lost their hearing, and the Mage lost their voice. As the Mage, the player needs to guide their allies through the dungeon using the only spells they can cast without an incantation: creating lights and sounds from thin air. The sounds help guide the blind warrior, and the lights help guide the deaf rogue, but they also attract the attention of monsters. The current prototype doesn't really hold up as a game, unfortunately. It's mostly a tech demo of a bunch of disconnected concepts the class introduced. As such, I won't put it up for download just yet.

Also, since disabilities are a touchy subject to some people, I'd like to make it clear that I don't think being deaf, blind, or mute means you can't live a normal life and basically be a totally awesome person. But if you've gone your whole life taking something like sight for granted and suddenly lost it, it'd take a good bit of work to adjust, I think. Anyway, I don't plan on going all-in on this project until I've done more research on the disabilities in question. Not just to be sensitive to those who have them, but also because I think the game and characters would benefit from me knowing more. Also, I need to figure out how to make it playable by the deaf and blind. I figure that'd be kinda important for a game like this.

I learned a bit about pathfinding and state machines and have been trying to re-make RoTAC to be more flexible and polished. If you played the first version of RoTAC, you may've noticed everyone just teleports to the spots they're moving to. In this version, they actually move there! And they don't get stuck, either! Tony (the Astray website guy. He's also a game dev. Here's another link to his website in case you didn't click it yesterday: http://www.tonyvle.com/) was pretty impressed with the prototype so far and we may be working together over the summer on refining it.

Finally, we spent one week in AI covering scripting languages. Our assignment was to pick a scripting language like lua, python, or ruby and just sorta...do something with it. I remembered RPGMakerXP used Ruby, so I tinkered around a bit with the back-end code for the first time. Turns out it's not as scary and incomprehensible as I remember it being! For the homework, I made a prototype that allowed a 5 person party instead of RPGMaker's default 4, and added a feature where the map music would continue unimpeded into and through battles. Getting these features working gave me the confidence to try something more complex. I've been working on getting Fated Paths to a stage where I wouldn't be embarrassed to put it on my portfolio website. For now, it's still sort of a cookie-cutter RPGMaker game with no unique or custom features. To fix that, I want to do two things: - Get a party-swap system in place where you have a group of reserve characters and your active party and can change them up as you see fit. - Have a menu screen where the player can buy overpriced emergency supplies from Merch, an eccentric arms merchant that accompanies the protagonist throughout the game (it'd also be used for getting refreshers on the main quest and sidequest goals the player has) Both these features have KINDA been in for ages, but it's currently done through using a key item in the inventory and navigating an awkward series of dialogue trees. Not intuitive at all. Once I've got that, I'll go over the dialogue to make sure there's nothing I'm TOO embarrassed of (a running gag about Merch wanting to buy a hot tub comes to mind) and finish adding content to a map that's currently half-done. Then I'll put up a download link here and add it to my website. That about covers AI Programming. Tomorrow'll be 3D Composition. Ever wanna see me try 3D Modelling? Well, tomorrow you'll get to see everything I modeled in the class! Personally, I think everything came out pretty well, but I'm not experienced enough to recognize bad modeling and texturing when I see it. :P

[gamemakernathan]

There is one RPGMaker game I've been holding off on posting here. It's the largest and, I think, most impressive one I've made (not counting one I only helped make), but it's also unfinished. At the moment, it doesn't even have a "that's it for now" point. It just ends. Jarringly and without warning.

I made it as a Christmas present for my sister back when I first started using RPGMaker. I had no money, so I figured this was a cool alternative to having nothing for her. Her OC is the main character in a fight against doppelgangers from another dimension. I started with the intro and added more to it for her Birthday, graduation, and other special occasions like that for awhile.

Some things I learned while making it: Scope: This game was waaaay too ambitious a project for me to do alone, ESPECIALLY back then when I knew very little about making games. Feature creep: Part of the reason this is still unfinished is I kept doubling back and putting new stuff in or changing things. Those snazzy battle portraits (made using this: http://www.kongregate.com/games/xdanond/anime-character-maker-2 and some occasional photoshop) are like, the third iteration of battle portraits for the entire cast (9+ different characters). Writing: Maybe it's because I approached this as just a silly thing I was making for my sister. Maybe it's because I was younger and dumber. Maybe it's because I secretly knew I'd never finish this and tried to shoehorn as much stuff into the beginning as I could. In any case, a lot of the writing in this is pretty terrible. Also bad jokes. Lots and lots of bad jokes. Mostly involving hot-tubs and one character's bizarre obsession with owning one.

I still work on this every once in awhile, stubbornly refusing to admit it's a lost cause. Maybe I'll post a build once I've gotten to a point I can put a "to be continued".