SiC as a whole game is a different game from any I've worked on before. All my past projects have either been small single screen, or at least small play area, games that pull more from arcade games and mobile titles. SiC on the other hand, is aimed more to pull from narrative shooters and linear RPG's. Which sort of fundamentally changes a lot of level and mechanic design, as something that's fun for a minute at a bus stop isn't necessarily fun stretched into a three hour narrative.

In the past, I would have described my design style as more punk rock than anything else. Do whatever seems fun, damn the consequences(in this case consequences being world building). Though with SiC I've been looking at everything from the level design, to the enemies, to the actual mechanics, doing my best to make sure it all coalesces into something that is, more or less, a cohesive whole. 

I'd recently put in a slew of scoring mechanics that were broken down for you at the end of every level. How many enemies were killed, how many secrets were found, how much score was attained, how long did it take you to finish. Most players liked this, they knew how well they did, and how many secrets they could go back and find. I have an issue with it though, because in the vaguely cohesive world of SiC there's no reason for these terminals. In the end, I'm working on a few ideas for similar to this, simple reports of things you missed on the level, but I want them to be smarter than just a list of the things you just did. I want them to inch players deeper into the world that we're creating.

This is all assuming I can pull off the hat trick of completing the game, a sizable number of people buy the game, and a sizable number of them beat the game. Not that I don't think it can happen, its just - you know - there are a  lot of great games out there.
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Thanks, 

Wyatt White
Caught between Uncertainty and Taboo.

SiC is the first game I've worked on with a beginning, middle and end. Of course other projects have had a point where the player starts, the play duration, and game overs, but never a real narrative. Now, that's not to say it'll be any good. I've got ideas galore, and it's certainly going to start out very formulaic-ly. For real, the game starts out with space pirates attacking a space station, as far as space marine games go, that's a pretty damn overdone premise. That being said, that's not where the game's gonna end, it's not going to be a stock shooter formula throughout, there will be twists and switchups throughout the run time. Whether those twists and changes will work, that'll remain to be seen, but they'll be there, and they'll be (fingers crossed) unique and interesting. 

It's both exciting and worrying to be making something with a story. On the one hand, it's another thing that can go wrong, which is always a little more stressing. Though, on the other hand I think it'll be a surprise where it goes considering how it starts, and maybe that'll be the thing that makes it for someone. Really though, until it's all complete and released, all I can do is hope and work. 

Anyway, we've got a call to action in game, I doubt this will be the final text, but here's what we've got right now. It's not anything amazing on it's own, but what it symbolizes is, to me at least, pretty damn cool.

Before I go, I just wanted to make sure y'all check out this game called Butcher. It's a free little platforming shooter by the group that made King Arthurs Gold and Soldat. It's a pretty entertaining thing, plus, you know, it's free.

Thanks,

Wyatt White
Money is just the means to an end.

I've been really frustrated with the lack of major blog post updates recently. It's certainly not been from lack of work on my end, more that the major changes that have been happening fall into being Large Backend changes, Level and Story Additions, or Secret stuff.

Large back end changes. Most recently the HUD and weapon rendering system, as well as the text storage and drawing. These changes are frustrating in that the best way to know they work correctly is that they look the exact same. From my end it makes adding new elements and tweaking existing ones way easier. Of course, there's not a ton of content potential in an article centering around me talking about how much better a coder I am now compared to when I started SiC.

Level and Story Additions. Seeing as SiC is more or less complete from a mechanics standpoint means that I've been spending an inordinate ammount of time the last few weeks working on the story and levels of SiC. Of course, to keep things novel, I'm doing my best to keep the levels pretty quiet on the internet, as I want people to experience them for the first time when they play the game, not months before hand on twitter. As for story, I should be at a point pretty soon where I'm comfortable enough with my own lore to start sharing tidbitts, but even then, it'll only be tidbitts. A lot of the background of SiC is going to be revealed and unlocked in game, so I don't really want to reveal too much beforehand.

Secret Stuff. Things happen during the run of SiC. Things that change other things. I doubt it'll end up being Shakespeare, but I'm trying to keep some of the later game events, NPCs and Enemies under wraps till the game is out, hopefully I can surprise people with a dumb action shooter that's just a bit smarter than it initially seems

Well, I did it. I wrote a substantial Dev Blog Post about how I really have a hard time writing substantial blog posts about recent developments.

First, I feel like I need to put out the obligatory 'been a while' comment. 

It's been a while.

Now that that's out of the way, I wanted to talk about how games change over time and how my expectations for my games has changed. Last post was about how strange and difficult Indie game development becomes as it goes on. This will be, I guess, tangentially related. Really though, I just want to ramble for a few moments on games change both during development and while being played.

Obviously, games change during development. The go from being an idea in someones head, to being a collections of art assets and code snips, to being real games, though that's not the kind of change that's interesting.  The more interesting changes come from the goal of a game changing as development goes on. SiC started life as a game about bounty hunting demons, before it became a game more about exploring an open station and repairing it, before eventually changing more into what it is now, which is more of a linear quick paced shooter. The central system planned has become less and less complex as development has marched on.

Ideas are easy, everyone has a million, every single person reading this has a game idea that they think would be great. The ideas that matter are the ones that get made, be they into games or books or comics or just as an essay. It's about turning a collection of random chemical signals into something tangible, something that can be shared and talked about. 

I'm not (well, not anymore anymore) the kind of person who's concerned with whether or not a game I'm working on is worth being talked about. I used to care, the first few years I was working on games, I wanted each to be talked about, I wanted each game to have impact, and I'd get especially depressed when they didn't. This was compounded by not immediately starting on something else once I'd finished a project. By now I can look back and see that I really didn't get what I was doing, that I was saddling both myself and my games with the expectation that they needed to be great, so when I would put one out, and watch it go by completely unnoticed, I would be devastated. Eventually, I figured out that if I immediately moved on to the next project, I could escape the existential dread of all my effort being in vain, instead being forced to focus on the next design issue or confusing new mechanical implementation. Eventually I stopped caring about making a  game that people want to talk about, focusing instead on making the best game I can make. 

That's all I want now. I mean, hell, if I do make something that's legitimately worth talking about, then that's great. In the end though, I'm not looking to make a game that's well loved by everyone, or dealing with a specific taboo topic. I just want to make a game that people can enjoy. 

Anyway, I don't specifically remember what I started off talking about, but it probably wasn't any good anyway.

Wyatt White
Proud owner of $6.28