Cleaning up folders and
I found this post I wrote like 5 mos ago haha... ha.......
Programming-wise my arbitrary first steps will be
1) Getting an environment I can have a sprite walk around in, and
2) Getting to where I can do cut scenes. So, text appearing on the screen, character portraits, etc. I was able to program a cut scene in Flash but I don't think working with Python is going to be comparable because the visual elements aren't as immediate. I am also gonna have to get used to functions, which is something I am having a little trouble wrapping my head around in the literature I'm reading. But in the end this is all to the good, since in the Flash demo, all the text was animated in by hand, which was horrendous. A game as large as LC can't be done all by hand like that.
I knocked out all the skills (except Tod's, 'cause he has a bunch) and most of the equips except weapons a while back. So now I'm trying to think about how I can deepen the gameplay, for instance making skills more involved.
Sil mentioned delegating a while back and I'm trying to start thinking of this in concrete terms. There's obvious stuff like begging people to read for me so I can have an extra set of eyes for spell-check and dumb continuity errors. But I'm also thinking about something like making a PSD with a bunch of layers that have NPC features on them, like different eyes and hair and stuff, and just asking anyone with minimal Photoshop experience to put them together however they think looks good and then save like 50 of them. Designing NPCs is surprisingly unfun.
If I ever get to the point where I have an alpha build, I think I'm going to have to run a Kickstarter or something to try to get funding for the soundtrack, too. This is not something I especially want to do, because I have very specific things in mind for certain melodies, but again-- time. You could say that if I'm picking my battles, maybe I should just hire a programmer, but I want to learn to program anyway because it's fun and I feel like it would be a useful skill to know in the future, whereas I have no intention of ever writing game music for money and don't enjoy the technical aspects of it at all, only the results.
Maybe this all sounds like I'm getting ahead of myself, but it's just stuff I've been thinking about for a while.
Meanwhile back in the present: I have not been writing at all, either on the script or the novel, for the last month or so, because commissions (and okay, internet pokemon) have been devouring my time and motivation. Also, lots of headaches, possibly because of the horrid weather.
Programming-wise my arbitrary first steps will be
1) Getting an environment I can have a sprite walk around in, and
2) Getting to where I can do cut scenes. So, text appearing on the screen, character portraits, etc. I was able to program a cut scene in Flash but I don't think working with Python is going to be comparable because the visual elements aren't as immediate. I am also gonna have to get used to functions, which is something I am having a little trouble wrapping my head around in the literature I'm reading. But in the end this is all to the good, since in the Flash demo, all the text was animated in by hand, which was horrendous. A game as large as LC can't be done all by hand like that.
I knocked out all the skills (except Tod's, 'cause he has a bunch) and most of the equips except weapons a while back. So now I'm trying to think about how I can deepen the gameplay, for instance making skills more involved.
Sil mentioned delegating a while back and I'm trying to start thinking of this in concrete terms. There's obvious stuff like begging people to read for me so I can have an extra set of eyes for spell-check and dumb continuity errors. But I'm also thinking about something like making a PSD with a bunch of layers that have NPC features on them, like different eyes and hair and stuff, and just asking anyone with minimal Photoshop experience to put them together however they think looks good and then save like 50 of them. Designing NPCs is surprisingly unfun.
If I ever get to the point where I have an alpha build, I think I'm going to have to run a Kickstarter or something to try to get funding for the soundtrack, too. This is not something I especially want to do, because I have very specific things in mind for certain melodies, but again-- time. You could say that if I'm picking my battles, maybe I should just hire a programmer, but I want to learn to program anyway because it's fun and I feel like it would be a useful skill to know in the future, whereas I have no intention of ever writing game music for money and don't enjoy the technical aspects of it at all, only the results.
Maybe this all sounds like I'm getting ahead of myself, but it's just stuff I've been thinking about for a while.
Meanwhile back in the present: I have not been writing at all, either on the script or the novel, for the last month or so, because commissions (and okay, internet pokemon) have been devouring my time and motivation. Also, lots of headaches, possibly because of the horrid weather.