Thursday, July 24, 2014
Tiki's Corner
Since this is my personal blog about the business, I'd like to post some things about myself, apart from the business once in a while. In the tradition of work, let's start with my newest job. While I'd been working the stock expert at a clothing store (I still work as an associate on the floor a day or two a week), I'm now working as an embroiderer. I'll post some pictures soon, but I made my first patch for a hat today. Sure, I redid their logo in photoshop and converted it, but I did it :). Hopefully there will be some print in the future as well with this job. For me, it's a great relief to have something that's not typical retail, and allows me to use my skills as a digital artist.
Talking about Talking
One of the more innovative ideas I've been working on is what I call procedural storytelling. To explain what this in more depth than I have elswhere:
Procedural Storytelling is the art of telling a story using multiple parts, to create a cohesive narrative that is still entirely unique to the player. Differing from branching story gameplay, procedural storytelling aims to play events based on requirements met by the world and it's actors/pieces. One of the biggest drawbacks of such an engine is Voice Acting is impractically expensive, and would require a highly sophisticated automatic voice algorithm to make it affordable and worth it. On the bright side, with it being such a new idea, there is plenty of fun to be had with nothing but text while the newest flash-based supercomputer prototypes are still being built. That's all I'm willing to release on it before we begin sending out demos to reviewers, which should be within the month. We haven't settled on a title for the first game, but we've finished the toolset, the base of the UI, and have only a small set of graphics and a large volume of stories to create to bring you an engaging and unique experience...
Meanwhile, I've made contact with our first feedback customer for CityScaper, who's already helped me largely prevent compatibility errors. If you've been getting LibNoise compatibility errors, they will be fixed in the next patch. Contact us at 'thetiki@gmail.com' with your order # if you've already purchased the asset and would like the updated version early. We are still looking for more feedback and errors, if you have another problem, don't hesitate to email us as well with your debug. No problem is too small for me too look at!
Finally, the Inventory System has been put back on the top of my priority list, withholding responses and patching for our CityScaper feedback. I've managed to fill in some of the holes I had left previously and now you can pick up the backpack and attach it to the character. All that's left now is to draw the GUI, and then I'll be spending a bit of time doing back and forth with the people who had requested this asset before releasing the *first* asset. From there I plan on releasing several small add-ons, as well as a final pack including all of them at a discounted price when finished.
Procedural Storytelling is the art of telling a story using multiple parts, to create a cohesive narrative that is still entirely unique to the player. Differing from branching story gameplay, procedural storytelling aims to play events based on requirements met by the world and it's actors/pieces. One of the biggest drawbacks of such an engine is Voice Acting is impractically expensive, and would require a highly sophisticated automatic voice algorithm to make it affordable and worth it. On the bright side, with it being such a new idea, there is plenty of fun to be had with nothing but text while the newest flash-based supercomputer prototypes are still being built. That's all I'm willing to release on it before we begin sending out demos to reviewers, which should be within the month. We haven't settled on a title for the first game, but we've finished the toolset, the base of the UI, and have only a small set of graphics and a large volume of stories to create to bring you an engaging and unique experience...
Meanwhile, I've made contact with our first feedback customer for CityScaper, who's already helped me largely prevent compatibility errors. If you've been getting LibNoise compatibility errors, they will be fixed in the next patch. Contact us at 'thetiki@gmail.com' with your order # if you've already purchased the asset and would like the updated version early. We are still looking for more feedback and errors, if you have another problem, don't hesitate to email us as well with your debug. No problem is too small for me too look at!
Finally, the Inventory System has been put back on the top of my priority list, withholding responses and patching for our CityScaper feedback. I've managed to fill in some of the holes I had left previously and now you can pick up the backpack and attach it to the character. All that's left now is to draw the GUI, and then I'll be spending a bit of time doing back and forth with the people who had requested this asset before releasing the *first* asset. From there I plan on releasing several small add-ons, as well as a final pack including all of them at a discounted price when finished.
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