Biting off more than can chew

Gilda & Grillo sleeping together, pic from a few years ago

I would like to be able to sleep peacefully as my two cats above! The reality is that in the past month it has been quite stressful, for various reasons, personal and job related.

In particular, I recently had to drop the idea of making the “two independent parallel plots” feature of Bionic Heart 2. It was definitely too much. I tried to fix the numerous plot bugs, with the help of some people but we failed. Then asked Aleema, my trusted Loren writer, thinking that maybe it was my faul, that I was just “burned” by all the recent work. But even her gave up! So at least it means it wasn’t just me.

Thinking back about it I don’t even know how I thought I could make that work. It’s a total nightmare since the game is already super complex even played as “normal” visual novel, with lots of path/branching and variables to take care of.

By coincidence, this week appeared on a games site the flow chart of the Walking Dead game by Telltale, which I enjoyed a lot last year. Immediately, I noticed how simple it was. Yet, playing the game I had the sensation of much more freedom of choices!

So in practice, to the end users doesn’t matter much if there are really 150 parallel plots. Nobody except a few people are going to replay the game from beginning to see them all. I remember when I did a survey a few years ago, only 10% of people said that they try to unlock all the endings.

I think that for all future games, I’d rather make the story longer, and use other gameplay/narrative “tricks” to give the illusion of freedom (because even in the multiple path games, you still don’t have complete freedom, is just an illusion).

Anyway, what does it means in practice for Bionic Heart 2? I thought that by removing the parallel plot thing, all problems would be solved but I was wrong again. Testers in forums were finding lots of new plot bugs! The game logic is still to complex, with too many branching points, jumps, and so on. For every problem fixed, two new ones would show up. This was going to be a neverending story…

The solution is something that I should have done from the beginning: I’m going to reorganize all the scenes in a simpler way, still providing choices like in all my games, but with a more simple logic behind it.

Nothing is going to be missing from the original script (maybe a few parts of some scenes, but I’ll try to keep as much as I can) but simply I will make it so that behind the scenes doesn’t become the huge, complex mess that made me (and two other people) lose 2 months of time (the game should have been out last month).

I think I should be able to finish it in 2 weeks max, maybe sooner. I really want to get out this game as soon as possible! 🙂

Progress update

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First of all, I redid my website layout, I think is much better and functional than the previous one (the shopping cart layout needs to be updated but don’t worry, it works fine and is safe!). Second, the big update for Planet Stronghold is now out of beta, so you can grab it from the official page: http://www.winterwolves.com/planetstronghold.htm

Third, it’s been a while since I last posted a cat picture and did a progress report of all my games, so here we go:
In the image above, my cat Tofu looking at the snow from her little wooden house

As you know I have always several projects going on at once. Let’s make the point of the situation. I’ll try to order the games in the orders they’re likely to be finished, but of course it’s not a definitive list:

Bionic Heart 2

As you know everything is ready, but there are some serious plot bugs. Hopefully out at the end of this month, at least the beta testing stage!

Nicole

The otome version is at a very good point. It has all the characters/background art, and it’s only missing the soundtrack (but that can be done in 2 months) and the writing. After that is done, I’ll need to put together the gameplay, but shouldn’t take long since will mostly reuse the one already coded for Always Remember Me.

Roommates

Even this game is at good point, but since is very big, it will be probably out after Nicole. Story-wise there’s the last part left to write, but then we’ll need to playtest/edit everything so that’s still a lot of work. All the backgrounds are still missing, though I have already contacted a person to do them, and we decided to add several more CG images for the Spring Break event where most love-stories will really begin to flourish 😉

Then there’s still the soundtrack to do, which very likely will also consist of a theme song, since one of the characters of the game (Max) is a singer in a band.

Planet Stronghold 2

This is a very ambitious game, so while a good amount of work is already done, like all the romance scenes, we will add more enemies and probably camp talk images like those that will be present in Loren sequel. The RPG framework is also being rewritten completely and will take some time because the coder want to make it more flexible than previous one (so it can be adapted and reused for future games better).

The other games

Even if I don’t have time to post regular updates, progress is being made for Amber Magic Shop, Queen Of Thieves, Roger Steel and all the others 🙂

Planet Stronghold deluxe version available

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I know many people after last week post are eagerly awaiting Bionic Heart 2 release. I asked Aleema to take care of it, since I was really burned out from weeks of continuous testing. I’m sure she’ll do a good job and I think the game should be out before the end of month!

Meanwhile take a look at the screenshot below:

It’s from the deluxe version of Planet Stronghold which is currently in beta testing, you can download it here: http://www.macgames.biz/games/PlanetStronghold-1.5.2-all.zip

What is this deluxe version? I needed a break from the testing, so I thought to update this old game with the latest Ren’Py version (which should improve the speed by a lot).

Since I was there I also decided to do a real update, consisting of:

removed the “super easy” difficult level, since even at Easy mode the game was easy enough, and added a new Nightmare mode, which could also be called “prepare to die”. Since there seems to be a new trend in making very-ultra-difficult games, I thought to do my part too!
but the real new feature, depicted in the image above, is a new screen that you can access by visiting the laboratory where Lucille is. You can ask her to build weapons and armors using “metal scraps”, which you can obtain looting enemies and salvaging other items you have. Some items are worse than those you can get through questing, others are better. You’ll have to find out which ones, there are about 80 new items 😉
last but not least, a new GUI for the game, as you can see from the screenshots below:

: normal dialog window

: load/save

: battle screen

The update is free for anyone who bought the “Official Strategy Guide” for the game. If you have bought only the base game you can get the strategy guide here: http://www.winterwolves.com/buy.php?prod=17030044

That’s everything for this week. Work on the other games continues, and I hope to have new interesting updates next Friday!

Making wrong choices

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I wish I had someone like Tanya to help me out, because I would really need it.

Today I hoped to announce Bionic Heart 2 beta testing. After two months of coding/testing, would be about time!

Instead no. I have bad news. I’m at one point where I fix a plot hole, and a new one appears. I check a variable, one path works, the other doesn’t. A scene that before was fine, now plays out of order.

I’ve worked like crazy in past 3 days, I’m stressed like never before and then I came to a simple conclusion. There’s no hope to make this work. Every time I open the script I have a headache now. Writer doesn’t have time to help.

So I’m thinking what to do. It’s really embarrassing for me. Despite all the efforts, I know that I can’t make this work, unless I make some really big changes. And I’m not used to release half-broken games. Testing to find the bugs is one thing, but the version I have currently is not even to be considered “testable”. Only 3 days ago I thought I was at good point, but then I discovered that is like a house of cards, if you move a piece, everything falls apart.

It’s the first time I find myself in such situation in my life, and I’m the sole responsible of this. I should have followed more carefully the situation, instead I was busy with other projects. A wrong choice, trusting too much someone else capabilities, thinking he can do it all on his own without supervision, and that’s the result.

A pity because the story itself is really good I think.

Not all is lost though!

However don’t be afraid, I’m already thinking what to do to solve the situation. A simple solution would be to eliminate the “multiple path” feature and just have a continuous story, where if you fail the Mars or Earth path the game ends. Less cool than the original project, but probably in this case I wouldn’t have to do a total rewrite of the story, and would be faster to solve it.

Don’t worry, the game WILL be out, you will only need to be patient for a little more! I am still aiming to finish it by the end of March, even if I’ll have to rework the game structure a lot.

I’m really sorry about what happened and will make sure this won’t repeat in future.

Computer Games

Development diary of Celso Riva

Biting off more than can chew

Progress update

Planet Stronghold deluxe version available

Making wrong choices