Back into it

I took a long overdue month off development in November. Now that's passed I can get back into it. First up is a few contract jobs that need finishing and then cracking back into Lylian!

Was nice to have a little break to clear the brain matter. Now just want to get it done!

Lylian Localisation

From the start of development, I have prepared Lylian to be localised into various languages.
Now the question is what languages would be the most beneficial. It's expensive to localise from English so can only choose ones that will be most requested.

If you have a preferred language, feel free to let me know via the comments.
My current wish list is as follows (in no particular order):

Spanish
French
Russian
Swedish
German
Finnish
Polish

Edit: Italian

Official Lylian Game page, in progress

Not too much going on over at lyliangame.com at the moment. Although it does its job in showing important information (gameplay footage!).

I have been working on the layout on content for it though. A quick rundown on interesting things to come are:

A monthly comic page! - very short stories of characters within Hacklaster hospital.
Minigames! - Well, one mini game to start with.
Chronicles of Bob! - Lylian's sidekick, Bob has his own story to tell.



But I have promised my Fiancee that November is a non development month, 2 weeks down, 2 weeks to go. And also trying to complete the game, so I'm not going to set any dates for when things are going to be done. :D

Buried among the contestants

Among a total of 306 entries for the 12th annual IGF main competition. Lylian resides:
http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2010.php?id=140.

Looks to be a lot of awesome games competing!

Cinematic intro Shhteaming along

The cinematic version of Lylian's model is complete. The rigging is curently being worked on and a bunch of her face expression targets will be started next.

The intro is short, but vital to giving a quick lead in to the story behind the game.
There will be little cut scenes too, but very short as to not distract the player from the game play too much.
I thought this would be better than have a too much dialogue to read... and, I like animating.

One week until imminent Doomage

Only one week left for Milestone.

Bugs keep popping up but no critical ones.

Doesn't help that I decided to go back over and tweak a lot of the sound effects.

Still a few other sounds to add.

Going to need to leave a few things out for this deadline unfortunately. But they'll still go in afterwards.

And there's a few things that still need to be decided on.


Entering IGF is still possible, but not 100% likely.

A small snippet of the opening story, of Lylian.

Chapter1


It only took 20 minutes for her life to utterly turn to crap. It was crap before, but then it became utter crap.

Lylian never got along too well with her family, they saw her behaviour as somewhat, peculiar. To the point where they felt she was mentally unstable and within 20 minutes they had her in the car with bags already packed, and checked into the Hacklaster hospital.

Hacklaster was the place you would hear stories about, but would never know anyone that actually ventured inside. It was the place for crazy people, a hospital for the mentally unsound.


Lylian woke up to a clack, the door to her cell was slightly ajar and she could hear a patter of footsteps trailing off down the hallway.

“Odd”, she murmured as she looked down to find the restraints on her straight jacket unfastened.

Carefully, Lylian peered out into the children’s ward hallway. No nurses were present.

“Odd”, she said aloud and the patient from the next room started banging against the wall which startled Lylian. The shock subsided to a craving…for jam filled donuts. She looked to the far side of her room where an empty donut box lay. Her stomach rumbled.

“Need to get me some jammy goodness”, with this as all the motivation she needed, she entered the hallway in search for a good feed.


Lylian didn’t just like jam filled donuts, no, she lived on them. You would say her lust for them was just a sweet tooth or a phase, but to watch her suck the juices from a jam filled treat and leave the dough so withered and unappetising is enough to make your neck hair stand on end. Her father was convinced it was an act of vampirism. The power she would draw from one donut was the most peculiar of all, the energy and agility she would gain is far from a little sugar rush.


She would usually think twice about venturing out in the halls without nurses care. Even though the doors to the other patients’ rooms were always locked and the only way into the next ward was with a security key. The hallway felt creepy with the sounds of moaning and the hall itself seemed to twist and turn as she walked through it. Her hunger felt stronger with each clunky step of her beloved boots. Boots she would leave on even while sleeping, afraid that someone may come to steal them from her.

Lylian Gamplay Video... Here!

It's been a long time coming. But the first video for Lylian is here. Well, at lyliangame.com.

Touchy input

With the recent playtest, there came some issues with background apps picking up multiple key presses as hotkeys, which interfered with game play.

Window's Sticky keys is a common one (when pressing shift 5 times quickly). And Google desktop's 2x Ctrl key for its google search shortcut.

These can be changed by the use of course. But I'm sure uses don't really want to remap or switch off things that they probably hadn't worried about before playing this game.

I've also had to take into account that German, french, Russian keyboards for example have certain keys in different places. So, I've remapped the keys to the fps style WASD & Space. This seems to be the best solution for now.

Later down the track I'll create a key mapping screen, but it's not that high on the list right now.

See how this goes in the next playtest.

Splicing Life and Auras. (And new screenshots!)

For Lylian, I wanted to have a HUD, but keep it in one tidy space while looking interesting.

In the game, the two primary indicators are the health of the player, and an indication of how much hitting of the enemies are needed to build the aura, which in turn activates a ready mark for when the player can activate a figment (Lylian's ultimate power).

A few nights ago I realised I made it quite complicated to understand in the early stages of the game, but after re-working the whole health/aura/figment system over the past few nights; I think it has improved dramaticaly.

So, the redish area in the above screen is indicating Lylian in full health, the blue above it is a 'faded' aura, meaning it's not ready yet. And the figure in the center currently standing upright is indicating that Lylian's aura is building with her confidence (If there was no build up, the figure would be hunched over).

When both health and Aura are at their peak, the figment is ready and can be activated.

The above image shows the figure's head move up close, the health was at 100% and they both set the blue aura above it. On the right the aura 'spills' for a moment showing the selection of figments available at that time (showing only one here).

This makes up the majority of the heads up display. There's only one or two extra elements that pop up when necessary.

Packing up the tidbits

I'm up to that stage in the Milestone's list to do now; where it's similar to picking up those annoying little bits and pieces you may find lying around when packing up to move house.

Not as annoying as that... in some ways kind of fun. But there's just these little things like hit sound effects and minor bugs that keep popping up or I've somehow left untouched.

Less than a month now, if I make it it will be cutting very fine, considering I wish to create a game-play video as well.

Intro animation won't be going in by this deadline, will need to create some stills as placeholders for the time being.

Back to it!

Playtest of a non-Player

Last night I sent a build of the game (Lylian) to a person who doesn't really play games that much. I learned a lot over the course of an hour as he played the game, asking me questions every now and then when he got stuck.
It reminded me how much a game can be played differently from one user to the next. Something that is blatantly obvious to an average gamer (as in someone 'conditioned' through playing various games), can send someone out of their element (doesn't play games very often) to a state of confusion.

I realise I'm going to need to mix my playtest group up a little more, which will guarantee varied feedback.

Less than a month now for scheduled playtest, things are becoming serious!

Checking of the list (part2) (talk like a pirate day style)

The scalawag of a save system is complete, eventually became a checkpoint system I dare say; autosaving at specific checkpoints ya hear. Land lover's options are to either continue, or start a new game I be warning you.

Death/defeat mechanic complete, just needs ya polish on the defeat splash screen, before sending 'em walkin' on the plank, health hazards ya know.

A feature mechanic's difficulty was too high, left me sitting on the high mast with the sea winds flapping on my cheeks like a squids tentacle it did, tweaked to simplify a portion of the gameplay quite a bit calmed her down.

I'd be a captains wooden leg if I hadn't been working on the sounds over the past few nights, and ya hope to get all generic sounds done before the end of this here weekend is nigh I'd say.

Story + Design-wise, I've tried to squeeze too much in, too early, left her bloated like a whale it did. Making the game a little too overwhelming and 'muddy' for any self respecting, pacific sailing crew. I've removed a lot in the first level to be spread out over following sections, should keep the scurvy at bay for a little longer.

At this point I'm a little worried the player won't understand the idea behind activating 'figments'. The playtest scheduled for late October should reveal all, like the guts of a sea creature people say are myths and such. But I ain't yet seen no one return from such a damned place.

2010 Independent Game Festival a month to go

Deadline for IGF submissions 1st November. Only a month and a bit to go, if you're entering; times a runnin' out!
http://www.igf.com/?cid=IGF10_Entries

I'm hoping to attend next year, If I do it'll be my first. (A big deal when you live in Australia, you see).