Weekly update #30

Art

Amnukhel is actually banana shaped. This is some awkward locomotion going on here.

Like a demonic spawn of a duck and an elephant.

Dev spotlight

Character workshop, part 2: How to start a character

Most of the inhabitants of the world of TU are invisible bystanders. They're usually only mentioned as a part of the description of an environment or they are implied to live in the random houses player sees on the map. In short, they exist only as a theoretical concept.

So what is the difference between these conceptually existing characters and the fully fleshed out characters with their own sprites and dialogue? Engagement. The character engages the player, or the player engages the character in some way, creating a bond between them.

Engagement
A situation must be created organically either by the circumstances of the event or through the player's choices where in the end the player interacts with a character. You could just make the character bump into the player on the street randomly and initiate dialogue that way, but if neither the character nor the player have a reason to interact with each other the conversation has no purpose, and it will taint the character from the get go. If the reason for this character existing is an exciting adventure hidden somewhere in the mundane questions you can ask from them, you should lead the interaction with that instead.

Lead with the reason to engage: If player talks to someone it should be done with intent from either the character ("This human person looks shady, I should go over and ask some questions") or with intent from the player ("I need to find this person, they might be able to help with the thing"). There are basically three different ways to approach this:

1. Character engages the player.
• Character reacts to the player, (Vuisul)
• Character is interested in the player, (Shyni).
• Character wants to small talk, (Punflen)
• Character is a barrier to progress, (Taulsol/Tornoth).
2. Player engages the Character. 
• Character is a shopkeeper, players seek out shops for utility purposes, (Bykaas/Tornoth).
• Player is directed/introduced to the character by another character, (Miggpli, Uum, Nkaanmykiunsuns, Subni, Noidu).
3. Circumstances force/encourage engagement between player and character.
• Player meets someone on the road.
• Player spends a lot of time within the vicinity of a character without a direct reason to engage, (small talk excuse).
• Player is interested in the character. You would need to introduce the character first by some other means for player to have this approach (Player going up to a character to flirt in a bar, etc).

So what the fuck am I supposed to do with this obnoxiously colorful thing I doodled in the last blogpost? I wasn't approaching this from the angle of a specific story beat or a character idea, so now I'm stuck with a character sprite I need to reverse engineer into a character (not a particularly new circumstance for me).

So... the character will be situated somewhere in the current playable area. Making the character into a feral would be super easy, so I'm not gonna do that. Let's do it the hard way instead.

-and it's at this point I stop for several days. I can't figure out how to introduce the character. The character doesn't have enough substance for me to speculate what could happen that engages the player with this character. So I started procrastinating with the writing by fiddling with the visual design instead because I thought the initial design was sloppy (they always are).

I removed the dangly bits but might bring them back, eh. I made buncha things more defined but some adjustments still needed.

I guess I should figure out what to do with the character. Ehh... let's transpose the possible player initiated engagement to the character instead. The character comes up to the player at the bar to flirt with them. There we go. It's a tiny notch above "You bump into this character on a road" but there's not really a reason why someone wouldn't do this.

Notice the script language highlighting "counter" because I thought using a simple word for functions was a good idea.

So this introduction tells us that the character thinks the player looks flirtable at a distance (Yes, we're creating this character's personality retroactively based on the way we introduce them). Great, now we have a premise and a single piece of personality to build on.