research counts as writing
so, lots of work done this past fortnight if you count research as writing. which it totally does count, right? anyway, here it is:
keyrin loves you
i had seen the upcoming full version of this game (titled threeverses3) on twitter before but didn't realise it has an earlier version. i really loved the vibe of it all, but did not realise that the core concept of this game is basically exactly what i'm trying to make. didn't think anyone else was out here trying to combine dungeoncrawler-style movement with typing mechanics. crazy coincidence? or maybe there's some older genre i'm not aware of. the typing mechanics i want to use are more action-based than the slow, methodical poetry-building of keyrin but yeah. maybe we're having a comeback of typing games (especially considering the game i saw at alt that i forgot to mention that is also a typing game). highly recommend playing keyrin, it's only about 30 minutes long but the aesthetics and design is tight.
other games
i played some other stuff too, the demo of cryptmaster which was incredibly fun. love those types of characters from old fantasy with the silly voices. typing of the dead too as i wanted to actually play something that has the typing mechanic style i want and wow... aggresively dated is all you really need to say about that story. the mechanic gets old pretty quick too, even when you throw in like one additional thing with the single-letter qte's. i thought the arcade modes might yield some more interesting mechanics but meh.
my game is going to be broken up by exploration and story so i don't think it'll get too old if it's somewhat similar. but at the same time i'm still on the fence as to whether i even need to have this mechanic at all... i guess i feel because the story is a fantasy where the characters are thrown into an unknown, spooky world, you need to have at least some kind of combat right? i feel there needs to be some kind of consequences, but as i want the story to be somewhat small, only having consequences through narrative means it'll spiral out of control quickly with way too many endings. or maybe... i'm thinking on it.
the other parts
sound is a pretty significant thing when it comes to video games, but i feel it gets overlooked a lot. especially in indie games as it's expensive and difficult to get good soundtracks going. i guess i will probably just have to use some pre-made stuff as i don't know any musicians and don't want to rope someone i don't know into doing some stuff for free, even if they're also just a hobbyist. musical abilities have always eluded me so i don't have much of a chance writing any music myself if i actually want people to play my game, but i saw some teenage engineering stuff recently and it's piqued my interest again...
finding tutorials for game dev stuff is surprisingly hard when you're looking for something of quality. of course, there's plenty of good tutorials out there, but i feel the only way you can genuinely use them effectively is if they were not just about following what the youtuber is doing exactly and instead were based on theory and structure.
i'm not really a programmer so i'm probably not using quite the right words but i think tutorials that show you how to structure different systems within your game, what processes you need to consider, etc. are so much more valuable than blindly following what someone else is doing. even if they take the time to explain why they're doing something, it's really easy to tune that part out and just bash your way through the code, and then later go hm, i don't know how to tweak this to be what i want because i don't actually understand what it is i've done. definitely not slamming anyone who does use these tutorials, i have, they work for a reason, but if i want to actually grow as a developer, i don't think these are what will help me. maybe i do just need to take some regular programming classes.
fun stuff
in other news my nfc tags arrived so i now have the world's dumbest business card. basically i have this to-scale model of a hercules beetle i got from a gachapon which you build yourself once you pull it out of the capsule. this means the inside of the body is hollow, aka the perfect space to put an nfc tag that has my website on it. so now if people want to know my site i can either just tell them the memorable name of ilovetoxicwaste.net or slap this guy onto their phone and pull it up for them lol. i have a few ideas for other weird types of business cards i want to make, not all of them involving nfc. and if you couldn't tell by my username, i love beetles (i actually have a few of these models lol).
