So, as I mentioned previously I have been stalled overmuch in my practice lately, which has unfortunately meant that my progress with the Flying Long Horse game development have been shut down for a while. I am getting on top of my workload again finally and once again have come upon the semi-current challenge keeping things from moving forward smoothly (or at all! :-O) My previous method to deal with issues of work-stoppage and lapses in motivation was to parse the production down into baby-steps. Which, in most circumstances, would rock, and in fact kept me from overloading at the sheer amount of work “weighing down on me”.

After a bit of time dwelling on that shift, and working up those shortened objectives, I have come to the realisation that in many ways producing one level in a game too large for one person to reasonably do (at this time, at least) is fairly comparable to doing a small, one level game demo by itself.

So, I am shifting gears late in the game. It means shelving the Human Trap game development and coming up with a new, smaller game - but all of the graphic assets I have produced to date are still useable. Part of the justification for this move is that a smaller ‘demo’ game is more achievable and immediately useful in my portfolio. I still have the larger game design documents and can use them later on if resources become more readily available.

I still plan to do a demo similar to one of the level-puzzles from the original game design document. But the gist of the ’story’ will be different and much more abbreviated.

So, here’s to progress - however slow and winding in its path. ;-)

So, after weeks of what seem to be Life happily wreaking havoc upon my schedule, I am finally getting to a long hoped-for productive position with my practice, and lo and behold! I am just about to really get into drafting my final Masters Thesis, and not long after that my trip home.

To be fair I’ve been horribly stalled, and without much enthusiasm or motivation to drag myself out of the stalls, between the bouts of: sicknesses, food poisoning, a Visa run, and other things I care not to mention here - which have all beset me in recent weeks.

At first, I typically berated myself and considered my lack of productivity a byproduct of personality deficiencies, a familiar old cognitive behaviour pattern - I wasn’t maintaining motivation, I was choosing to procrastinate, I was never going to finish my project, I was not being productive enough, etc… Suddenly, though, I feel that in reality I have to slough off these misgivings and simply rise again into the saddle and continue with my work, however it moves forward! I may have been less productive than I would have liked in recent weeks (often for actual, valid reasons even), but I can choose to not let that get me down and perpetuate the cycle of inactivity and negative thoughts; I can choose to keep working and do my best to remain active and happily practising my craft.

I am reminded as well of the continual refrain I have in the back of my head, “Just do it!”, from an old co-worker who perhaps saw my muddling, overly pensive form of inactivity long ago and used the popular Nike ad campaign-cum-sage advice to motivate me.

In fact, I have found many times recently that, in truth, things seem worse when viewed with forlorn eyes before the start, and not nearly half so bad when seen at mid task. It is an annoyance, though, that it seems a harder trick to remember than to learn. One of many, truthfully. ;-)

Happily, my head feels clearer and my body feels more immune to the typical malignancies of life in BKK, which has given rise to better cognition and probably to this change in tactical attitude. Knowing that I have a flight home - a definite, one-way departure to my time in Thailand - also gives me more vigour.

So, even as I identified stop-gaps in my production process that I wanted to work on for my MA quite a while ago now, I’ve found myself amidst one of them. Indeed it has turned into a bit of a blind-spot, even as I was laying out and planning the project. Basically, I am beginning to be concerned with the amount of work necessary to complete The Human Trap. With seven levels and the design and animation for each, not to mention audio… well, it’s quite a bit to be getting on with. At first, I believed that working with my code-collaborator would ease things along, sharing some of the workload and helping to maintain inspiration. But since my buddy is too busy to help lately, I am faced with doing it alone. As usual, as well, there are often unaccounted for tasks that appear during any production that expand the work schedule.

Regardless, after reflecting on how to best move forward knowing that it’s a mighty challenge, I have decided to create a series of benchmark goals - focusing on completing exemplary levels, one at a time, to best take advantage of the time and resources I have. Do what I know is needed and easy to do now, and focus on completing one level at a time.

One of the goals for this project is to add some kick-ass work to my out-dated portfolio in preparation for finding full-time, long-term work in the Fall. The biggest goal still remains to create the full online experience and have it well exposed, etc. That goal has not changed, but I realise that I need to focus on smaller baby-steps to help get me there - especially if I am navigating these shoals solo. This is also necessary to minimise possible panic and freak-outs because of a “potentially” unmanageable workload - something that often set me back as well, thinking about things too much instead of just going about doing them.

So, I’ve been working on background graphics for The Human Trap to get my level design mojo flowing. I finally just had a break-through on the first, introductory level setting and had to post it. It went through many reworkings and reductions, and though it is a bit removed from my intial idea it definitely has the feel I was looking for. Since his home is a stetch of ‘pasture’ in the Realm of Myth, I was going for otherworldy, surreal and strange in varying proportions - without going over the top and being crazy colour saturated. I like to think I’ve achieve it in a subtle yet pervasive way. :-)

The Flying Long Horse isn’t posed or anything, and there’s no proper shadow (which I am hopeful to include later) but he does sit well, almost canteringly gallevanting around the landscape. Anyway, here’s the image.

So I’m still knee-deep in Dink and Nipples game development. I don’t have anything new to post content-wise, but I am desperately trying to get into graphics-mode soon. So there will be some new things to lookie-lookie at in the foreseeable future.

I’ve finished an initial draft of the GDD (game design document) for The Human Trap. Mostly it was just transcribing the mess and plethora of details from my notebook into OpenOffice. It became an obvious pressing need after a meeting with Toon to recap what had been settled on so far and realising that I had to have one reference where it was easy to see what had been decided. So, overall a natural progression into the GDD, which is nice. — I enjoy writing up proposals and documents, so it was nice to tap that off. If I get to polishing it up soon I will post it online here. My main emphasis at the moment is design so the documentation is being done where necessary. While working independently there is less need to polish the docs up since I am the one funding and doing the work.

The biggest milestone on my list of things to do is level design. The overall gist and sway of the story has been detailed; the major characters have been illustrated; the game-play and interactivity have been outlined… and now it’s the level specifics that have to be set down. The player has to lead Dink and Nipples through four different stages to reach the final level. The levels in each stage are already outlined, but the actual level construction and obstacle-puzzles need detailing. The more puzzle-logic levels were the first ones fully detailed - being the easiest to do on paper. The more side-scrolling, full landscape levels are turning out to be irksome.

I had intended to sketch out all the elements for these levels on paper before moving into production and prototyping, but I’ve hit a wall. How do you get from the overall idea for a level to the final level design, one where every rock and leaf has been placed? In traditional tile-based side-scrollers, you use a level-designer. (Basically, a little application where you place the graphics on a canvas.) Since the level design for The Human Trap is not tile-based - it’s one large, non-repeating graphic element - I can’t go that route. I have decided to forego laying out entire levels on paper for now and instead will start making a mess and mashing things up graphically first. I need to get some inspiration going to fill in those spaces I am not sure how to fill at present. I also know I will inevitably come back and draw it all out on paper when I have progressed far enough to get an idea of what each level will look like. It will also give me an idea of what, where and how the obstacle puzzles will present. Incidentally, here’s a nice thread on the indiegamers about ‘game planning vs doing’.

In a related stream, I’ve also been trolling around online looking for online game, casual game and flash game development forums and resources in an attempt to find an active game community in which to post. I’m partially looking for comments and feedback on what I’ve got so far for The Human Trap, but also just to see if I can contribute anything as well. Since I have a smaller group of design friends here in BKK than home in Canada I’m also feeling the yearn to talk about design work in general. Thankfully I’ve found a few good resources that I am going to explore. Here are some of them, general as well as specific, if anyone wants to see what the online casual games world is like:

Kongregate
Jayisgames
Game|Life
Indiegamer.com Forums

I’m also considering and doing initial fact-gathering about potential marketing options for The Human Trap. The two main objectives for this production are to get a kick-ass project under my belt, and to see where I can take the game online and online in possible revenue-making avenues. I need to allow for certain possible options in the future, BUT! for now I have to get down to work. ;-)

And it’s live! flyinglonghorse.com is active and engaged. Presently it’s just a “coming soon” page linking to the development project section of this blog. But nonetheless, it’s fancy and makes me happy. :-D Enjoy.

The Adventures of Dink and Nipples, the Flying Long Horse

So, what have I actually been doing for the last while?

One of the projects I have been working on is an online puzzle-style Flash game. At present it is tentatively titled: The Adventures of Dink and Nipples, the Flying Long Horse: The Human Trap. And if you’re not sure what all that’s about I will endeavour to explain.

Overview

A Long Horse is a cryptozoological animal, a regular horse with an extra long mid-section basically. And well, in this game said horse can fly, like Pegasus. So far, so simple. But!!! this flying Long Horse can split into two halves: one in the front, one in the rear. (Not unlike those two-person horse costumes.) And those two halves of the Flying Long Horse, the front and rear portions, are individually Dink and Nipples. Dink is the smiley faced, simple half, and Nipples if the flying, brainy portion. You can see both of them here in the following model sheets, as well as the fully formed Flying Long Horse. Click to see larger versions in my flickr site.

Storyline

The plot of the game is such: Dink and Nipples, being a semi-mythical creature of the cosmos, are hanging out in that specific place where mythical creatures hang out, a side-step over from our corporeal, less-majestic existence. One day they hear news that a friend of theirs, an equally mythical and fantastique creature, is trapped in the shell of a living human being’s head - having got unduly lodged there during a botched dream-transfer. Being mythical creatures these characters can traverse the paths and doorways of the dream-world and move from place to place and dream to dream at will - as long as they can find the next doorway. Dink and Nipples’ friend has found himself in a dead-end and will disappear forever if the human wakes up.

Dink and Nipples being the heroic horse that they are cannot abide to tolerate their friend’s incarceration and eventual dissolution inside a human’s skull. So, they must travel through the paths of dream and find their friend inside it’s Human Trap and release him. In each level of the game then Dink and Nipples must travel through a different dream, or mini-world, in the grander dream-realm to finally enter into our meagre realm and save their friend.

Gameplay

The general play for the game will include several Stages, with multiple Levels in each Stage, culminating in a fantastique Final Level. Each Stage has paired levels with similar game plays, growing progressively more difficult and fantastique as Dink and Nipples advance. The player progresses through the levels by controlling Dink and Nipples by clicking on each character and then on possible locations or items with which Dink or Nipples can then interact. Players who fail to complete a level are simply deposited at the end of the previous level and can retry any level again without having to restart the entire game.

There are also a series of special powers that both Dink and Nipples obtain throughout the levels, metamorphosing into super-powered Dink and Nipples, necessary to solve each level. But I won’t go into detail about that here to save from spoiling the storyline or level designs.

Postlude

The Human Trap is meant to be a casual game with a variety of puzzles and level designs to interest the imagination of the player. The storyline, puzzle-style game-play and visual designs will take precedence over interesting game mechanics, simulations, or more “hardcore” arcade-style game play. It is my hope that Dink and Nipples captures the imagination of some portion of the web-o-sphere and gains some attraction and attention. Oh, and I want to print shirts with them on it and sell them, hehe.

At present, I and my friend Toon Degryse are involved in pre-production. I am acting as creative and production lead, and Toon is assisting with ideas and doing the code. As you can see, character designs exist for Dink and Nipples, and we are at work on level and overall designs. I will post more material and information as things progress.

For those interested, inspiration, and just down right great games with similar puzzle-style gameplay, can be seen in: Samorost and Warbears. Though stylistically, you can see Dink and Nipples stand apart from these games.