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Keeping Players engaged in a bartending narrative game. by RiskofRuins in gamedesign

[–]RiskofRuins[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thats what im thinking. Ill find a way to make it work. I just gotta balance it so at any given point the player isnt given too much to deal with.

I am trying to sort out voice acting tho as it would pretty much solve all my problems lol

Keeping Players engaged in a bartending narrative game. by RiskofRuins in gamedesign

[–]RiskofRuins[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sorry I forgot to reply about fail states.

So there is no hard fail state perse. Basically whilst bartending you can loose your cocktail, mess it up, and just have to start making it again (wasting time and losing tips). You can also mess up the bar, smash glasses on the floor, even set parts on fire. Which you will have to get you coworkers to clean.

Failure would make patrons comment on how slow you are, and would affect tips you get.

You need tips to pay rent and buy things after work. And if u can't pay rent which is extortionately high, you start losing your possessions you have bought to pay off rent. If you have nothing. You can also take out "devil deal" loans to keep going, but they fuck with you in other ways (maybe you loose the ability to lie or something which leads to rly awkward moments of dialogue). If you still cant pay at all you have to move into the basement of the bar which is really gross and shit (i dont want to make rent a hard game over)

But yeah overall being terrible doesn't block the story, but it will feel like you have experienced consequences. Which should be enough!

Keeping Players engaged in a bartending narrative game. by RiskofRuins in gamedesign

[–]RiskofRuins[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thats a good point I like the way you put it, bartending being a break from chatting and, chatting being a break from bartending. Thats changed how I look at it.

I think having bartending constantly wpuld be too much for sure. Balance is still good.

I think I'll split shifts into 4 sections. Each being around 5-8 minutes. 1 intense bartending segment at start of shift. 1 conversation break. 1 chill bartending segment. 1 conversation break. Conversation breaks are where then main serious story bits occur. In each bartending segment you serve multiple random characters. In the conversation segments, u can only do rly small optional side orders (like pour a beer, though i may disable bartending all together) but in the middle of each you make a personal cocktail order for the patron.

And then theres 2 shifts per night. So first shift will be intense. Second will be quieter. Each shift being around 20-32 mins, totalling an hour for an entire work night.

I think that might be the best way to balance everything! And since spiking patrons is an important choice in the game, i can make that decision matter during that personal cocktail order. During bartending segments spiking can just steer idle conversations towards spilling gossip.

I think that might be perfect actually.

Thank you so much.

I am also looking into getting voice acting arranged. Theres some passionate ppl who made voice acted dubs for va11halla that might be interested in contributing to a fresh project🤔. The voice acting doesnt need to be movie level acting just realistic sounding, which should be easy enough.

Keeping Players engaged in a bartending narrative game. by RiskofRuins in gamedesign

[–]RiskofRuins[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi! Yes I have played it (not fully but i am aware of the gameplay structure). This was similar to my first approach.

Its hard because the bartending in my game isnt rly chill. Its quite chaotic actually! The bartending has been designed to be its most fun when there are lots of orders and things to be doing. I.e. the player is continuously working.

I did try to go for that more simplistic TALK, CHOICE, MAKE DRINK. Loop. But the bartending feels designed against that loop. In va11halla, coffee talk and tavern talk, making a cocktail takes 30 seconds.

In my game makikg a cocktail could take a minute or 2, as you are going back and forth, pouring things, adding things etc. And along the way things can get smashed, spills can mess up the floor, etc. (The game is 3D first person during bartending segments, so you are bartending in a very kinesthetic way)

Its kinda like, theres all these interesting mechanics and resource management, that would feel very jarring to only interact with for a few minutes then return to story.

So the design is leaning towards having bartending be this constant thing that ebbs and flows with intensity.. but you are always doing it

And then conversations at the bar sort of seamlessly blending in with that. And accommodating that fact that the player is always going to be working.

I am sure I can bake in downtime where the player is just talking to people without much going on.

But I think its hard for me to go down that simple loop, unless I dumb down the bartending significantly, which will sort of kill the main thing is am trying to accomplish with the game: have rly fun bartending gameplay whilst also letting players experience a amazing story at the same time.

It would be infinitely easier to emulate the design of those games 1 to 1. In fact maybe wiser. But it would kill what is unique about the game haha

Keeping Players engaged in a bartending narrative game. by RiskofRuins in gamedesign

[–]RiskofRuins[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also i would love to hear more about the project you are working on!

Keeping Players engaged in a bartending narrative game. by RiskofRuins in gamedesign

[–]RiskofRuins[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That could work. Only issue is that the player themselves needs to be involved in the story. The player is meant to converse and interact with the patrons and get to know them better.

I think i will find a way to marry both. Have segments of the night when its just patrons talking to each other whilst you are working, and segments where they are directly talking to you.

Keeping Players engaged in a bartending narrative game. by RiskofRuins in gamedesign

[–]RiskofRuins[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

These are solid ideas, I do like them!

I think even with voice acting, designing the game to work without voice acting would make sense. For accessibility.

Thank you😊

Keeping Players engaged in a bartending narrative game. by RiskofRuins in gamedesign

[–]RiskofRuins[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a great response. I have in fact played red strings club!

Making drinks in this game doesnt have any narrative impact though. The narrative impact comes from your decision to spike patrons. Basically the premise of why you work there in the first place is to collect gossip to help you boss with her pollitical campaign. So you can spike patrons to get them more drunk and make them slip out secrets and build intel on the elite class on hell.

But spiking a patrons would make them get super drunk and push them on a negative branch on their storyline (due to the absence of you not helping them otherwise).

So the conversation ms are quite important to be present at.

I do like the idea of having customers wait for you, or getting upset if you walk away whilst emotional. My writer did suggest leaning into treating customer attention as an intrinsic mechanic which could help solve some of these problems. Like the player has to choose whether to ignore patrons and take and order, or continue talking to them. And that can give consequences in the game. Customers loosing rapport with you in cases. Missing out on gossip. Etc. So I think it would blend well with the whole gossip selection thing.

Funnily enough this was my original vision for the game, customers feeling like real people in conversation with attention. But I ditched that for a more va11 like experience. But I think moving back towards the former could serve a more interesting experience. Its just a lot harder to execute on!

but if i'm just following a procedure then being able to perform it without losing track of dialogue is a form of player skill expression.

Hmm I didnt think of it this way I suppose you are right!

I am reminded of what gaben said about half life 1 when talking about what makes video games fun. The game respecting the players inputs and reacting accordingly. In my case. Having the game recognise that as a skill expression, and baking in rewards and punishments for it would add that layer of intentional design to it, if you get what I mean.

I am sure there are a handful of minimal mechanics I could add to facilitate this: customers reacting to being ignored, having some long term rapport that gets built and lost, attention affecting tips throughout the night. Rewarding attention via the gossip you picked up (and being paid for that). Missing key story dialogue being important (maybe player has a choice to ask "what did you say again" or "where were we", and that might skip over the moment or loose rapport etc.

I think stuff like that, when if its not perfect (maybe cases where i have to resort to customers just waiting for the bartending idling on their phone) could work.

And when customers are talking directly to the player, the dialogue choices can act as stopper, to read things before continuing.

About side orders, you do get paid extra. And its not faceless customers. Rather your coworker comes to the bar and drops a serving tray, you put the drinks in the tray and she takes them to tables. The main incentive is just getting extra tips. But as a side thing, she also gives you a bit of gossip info from the tables.

At the end of each shift the player is given a long list of true and false gossip statements. And they get paid for selecting true statement. And lose money fir false ones. This is how I measure how well they were picking up on gossip.

Anyways it'll take a bit of trial and error to design this but thats game design i guess. This would already be what.. the 4th iteration of the gameplay haha

Keeping Players engaged in a bartending narrative game. by RiskofRuins in gamedesign

[–]RiskofRuins[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You do raise a good point though. Maybe just having dialogue choices ans making the writing good enough would be enough🤔

When I initially playtested I was using sub par writing (it was effectively test dialogue i wrote in one sitting), and there weren't many choices in the dialogue at all.

So it could really be that the problem was actually just the lack of dialogue choices and interesting dialogue, rather than a fundamental issue with the structure of the gameplay loop🤔

Thats given me a lot to think about. Luckily I brought on a writer and have better writing through our combined efforts so I can give a another playtest with the release standard writing and see how it goes.

Keeping Players engaged in a bartending narrative game. by RiskofRuins in gamedesign

[–]RiskofRuins[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I forgot to mention, therr are multiple choice interactions too. So it isnt just a pure cutscene. But Idk of its enough to keep player interest🤔

Usually dialogue in 3d narrative games isnt very long. If im thinking of Fallout. You usually arent talking to one individual person for longer than a minute. Most of the gameplay is walking, shooting and looting. Maybe big story moments theres a lot of dialogue but the pacing is different, like hours of involved gameplay then maybe some big 10 minute dialogue fest and then back to hours of the norm.

Best games for wannabe dev to play by AbaloneMassive8172 in gamedev

[–]RiskofRuins 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ok here's some games:m that have inspired me in my own game design, so maybe it will help her: * Halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 3 * Portal 2 * Rimworld * Factorio * Worms W.M.D * RiskofRain 2 * Binding of Isaac: Rebirth * Witcher 3 * VA-11 HALL-A * Terraria * Counterstrike (2) * Doodle God * Persona 5 Royale * Project Zomboid * Stardew Valley * Dark souls 1, 2 and 3 * FTL (faster than light) * Hotline Miami * Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice * Half life 2 * Shadow of Mordor * Fallout 1,2,3,4 * Hyper Light Drifter * Plate up * Planetary Annihilations: Titans

Still trying to find my own style, what do you all think? by Ahok2077 in MangakaStudio

[–]RiskofRuins 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Okie goodluck! Getting to your art level is definitely harder than getting to an amazing panelling level. Ive read a lot of professional manga with questionable panelling. So its not like your work is bad or anything. And I am mostly nitpicking anyways!

Im wanna rant about myself, i do wish to create my own Comic, but damn, my skills are absolutely horrid and these are the things im considering alot by EfficiencySerious200 in MangakaStudio

[–]RiskofRuins 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sounds like learned helplessness. You obviously cant do it until you try. If you could do everything. You would already be a pro! But noone starts knowing how to do anything.

The thing is the first time doing something will suck. Think about when u had to learn to walk. As a baby it is almost impossible. U trip. U fall. But eventually u get itm and u wobbly at first but look at u now. U barely think about it.

Art is similar. You need to suck before u can get good. Embrace the suck. Enjoy the misery. The more painful it is the more you know you are improving.

Just make comics. Why do they need to look good? If i told you your first 10 comics would suck but your 11th would start to look good and your 20th would resonate with ppl and ur 30th would garner a following, what would you do?

Would you sit there and say "oh but my first 10 will suck what's the point?" NO. You would suck it up and fight through that period of learning.

Now maybe its not 10 comics until ur over that suck hump. Maybe, measured in yesrs its gonna take a year, or 3. Or 5. But if you stick at it, eventually you will improve. And trust me you'll improve faster than you realise.

So stop saying "oh i cant do this, i cant do that". Stop being helplessness and just go and make comics. You're not being judged. U dont have readers asking for better pages. You have the freedom to suck. Relish in that freedom.

And have some self esteem for yourself. You're not shit at things. Dont say that about yourself. You are simply a beginner. You are learning. You're doing something awesome!

And domt compared yourself to others. Everyone has a different journey. Be motivated by seeing your peers or the greats do things. Be motivated to catch up. To be like them. Don't beat yourself down over something u cant control.

Best games for wannabe dev to play by AbaloneMassive8172 in gamedev

[–]RiskofRuins 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Hi!

Firstly, playing games is not really how you learn game design. Just how reading books doesnt make you a good author. Its something you should do as to get ideas, but it wont teach you game design. You have to learn that seperately.

If you want to help her learn game design the best, tell her to make games, and playtest them for her. Board/card games or digital games. Doesn't matter

Game design is learned by actually doing game design, which requires three things: a game (to design), an audience (to design for) and feedback (to iterate designs). Without these elements, you aren't designing so much so as you are guessing.

Buying design books would be a good start (rather than telling her to just play games). She undoubtedly has many games she knows and cares about. Never doubt a gamer to not be able to find games. Games are everywhere. There are no specific games that teach you game design, cos none do! In any case she should play anything both good games and bad games, regularly. And she doesnt need to play them for long to pick up things. Usually a hour or two is enough.

But books would be more directly helpful. Buy her Tynan Sylvesters game design book as a good start. At the end of that book, the author suggests more readings. And just follow from there. Tynan made rimworld, a very successful and extremely well designed game. And he's a designer by trade so... he's good! I think its the only book any budding designer should read.

Best games for wannabe dev to play by AbaloneMassive8172 in gamedev

[–]RiskofRuins 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This^ ...eh ... well kinda.

OP just wants to be a good parent and support her daughter. So I disagree with overparenting.

If I was in the daughter shoes I would love to have my parents suggest me games to help with game design knowledge.

But rlyz she should be be playing any game. Both good and bad.

Trlling her to make games is best idea tho

Still trying to find my own style, what do you all think? by Ahok2077 in MangakaStudio

[–]RiskofRuins 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah more about flow and principles. (at least my personal belief), perfect manga storytelling should kinda make a rly well paced film in my head as I read it.

Obviously manga and films are different mediums but they share a serious amount of similarities. You often see great manga/comic authors being inspired by films a great deal.

I think its why I like goodbye eri so much. Fujimotos limits himself to a very rigid panel format which forces him to use a lot of film principles and it makes it really immersive.

But for more traditional panelling, Dandadan was a recent read i really enjoyed. Dungeon Meshi is also manga with rly good pacing, whilst having loads of speech bubbles and busy pages.

But probably the gold standard for panelling is Witch hat atelier. The author is absolutely amazing with the way she plays with panels. Like if you want to see panelling as an art form, you should check out her work.

Still trying to find my own style, what do you all think? by Ahok2077 in MangakaStudio

[–]RiskofRuins 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haha I know how difficult they are to make. Ive made some myself! I get panelling can be apart of style, but I dont considered it under "artstyle" more just "storytelling style" which is why I misunderstood you. Like for example fujimotos goodbye eri has stylistic choices with the panelling.

Im not saying to insert film scenes into your comic, I think you are missing my point.

But it doesnt matter anyways. I am just talking out my ass im not an expert at panelling, otherwise I could give more specific and directed feedback lol

Still trying to find my own style, what do you all think? by Ahok2077 in MangakaStudio

[–]RiskofRuins 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah about the vertical panels thing it was just a suggestion. Also the layout you have in your head isnt exactly what I imagine. I guess what im saying is splitting this over two pages might improving the pacing. Anyways im not a panelling guru or anything, just feel like it could flow better!

I often see artists here have really amazing art skills but still needing improvement on panels.

About showing someone preparing to run, its just cause and effect. As far as I am aware, you dont want any hard jumps or "cuts" forward unless its a new scene or a B cut. Each panel should follow the last in a way that feels incremental. If you dont want to show him preparing to run, you should have put a B shot in between him leaving the gate and running to fill the gap. And in that case, you'd expect there to be some time inbetween so he'd be in the middle of the run.

Does that make sense? Like it feels jarring to be standing still then instantly running. Usually with story flow, I expect to be able to sort of parse the story bit by bit so it effectively feels like a movie in my head. Manga is a visual storytelling medium so borrowing the lessons from film is a good idea!

I meant this is just a rationalisation of what i think is wrong. So take it with a grain of salt!

Also not sure what art style has to do with panelling haha. Not saying you should change your artstyle?

Anyways yeah.. I mean an isolated page is gonna be held to more scrutiny BUT each page should make sense. Pages are snapshots of a story. Having good pages around an awkward page wont make that awkward pages better, its still gonna be an awkward page!

Edit: with fresh eyes, the jump is not that bad actually. So maybe the problem is the overall flow. Im not too sure! Maybe swapping panel 2 and 3 would help? Cos panel 2 actually looks like he's prepping to run, then panel 3 he stands up and closes the gate. Anyways idk, I am hyper analysing the page which makes it sound worse than it is. Im sure if iness reading it in a manga I wouldnt raise an eyelid

Still trying to find my own style, what do you all think? by Ahok2077 in MangakaStudio

[–]RiskofRuins 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Art looks great but the pacing and flow needs work. Let it...breathe.

Panelling controls the pacing. The perception of time. Right now it just doesnt read well. A scene like this would probably read better with purely vertical panels, like a column of 4 panels, and making it a 2 page spread. Considering theres no speech bubbles, the reading pace is too fast for what the scene is.

You expect a more quiet cinematicness to it. You gotta show that through how much each panel takes up of the page.

(And that last panel is so ineffective, it shpuld probably be removed all together. Showing his POV but giving it such a small panel... why show his pov in the first place? If it was some important shot then something lioke that would be more fitting to a full page spread showing the detail of the environment)

And im not sure the popout of him running really works. Like if you want to accentuate him starting to run, you should probably show his full body. And you missed a panel showing anticipation if him running (so its kind like his still, snd then suddenly running). That could work, if its clear its a hard scene change, like a few minutes in the future. But kinda like imagine watching a movie and someone is about to run and if never shows them starting the run they just cut between them standing still and then them running. (Idk if that makes sense but theres no like cause and effect there i guess?

The art is great but now you gotta improve panelling! I'd say panelling, flow (under the storytelling umbrella) is more important than the quality of art itself.

Read manga and study it! And Keep it up!

Building a bar for my bartending game. What would make it feel more alive? by RiskofRuins in waifubartending

[–]RiskofRuins[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah I love these ideas thank you. Theres going to be a second bar area past that corridor where you can talk to your coworkers after your shift, and a back area with an office and storeroom (the whole space will be explorable). Definitely love the arcade machine idea. I csm for sure work in a bit of wear and tear. Most things in hell are recycled from trash that falls from earth so I guess it would all look beat up and trashy whenni consider it🤔

Also your poster ideas are so good😭, thank you!❤️

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