Devlog 2

DevLogs - Week 2

Admittedly, I have not spent too much time in the coding department, though that is due to how many assignments I have had on my plate. That said, I did some work in some of the other aspects of the game’s design, namely the music and the puzzle design – the former due to how I knew that the sound of the game was key to giving it a unique feel, and the latter due to how it was recommended to consider by the course tutors For the music and general sound system, I divided it into three sections: character dialogue, background music and sound effects. Sound effects were the easiest to figure out, as I figured that each of the sound effects that were needed could be applied only to general commands, rather than specific instances (i.e. a sound for picking up and putting down, as opposed to different sounds for picking up a pot and jewel) Character dialogue is a bit of a different story, as each of the main characters would need a different dialogue sound. However, I already have the amount of characters I wish to include in the game planned, so I know I won’t go overboard with the amount of sounds to make. Music for the game is the simplest thing I have to work on, as I only really need to include a track for each “location” planned (main character home, home of the victim and the museum where a lot of the story takes place), and with each track lasting for about only 1 minute each. Whilst the track length does seem short, I plan on programming each song to loop. As for puzzles, I divided them up into three separate categories: the first one is the “combination of items” puzzle, where the player needs to assemble a larger object from smaller ones. Like many other adventure games, this will be a sort of “grand scheme puzzle”, where the items that are used to solve this puzzle are unlocked through smaller puzzles. The second category that I wish to include are more “logical” or “riddle-based” puzzles that will test knowledge that the player has learned through their travels. The final one, “movement-puzzles” involve moving one item or two from one spot to another, with one puzzle in particular I had in mind involving placing heavy objects on a scale to help balance it out and unlock/open a secret item. I think that having a diverse array of puzzles will help keep the players’ interest, as having repetitive puzzles will make the gameplay too stale and monotonous. Plus, having the same puzzle styles would mean that the solutions would be much easier to solve, and isn’t that just boring? Next week, I plan on focusing more on coding the game, and at least figuring out a system to properly interact with the basic command system I set up, as well as determining how to work proper dialogue. That way, a large portion of my game’s code can be knocked out of the park with that one week in order to make up for my lack of activity this week.