Damn dirty updates!

I blame… something… maybe next week I’ll have a good excuse.

It happens every damn time. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday go by and I’m optimistic about life “Oh yeah, I’m going to kick Friday’s ass. I’ve done so much work that I’m about to write what would pass as a dissertation at University. Friday rears its ugly head and blam! Where the fuck did my weeks worth of work go!? I fucking did SOMETHING over the last seven days, I can tell you that much!

So I sit here at 1:32 am, realising that if I don’t pull out something ‘witty’ before I go to sleep in around 4 hours, this update isn’t going to happen.

So yeah… this is fun.

What the hell did I actually do the last week? Ah yes, we actually have a save feature that works! Yes, we had an awkward system that I really hated… to give an example of how annoying it was, I saved TWICE and it made me angry. I’m shooting for a 100% run of the RPG to take around 80 hours, so if my RPG saves are anything to go by (and I save the least amount of times that I can- I’ve lost 3 or 4 hours worth of progress in the past because of that) you are going to have at least 100 saves. But for someone who is playing it safe, they’d save at least 200 times..

I can’t really show pictures of the save system (at its core, it’s done… it just doesn’t look all that pretty) but in its infancy the process of saving was this-

Backspace to enter main menu, go to save, press Z to enter, select your slot and press Z, press Z to confirm your save/ overwrite. Press Z to get out of the “Save complete”, press X twice to back out from the save screen and press Backspace to get back in game.

The entire process took around 20 seconds and I found myself getting stuck in a loop, out of habit I’d hit Z as fast as I could, save 3 or 4 times and wonder why I’m not back in game yet. But now, thanks to my advanced awesome (in reality, I didn’t do any of this system, Ad134 get’s the credit he for once deserves (Zing!)) the system is now this:

Back to enter main menu, go to save, press Z to enter, select your slot and press Z, Confirm your overwrite with Z, Press Z to finalise your save- Finalising your save automatically takes you back in game.

So in reality, you can hit Z really fast for less than five seconds, save and get back in game! If you played the entire game on one save slot using this method, you’d probably spend less than two minutes saving, out of the 80 hours you played. Take note everyone- this is how you make a fucking save system.

Loading is kinda sweet too! We have a main menu (although I use that term loosely- it will totally have some sweet-ass artwork in the background, maybe it’ll be animated, like leaves blowing in the wind in the foreground with a location of importance in the background, and the name of the RPG in a nice subtle font… maybe have some peaceful ambient music playing, with a nice pulsating glow around the “New Game” button, which beckons you to enter our beautiful world that we have created for you…

That will probably be the hardest thing for me to do… this menu needs to be “ perfect” as first impressions are vital in an RPG… “Fuck it, let’s just get it over with” isn’t the mindset a player that finishes RPGs has. We’ll see, I might ask for help with this part, but first, this damn project needs a name!

Where was I? Oh yes, load system, you click on load game, select your slot (which will be the last thing we add… it’s something that we can’t do with the engine, surprisingly, we are going to have to package a file with it (the RPG is probably going to have an installer, anyway) that’ll allow you to view the slots and it instantly takes you in game, to the location you were in on the ‘map’ before you entered the menu.

This really might not sound like much, but in terms of over all enjoyment for the player, it was probably the most important thing we have coded thus far. (It’s actually the first major sense of accomplishment I think I’ve had since the last draft of the cinematic screenplay was finished.

A bad thing about that screenplay, it’s currently sitting at 109 pages (for those who don’t know the Hollywood screenplay format, one page is supposed to equal one minute of screen time, a 120 page screenplay, for example, should have a running time of around two hours.) and that draft only included the “vital” story parts… It essentially covered why the player is here, who the characters are very minor details to their backstory (the longest ‘flashback’ is Queti Sate-Ravias’s story, which tells her story and actually ties around 90% of the loose ends together- so basically, if anyone calls me on my writing ability and cites certain plot holes, I’ll instantly know they are full of shit. So I’ve probably still got another 200 pages worth of dialogue to write… the doesn’t really scare me- I truly love writing, what does scare me however, is the fact that I’m actually going to try and have full voice over in this game. (In short, every single thing that a character says, has a voice saying it… yeah, this is going to be a really, really tough project to sell. I only hope the effort shows, if I reach the point where I can blow people away with the near finished project, I’m good.)

But yeah, the way I wrote it was quite smart. I have the ability to add whatever I want without it really having an affect on the story. For example, I could go and add “Battling Seizure Robots” (a Google search will help you if you missed that reference) as the most common enemy in the game… sure it would be fuckin’ weird, and it wouldn’t fit with the style, but it wouldn’t render the entire story untellable.

Anyway, I’m rambling and for some reason, I am quickly losing the ability to type (I’ve went an hour without any mistakes, now I can’t go more than a sentence before I start hitting the wrong keys.) I’m going to take the weekend off before going off and looking at the overall story, in a few instances I have ' Point A to point B', but I don’t say how they get between them, I'm going to go and elaborate on that.

Have fun everyone, enjoy your weekend.