A fiddling and generally stuffing about day the conversation with the butler now ends properly but that created a couple of  new problems that I had to fix, firstly the thought bubbles didn't look good so I have to fix them and secondly I got into also sort of both with walking behind and if front of things. In the five years that I have worked with WME I have revisit this anew each time.

Been a while since the last one, and as ever not as much progress as one would want, Main causes of the delay are

looking at a commercial software product to see if there is a business to be made out of it - probably

had some teaching which is always emotionally exhausting

watching loads of videos of adventure games - assessing the competition it's called

However as far as plains is concerned I have done the following#

1. Completed the dialogue with Foggit
2. Done some animations for the butler and have got these at the beginning of the scene and at the end of the conversation with Foggit

3 Reverted the right click menu to the original and changed the font colour in the dialogue box to white, I have also made the dialogue box slightly less transparent - it probably needs a bit less transparency.

4. some small changes to the dialogue

Rik Mayall

This is a great tragedy  like other's before him, Peter Cook there was so much more he could have/ should have done, he had all the talent, the charisma, the intellect and goodness to have affected peoples lives, making them laugh is great but he could have fought in the great fight. So sad for his wife and children.

Back to work

First fullish day in a while. Have been doing quite a lot of research and thinking.

I have been thinking through different ways of creating cut scenes and exploring the manga 5 product. Not entirely successfully, but that is probably more my fault. In an attempt to re-energise I worked on the conversation with Foggit and that went ok.

However I made a  change  to the main loop script by re-positioning the right click menu and I also resized the verb menu and changed it's back ground so all in all a useful day,

Moved on a little, now crafting the closeup conversation scene between Ron, the Doctor and then butler.

Once the trigger has been set in the conversation with Alice there scene moves into a close up between Ron the butler and Foggit,

both the Butler and Foggit are live, pressing on either will cause the butler to move to the right with the drinks tray

Foggit will turn and the conversation with Ron can begin

Opening Sequence

A strong opening sequence is always important.

Initially it was going to be the discovery of the body at a marsh and I have already developed some ideas for a cut scene to achieve this.

Having a rethink on this and perhaps it should rather cover something more of Ron's back-story,

The shots that I have in mind are arriving at Cambridge, images of going to war, trenches, gas attack hospital bed, woman leaning over hospital bed, back to Cambridge, leaving, woman walking off hospital bed, news papers, ash tray.

This could be done in comic strip form or as a series of fades and snap-shots. They could be repriesed as memories later.

Finished the "thought" interface

Rubbish name for the thing, but it is completed now, I have done a fair bit more to it, doing a little bit of string measuring to make sure that the text appears in the correct position within the graphic in the X axis, I have also modified the position of the thought bubble by taking into account the variation in the actors X position due to the direction he is facing. A font has now been selected which works.

Time now to leave the test framework and return to the main game and move on at last

In the lands of niggle

Got the scaling working in a satisfactory manner, the next thing is that the direction of the actor is also affecting the thought bubble so I need to take that into account for setting the x position. More fiddley trial by error coding coming up.

More on the thought

Just doing a bit of work on the positioning, I also need to take into account the scale of the character when working out the position on the Y Axis, that is the next task.

Then move onto the font.

Graphics tools

As always I struggle with the graphics, and am continually trying to get hold of stuff to cover my deficiencies. To that end I have decided to create 3d characters and perhaps some objects in makehuman and blender, then pose them in either blender or Fragmotion before rendering as sprites and using purely as 2d images.

I quite like the cut scene approach of the comic type images, and so have got a cheap graphics tablet and Manga studio to see if I can make that work

Thought Verb

Have implemented the thought verb, I have reused the code from Seraphite, it was one of the later things I did for that project and it works pretty well. It needs some tweaking in respect of size/position and font, and something to flip it to the other side if its too close to the window edge, I think rather than test the window edge I will simply find out if the actor is to the right or left of the screen centre and adjust accorndingly

Regions and actor entry

I have a reasonably clear view on how the scene will pan out now.

There is a trigger expression in the conversation with Alice that will allow access to Tilker Skallion and Foggit.

Traditionally I had always managed these things by using global variables which meant my code was chocking up with globals, even if they were only used in the context of a single scene.

I just worked out(though doubtless thousands have used it before) a new tactic of creating an entity which just has he scope of a scene. This entity can then either be forcibly released or alternatively will drop away once the scene is exited.

this created entity can then hold attributes/properties/ which can have states, This is a great mechanism for recording which conversations have taken place in a scene.

Now I have to bring in a thought verb. I will reuse the code from seraphite for this.

People and places,

I know it seems contrived but I am going to use this scene to introduce a number of major characters, it gets them into the game and will allow me to share information to get the game underway.

The three characters each have an important role to perform in the story.

At the moment the graphics that I am preparing are only place holders,

Here we have Doctor Foggit, the face of the model is finished, but clothes and hair all need doing as well as animations.

More on the response box

Ho hmm after careful consideration using the variable size response box has to be simplified, I have taken a far bit of code away, it's now not quite so sophisticated iro of measuring options line length but it allows use of all the engines rich dialogue functionality.

On the first test it's really working very nicely.

Similar on subsequent tests, in fact quite comfortable with the whole dialogue suite.

I had the initial talk sequence stored in the scene init script, I have just moved the dialogue sequence out to an attached script to allow the conversation  to be picked up   at  a later stage if not completetd.

Reponse Box

Spent a bit of time on the Response Box, reasonably happy with the results thus, far, I have created a method to dynamically size the response window and that works ok, though I am not convinced I am calling it from the right place. Spent a bit of time trying to resize the response box itself only to discover that this cannot be done programatically but, it seems in some way to derive it's size from the window, so the result is ok for the time being. I next need to call the function from a different place, so I will need some thinking as to  how this will happen.

Took a few minutes out to remind myself how dialogue branches work - .

Just thinking about the response box, the way to handle this is to add a couple of methods, one to increase the height if extra options are added, the other is to decrease the height if they are taken away, the only issue with this is that the facility to name unused strings as part of the initial array cannot be used.  hmm I need to rethink this, it's more complex than my initial analysis.

Testing the speaking and dialogue

Speaking and dialogue windows all working ok - I am still unsure about the for, I might try to change it by making the centre of the letters a dark red. No a major thing though, I will move on now to redesign the response window.

I want this to reference the dialogue window if I  can, hopefully I can remember or at least approximate  the set up I used in the dialogue stuff.

The response window is now done and I have kept to the look and feel of the dialogue, as an afterthought I wondered whether both of these windows should follow the form of the menu and other inventory instead of the action- dilalogue and response- I think it's ok at this stage to maintain two forms

Current State of Devlopment

Current State of  Development, er well the main story is plotted and the initial sequences are quite well developed and thought through, and the design for the set up is complete, as well as a few assets have been created.

Most of the interface is developed, this includes the main menu which deals with file saving and loading as well as the main in game menu which I may change, it seems a bit large to me, - this also includes the inventory which is done.

An initial right click menu has been developed along with a range of verbs, and the talking/dialogue system is where we are.

Art work on a number of the main characters is underway - there will not be a massive investment in this as I hope to use crowdfunding to get that side of the thing done properly although a talented enthusiast would be much appreciated if there is anyone out there.

Plains of perils is a point and click adventure game initially set in the 1920's, this game has been festering for a number of years, and every time I try to get started work or some other priority takes over.

It's primarily built on the excellent Wintermute engine
http://forum.dead-code.org/


 and is going to be delivered as a 2 d product. It might be that at a later stage I change it to 2.5 d as I am building a lot of the assets in 3d and rendering them, but we will have to see about that.

I was distracted for a couple of years by working on the excellent Seraphite project, but that now is on hold so plains takes off again.

https://www.facebook.com/OrdinanceoftheFuries

It will be apparent that my graphics skills are limited, and this has hindered solo game development in the past. I would be delighted to work with artists but, let's be clear there is no money in this for anyone yet.

It is my intention to get crowdfunding, to improve the graphics side of the game and I have a goal to launch a a crowdfunding exercise in about 9 months.

Although I would describe myself as an independent game designer I have worked in a wide variety of roles in the software business for a number of years generally with a high degree of success, and so have all the business and programme management skills necessary to make a big success.